Preparation

As time has gone by, I have questioned more and more the value of my college education.  I never had such qualms about law school; I knew by the end of my first year I'd made a rum investment I was unlikely to see a decent return on, and the years have proved me exactly right.  So ram all your donation requests sideways, Michigan Law.  But it took quite awhile to start questioning the value of my time at Utah State.  My posts here and here, though, show that I finally got around to it.  My attitude is even worse now.  Apart from Alder giving me the worst advice I've ever followed, the place simply did not prepare me for anything.  It did not prepare me for finding a way to make a living, going to law school, or dealing with my law school classmates.  It did not clue me in on the problems a kid with my background would have to identify and overcome (Sorry to the late Bob Cole, you may have grown up on a farm, but you did not come from the kind of hardscrabble background I did.  And to the extent you did, you came out at a time when there were opportunities by the bargeload.).

And I have to say it goes beyond my own time there.  I have to ask just what the place is teaching in general.  So many graduates, people with alleged science degrees, are climate change deniers.  Several of them I know personally, but I'll just leave that right there.  None of them have degrees in climate science, which means that if they were intellectually honest they would admit they were operating outside their expertise regardless of their science backgrounds.  Instead, they rant away with an arrogance and butt-ignorance that matches the worst QAnon clowns.

I will say right up front I am not a scientist, let alone a climate scientist. I have read a number of their comments, though, and they boil down to this: 1) We have a pretty good geologic and biologic record of climate changes over a pretty long stretch of time; 2) the rapid changes have overwhelmingly (and effectively uniformly) been caused by some catastrophe such as meteor strike or increased volcanic activity; 3) we are experiencing rapid change now; 4) there has been no catastrophic event; 5) the only identifiable difference between this rapid change event and all the others is the existence of H. sap. and its industrial activity. Nevertheless, the deniers know better. In the Winter 2020 alumni magazine, Frederick Su, a retired physicist (specialty: optics) who received his bachelors and masters from USU, claims that because we can not do control and variable experiments on climate, it's all bunk (I wonder what his attitude is on astrophysics.). This of course ignores the archeology and the fact that human activity is the one data point different from all other climate events. Yes I know correlation is not causation, but when you have just one correlating data point.... Anyway. It should come as no surprise that this guy is a raving ammosexual (He once said that the NRA is "the greatest civil rights organization in the world".) and LDS (He once actually wrote, "Hence, the Constitution was born, the greatest document ever conceived by man. The Founders were touched by God."). Just wow.

Then there is Bruce Nieveen, a civil engineer who I assume received his degree from USU, who in the Fall 2020 alumni magazine claims that we should not listen to climate scientists because they use models and models are wrong, quoting George E. P. Box out of context that, "All models are wrong, but some are useful." It's a fun aphorism, but as Box himself, who created a great many mathematical models in his time, would explain, its real meaning is, "All models are incomplete and therefore wrong at some point, and it is necessary to be mindful of their limits for them to be of use." Nieveen then accuses USU and climate scientists in general to be taking bribes to reach their conclusions. Talk about reaching a conclusion with no evidence.

USU, like Michigan Law, should not be expecting a positive response to any of the donation solicitations it sends me.