[Bingo]

Originally Posted by Lanny_MacDonald

Having worked on both sides of that fence, no it doesn't. My observation was that private sector was always more directed/results oriented, where the test was to use your method to deliver the expected result. There was very little doubt of what information you were investigating and what results you were to find. What methods you used to get there was more important than the information you discovered, as the results were pretty much prefab and outlined in any RFP you got. You were paid to deliver exactly what was expected and provide a methodology that would support the expected result. In the public sector you are asking for financial support of your idea and the ability to test your method, reporting the unknown data of an untested methodology. Through this research would hopefully develop a new methodology and with it a verifiable dataset. The goal was more proof of concept independent of data rather than proof of data itself. I think that is the biggest difference between the two sides of the fence.

Consider it Calgary fans mentality versus Oiler fans mentality. Calgary fans (public sector) look at statistics to find patterns that define levels of play. Edmonton fans (private sector) have a predetermined result and manufacture statistics to make their level of play look more impressive. "Hard minutes" are invented to show that the end result is not as brutal as it may first appear. Whether you like the results depends on your methodology or approach to crunching the numbers.



Visionary is probably a bad term. How about visioneer. What I was trying to say was that I tend to be more of an ideas guy (something pointed out in another thread) and able to visualize the interconnects between things. I been told I see how things fit together long before others do, which is probably why I am good at what I do. I just wish I could turn that into some cold hard cash and be able to stop working for the man!

On the alternative fuel thing, I think we are sometimes constricted by the box in which we live. We are used to doing things a certain way and sometimes don't see the solutions right in front of our faces. Fuels is one area where I think we hit that wall and box ourselves in. I think we dismiss the energy source most obvious, that being electricity. I hope to see the change to this standard in my lifetime, but I'm not confident that will happen.

Electricity is primarily driven by the burning of the cleanest of the fossil fuels ... natural gas.

There are wind and water driven electrical sources, but to this day the primary driver is still natural gas.

So you can envision all you like, but invention is the key to make this clean, and until that happens people are seriously whistling in the wind (bad pun) when it comes to alternate fuels for energy.

The best alternative available is nukes, but the NIMBY (not in my back yard) crowd keeps that on the outskirts and without a great deal of opportunity to take a foot hold.

Beyond that ... don't fool yourself, there have been plenty of sources citing a huge amount of pressure on the grant side to come up with man made causes for global warming. That in itself doen't make the science itself wrong, I myself am far from deciding at all what the cause is, but there are plenty of insidious angles on both sides of the fence.

To only see it one way is foolish.