The idea of scientific enquiry

The much touted peer reviewed scientific consensus on AGW ( or as I like to call it ... cue the scary music...."The Warming") has been under sustained attack all week thanks to a "hacker" (or more likely a whistleblower) releasing thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit. These dudes, along with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies have been the primary pushers of the theory that man-made activities have pumped so much CO2 in the air that it has caused planet Earth to warm up.

Now I have my beefs with the science and the premise (as detailed in all my previous posts here) however, this post is not about that.

This is about how the process of science has been perverted in the name of a political agenda. When the most vocal proponent of The Warming (apart from the Goracle and his immediate circle) George Monbiot is publicly acknowledging the damage of the leak (in the pages of The Guardian no less!!), one would hope governments, NGOs and the disgraceful UN would 'recalibrate', however there is too much money and power at stake for an about face.

So instead of a public mea culpa from the scientists who have been caught red-handed "hiding the decline" via email conversations, we have endless arguments about the definition of "trick":

"Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all."

And how the words "hiding the decline" don't actually mean what you think it means. This also doesn't explain away the very clear, precise and unambiguous programmer's comments in the code.

However, to get a full understanding of how the actions of the staff at CRU are bordering on criminal and how badly they have damaged their cause, read this posting from a guy who attempted to get the data from the 'scientists' at the CRU to replicate their results...you know, how science is supposed to work...

"Science works by one person making a claim, and backing it up with the data and methods that they used to make the claim. Other scientists then attack the claim by (among other things) trying to replicate the first scientist’s work. If they can’t replicate it, it doesn’t stand."
...
This is not just trivial gamesmanship, this is central to the very idea of scientific inquiry. This is an attack on the heart of science, by keeping people who disagree with you from ever checking your work and seeing if your math is correct.

Read it all. It's long, but if you have the time, it's worth it.

World's. Biggest. DUH!

From The Guardian (re: those hacked emails):

“Jones said the timing of the theft suggested it was intended to cause maximum embarrassment ahead of the Copenhagen climate talks next month: "One has to wonder if it is a coincidence that this email correspondence has been stolen and published at this time. This may be a concerted attempt to put a question mark over the science of climate change in the run-up to the Copenhagen talks."

Pollen Photography

Some very nice pictures...of pollen. (via Metafilter)

Check out the gallery

Everyday Normal Guy 2

"I like red peppers better than the green ones"

Cause for Pause

From an article supporting The Warming:

"Those emission estimates are not very accurate compared to high-calibration devices," says Michael Woelk, CEO of Picarro, a California-based manufacturer of such a device for measuring CO2 emissions. "No country today is using scientific instruments to monitor and calibrate the effect of policy," not even the European Union, which has an emissions trading scheme for greenhouse gases.”

Yet here we are, in Australia, about to pass legislation taxing CO2 output because the gutless and cowardly Opposition is split about whether The Warming is just a load of codswallop, or does spell the end of days. Just in case my emphasis in the previous quote didn't quite hit home, WE CAN'T ACTUALLY MEASURE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ANY TYPE OF LEGISLATION OF CO2.

From The Australian:

“After an all-day debate over climate change, the Opposition Leader unilaterally declared the Coalition would back Kevin Rudd's carbon emissions trading scheme.”

In a one brilliant move, Mr Turnbull has split the Coalition (the Nats are not going to vote for the ETS), split the Liberal party (skeptics ahoy!) because the fear of a double-dissolution and an election called too soon which would inevitably lead to another 4 years in the wilderness,
Turnbull is making a stand on what he believes the Australian electorate wants.

In some ways he is in a damned if you do-damned if you don’t moment. But the timing of the ETS, the manner of the debate on the legislation (ie. minimal due to KRudd wanting to pass this before the Copenhagen Summit), and the revelations of gross scientific malpractice are not stopping this relentless push for higher taxes that people don’t want, won’t be effective, and will hamstring our economy.

Support the ETS, and split the party and coalition = unlikely to win next election and probably lose the position of leader of the party.

Don't support the ETS, keep the coalition and party together = electorate believe that the Liberals wan't to kill Gaia, unlikely to win next election.

Frickin' Airborne Lasers man!

I present to you the Advanced Tactical Laser:

Target view of a vehicle of the airborne laser.

Videos here.

Hackers, Hoaxes and Hypocrites

Hackers hack a climate research unit at a university (BBC):

"E-mails reportedly from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), including personal exchanges, appeared on the internet on Thursday.
A university spokesman confirmed the email system had been hacked and that information was taken and published without permission."

Content of emails between scientists published on the internet. Emphasis mine:

From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@xxxxx.xxx, mhughes@xxxx.xxx
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@xxx.xx.xx,t.osborn@xxxx.xxx

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or
first thing tomorrow.
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps
to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from
1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual
land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land
N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999
for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with
data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
Thanks for the comments, Ray.
Cheers
Phil
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) xxxxx

School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) xxxx

University of East Anglia
Norwich
Email p.jones@xxxx.xxx
NR4 7TJ


Headline from Der Spiegel:

"Climatologists Baffled by Global Warming Time Out"

Baffled I tell you! I mean how the hell can the record NOT show warming when you have such ethical notaries as the scientists quoted in the email cooking the freaking books.

In other words, despite your shonky scientific methods, your rank hypocrisy and false starting premise, and your decade long ability to modify the data to support your case, and yet still the Earth has not shown a warming trend in the last 9 years!?!?

From the Der Spiegel Article:

"The Hadley Center group (aka University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) whence the emails have come from - Jack) expects warming to resume in the coming years. "That resumption could come as a bit of a jolt," says Hadley climatologist Adam Scaife, explaining that natural cyclical warming would then be augmented by the warming effect caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions...and if not, we'll just make shit up until it looks like it.

(I may have added that last part....but I'm sure he was thinking it)

Reassortment

Reassortment: The rearrangement of genes from two distinct influenza strains to produce a novel viral strain(link).

From this:

“And in the next few weeks, scientists working there are planning to manufacture a new resident. They hope to test whether the highly transmissible pandemic H1N1 virus could reassort with its deadlier cousin, the H5N1 avian flu, to make a virus with the worst properties of both.” (emphasis mine - Jack)

And shortly after they will infect the hamsters with this new super-virus, who will then go on to develop uncontrollable rage at being treated like guinea pigs, kind of like a "rage virus", biting the scientists through their BSL-4 suits, infecting humans...28 days later...zombies. We've all seen the bloody film, why o why make it a reality?



Links:
H5n1 pic source: http://phil.cdc.gov/phil/details.asp
H1n1 pic source: http://www.cdc.gov/H1n1flu/images.htm

Overstatement

Overstatement of the week:

A decree banning women from wearing trousers in Paris is still technically in force, it emerged on Monday, making the laissez-faire French capital theoretically stricter than hardline Sudan in the fashion stakes.

Using the same logic, the lack of enshrined right to free speech in Australia makes the theoretically open-society of the “sunburnt country” more oppressive than North Korea.

Regular Everyday Normal Guy

"My parents are really nice people, mothaf*cka!"

Indulgences? Or just eating the dog?

Other than the (almost-tongue-in-cheek) suggestion that we should get eat our dogs...to save the earth (a joke repeated about 3 times), the scariest thing about this op-ed is the way the author has internalized the idea that the Australian Goverments Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) will save the the planet:

"But the politicians' bickering over the emissions trading scheme demonstrates their shameful unwillingness to tackle this incredibly pressing problem."

If it wasn't for the spineless Opposition, this bill should have been dead in the water yonks ago. And if you think that paying the government (in the form of higher taxes) reduce the amount of CO2, well.... how much did the buying of indulgences in the middle ages reduce the incidence of sin?

(picture source)

Vatican Alien Symposium

Right on the tails of ‘serious scientists’ grappling with the threat of zombies, now the Vatican is holding a conference on “astrobiology, the study of life beyond Earth”. The discovery of alien life forms would raise some troublesome issues for Christians, as “God had made Man in His own image” (Genesis 1:27), however according to Paul Davies who will be attending the conference,

“The possibility of extraterrestrial life is not much of an issue for Eastern religions, which tend to be less Earth-centric”

And also mentioned is that Islam apparently allows for the existence of life beyond earth, although having read the Quranic verses quoted, I’m not convinced. The idea that certain followers of Islam, who are famous for their tolerance of fellow humans, would somehow be cooler about ET than say, Pope Benedict XVI, is a little hard to swallow, however I welcome the hypothetical.

Three little "jellyfish" are we...

Cells subdividing? Jellyfish? A skin care ad with blemishes?

Nope. It's the "Erosion of the south polar residual ice cap"... on Mars.

More really cool pics here.

Douchebags

Your Friday Funny...

Ft Hood

From this article:

Other than the fact we have the usual variety of reprobates gleefully celebrating the mass murder that Major Nidal Malik Hasan carried out at Ft Hood, Texas [because the senseless murder of defenseless people adds to the glory of “God”, however you may interpret Him], the real scary sentence in the article is this:

“Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey said Sunday it's important for the country not to get caught up in speculation about Hasan's Muslim faith, and he has instructed his commanders to be on the lookout for anti-Muslim reaction to the killings at the Texas post.”

Here’s an idea, why not be “on the lookout” for other potential sudden jihadi syndrome/mass murderers to prevent more real deaths, rather than perceived/real/imagined “anti-Muslim reactions”. I would have figured that preventing the very real prospect of more depraved individuals carrying out further attacks was more of a priority than worrying if some beardie-weirdie got teased.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me”…no more… however if that weedy kid in 4th grade you teased decides to come to school packing two FN Herstal 5.7mm semi-automatic pistols and starts shooting everybody, well, if we apply the emerging media narrative on Ft Hood, it’s your fault.

Just a bird? or agent from the future?

From The Age today:

"GENEVA : THE $6.5 billion machine designed to recreate the conditions present at the beginning of time had to be switched off after a bird dropped a "bit of baguette" into it, causing it to overheat."

From the CERN webpage entitled "The safety of the LHC":

"The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) can achieve an energy that no other particle accelerators have reached before, but Nature routinely produces higher energies in cosmic-ray collisions, and the occasional random bird fly-by with a bit of baguette"

(it's entirely possible I may have added something).

So to recap, the most expensive science experiment ever undertaken that is using and observing energies that existed a few moments after the big bang, got broken due to an errant bird and a piece of bread. Call me naive, but surely the nuclear scientists that designed the LHC would have somehow figured for such an eventuality and not had a critical piece of equipment exposed to the outside ??

Or was the bird an agent of the universe from the future, sent back to sabotage our puny efforts at discovering the mysteries of the cosmos?

UPDATE: fixed picture

2012 - The end of the World?...or not?

1,000 foot tsunamis taking out isolated mountaintop Buddhist monastories, earthquakes splitting the Sistine chapel in half and the St Peter's basilica crashing down on thousands of worshippers, the giant Jesus Christ statue in Rio de Janeiro crumbling and collapsing, the Whitehouse crushed by freakin' aircraft carrier, all of these events depicted in this years ultimate disaster-porn movie "2012"...trailer.



However there are some man-made structures of significance that will be spared:

No Islamic Landmarks Were Harmed in the Making of '2012'

That's a relief....

Wolverine...in 30 seconds

(via Metafilter)

Altruism

From here:

"Few people have been as vocal about the urgency of global warming and the need to reinvent the way the world produces and consumes energy as Mr Gore. And few have put as much money behind their advocacy and are as well positioned to profit from this green transformation, if and when it comes."