Settled Science Unsettled Is Unsettling Scientists Part VI

The science is settled. The debate is over. It is time to act. Global warming is caused by humans. There can be no argument.

So lets assemble the torches, pitchforks, tar and feathers, and lets go after the humans who caused global warming - that cabal of greedy "scientists", venal politicians and their media cheerleaders, aided and abetted by the captains of "green" industry and everyone else who can smell a gravy train.

They are the humans that have scared the planet witless with their bogus global warming. And they should be held accountable. There now. That's settled.

Settled Science Unsettled Is Unsettling Scientists Part V 
Settled Science Unsettled Is Unsettling Scientists Part IV
Settled Science Unsettled Is Unsettling Scientists Part III
Settled Science Unsettled Is Unsettling Scientists Part II
Settled Science Unsettled Is Unsettling Scientists Part I

Climategate And The Silence Of The Media

A week into Climategate, one of the greatest scientific scandals of our time, most Canadian media - CBC, CTV, Globe & Mail, Global News - are averting their gaze. But there is a good summary of the scandal in today's National Post. Be sure to read the comments too for some excellent contributions.

And David Warren at the Ottawa Citizen writes The Skeptics are Vindicated.

Other media -- which have played a leading part for years in giving credibility to "global warming" claims -- are now maintaining the silence of Iago on the revelations. We will see how long this can be sustained.

UPDATE: Climaquiddick - this isn’t just a science scandal, but a journalistic one.

Three Things You Absolutely Must Know About Climategate

Read this and then you decide if the world should still plow ahead with massively disruptive  political and economic interventions to stop global warming.    

From Iain Murray writing at Pajamas Media:

First, the scientists discuss manipulating data to get their preferred results.

Secondly, scientists on several occasions discussed methods of subverting the scientific peer review process to ensure that skeptical papers had no access to publication.

Finally, the scientists worked to circumvent the Freedom of Information process of the United Kingdom.

At long last the theocrats of global warming are being exposed. But don't expect to see much of this in mainstream media.

Back From The Dead?

Here's one for the medical books - or maybe House MD:

56-Year-Old Man Brought Back To Life After 47 Minutes, 4,500 Chest Compressions And 8 Zaps With Defibrillator

Harry_Read_Me

Over the weekend everyone was poring through the CRU emails looking for, well, everything. But emails were only part of what was released into the wild.

Also out there is a file called HARRY_READ_ME.txt. Computer programmers usually include a comments file (aka a readme) with their software and data to explain decisions they make, anomalies they discover and so on. This file contains 15,000 lines of comments from the programmers as they try to fit the results of their programs and data to PREVIOUS results. In other words, they are retroactively massaging their computer models to account for current results.

I am looking forward to someone taking this dataset and code, cleaning it up and running it. Then we will see what it actually represents.

Summaries Of Leaked CRU Files

From Bishop Hill, here are some summaries of the CRUgate files. The numbers link directly to the emails quoted. Some examples:

Michael Mann discusses how to destroy a journal that has published skeptic papers.(1047388489)

Tim Osborn discusses how data are truncated to stop an apparent cooling trend showing up in the results (0939154709). Analysis of impact here.

Phil Jones encourages colleagues to delete information subject to Freedom of Information request.(1212063122)

Jones tells Mann that he is sending station data. Says that if McIntyre requests it under FoI he will delete it rather than hand it over. Says he will hide behind data protection laws. Says Rutherford screwed up big time by creating an FTP directory for Osborn. Says Wigley worried he will have to release his model code. Also discuss AR4 draft. Mann says paleoclimate chapter will be contentious but that the author team has the right personalities to deal with skeptics.(1107454306)

UPDATE: Three scandals in one:

• Suppression of dissenting voices; 
• Manipulation of data to make a political case; 
• Conspiracy to prevent data from being released as required by the Freedom of Information Acts.

A Very Sad Day For Climate Science?

Dr. Tim Ball is a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg and outspoken critic of theories of anthropogenic global warming. This article by Dr. Ball appeared yesterday at Canada Free Press in reaction to the release of hacked/leaked data from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia.

The argument that global warming is due to humans, known as the anthropogenic global warming theory (AGW) is a deliberate fraud. I can now make that statement without fear of contradiction because of a remarkable hacking of files that provided not just a smoking gun, but an entire battery of machine guns.

Of course the IPCC Reports and especially the SPM Reports are the basis for Kyoto and the Copenhagen Accord, but now we know they are based on completely falsified and manipulated data and science. It is no longer a suspicion. Surely this is the death knell for the CRU, the IPCC, Kyoto and Copenhagen and the Carbon Credits shell game.

CO2 never was a problem and all the machinations and deceptions exposed by these files prove that it was the greatest deception in history, but nobody is laughing. It is a very sad day for science and especially my chosen area of climate science. 

I would respectfully disagree with Dr. Ball that it is a sad day for science. Although what happened is a scandal and a disgrace, the truth is now coming out. This should make for much better climate science.

The Global Warming Bombshell

Or is it the 'smoking gun'? How about Warmingate?

John Hinderaker at Powerline with analysis of the incredible Hadley CRU hack/leak of emails from the top global warmist scientists:

This and many other emails convey the impression that these theorists are making the "science" up as they go along, with data being manipulated until it yields the results that have been predetermined by political conviction. Left-wing politics is a common theme of the emails.

They also suggest that pro-global warming scientists fudge data to get the results they are looking for.

Fudging data to yield results predetermined by political conviction. Wow. Who would have predicted that?

UPDATE: From The Telegraph: The final nail in the anthropogenic global warming coffin?

Manipulation of evidence, private doubts about whether the world really is heating up, suppression of evidence, fantasies of violence against prominent Climate Sceptic scientists, attempts to disguise the inconvenient truth of the Medieval Warm Period, how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process.

And on it goes through hundreds of emails. This may well be one of the greatest scandals in the history of science. How many billions of dollars have been wasted on this so far?

The Evolving Truth Of Climate Change

Whether hacked or leaked, the story is out: Scientists at CRU were working to hide the decline. That would be the decline that corresponds to something that is not global warming. Gee, I wonder what that could be?

But far more serious - at least in a legal sense - may be his apparent boasting of destroying data to stop sceptics from checking this alarmist work. If, as some emails suggest, he destroyed it to thwart FOI requests from Professor Ross McKitrick and Steve McIntyre, who’d already exposed as fake the Michael Mann “hockey stick”, Jones, one of the most active of the IPCC lead authors, could even face criminal charges.

More from the New York Times.

The Evolving Science Of Climate Change

A well-reasoned article on climate change in Germany's Der Spiegel. Finally scientists are looking past their obsession with CO2 and anthropogenic causes of climate change and are trying to understand the bigger picture.

Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.

...it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year.

Mojib Latif, one of Germany's best-known climatologists, says that the temperature curve has reached a plateau. "There can be no argument about that," he says. "We have to face that fact."

There can be no argument? Tell that to the politicians. They are dangerously behind the temperature curve here.

Remembering The Chevy Nova

With options for everyone from little old ladies to drag racers, the 1968 to 1974 Chevy Novas were cheap, plentiful and possibly the best cars GM ever built.

I drove several of these and if I were to add to my collection I'd look for one like this. If I, you know, actually had a collection.

Newfoundland Wiped Off The Map. Again!

Sheesh. What's up with all this wiping Newfoundland off the map? First it was the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. They at least had the decency to fix their map (well sort of). You can email your thanks here.

But here, via Watts Up With That, is a map eliminating Newfoundland that won't be fixed. Why? Because it's in Al Gore's new global warmist screed "Our Choice".

Compare and contrast the two photographs shown from Gore's book. According to this, once the ice caps melt, Newfoundland will be under water. That means the ocean will, rise , oh, 2,673 feet, to cover the Island's Lewis Hills in the Long Range Mountains. 

Does Al Gore really believe the oceans will rise half a mile? Oh well, the photos also show imaginary hurricanes too. Especially note the clockwise rotating southern hemisphere cyclone just off the east coast of what's left of Florida. That would be in, you know, the northern hemisphere. According to Al Gore, global warming doesn't just mean more hurricanes, it means hurricanes that defy all known physics of climatology. 

Er, wait. Doesn't that sum up anthropogenic global warming right there?

Curing Congenital Blindness

Researchers in Philadelphia have developed a successful gene therapy that has drastically improved vision in a group of young and middle aged people legally blind from birth.

...after a single injection of genes that produce light-sensitive pigments in the back of his eye, he sits in front with classmates and participates in class without extra help. In the playground, he joins his classmates in playing his first game of softball.

His treatment represents the next step toward medical science's goal of using gene therapy to cure disease. Extending a preliminary study published last year on three young adults, the full study reports successful, sustained results that showed notable improvement in children with congenital blindness.

Pomplamoose Just Gets Better And Better

Great new stuff from "video song" collaborators Nataly Dawn and Jack Conte of Pomplamoose:

Pigeon Impossible

Pigeon: Impossible is the tale of Walter, a rookie secret agent faced with a problem seldom covered in basic training: what to do when a curious pigeon gets trapped inside your multi-million dollar, government-issued nuclear briefcase.

This six minute animation by Lucas Martel has won all kinds of awards and now it's viral on the Internet. Watch it full screen and turn up your speakers to get the best of the the fabulous big-band sound track. And then go here to see videos on how Pigeon: Impossible was made.

Putting Newfoundland Back On The Map

I've posted before about the Island of Newfoundland not appearing on a map of the world published by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Well, less than a week later, the big map now includes Newfoundland. It's a bit of a copy and paste job and the orientation of Newfoundland with the compass is, er, mysterious, but it's there, proving that emails and blog posts actually can work. Thanks Mr. and Mrs. Gates.

Canada Among Least Corrupt

Good old boring Canada. I had never heard of Transparency International until they published this report today. From the National Post:

Canada is viewed as one of the least corrupt countries in the world and is an "inspiration" for the U.S. and other nations in North and South America.

Canada's score, as high as 9.0 [out of 10] in 2002, slid to 8.4 in 2005 as a result of the Liberal sponsorship scandal. It bounced up to 8.7 in the 2007 TI index, a level it has maintained in the two subsequent TI studies.

Stupendous Soviet Flying Machines

Over at the indispensable English Russia, photo-realistic renderings of 1930s Soviet designs for monster airplanes. Some of these actually look like they might be able to fly, but the battleship turrets are a bit much. The Nazi flying saucer is way cool.

Come to think of it, this is kind of like the stuff I liked to draw in study hall. And by the way, don't blame me if you come up for air at English Russia and discover days have gone by. Not necessarily safe for work.

An Anti- Smoking Vaccine?

Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline has signed a potential $500M licensing deal with Nabi Biopharmaceuticals for Nabi's new anti-smoking vaccine NicVAX.

NicVAX is an experimental therapy for the treatment of nicotine addiction and the prevention of smoking relapse. The vaccine is designed to stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies that bind to the nicotine molecules. Once bound together, they are too large to cross the blood-brain barrier. In this way, the nicotine is blocked from reaching the receptors in the brain that cause the highly-addictive pleasure sensation experienced by smokers and users of nicotine products.

Conrad Black On Teaching In Prison

Publishing magnate Conrad Black is still in a US prison, waiting, as he says, for "the U.S. Supreme Court’s disposition of the 15% or so of the charges made against me four years ago that survived the trial."

 

In the National Post (a paper he ironically used to own), he writes a wonderful essay on the unexpected rewards of teaching his fellow inmates.