"The meaning of the world is the separation of wish and fact." - KURT GÖDEL
"According to Peirce's doctrine of fallibilism, the conclusions of science are always tentative. The rationality of the scientific method does not depend on the certainty of its conclusions, but on its self-corrective character: by continued application of the method science can detect and correct its own mistakes, and thus eventually lead to the discovery of truth".
A guiding principle for accepting claims of catastrophic global events, miracles, incredible healing, invisible friends, or fill in the blank is:
“extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” - Carl Sagan
"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable." - H. L. Mencken
I would add irrational and highly delusional to the mix when faith requires one to accept magical violations of the well known, well tested or easily demonstrated laws of Nature. - PWL
"Science is Progress and the Future. Faith is regression to the Dark Ages." - PWL
“It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.” - Carl Sagan
"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan
"Two important characteristics of maps should be noticed. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness." - Alfred Korzybski
"Science is a search for basic truths about the Universe, a search which develops statements that appear to describe how the Universe works, but which are subject to correction, revision, adjustment, or even outright rejection, upon the presentation of better or conflicting evidence." - James Randi
"Hypotheses are nets: only he who casts will catch." - Novalis
"Nullius in verba. Take no one's word for it." - Motto of the Royal Society
"I'm trying to find out NOT how Nature could be, but how Nature IS." - Richard Feynman
"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." - Thomas Henry Huxley
“A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.” Albert Einstein
"Science is empirical. Knowing the answer means nothing. Testing your knowledge means everything." - Lawrence Krauss
"Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism - and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency." - Stephen Jay Gould
"Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic. And it doesn't work." - James Randi
“Tel-Aviv University demos quantum superconductors locked in a magnetic field.”
This is a kind of Tractor Beam where the beam is the magnetic field of permanent magnets and a superconducting material. It’s quite impressive aspect of Quantum Mechanics operating at a macro scale, something we’re not used to seeing. It’s the “locking” aspect that is fantastic. Of course this raises many questions about what applications are posisble.
First let’s watch the recent demo that’s been spreading like wildfire.
Now for more indepth videos that get a little bit into the science.
Going beyond the small dream of Occupy Wall Street; embrace a real dream: we are already occupying the Earth, soon the Moon and then onto the goal of occupying the entire Solar System! A worthy goal for the various space programs of Earth.
The NASA director gives 54 minute talk on occupying the solar system.
Dr S.Pete Worden, Director of NASA Ames Research Park, NASA’s cutting edge research base in Silicon Valley, discusses humanity’s goal of settling the solar system.
It ain’t over till the fat lady Neutrina sings again in a number of encore performances around the world, aka “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” (to borrow a principle from Carl Sagan).
A quick summary of the alleged discovery of slightly faster than light neutrinos:
CERN’s Antonio Ereditato does a brief BBC Inteview.
“[The following] is the live Webcast from CERN on Friday September 23, 2011. Given the potential far-reaching consequences of the OPERA experiment — which observes a neutrino beam from CERN 730 km away at Italy’s INFN Gran Sasso Laboratory, indicating that the neutrinos travel at a velocity 20 parts per million above the speed of light — independent measurements are needed before the effect can either be refuted or firmly established, according to a CERN statement just issued. The OPERA collaboration has therefore decided to open the result to broader scrutiny.” Read the rest of this entry »
“Wonders of the Universe is a 2011 television series produced by the BBC, Discovery Channel, and Science Channel, hosted by physicist Brian Cox. Wonders of the Universe was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC Two on 6 March 2011. The series comprises four episodes, each of which focuses on an aspect of the universe and features a ‘wonder’ relevant to the theme. It follows on from Cox’s previous series for the BBC, Wonders of the Solar System, which was first broadcast in 2010.” [1] Read the rest of this entry »
“The purpose of language is to communicate and as long as you’ve communicated getting the nouns and verbs in the right order, grammar, spelling, pronunciation, or any of that correct is irrelevant.” ~ Powell Janulus, Master of Language, Speaker of 80+ Languages, Language Teacher, Court Translator, (paraphrased).
Let’s explore this by way of two very interesting conversations, one from philosopher and physicist Paul Davies and the other from Stephen Wolfram.
Philosopher and physicist Paul Davies give a fascinating and thought-provoking talk on the possibility of an ultimate explanation for our universe. Dismissing the multiverse and God, he outlines an idea for finding an explanation for the universe and physical laws within the universe itself.
CARGO CULT SCIENCE by Richard Feynman
Adapted from the Caltech commencement address given in 1974.
During the Middle Ages there were all kinds of crazy ideas, such as that a piece of rhinoceros horn would increase potency. Then a method was discovered for separating the ideas–which was to try one to see if it worked, and if it didn’t work, to eliminate it. This method became organized, of course, into science. And it developed very well, so that we are now in the scientific age. It is such a scientific age, in fact that we have difficulty in understanding how witch doctors could ever have existed, when nothing that they proposed ever really worked–or very little of it did.
But even today I meet lots of people who sooner or later get me into a conversation about UFOS, or astrology, or some form of mysticism, expanded consciousness, new types of awareness, ESP, and so forth. And I’ve concluded that it’s not a scientific world.
It’s official, Obama named the storm “Snowmageddon“!
Snowmaggedon, the epic snow storms of 2010, descends up on the east coast of the USA. Snowmaggedon is just a few categories below The Day After Tomorrow as far as snow disasters go.
Snowmaggeddon 2010 – NOAA/NASA
“The North American blizzard of 2010 is a winter storm and severe weather event creating potential for historic snowfall totals in the Middle Atlantic states, possibly eclipsing the Knickerbocker Storm of 1922. The blizzard stretched from Mexico and New Mexico (USA) to New Jersey, killing people in New Mexico, Maryland and Virginia.
The profound deep arrogance of man is revealed in the self imposed delusional mythological belief systems from the Bronze Ages. Many people, purportedly the vast majority of people on Earth, believe that the universe was created for man. How arrogant. How sad. The cartoon above says it well.
Let’s get it through our thick skulls. The universe wasn’t created for human beings. We simple evolved here fighting and clawing our way from sub-cellular life to multi-cellular all the way up to human being. To say that the universe was created for us is so insulting to our ancestors that it isn’t funny- it does them a deep disrespect for it says that their struggle in the continuous chain of life from them to us was unnecessary and make believe just to suit the whims of some arrogant God that want’s to toy with us for his/her/it’s own designs.
Anyone who truly gets the notion of freedom and independence must reject the notions of arrogance implied and supported by the profoundly horrific self conceited notion that the universe was created for us.
A new ruling by the Supreme Court in Canada will allow journalists and bloggers greater protection from defamation lawsuits, establishing the new defence of responsible journalism.
If sued for defamation, journalists will be able to defend themselves by proving that they acted in the public interest and that they acted in a responsible way to gather the information. This rule will still apply even if particular facts are found to be false.” – Canadian Supreme Court Strengthens Press Freedom
This covers anyone blogging from Canada. I’m not sure [but am double checking] that this might cover Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit dot Org fame (assuming he’s resident in Canada). Certainly Stephen set’s the bar for indepth scientific blogging that goes beyond what any journalists that I’ve ever read have done (with the except of a few that have authored of books). One can aim towards Stephen McIntyre’s standards and not go wrong.
Wow, Nature at it’s rawest moments. Breathtaking. So much for buffalo’s being dumb animals. I’d say courageous and brave is more like it while the lions, well, watch it for yourself.
CAUTION: Blood and Gore! No, not Al Gore and his business partner David Blood, but Natural Blood and Gore!
“A battle between a pride of lions, a herd of buffalo, and 2 crocodiles at a watering hole in South Africa’s Kruger National Park while on safari.”
Very cool tool from visualizing data from NASA satellites in 3d in a web browser.
What I’m interested in is not just the visualization aspect but the actual data behind the visualizations since as we know from the Climategate confirmations of scientific fraud in climate science visual images can be highly misleading towards the alleged scientists point of view. Raw data please. All manipulations MUST be FULLY documented with the software source code that made the changes and detailed reasons listed for all adjustments.
If we are to raise our knowledge, skills and competence in using the scientific method to study the Earth, Moon, Sol and other relevant systems we must do some basic learning. Hard science requires making use of hard data without cheating and with showing ones data and any adjustments with justifications and open source code for auditing and proper open peer reviews!
Now let’s see what we can learn from this 3d puppy. My favorite is the GRACE Gravity satellites.
I’ve often wondered what impact the uneven gravity has on the Earth’s climate systems and if the gravity effects are taken into account in the so called climate models. As you can see from the above video the Earth isn’t even an oblate spheroid, it’s a really bumpy place when it comes to gravity. This must impact the weather and thus the climate systems as the atmosphere and water and ice move about.
John Coleman, the founder of The Weather Channel speaks out against global warming.
“John Coleman is a harsh critic of anthropogenic global warming. In the fall of 2007, he described the current concern over global warming “a fictional, manufactured crisis, and a total scam.”. In 2008, Coleman gave a speech of the same tone, before the San Diego Chamber of Commerce, blaming the “global warming scam” and environmentalist lobby, for rising gas and food prices. He also declared the scam “a threat to our economy and our civilization.”
Thousands of awe-struck Norwegians bombarded the Meteorological Institute to ask what the incredible light — that could be seen in the pre-dawn sky for hundreds of miles — could possibly be.
The phenomenon has been dubbed ‘Star-Gate’ — as the world’s top scientists and the military lined up to admit they were baffled.
I gather a black hole escaped from the LHC!
Or, maybe it’s the Copenhagen Climate Conference Hypnosis Ray Satellite destructing with the Climategate confirmations of science fraud?
However, after a moment, I realized this must be a rocket, most likely spiraling out of control. I don’t understand all the details — I don’t have all the info yet — but a rocket fits what we’re seeing here. First, this was seen all over Norway, so it must have been at a high altitude to be so visible. Second, the blue spiral angling down to the right is clearly due to perspective. A rocket spiraling around, and coming up from the lower right, would appear to make tight spirals when it was far away and bigger ones as it got closer.
“It’s … a very serious breach of how true science is done. … Scientists worldwide will begin to realize how prosecuting authorities are beginning to move in on them and particularly those who have profited, or profiteered rather, by peddling false and exaggerated science whether they are scientists themselves, politicians or people in the environmental movement who have been exaggerating the supposed threat of climate change in the way that we now know that the University of East Anglia (UEA/CRU Climategate, Phil Jones, Mann, et. al.) was doing. If that is a widespread problem then the fraud authorities are also going to be moving in on the UEA and on the scientists linked with them in what looks like a small tightly controlled conspiracy to bend, falsify and exaggerate the supposed problem of climate change.” – Christopher Monckton
Christopher Monckton has been asking Al Gore to debate him, Al has been silent to these requests.
Al Gore, Monckton is coming for yeah and it won’t be to debate anymore, he’s coming for you Al with a pair of bracelets. What you gonna do when they come for you Al baby?
Christopher Monckton has suggested that anyone financially benefiting from the “global warming fraud” financially, such as Al Gore who stands to become a “first billionaire from carbon“, be gone after with “racketeering laws” in the USA and the new “fraud laws” in England. It is interesting to note that Al Gore does have a sizable stake (reportedly 16 million shares) in Camco International Limited (CAMIN.L) (London Stock Exchange), a carbon credit trading company out of England, which happens to be Monckton’s home turf.
“The belief that the ends justifies the means may be the true root of all evil.” – Troy Brumley
“Al Gore, First Emperor of the Moon, Head Authority on Mann-Made Climate Change“
While Branson get’s it wrong on ManN Made Global Warming Climate Change his engineer Burt Rutan gets it on target!
Rutan made headlines … in 2004 with SpaceShipOne, which became the first privately built, flown, and funded craft to reach space in June of that year, winning the Ansari X Prize a few months later on October 4. SpaceShipOne completed two flights within two weeks, flying with the equivalent weight of 3 persons and doing so while reusing at least 80% of the vehicle hardware. The project team was honored with the 2004 Collier Trophy, awarded by the National Aeronautic Association for “greatest achievement in aeronautics or astronautics in America.” The craft embodies Rutan’s unique style, and is another of the “icons of flight” displayed in the NASM Milestones of Flight exhibit.
This achievement was quickly commercialized — Virgin Galactic, an offshoot of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, announced that it would begin space tourism flights in 2008 using craft based on the designs of SpaceShipOne. Dubbed SpaceShipTwo, these new craft, also designed by Burt Rutan, are intended to allow six “experience optimized” passengers to glimpse the planet from 70–80 miles up in suborbital space. Production of the first of five planned SpaceShipTwo craft has started, with the first test flights currently scheduled for 2007-8. An explosion at the Scaled Composite factory at the Mojave Spaceport on July 26, 2007 killed three engineers and seriously injured three others. They were testing components for SpaceShipTwo, but as of August 2007[update] Scaled
Composites remained dedicated to perfecting the design of SpaceShipTwo.
…
On July 29, 2009, Burt Rutan drew a full house for his presentation at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s EAA Airventure 2009 Oshkosh Conference entitled “Non-Aerospace Research Quests of a Designer/Flight Test Engineer” where he discussed his thoughts on his hobby of climate change.[1] Although he admitted in his presentation that he was not a climate scientist, he stated he spent most of his career on data analysis and interpretation and how it is used or misused.[2]
“I put myself in the (Those who fear expansion of Government control) group, and do not hide the fact that I have a clear bias on [ Anthropogenic global warming (AGW)]. My bias is based on fear of Government expansion and the observation of AGW data presentation fraud – not based on financial or any other personal benefit. I merely have found that the closer you look at the data and alarmists’ presentations, the more fraud you find and the less you think there is an AGW problem… For decades, as a professional experimental test engineer, I have analyzed experimental data and watched others massage and present data. I became a cynic; My conclusion – “if someone is aggressively selling a technical product who’s [sic] merits are dependent [sic] on complex experimental data, he is likely lying”. That is true whether the product is an airplane or a Carbon Credit.“
Burt Rutan also states he was raised Republican but now seems to think that both official parties have grown too big and socialist for his more libertarian leanings. He describes his interest on the topic deriving from his “interest in technology, not tree hugging”.
We have seen Noam Chomsky’s principle of “Manufacturing Consent” working with the Climategate criminals Jones, Mann, et. al.. A conspiracy of “values and beliefs”, an elitist clique that thought that they were above the rest of the people they worked for, us. Other scientists have this “academic” elitist bias or shared value, that says that you need not just the “qualifications” but the “right attitude” otherwise you’re “outside the group”. Einstein broke the mold as have McIntyre and others, Einstein was a “patent clerk” when he worked on his famous breakthroughs.
Now we see it with Jon Stewart. While making light of the Climategate in a really funny way he reveals his bias in that he “believes” in “global warming” when he says “does it [Climategate] disprove global warming, no”. Unfortunately it’s much more complex than Jon Stewart realizes and that his shared values and beliefs in “global warming” blind him from deeper inquiry. OR, as a masterful media perception shaper he’s doing his job of making people laugh with short segments and the Climategate is way too much to get into and his demographic also shares his values in “global warming”.
In any event the science will clearly demonstrate what’s going on as time unfolds and Nature does what she does.
What’s interesting in Jon Stewart’s masterful media play is really how good he is at it.
Three men assaulted by goons under orders from Al Gore.
Does Al Gore still think he has sovereign powers as an ex-president? Where does Al Gore get off illegally forcibly assaulting people who ask him questions he doesn’t like? I know of nothing in the US Constitution that would permit a private citizen to use force as was done here multiple times.
The evidence shows that Al Gore considers questions on Climategate and AGW from non-violent people to be an imminent security threat as he orders his (secret service?) security detail to forcibly remove three people who ask inconvenient questions Mr Gore doesn’t like.
“CHICAGO IL – On Tuesday, November 24th 2009, We Are Change Chicago attended a book signing with former vice president Al Gore, at the Borders Bookstore on 150 N. State Street.
…
First up was Saad Ali. As he approached Gore, he peacefully and respectably asked, “Sir, can you comment on the emails and documents that were hacked [ClimateGate] that reveal… that the research was a fraud and that it was all manipulated?” Gore, with an evil smirk, claimed that “he never read them.” By the look on his face and his stutter, it became quite clear that Gore was extremely uncomfortable with the question, so he quickly glared towards his security. The agents grabbed and assaulted Saad, escorting him away from Gore for merely asking a simple question. The press took notice and started filming and snapping pictures of what was going on. One of which appeared the next day in the Chicago Sun Times.”
This of course isn’t the first time that Al Gore has used intimidation and assault to stifle free debate and free speech of his critics as these following videos testify to.
STS-129 (ISS assembly flight ULF3)[2] was the most recent Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Atlantis launched on 16 November 2009, at 14:28 Eastern: UTC -5[3][4] and landed at 9:44 a.m. EST on 27 November 2009 on runway 33 at the Kennedy Space Center’s Shuttle Landing Facility.
STS-129 focused on staging spare components outside the station. The 11-day flight included three spacewalks. The payload bay carried two large ExPRESS Logistics Carriers holding two spare gyroscopes, two nitrogen tank assemblies, two pump modules, an ammonia tank assembly, a spare latching end effector for the station’s robotic arm, a spare trailing umbilical system for the Mobile Transporter, and a high-pressure gas tank. STS-129 was the first flight of an ExPRESS Logistics Carrier. The completion of this mission leaves five space shuttle flights remaining until the end of the program.[5]
“It’s to give people an opportunity to think for themselves… what happens is that most of us think that our very strongly held beliefs, you know those things we hold, our opinions, that are very strong, we think that that is thinking for ourselves but it isn’t really. The ability to think for yourself really means the ability to think something that you haven’t thought before. To think outside the allowable range of thoughts rather than just inside the allowable range of thoughts.” – Werner Erhard, TV Interview
Learn to think for yourself out side of your allowable range of thoughts and especially outside the cage of your beliefs and opinions.
The Known Knowns.
The Known Unknowns.
The Unknown Knowns.
The Unknown Unknowns.
“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don’t know.” – quote popularized globally by Donald Rumsfeld in justification of mass murder; quote popularized by Werner Erhard in the 1970′s and 80′s to make the world a better place one person at a time.
During the 1970′s and 1980′s Werner Ehard’s est Training Program used this quote (or a variant thereof that covers all four possibilities, known knowns, known unknowns, unknown knowns, unknown unknowns) as a part of the course material. Landmark Education’s The Landmark Forum course also uses it. One point of using it is to help people see the limits of their knowledge and the edges of the metaphorical box they live in. Where are our blind spots when it comes to our knowledge or lack there of? What are the risks of ignorance? The exploration of these four domains would be extensive and take many hours of these courses.
“It’s said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That is false and tragically false. Look for yourself, this is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people where turned into numbers. … It was not done by gas… It was done by arrogance… it was done by dogma… it was done by ignorance. When people believe they have absolute knowledge with no test in reality this how they behave. this is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of the gods. … Science is a very human kind of knowledge… we are always at the brink of the known… every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute power.” – Bronowski‘s The Ascent of Man
Continuing Dr Bronowski’s personal view of mans major discoveries and the evolution of his thought; this programme highlights the achievement of twentieth century physics in proving that absolute certainty inside or outside science is beyond our grasp.
1) The Method of the Artist.
2) The Invisible Waves.
3) Karl Friedrich Gauss and Göttingen.
4) Max Born and Heisenberg.
5) The Principle of Uncertainty.
6) Leo Szilard.
7) The Tragedy of Scientists.
Anthropomorphic Global Warming Hits Gilligan’s Island with a vengeance.
“Just like in real life with Anthropomorphic Global Warming the professors hypothesis of the island sinking is proven false due to bad data collection, misinterpretation, and above all fear based soothsaying of the future when it’s not prudent nor scientifically possible.
Fear NOT, CO2 is life as it’s an essential plant nutrient needed for our friends the plants to grow strong and lush. CO2 is needed to feed the ever growing human population.
Gilligan’s Island Sinking due to Global Warming (AGW)?
From: MountThor | October 09, 2009 | 291 views
Unfortunately Warner Brothers chose to prevent even a fair use of Gilligan’s island from occurring. There are 98 episodes of Gilligan’s Island of about 25 minutes each for a total of about 2450 minutes. The video which was deleted was about 8 minutes and 40 seconds, say 9 minutes… that’s less than 0.37% of the total footage ever shot and broadcast which makes the amount I used fair use under international copyright laws. The copyrights were left intact as were the shot titles and a thank you for usage was added to this descriptive note (not that that is necessary for fair use situations). The footage was ONLY used since it provides a public commentary on the politics of global warming and how the data the so called science is based upon is flawed as was the science the professor used in his conclusion that the island is sinking was flawed.
I refer you to: http://www-sul.stanford.edu/cpyright.html where you’ll see that this limited in size video expert for non-profit review and critique and commentary meets all the criteria for fair use.
I subscribe to the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video.
This documentary is a good companion to the latest documentary,”The Great Global Warming Swindle” recently shown on CH 4 UK and is available on Google video. The hoax of Global Warming / Green House was exposed 19 years ago by CH 4 UK in this documentary entitled Green House Conspiracy. Those who subscribe to the rubbish trotted out by Al Gore and his mindless followers are not new they were the same arse clowns who were telling us we were all going to freeze to death 30 years ago.
What The FUCK? Almost every aspect of this video from 19 years ago is exactly the same as it is today!!!! Wow, nothing has changed. The warmies are still crying wolf. I wonder who let them out of the asylum?
The Solaranite Theory of Climate Change starts around 3:00 into the flick.
Solaranite Theory of Rapid Anthropomorphic Climate Change: “Take a can of your gasoline. Say this can of gasoline is the sun. Now, you spread a thin line of it to a ball, representing the earth. Now, the gasoline represents the sunlight, the sun particles. Here we saturate the ball with the gasoline, the sunlight. Then we put a flame to the ball. The flame will speedily travel around the earth, back along the line of gasoline to the can, or the sun itself. It will explode this source and spread to every place that gasoline, our sunlight, touches. Explode the sunlight here, gentlemen, you explode the universe. Explode the sunlight here and a chain reaction will occur direct to the sun itself and to all the planets that sunlight touches, to every planet in the universe.“
The details of the Solaranite Climate Change Theory come to light in this following riveting conversation. Pun intended.
Eros, the leader, confronts a group of skeptical earthlings with the true nature of his plan. The scientific minds of Earth are on a treacherous course of weapons discovery that will eventually lead to a bomb that could explode the whole universe, the “Solaranite Bomb”.
Colonel Edwards: Why is it so important that you want to contact the governments of our earth?
Eros: Because of death. Because all you of Earth are idiots!
Jeff Trent: Now you just hold on, Buster.
Eros: No, you hold on! First was your firecracker, a harmless explosive. Then your hand grenade: you began to kill your own people, a few at a time. Then the bomb. Then a larger bomb: many people are killed at one time. Then your scientists stumbled upon the atom bomb, split the atom. Then the hydrogen bomb, where you actually explode the air itself. Now you can arrange the total destruction of the entire universe served by our sun: The only explosion left is the Solaranite.
Colonel Tom Edwards: Why, there’s no such thing! Why, a particle of sunlight can’t even be seen or measured.
Eros: Can you see or measure an atom? Yet you can explode one! A ray of sunlight is made up of many atoms.
Jeff Trent: So what if we do develop this Solaranite bomb? We’d be even a stronger nation than now.
Eros: “Stronger.” You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
The impassioned plea continues with an appeal to intelligence and metaphor.
Colonel Edwards: You speak of Solaranite. But just what is it?
Eros: Take a can of your gasoline. Say this can of gasoline is the sun. Now, you spread a thin line of it to a ball, representing the earth. Now, the gasoline represents the sunlight, the sun particles. Here we saturate the ball with the gasoline, the sunlight. Then we put a flame to the ball. The flame will speedily travel around the earth, back along the line of gasoline to the can, or the sun itself. It will explode this source and spread to every place that gasoline, our sunlight, touches. Explode the sunlight here, gentlemen, you explode the universe. Explode the sunlight here and a chain reaction will occur direct to the sun itself and to all the planets that sunlight touches, to every planet in the universe. This is why you must be stopped. This is why any means must be used to stop you. In a friendly manner or as (it seems) you want it.
This time the Math of Zombies tells us like it is: basically were all doomed to either be eaten alive for our brains (highly nutritious component of the Zombie Diet not to mention very addictive) or be converted into a zombie and eat the brains of the rest of us. Take your pick: be the food or the eater of the food.
“A zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilisation, unless it is dealt with quickly. While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often. “
“Zombies are … usually … brought about through an outbreak or epidemic. Consequently, we model a zombie attack, using biological assumptions …. We introduce a basic model for zombie infection, determine equilibria and their stability, and illustrate the outcome with numerical solutions. We then refine the model to introduce a latent period of zombification, whereby humans are infected, but not infectious, before becoming undead. We then modify the model to include the effects of possible quarantine or a cure. Finally, we examine the impact of regular, impulsive reductions in the number of zombies and derive conditions under which eradication can occur. We show that only quick, aggressive attacks can stave off the doomsday scenario: the collapse of society as zombies overtake us all.” – Math of Zombies (pdf paper)!
First off you should note that there is a fundamental flaw in the paper: it assumes that Zombie Attacks are not real but just in the movies! This is a way of keeping the secret while discussing this serious problem in academic papers! Zombies are as real as Jesus Christ! The more real you think Jesus Christ to be the more real Zombies are! Fantasies come alive in our brains and that is why Zombies of all kinds including Sweet Zombie Jesus want your brain! Don’t let them have it, remain belief and faith free by embracing Nature and Rational Thought and Science. May your brains survive the Zombie Attacks of religion, faith and belief in the supernatural and may you avoid having the delusion of an invisible friend in the sky who will save you from death with the false promise of an everlasting life! Obliterate faith and belief in delusions that can’t be proven since that is how they get your live brains and then control you sucking the independence and life out of you! Face it, the only way to exist is to not have your brains eaten by the Zombie Virus and other mind eaters!
An outbreak of zombies infecting humans is likely to be disastrous, unless extremely aggressive tactics are employed against the undead. While aggressive quarantine may eradicate the infection, this is unlikely to happen in practice. A cure would only result in some humans surviving the outbreak, although they will still coexist with zombies. Only sufficiently frequent attacks, with increasing force, will result in eradication, assuming the available resources can be mustered in time.
Furthermore, these results assumed that the timescale of the outbreak was short, so that the natural birth and death rates could be ignored. If the timescale of the outbreak increases, then the result is the doomsday scenario: an outbreak of zombies will result in the collapse of civilisation, with every human infected, or dead. This is because human births and deaths will provide the undead with a limitless supply of new bodies to infect, resurrect and convert. Thus, if [WHEN] zombies arrive, we must act quickly and decisively to eradicate them before they eradicate us.
The key difference between the models presented here and other models of infectious disease is that the dead can come back to life.
In summary, a zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilisation, unless it is dealt with quickly. While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often.
Al Gore’s wettest dreams of global destruction don’t even come anywhere close to this awesome beyond awesome film, 2012! Sorry Al, just like your film An Inconvenient Truth, 2012 is just science fiction – none of it’s going to happen (unless we don’t stop the asteroid – see below!!!!). So sit back with your drink and pop corn and enjoy the ride!
Ok, the real trailer for the film (short version):
A pretty funny review of the movie with N special effects, where N is ___!
The second trailer, medium length. Awesome!
The full on third hard core extended version of the trailer that really shows mega destruction!!! YES!!! Al Gore eat your heart out! Oh, this one can only be viewed at youtube… since they turned off embedding….
Oh the FEAR! Soothsayers predicting DOOM and DESTRUCTION!!! Yikes!!!
Nope, no hard science behind the warnings! No soothsayers can’t predict the future! Sorry Al Gore, that includes climate soothsayers in the ninny crowd of those that can’t predict the future!
But does it have Nazi’s or Zombies??? Nope, for that you’ll need to see this film.
This is the real concern that we face:
Oh, the lunacy. You’ve got to love how insane we humans really are…
“Sometimes we forget that not all numbers are the same. This becomes very apparent in dealing with floating point numbers in parallel computing. … Floating numbers are not associative or distributive. … The more cores programmers run their parallelized code on, the more ways operations can be interleaved and the more challenges programmers face.” – Tim Mattson and Ken Strandberg, Intel
As if it’s climate science is not bad enough with intentionally corrupt or incompetently done statistics it turns out that climate models may be based upon computer programs with serious math flaws: the limits of the floating point and double precision floating point data types can produce incorrect results since “Floating Point Numbers Aren’t Real Numbers!” they are data types with limited precision. It gets even worse than that, when supposedly good programs are transformed into massively parallel programs with N threads of execution the results can vary with the number of threads chosen to run the program! Of course in climate science N can be 2 or 4 threads on a single multi-core machine but it can also be 1,000+ using GPGPUs or server compute farms.
Have the climate model programs been vetted to ensure mathematical accuracy? Is there a set of test cases that validate it after new changes have been made to the climate models? Do the test cases cover all the calculations in the climate model software? How do we know the answers are even accurate mathematically? (Of course that’s not even asking how do we know the model is relevant but this inquiry is not into relevancy it’s into accuracy of the calculations, whatever they happen to be, in climate models).
“The more cores programmers run their parallelized code on, the more ways operations can be interleaved and the more challenges programmers face. Parallel programmers must deal with a host of issues peculiar to parallel programs such as synchronization, protecting shared variables, and finding thread safe versions of common math routines (such as random number generation). One of the most subtle problems faced by the parallel programmer, however, arises from the properties of floating point numbers. Floating point numbers are the same in serial and parallel computations, of course, but when a program executes in parallel, special features of these numbers are more likely to impact your results.” – Tim Mattson and Ken Strandberg, Intel, in “Parallelization and Floating Point Numbers“
One aspect of models in science and engineering that involve calculations using the “floating point number format” is that Floating Point numbers are NOT REAL NUMBERS they are limited precision approximations of Real Numbers and as such they have their limits often caused by rounding which results in Floating Point numbers not being associative, in other words the order matters!!! What happens in science and engineering calculations on computers using Float 32 or Double floats (64 bits) especially when scaling massive numbers of computations to multiple threads on your multiple cores or on thousands of processor nodes in super computers or on GPGPU (general purpose graphics processing units) is that you get the wrong answers due to the miss use of these floating point data types.
You can easily generate numbers that don’t fit into the floating point format, and thus you produce answers from the basic arithmetic operations that don’t fit into a floating point format. In other words, the floating point numbers when operated on by the basic arithmetic operations do not constitute a closed set.
The impact of this is significant. Floating numbers are not associative or distributive. So,
A * (C * B) ≠ (A * C) * B and
A * (B + C) ≠ A * B + A * C
[Obviously the sentence is missing something here, most likely the two equations do not produce the same answers! -pwl]
This means that as you change the order of a long sequence of arithmetic operations, you can generate different answers. Mathematically with real numbers, the answers can’t depend on the order of the operations (for commutative operations) or the way they are grouped together (associatively). But with floating point numbers, if you interleave the operations in different ways, you get different results.
Here’s a good test to demonstrate the implications of this behavior by floating point numbers:
1. Fill 2 arrays each with 10000 random values between 0.0 and 1.0.
2. Shift one up by 100 and shift the other down by 0.001.
3. Mix the arrays together, sum them, and subtract a large number (500000).
Here are the results run on 1, 2, and 4 threads.
1 thread computes 170.968750
2 threads computes 171.968750
4 threads computes 172.750000
Which one of these numbers is correct, the 1-thread, 2-thread, or 4-thread value? Are any of these the true value? Would you consider that with 4 threads, the answer is correct and the others wrong? Or with 1 thread?
This is not a trick question, nor is its goal to make programmers look silly. Developers are smart people. But, many programmers steeped in sequential programming for so many years make the assumption that there is only one right answer for their algorithm. After all, their code has always delivered the same answer every time it was run. When you consider the above example, however, all the answers are equally correct. To pick one arbitrarily and call it right and the others wrong is completely unjustified.
Wait there is more! This is quite shocking isn’t it? What you were taught in math class isn’t the way that computers do math! Yikes. Most computer scientists are not aware of this problem as most never encounter it in their careers, or don’t know that it’s a problem that is happening right under their noses. Scary.
By mixing the numbers as this example does, it creates a pathological situation designed to maximize problems due to round off error. The test mixes very large and very small numbers together. The arithmetic unit aligns the numbers before adding them, which, given the large difference in their absolute magnitudes, all but guarantees that we’ll loose bits of precision in the process.
As the number of threads changes, the combinations of numbers being added also changes. With all the roundoff errors, as the way these numbers are combined changes, the way roundoff error is accumulated also keeps changing. Thus, the answers change.
So which answer is correct? The algorithm for adding them together is unstable. If you carefully add the numbers together so large numbers add with large numbers and small numbers add with small numbers, and then add the “large_set_sum” to the “small_set_sum”, you get a numerically stable result. The answer in this case is 177.750. Note that the test answers in every case considerably vary from the stable method of obtaining the answer.
Note also that, with a serial algorithm, you’d never know there was a problem. Only as the thread count grows and the answers change, does the instability of the algorithm become obvious. It’s apparent the problem is not in the compiler or even the program. The problem is with the numerical instability of the algorithm. And it’s only revealed by going to multiple threads.
The video with Tim Mattson explains it well.
Are you getting different numbers for calculations as you vary the number of threads? Your algorithm may be incorrect. Real numbers are nice; floating numbers are not nice. Floating numbers are not a closed set, the overflow bits need to be rounded and that can change the results of a calculation. Tim discusses how to work with floating point numbers and resources available to help in the Intel Math Kernel Libraries.
In the engineering applications that I’ve worked on for civil engineering of bridges we found that Double Precision Floating Point Numbers at 64 bits was simply not enough accuracy. We were able to use 80bit Extended Double Precision Floating Point numbers supported by the 8087 math coprocessor in the Intel line of chips. Even though the extended precision covered most of the cases that Double Precision didn’t there were a few cases where we had to adjust the order of our computations to ensure that we didn’t overflow the precision limits of the computation of the extended 80bit math! As you can imagine errors in bridge calculations are rather critical to life and limb.
The same is true in the Climate Models, lives and treasure both depend on correct math. The science fails when the math is wrong. Have they been vetted for numeric accuracy? How do we know that? Have test cases been written that test these limits in the climate model programs?
The same applies to random numbers in computers, they are not real random numbers either. As Tim Mattson says “We now know that god does play dice but that computers can’t!” (paraphrased). Random numbers are important in climate models since the climate is in inherently a system with randomness being generated from within. See Wolfram’s A New Kind of Science.
Computers cannot make truly random numbers. For statistical algorithms requiring random numbers, developers need to be careful in parallel code to avoid overlapping sequences from random number generators. Tim discusses different methods to use random number generators – including using independent generators for each thread and the “leap frog method” – to produce “pseudo random numbers” for statistical algorithms that work in parallel code.
Very interesting and important topic to any system that depends upon parallel computations being correct to protect limb, life and treasure.
Thanks to Intel, Tim Mattson and Ken Strandberg for this important information.
Mars Direct is a proposal for a relatively low-cost manned mission to Mars with current rocket technology. The plan was originally detailed in a research paper by Robert Zubrin and David Baker in 1990. The mission was expanded upon in Zubrin’s 1996 book The Case for Mars.
The plan involves launching an unmanned “Earth Return Vehicle” (ERV) directly from Earth’s surface to Mars using a heavy-lift booster derived from Space Shuttle components. The booster is no bigger than the Saturn V used for the Apollo missions. Several launches are made in preparation for the manned mission.
The first of these launches the ERV, a supply of hydrogen, a chemical plant and a small nuclear reactor. Once there, a relatively simple set of chemical reactions (the Sabatier reaction coupled with electrolysis) would combine a small amount of hydrogen carried by the ERV with the carbon dioxide of the Martian atmosphere to create up to 112 tonnes of methane and oxygen propellants, 96 tonnes of which would be needed to return the ERV to Earth at the end of the mission. This process would take approximately ten months to complete.
Some 26 months after the ERV is originally launched from Earth, a second vehicle, the “Mars Habitat Unit” (MHU), would be launched on a high-energy transfer to Mars carrying a crew of four. This vehicle would take some six months to reach Mars. During the trip, artificial gravity would be generated by tying the spent upper stage of the booster to the Habitat Unit, and setting them both rotating about a common axis.
On reaching Mars, the spent upper stage would be jettisoned, with the Habitat Unit aerobraking into Mars orbit before soft-landing in proximity to the ERV. Once on Mars, the crew would spend 18 months on the surface, carrying out a range of scientific research, aided by a small rover vehicle carried aboard their MHU, and powered by excess methane produced by the ERV. To return, they would use the ERV, leaving the MHU for the possible use of subsequent explorers. The propulsion stage of the ERV would be used as a counterweight to generate artificial gravity for the trip back.
The initial cost estimate for Mars Direct was put at $55 billion, to be paid over ten years.
A giant mysterious blob is moving through Alaskan waters. The blob is made up of a gooey substance, and it has hair! Scientists don’t know what the blob is made up of, but the blob has already been found to have captured seabirds and jellyfish in its goo. Scientists have confirmed that the blob is neither algae nor oil.
Do you ever play with your food?
UPDATE: 20090722
“We got the results back from the lab today,” Ed Meggert of the state Department of Environmental Conservation told the Anchorage Daily News late last week. “It was marine algae.”
No one in the area — whether biologist, Inuit hunter or oil worker — had ever seen anything like the strange stuff, which moved slowly through the Chukchi Sea last week between the towns of Barrow and Wainwright.
It stank, trapped sea birds in its gooey mass and, perhaps most alarmingly, was pretty hairy. And most marine algae is green, yellow or red, not black.
Well, that’s too bad… the dreams of blobs sucking up people left right and center will have to await another day… however, the birds better be on the lookout!
They claim that the C02 greenhouse gas is the biggest challenge to our existence on Earth; if it’s true that C02 is a serious problem then why not a single word from them about the dangers of Water Vapor and Clouds which are the largest greenhouse gas contributor!?
When gases are ranked by their contribution to the greenhouse effect, the most important are:
water vapor, which contributes 36–72%, factoring in clouds up to between 66% and 85%
carbon dioxide, which contributes 9–26%
methane, which contributes 4–9%
ozone, which contributes 3–7%
Since water vapor accounts for the largest percentage of the greenhouse effect, between 36% and 66% for water vapor alone and between 66% and 85% when factoring in clouds, don’t boil that water for your tea or for cooking dinner as you are directly contributing to green house gases with the steam! Don’t bring that water to a boil, don’t do it! DO NOT COOK WITH WATER!!! or you are a greenhouse gas criminal! – pwl
All the politicians and extremist environmentalists want to talk about is how much money it will take to correct the imagined C02 problem. Money to them. Mo-money to them. Give them all your money to solve the C02 problem. That’s what they want, your money. Save the Earth with your money. Nice scam. Why did you vote for them again?
“With five months left to go before Copenhagen, international attention is fixed on coming to an agreement over emissions targets. The failure, at last week’s G8 summit, of the world’s 17 major polluters to agree to specific cuts in greenhouse gases by 2050 only sharpened this focus, as China and India rebuffed a firm commitment in part because industrialized nations have refused to agree to mid-term 2020 goals. But buried beneath the headlines was the other reason negotiations fell through, and the one that could turn out to be the deal breaker in December: cold, hard cash. In recent months, developing nations, with China at the helm, have grown increasingly insistent that wealthier nations should provide poorer ones with financial assistance to help them cope with climate change. This includes funding for so-called “mitigation” efforts that curb carbon emissions and for “adaptation”—the long-term adjustment to rising tides, higher temperatures, drought, and increased infection rates of a warming planet. Despite two long negotiating sessions held earlier this year, however, no country has yet started putting money on the table.” – SEED
Scam… scam… scam… scam… bigger than Madeoff.
The fears about C02 are a complete overblown scam. If you really are afraid of C02 then you should be utterly terrorized about water vapor! Not to mention the real pollution issues that are facing our planet.
The REAL indisputable pollution are things like The Great Pacific Garbage Patch and yet people worry about imaginary things, like AGW which are most likely Natural Cycles in action. Clean up the actual pollution mess and give time for the long term climate science to get some actual standards.
“The way we approach it may be better or worse, but the vast majority of REAL climate scientists have no doubt that it IS happening, and that that tons of gases we put into the air over the past couple of centuries played at least some part. why even subscribe to Seed if you’re gonna listen to the folks who aren’t actually doing the science?” – Brooks Onley, July 13
Take a good long peek at WattsUpWithThat and you’ll see that the so called climate science isn’t as sound as it’s sold to the public to be. Consensus isn’t science by the way Brooks, it’s believe based culture not much different than theology. Water Vapor is by far the biggest green house gas so we should be working to eliminate clouds by the C02 scare logic. Get real.
“Water vapor accounts for the largest percentage of the greenhouse effect, between 36% and 66% for water vapor alone, and between 66% and 85% when factoring in clouds.”
Don’t boil that water for your tea or for cooking dinner as you are directly contributing to green house gases with the steam!
As someone very interested in and dedicated to hard science the more I learn about climate science the less I’m I’m able to accept about AGW due to the many faulty claims made by the fear mongering soothsayers of global doom. The more I learn about climate science the more I see that it’s not a hard science after all but a fledgling science with some hard (yet flawed) data collection but lots and lots of interpretations based upon massaged statistical games, but above all it’s not much better than a lousy guess and not much different than the ancient practice of soothsaying.
For example, clouds are not modeled properly thus the climate models are incomplete.
“The effects of clouds are a significant area of uncertainty in climate models. Clouds have competing effects on the climate. One of the roles that clouds play in climate is in cooling the surface by reflecting sunlight back into space; another is warming by increasing the amount of infrared radiation emitted from the atmosphere to the surface. In the 2001 IPCC report on climate change, the possible changes in cloud cover were highlighted as one of the dominant uncertainties in predicting future climate change“!
Wow, so even the IPCC admits that clouds, aka water vapor in the form of clouds, are one of the dominant uncertainties in predicting future climate change! So climate science is not settled science by their own admission that there are significant areas of uncertainty!
They also have forgotten that the Weather and thus Climate are not predictable systems as these systems are governed by Stephen Wolfram’s Law of Predictability paraphrased here as: waiting till the future arrives is sometimes the only way to predict the future, especially with Natural Systems! Stephen Wolfram proved that in his book, “A New Kind of Science”, Chapter 2.
Added 20090820: Cloud cover is influenced by Cosmic Rays. The Center for Sun-Climate Research at the Danish National Space Institute “investigates the connection between solar activity and climatic changes on Earth”.
“Svensmark proposed that as cosmic rays fell through the Earth’s atmosphere, they formed “condensation nuclei.” Water vapor molecules could then stick to the nuclei and eventually form clouds. More clouds would reflect more sunlight, and the Earth’s temperatures would drop. In contrast, fewer cosmic rays would mean fewer clouds and a warmer climate.” – The Cosmic Climate Connection.
“During the last 100 years cosmic rays became scarcer because unusually vigorous action by the Sun batted away many of them. Fewer cosmic rays meant fewer clouds—and a warmer world.”
The more I learn about AGW the more I focus on REAL pollution as it’s clear that real pollution is a real problem. Pick up your garbage! Reduce your consumption of consumables. Don’t use that bag. Don’t buy that bottle. Reuse.
Leo Simpson explains it quite well here:
“For a start, let’s consider this highly emotive term “carbon pollution” which is constantly being bandied about. It only takes a moment’s thought to realise that there is no “carbon pollution” problem. It did exist 50 years ago, when we had steam trains and diesels with smoky exhausts and coal-burning power stations which had less than complete combustion. It used to be called soot. But it is not a problem now, in most countries. Now I know that some people use “carbon” as shorthand for carbon dioxide but it is sloppy thinking and generates worry in the unthinking masses that we are spewing all this carbon into the air. We’re not.
We are burning tremendous amounts of fossil fuels and that is putting huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the air. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and that is a big worry, isn’t it? Well, maybe. But all these doom merchants who worry about carbon dioxide never say anything at all about the other greenhouse gas which is produced when fossil fuels are burnt. What is that? It’s called water vapour – the same stuff as in clouds. Is water vapour a problem? Definitely not.
Just in case you don’t believe me, consider the combustion of petrol which is mainly octane, C8H18. When this is burnt, the chemical reaction is:
2C8H18 + 25O2 16CO2 + 18H2O
octane + oxygen carbon dioxide + water
If you calculate the molecular weights of the two combustion products, carbon dioxide and water, you will find that there is more water produced than carbon dioxide. But greenies never mention it. Why? Because they have either forgotten their high-school chemistry or they are completely ignorant of it.
The point is that both water vapour and carbon dioxide are normal components of the air that we breathe. They are not pollution. They are both necessary for life to exist on the planet. If there was no carbon dioxide, plants would not grow (more high-school chemistry – it’s called photosynthesis). Without plants, no animals, including us, can live. It’s a simple as that. If there is more carbon dioxide in the air, plants grow more profusely. In fact, it is common practice to increase the carbon dioxide in greenhouses and aquariums to make the plants grow more vigorously.“
That’s very interesting, especially the point about there being more water vapor produced with the burning of fossil fuels than C02. If you or someone else is freaking out about the C02 produced then they MUST also freak out about the amount of H20 vapor being produced! Both are greenhouse gases!
I’m constantly surprised by so called environmentalists who won’t do anything about real pollution since they are focusing only on their imagined C02 soothsaying fears. Help clean up the real pollution please.
Questions:
I’m wondering how much human activity causes water vapor to enter the atmosphere: cooking, boiling water for cooking and tea, industrial water boiling, nuclear plant steam emissions, vapor from human breath, etc…
Considering that water vapor and clouds are the largest percentage of greenhouse gas (up to 85% of all greenhouse gases) wouldn’t it be better, as in more effective with immediate results, to Ban Cooking and Outlawing Making Tea than limiting C02 to reduce greenhouse gases?
He’s cooking with water, shoot to kill! Making tea, how opulent, destroy and obliterate that house! That puts an end to that particular source of greenhouse gases.
Wouldn’t it be easier technologically and cost wise to take water vapor out of the atmosphere than C02?
Are there any studies that have been done to see how much Water Vapor in the Atmosphere is allegedly from human activity? How does that compare with the amounts of C02 that are allegedly from human activity?
Maybe Nature corrects for too much greenhouse effect by adding more clouds? Any studies on that?
How much water vapor would we need to remove from the atmosphere to compensate for the allegedly human caused C02?
And if we did remove water vapor from the atmosphere using some technology wouldn’t it just be replaced by an equivalent amount of water vapor by Nature? Would we need to terrorform Earth into a desert to avoid Al Gore’s horrific soothsaid Waterworld?
How much does plastic in the oceans effect our world?
Thoughts
Someone replied “that she is with Brooks”, whatever that means.
It really isn’t about who is with who, it’s whether or not the AGW hypothesis is correct or not; if you assume it’s correct and begin terraforming the Earth the wrong way you’ll just make matters worse off. Following the logic of the AGW hypothesis would mean that eliminating C02 could trigger an ice age if you eliminate too much. How much is that? Who knows!!!
How about working on real indisputable pollution problems rather than imaginary and unproven ones for a real change?
Let’s eliminate actual “carbon aka soot” and other nasty particles from coal power stations around the world rather than focusing on the plant food “CO2″ that they emit. Plants need CO2 for their life and we need plants to have their CO2 for our life!!! Greenhouses regularly use ~3 times as much CO2 as is in the atmosphere to enhance plant growth!… Read More
Let’s clean the oceans of plastics! That’s cleaning up real pollution.
What other real pollution problems you can work on to solve that involves actual problems?
Someone else was suggesting that people just want money.
I have no plan for your money. Unless… just kidding… really no plans for your money. All I’m asking is that people do something about real pollution rather than do nothing by listening to the fear mongering of the climate of fear soothsayers. Pick up trash. Plant a tree. Don’t toss out that bag without reusing it at least once or thrice. … Walk rather than drive. Cycle without getting yourself killed (difficult in modern cities). Add solar to your dwelling unit if appropriate. Don’t toss your medicine in the trash, return it to a pharmacy for proper disposal. Recycle your electronics. Resell your things or give them away rather than tossing them. Save the oceans from plastic. Hug someone in need. Live a real life rather than one distracted by delusions that can’t be proven.
Know that climate and weather are natural cycles of Nature and that in our arrogance to save our planet we might do more harm than good so there is wisdom in taking solutions slowly; fools rush in.
“Preparing to surf a standing river wave in the St. Lawrence, where high-velocity water roars over a steep river-bottom depression, pitches back and upward, and creates a waist-to-overhead breaker. Surfers paddle into it or swing out by rope to catch the green-faced wedge, rewarded by a seemingly endless ride.
“Once you’re carving, it’s exactly the same feel as on an ocean wave,” said Chris Dutton, the founder of the Web site SurfMontreal.com, “except that instead of going straight down the line, you carve a little bit, flip around, carve back, and can go all day.”
Modern river surfing on standing waves evolved on the Eisbach River in Germany in the mid-1970s. Tidal bores have been ridden for years on the Severn in England; in Bordeaux, France; and on the Amazon. New standing waves are being pioneered almost daily in rivers in places like Colorado, and in Ontario and Alberta in Canada.”
Yeah, it’s great that Obama is a “Secular” USA President. His dad was raised in Islam and became an atheist in a Muslim country, not an easy thing to do. Nice to have someone who comprehends the distinction of a Secular State and how important Separation of Crutch and State is.
As for Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) the jury is still out and it’s not looking good for the theory that humans have caused it. The evidence and counter evidence is mounting that it’s just part of a Natural Cycle and we’ve not had much if anything to do with it.
Of course, let’s clean up real pollution on a global scale instead of playing political games with poor and premature science. All the main claims of Al Gore’s in his movie have since been proven wrong.
Check out these articles on climate science here or over at Whats Up With That for lots of interesting true facts about climate science.
Oh, belief has no place in science, so when someone says they “believe in global warming” (or they don’t) it means that they ARE treating it like a religion and don’t know what they are talking about since they don’t know the actual science, they just “believe”. Asking someone if they “believe” in global warming is also asking them their religion.
Science over belief and propaganda, that’s what will ensure a healthy environment on Earth. It is important that we don’t mess up the planet worse with the wrong diagnosis!
Calculus. (Latin, calculus, a small stone used for counting) is a discipline in mathematics focused on limits, functions, derivatives, integrals, and infinite series, and which constitutes a major part of modern university education. It has two major branches, differential calculus and integral calculus, which are related by the fundamental theorem of calculus. Calculus is the study of change, in the same way that geometry is the study of shape and algebra is the study of equations. A course in calculus is a gateway to other, more advanced courses in mathematics devoted to the study of functions and limits, broadly called mathematical analysis. Calculus has widespread applications in science, economics, and engineering and can solve many problems for which algebra alone is insufficient.
Historically, calculus was called “the calculus of infinitesimals”, or “infinitesimal calculus”. More generally, calculus (plural calculi) may refer to any method or system of calculation guided by the symbolic manipulation of expressions. Some examples of other well-known calculi are propositional calculus, variational calculus, lambda calculus, pi calculus and join calculus.
Snowmaggeddon 2010 – NOAA/NASA
“It’s … a very serious breach of how true science is done. … Scientists worldwide will begin to realize how prosecuting authorities are beginning to move in on them and particularly those who have profited, or profiteered rather, by peddling false and exaggerated science whether they are scientists themselves, politicians or people in the environmental movement who have been exaggerating the supposed threat of climate change in the way that we now know that the University of East Anglia (UEA/CRU 
Since water vapor accounts for the largest percentage of the greenhouse effect, between 36% and 66% for water vapor alone and between 66% and 85% when factoring in clouds, don’t boil that water for your tea or for cooking dinner as you are directly contributing to green house gases with the steam! Don’t bring that water to a boil, don’t do it! DO NOT COOK WITH WATER!!! or you are a greenhouse gas criminal! – pwl
“With five months left to go before Copenhagen, international attention is fixed on coming to an agreement over emissions targets. The failure, at last week’s G8 summit, of the world’s 17 major polluters to agree to specific cuts in greenhouse gases by 2050 only sharpened this focus, as China and India rebuffed a firm commitment in part because industrialized nations have refused to agree to mid-term 2020 goals. But buried beneath the headlines was the other reason negotiations fell through, and the one that could turn out to be the deal breaker in December: cold, hard cash. In recent months, developing nations, with China at the helm, have grown increasingly insistent that wealthier nations should provide poorer ones with financial assistance to help them cope with climate change. This includes funding for so-called “mitigation” efforts that curb carbon emissions and for “adaptation”—the long-term adjustment to rising tides, higher temperatures, drought, and increased infection rates of a warming planet. Despite two long negotiating sessions held earlier this year, however, no country has yet started putting money on the table.” – 
