"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
Well obviously it “Beg(ley)s the Question” (sorry I couldn’t resist) about why Ed Begley hasn’t read or seen the part of Climategate that shows that the so called “peer review” was hijacked and stacked and thus can’t be trusted! Oops! Obviously Ed’s not up on the latest developments or is choosing to ignore the evidence of the Very Serious Climategate Peer Review Process Corruption that has taken place!
Begging the question (or petitio principii, “assuming the initial point”) is a logical fallacy in which the proposition to be proved is assumed implicitly or explicitly in the premise. Begging the question is related to circular argument, circulus in probando (Latin for “circle in proving”) or circular reasoning but they are considered absolutely different by Aristotle.[1] The first known definition in the West is by the Greek philosopher Aristotle around 350 BC, in his book Prior Analytics, where he classified it as a material fallacy.
Worse than “Begging the Question” Begley uses the “Appeal to Authority” argument for constructing his belief based view of reality. In the video Ed Begley goes on and on literally yelling to control the interviewer with intimidation spouting “peer review” repeatedly in so many ways thus making an appeal to authorities. Unfortunately it fails for him due to the fraudulent representations of the Climategate alleged scientists. Regardless appeals to authority are not substantive in science, what is substantive in science is the cold hard verifiable evidence that either proves or refutes a hypothesis!
For intelligent people who require actual factual evidence of a claim in question the appeal to authority holds no value. What hold value to evidence based people is the actual factual verifiable and repeatable evidence! Prove your hypothesis conclusively with review by anyone with the skills to peer review it! Basing one’s important decisions on appeals to authority in science is just asking for serious trouble and invites cult style belief systems of thought. Verifiable Open Evidence is the knife that separates the facts from the fiction in science.
Source A says that p.
Source A is authoritative.
Therefore, p is true.
This is a fallacy because the truth or falsity of the claim is not necessarily related to the personal qualities of the claimant, and because the premises can be true, and the conclusion false (an authoritative claim can turn out to be false). It is also known as argumentum ad verecundiam (Latin: argument to respect) or ipse dixit (Latin: he himself said it). [1]
The Journals must be quivering under the Climategate revelations of peer review corruption. I wonder how many will crumble as a result? Or will they get their footing back and survive? I wonder how peer review journals will adapt their policies to correct for this pernicious corruption of the scientific process?
“By Ed’s reasoning, excluding everyone who is “not a degreed climate scientist” that rather puts Dr. James Hansen out of the picture, and many others, including Al Gore.” – Anthony Watts
So yes, according to Ed Begley no one without a PhD in “climate science” can be trusted. Not even Al Gore!. Not even Ed Begley himself who is giving advice! Oh wait, if Ed Begley can’t be trusted then neither can his advice about people having a climate science PhD after their name! Oh the hypocrisy abounds as does the lack of understanding of the scientific process! Read the rest of this entry »
The alleged Climategate science criminals and the alleged crimes and unethical acts they committed.
If all you do is watch this one video this is the one video to watch to get a summary of what Climategate is all about.
If you’ve not heard the shocking news, the key scientists behind the main proof for human caused global warming (AGW) have had their internal emails and computer programs exposed by a whistle-blower revealing that they cooked the books to make it seem like the planet it warming.
They faked their data and committed other crimes such as deleting data when presented with a Freedom of Information Request which is a crime in Great Brittan. They are also the key players on the UN’s IPCC. The infamous Hockey Stick Graph is Al Gore’s film has now been unequivocally proven to be not just wrong but criminally faked!
The video in the article is an excellent summary of the key players and their specific crimes identified so far.
Mann’s work doesn’t meet that definition [of science], and those who use Mann’s curve in their arguments are not making a scientific argument. One of Pournelle’s Laws states “You can prove anything if you can make up your data.” I will now add another Pournelle’s Law: “You can prove anything if you can keep your algorithms secret.”
–Jerry Pournelle, 18 February 2005 East Anglia Emails, 1109021312.txt
“It’s getting pretty clear what happened. These academics, who were influential in framing the UN climate report on which most of the political decisions on what to do about man-made global warming depend, became alarmed when the data over the past few years didn’t support the predictions of their models. At this point they had a choice: to accept the new data and see what that did to the theory, or simply to cover it up because they were convinced the basic theory was correct and the issue was too important to allow the theory to come under serious doubt.” – Jerry Pournell, 24 November 2009
Guess what they chose? Did they choose honoring the scientific method and follow the data where it lead? NOPE! They actually choose the Dark Side of the Forcings and the results are now revealed to all to see. As a direct result they choose to not be scientists anymore as the evidence illuminates so clearly. They choose to be political activists with a cause ignoring the actual data rather than scientists respecting the actual data. They choose alarmism rather than to properly consider the facts as they are.
“It’s no use pretending that this isn’t a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker [editor note: an alleged hacker although it could may well have been an internal whistle-blower with integrity and a conscience to clear - pwl] from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging(1). I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I’m dismayed and deeply shaken by them.
Yes, the messages were obtained illegally [editor note: that has yet to be determined in a court of law -pwl]. Yes, all of us say things in emails that would be excruciating if made public. Yes, some of the comments have been taken out of context. But there are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad. There appears to be evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released(2,3), and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request(4).
Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics(5,6), or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(7). I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed.” – George Monbiot, Humann Caused Global Warming Alarmist Science Writer and Activist, published in the Guardian, 23rd November 2009
Unfortunately I concur with Jerry Pournelle’s assessment and with the above portion of George Monboit’s comments. This is a very sad episode in the annals of science.
UPDATE 20091128: Now even members of the IPCC itself are calling to BAN these alleged Climategate science criminals from the IPCC! WOW!
Short answer: because the scientific assessments in which they may take part are not credible anymore.
A longer answer: My voice is not very important. I belong to the climate-research infantry, publishing a few papers per year, reviewing a few manuscript per year and participating in a few research projects. I do not form part of important committees, nor I pursue a public awareness of my activities. My very minor task in the public arena was to participate as a contributing author in the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC.
By writing these lines I will just probably achieve that a few of my future studies will, again, not see the light of publication. [Editor's Note: Fear of reprisals from the Climategate criminals voiced in public! A paradigm shift has occurred!] My area of research happens to be the climate of the past millennia, where I think I am appreciated by other climate-research ‘soldiers’. And it happens that some of my mail exchange with Keith Briffa and Timothy Osborn can be found in the CRU-files made public recently on the internet.
… I may confirm what has been written in other places: research in some areas of climate science has been and is full of machination, conspiracies, and collusion, as any reader can interpret from the CRU-files. … The scientific debate has been in many instances hijacked to advance other agendas.
… I am also aware that in this thick atmosphere -and I am not speaking of greenhouse gases now- editors, reviewers and authors of alternative studies, analysis, interpretations,even based on the same data we have at our disposal, have been bullied and subtly blackmailed. In this atmosphere, Ph D students are often tempted to tweak their data so as to fit the ‘politically correct picture’. Some, or many issues, about climate change are still not well known. Policy makers should be aware of the attempts to hide these uncertainties under a unified picture. I had the ‘pleasure’ to experience all this in my area of research.
… I feel myself entitled to read how some researchers tried to influence reviewers to scupper the publication of our work on the ‘hockey stick graph’ or to read how some IPCC authors tried to exclude this work from the IPCC Report on very dubious reasons. … They are an account of many dull daily activities of typical climatologists, together with a realistic account of very troubling professional behavior.
How long will it be before the resignations begin?
Phil Jones and Micheal E. Mann indite themselves in these emails. Here is one egregious sample. See the references below for the raw email files and read them for yourself.
“From: Phil Jones
To: “Michael E. Mann“
Subject: IPCC & FOI:04:11 2008
Date: Thu May 29 11 Mike,
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t
have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.
I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!! Cheers
Phil“
- 1212073451.txt
“AR4″ referrers to the fourth UN IPCC Climate Assessment Report.
“According to Hazel Moffatt, a partner in the litigation and regulatory department at the law firm DLA Piper in London, deleting emails subject to a FOI request is a criminal offense in the United Kingdom, punishable with a fine. “It’s quite naughty to do that,” said Ms. Moffatt.” – As Serious As Crime.
The Climate Research Unit released a couple of press releases here and here to cover their asses in the Pernicious Climategate Scandal that is rocking their tidy deceptive world. Nice try but you fail. The very serious allegations against your group are shocking and invalidate and bring into disrepute all of your works and all works based upon your works.
As a result of the Climategate allegations in the CRU Files FOI 2009 Philip D. Jones, Michael E. Mann, et. al. (Gavin Schmidt, Keith Briffa, Eugene Wahl, Caspar Ammann, Stephen H Schneider, Myles Allen, Peter Stott, Benjamin Santer, Tom Wigley, Thomas R Karl, James Hansen, Michael Oppenheimer, Eystein Jansen, Tim Osborn, …) how about your resignation today
(1) for Scientific Fraud, and Read the rest of this entry »
Homerian Wisdom tells the tale of the shifting perception.
That’s a subtle way of putting it Homer. The inside tip of course are the Climate Research Unit (CRU)’s released emails. They were either released by (1) a hacker, (2) incompetence leaving the internally collected Freedom of Information (FOI) Requested information on a public server, or (3) a whistler blower intentionally leaving it on a public server.
Of course Al’s still at his game setting up his corporate pieces to position himself so that he can make billions in various ventures such as Carbon Credit Trading and other investments opened due to his propaganda now shown to have been based upon falsified and “mannipulated” techniques.
The entire basis for Al Gore’s claims using the infamous hockey stick graph has suspected of being based upon fraudulent science for some time. NOW there is evidence to back up these suspicions. As close to a smoking gun as you can get!
“This is not a smoking gun, this is a mushroom cloud.” – Climatologist Patrick J. Michaels on the CRU Files.
To quote the immortal word of Homer Simpson, “Doh!”.
This is a potentially a very serious issue should these charges be proven. Should criminal charges be laid against Dr. Mann and members his close inbred network of 40 or more climate scientists who very possibly manipulated the data to achieve political and career ends and in the process distorted science with fraudulent activities? Certainly it’s unethical science that has been conducted. Time will tell who goes to jail or has their career in science ended for their role in doing the alleged fraudulent climate science of Dr. Mann and his cohorts.
“This is horrible,” said Pat Michaels, a climate scientist at the Cato Institute in Washington who is mentioned negatively in the emails. “This is what everyone feared. Over the years, it has become increasingly difficult for anyone who does not view global warming as an end-of-the-world issue to publish papers. This isn’t questionable practice, this is unethical.“
…
“Phil Jones, the director of the East Anglia climate center, suggested to climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University that skeptics’ research was unwelcome: We “will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” Neither man could be reached for comment Sunday.”
– Wall Street Journal
“The interior of the earth is extremely hot, several millions of degrees.” – Al Gore!!! on The Tonight Show, 12th November 2009!
After all these years claiming to know the facts Al Gore get’s it SO EMBARRASSINGLY WRONG! This “mistake” of Gore’s is likely the result of Al Gore’s stated strategic tactic to exaggerate the facts regardless of how much he distorts them! The amazing thing is that he gets away with it even when it’s pointed out that he is blatantly exaggerating beyond any reasonable scale and thus lying.
“In the United States of America, unfortunately we still live in a bubble of unreality. And the Category 5 denial is an enormous obstacle to any discussion of solutions. Nobody is interested in solutions if they don’t think there’s a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous (global warming) is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.” — Al Gore in an interview.
“This is mind blowing ignorance on the part of Al Gore. … Watching Gore make a complete scientific idiot of himself on national TV: priceless.” – Anthony Watts
Al Gore proves that he can’t be trusted on Scientific Information! We knew that but now it’s abundantly clear, he can’t even get the facts straight!
“There is no way to measure the temperature at the Earth’s core directly. We know from mines and drill holes that, near the surface of the Earth, the temperature increases by about 1 degree Fahrenheit for every 60 feet in depth. If this temperature increase continued to the center of the Earth, the Earth’s core would be 100,000 degrees Celsius!
But nobody believes the Earth is that hot [except evidently Al Gore]; the temperature increase must slow down with depth and the core is probably about 3000 to 5000 degrees Celsius.
This estimate of the temperature is derived from theoretical modeling and laboratory experiments. This work is very difficult (and speculative) since nobody can reproduce in a laboratory the high temperatures and pressures that exist in the core. Also it is not known exactly what the core is made of.” Ask A Scientist
Either Al Gore is a priceless idiot or he’s warning us about 2012!!!! This is what would happen if the Earth’s Core was “several million degrees! Get to your airplanes fast folks!”
Conversation with Richard Dawkins and Steven Weinberg.
Part 1 of 8.
“The whole history of the last thousands of years has been a history of religious persecutions and wars, pogroms, jihads, crusades. I find it all very regrettable, to say the least.”
“Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”
“I can hope that this long sad story, this progression of priests and ministers and rabbis and ulamas and imams and bonzes and bodhisattvas, will come to an end. I hope this is something to which science can contribute … it may be the most important contribution that we can make.”
“This is one of the great social functions of science — to free people from superstition.”
- Steven Weinberg, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin, 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics
The belief that the ends justifies the means may be the true root of all evil. – Troy Brumley
A prime example of how science is distorted by – likely well meaning – scientists or science educators. Deliberately or not this video is a masterful piece of propaganda pretending to be science. Credits are due to Greg Craven, the master propagandist who appears in the video.
Greg Craven: falsum in uno, falsum in omnibus?
Greg Craven: false in one thing, false in everything?
Neither risk presented in the video is acceptable because they are a false choice and Greg Craven knows it [or he should know it as a science teacher]! His logic is flawed since he presents a “binary choice” and that is his mistake, black and white thinking. His second mistake is presenting a false dilemma when he knows the facts much better [or should know them better as a science teacher]! There are so many other choices one can choose that it’s not funny. It’s typical of many people trained in the sciences and technology, as well as the general public, to think in black and white binary terms. The universe is fuzzy people. It’s about time we realized that.
The logical fallacy of false dilemma (also called false dichotomy, the either-or fallacy) involves a situation in which only two alternatives are considered, when in fact there are other options. Closely related are failing to consider a range of options and the tendency to think in extremes, called black-and-white thinking. Strictly speaking, the prefix “di” in “dilemma” means “two”. When a list of more than two choices is offered, but there are other choices not mentioned, then the fallacy is called the fallacy of false choice, or the fallacy of exhaustive hypotheses.
False dilemma can arise intentionally, when fallacy is used in an attempt to force a choice (“If you are not with us, you are against us.”) But the fallacy can arise simply by accidental omission—possibly through a form of wishful thinking or ignorance—rather than by deliberate deception (“I thought we were friends, but all my friends were at my apartment last night and you weren’t there.”)
When two alternatives are presented, they are often, though not always, two extreme points on some spectrum of possibilities. This can lend credence to the larger argument by giving the impression that the options are mutually exclusive, even though they need not be. Furthermore, the options are typically presented as being collectively exhaustive, in which case the fallacy can be overcome, or at least weakened, by considering other possibilities, or perhaps by considering a whole spectrum of possibilities, as in fuzzy logic.
Furthermore the dark vision of doom and gloom presented by the human caused global warming alarmists is exaggerated! Even Al Gore admits that he exaggerates – lies outright – just to get people to act! It’s clear that the alarmist views are not on the same footing as a rational scientific view that can be audited and examined fully in the public eyes.
Al Gore admits that he deliberately lies to and scares people for political gain on the topic of human caused global warming climate change. His lying is so blatant that he arrogantly brags about it! Wow, mastery of propaganda is certainly a strong suit for Al Gore.
“In the United States of America, unfortunately we still live in a bubble of unreality. And the Category 5 denial is an enormous obstacle to any discussion of solutions. Nobody is interested in solutions if they don’t think there’s a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous (global warming) is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.” — Al Gore in an interview.
Steven Schneider [now deceased], [was] an alleged climate scientist who also advocates [advocated] lying to people and scaring them with outright lies for political gain. Wow what a one man propaganda machine.
On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.” – Steven Schneider, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), (Quoted in Discover, pp. 45–48, Oct. 1989; for the original, together with Schneider’s commentary on it misrepresentation see also American Physical Society, APS News August/September 1996.
Schneider has been publicly criticized by fellow atmospheric scientist, Craig Bohren, for his history of self-promotion using contradictory climate scares:
“…some of the prominent global warmers of today were global coolers of not so long ago. In particular, Steven Schneider, now at Stanford, previously at NCAR, about 30 years ago was sounding the alarm about an imminent ice age. The culprit then was particles belched into the atmosphere by human activities. No matter how the climate changes he can correctly say that he predicted it. No one in the atmospheric science community has been more successful at getting publicity. NCAR used to send my department clippings from newspaper and magazine articles in which NCAR researchers were named. We’d get thick wads of clippings, almost all of which were devoted to Schneider. Perhaps global warming is bad for the rest of us, but for Schneider and others [such as Al Gore] it has been a godsend.“
More scare mongers with a deliberate lying bent where the end justifies the means, scientists, politicians and eco-warriors alike admitting they are willing to lie through their teeth to get the job done even if it’s global warming is false! Wow.
“What we’ve got to do in energy conservation is try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”
– Timothy Wirth, former U.S. Senator (D-Colorado)
“Scientists who want to attract attention to themselves, who want to attract great funding to themselves, have to (find a) way to scare the public . . . and this you can achieve only by making things bigger and more dangerous than they really are.” (Petr Chylek, Professor of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, commenting on reports that Greenland’s glaciers are melting. Halifax Chronicle-Herald, August 22, 2001)
“We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing”
(Tim Wirth 1990, former US Senator) as quoted in NCPA Brief 213; September 6, 1996
“A global climate treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the [enhanced] greenhouse effect“
(Richard Benedict, US Conservation Foundation)
“We have wished, we ecofreaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion — guilt-free at last!“
– Stewart Brand (writing in the Whole Earth Catalogue)
Taking action can cause much worse problems for humans by rushing and taking the wrong actions. It’s very possible that the huge economic upheaval that is being caused by the rush to judgment by the alarmists will actually cause more harm than any real amount of actual warming.
Will Greg Craven, the guy in the video, take personal responsibility for all those that die in the economic turmoil of the implementation of useless “carbon solutions” for his role in presenting false dilemmas? Will he be responsible for those that die as the planet it terrorformed by his advocacy? I doubt it.
Besides the facts now show that the last ten years have been getting colder. Cold is the new warming. What? Yup. It’s getting colder which means the planet is warming. Weird, but that is what the alarmists claim.
Having an accurate assessment of the risks is crucial for any decision making process. This guy presents the situation in binary thinking and aims you towards his forgone conclusion revealing his bias. More propaganda based upon false reasoning steps and a very crude method of risk management. Since we already know that the alarmists claims are false (even they admit it) this guy is presenting a false choice on the alarmist side of the ledger.
Overall Greg Craven fails as a scientist to present the full set of known facts but passes as an effective and craven propagandist. As such Greg Craven gets a failing grade.
One Richard Feynman has this to say about falsification and full disclosure and it should be a lesson to Greg Craven and the others quoted above as Greg and the others are being schooled by Feynman indeed:
“But this long history of learning how not to fool ourselves–of having utter scientific integrity–is, I’m sorry to say, something that we haven’t specifically included in any particular course that I know of. We just hope you’ve caught on by osmosis.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself–and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.
I would like to add something that’s not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you’re talking as a scientist. I am not trying to tell you what to do about cheating on your wife, or fooling your girlfriend, or something like that, when you’re not trying to be a scientist, but just trying to be an ordinary human being. We’ll leave those problems up to you and your rabbi. I’m talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you are maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.
For example, I was a little surprised when I was talking to a friend who was going to go on the radio. He does work on cosmology and astronomy, and he wondered how he would explain what the applications of this work were. “Well,” I said, “there aren’t any.” He said, “Yes, but then we won’t get support for more research of this kind.” I think that’s kind of dishonest. If you’re representing yourself as a scientist, then you should explain to the layman what you’re doing–and if they don’t want to support you under those circumstances, then that’s their decision.
One example of the principle is this: If you’ve made up your mind to test a theory, or you want to explain some idea, you should always decide to publish it whichever way it comes out. If we only publish results of a certain kind, we can make the argument look good. We must publish both kinds of results.
I say that’s also important in giving certain types of government advice. Supposing a senator asked you for advice about whether drilling a hole should be done in his state; and you decide it would be better in some other state. If you don’t publish such a result, it seems to me you’re not giving scientific advice. You’re being used. If your answer happens to come out in the direction the government or the politicians like, they can use it as an argument in their favor; if it comes out the other way, they don’t publish it at all. That’s not giving scientific advice.
…
But not paying attention to experiments like that is a characteristic of cargo cult science.
… And now you find a man saying that it is an irrelevant demand to expect a repeatable experiment. This is science?
…
So I have just one wish for you–the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom. ” – Richard Feynman, Cargo Cult Science, A Lesson From Richard Feynman For Scientists of Today to Learn
Sounds like Greg Craven needs to go back to grade ten science class and relearn the basics as long as his science teacher is someone like Richard Feynman and very unlike Greg Craven.
A detailed analysis of Greg Craven’s video “How the World Ends” (which have the same false dilemma argument) is illuminating of Greg Craven’s craven attitude towards factual science presentations.
Now a more rational video presentation on climate science.
What is Normal Climate?
“All we can do is adapt, it is the sun that does it, not man.“
All belief is religion as belief isn’t based upon verifiable knowledge.
“A United Kingdom court has ruled that a man can take his employer to court on the grounds that he was discriminated against because of his views on climate change. …
Mr Nicholson successfully argued that his moral values about the environment should be recognised under the same laws that protect religious beliefs.
In the landmark ruling, Justice Michael Burton said that a belief in man-made climate change is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the religion and belief regulations.” Beliefs on climate like Religion, court rules
The word “belief” is a problematic word with so many definitions that you have to pretty much define what you mean either by the context or by direction definition.
Generally when I’m down on the word belief I specifically mean “religious belief” or “supernatural belief” and not a belief that my car is still parked where it is.
I don’t think it’s responsible to say that “I believe in Newton’s Gravity Theory” as to use the word belief to talk about facts mis-communicates to the masses of people out there without scientific training. It’s better to use other words. Your “belief” that letting go of a stone has nothing to do with whether or not the stone falls.
Common uses of belief basically mean that you don’t know or don’t have evidence and that you assume it is true anyway. Since you do have evidence that dropping a stone on earth will have it fall (unless it’s otherwise supported or blocked) using the word belief is a mistake. One instead should say “I know that when I let go of a stone at chest level, it will fall (assuming that it’s not supported or blocked in some other manner).” This has clarity.
It is a big mistake for Richard Dawkins to be using the word belief the way he does with regards to scientific knowledge. He should be more careful and define his terms more precisely when talking about scientific knowledge and what is know and what isn’t since the religious masses use the word belief differently.
Sure people have a “belief” that X person will be a good political leader, but that is an entirely different category and meaning of belief than “belief that god exists” which is a statement that has no evidence and will never have any evidence in all probability not even mentioning all the evidence against the possibility of any gods existing.
As for climate change caused by man the science isn’t settled and if you think it is that is your “belief” and not a valid scientific statement. The more I learn the more I learn that we don’t yet have conclusive answers and that politics of extreme environmentalism started it and now that mainstream politicians have gotten into the act it’s now even more highly suspect. So I’d say show the evidence in a context where it can be audited by anyone which means showing all the data, raw and manipulated, detailed and comprehensive explanations for the manipulations, the statistics methods involved and why they were chosen, the software and the data used to create the graphs, all the scientists notes, photographs, and other materials used in the preparation of all the science papers. It’s clear that climate scientists (and others) have not been up to the standards of other fields and that all publically funded science needs to have it’s standards of openness and auditability raised.
I’m a very strong show me the hard evidence guy. Belief has no place in science nor in the communication of science nor in the science education process unless it specifically means “we think it could be true or false but we don’t just know yet”.
Believing that murder is wrong is a statement of one’s moral values and the word belief is often used although I’d question it’s use there. I’d not say it that way. I’d rather be more specific and say that “Murder is wrong because human life is valuable.”
Is saying “gravity sucks” a statement of “belief” or is it a succinct statement of the known laws of Gravity? I pick the latter.
“The relationship between belief and knowledge is that a belief is knowledge if the belief is true, and if the believer has a justification (reasonable and necessarily plausible assertions/evidence/guidance) for believing it is true. … Later epistemologists have questioned the “justified true belief” definition, and some philosophers have questioned whether “belief” is a useful notion at all.” – wikipedia
So “belief” is shaky ground at best, and as such it’s best to avoid using it when speaking generally about science or anything that is a statement of objective reality or it’s nature. I also use it carefully. My main use is in talking about the belief and faith stricken members of society.
Is that my belief? No, it’s a precautionary guidance principle based on knowledge gained from far too many conversations with the belief stricken who set well placed linguistic and philosophical traps.
Climate change belief given same legal status as religion In a landmark ruling, Mr Justice Michael Burton said that “a belief in man-made climate change … is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations“.
An executive has won the right to sue his employer on the basis that he was unfairly dismissed for his green views after a judge ruled that environmentalism had the same weight in law as religious and philosophical beliefs.
Facts do not matter anymore as belief in global warming is now officially recognized as a nutter religion!
(All religions are anti-scientific since they require faith above facts of Nature and Nature always wins thus the supernatural religions are false).
The Religion of Climate Change
He’s close “belief in human caused climate change is a religion” but it’s not that they’ll believe in anything its’ that they put “belief” above reason and facts and they’ve been convinced by the likes of Al Gore. It is not the lack of a belief in god that is the problem it is belief itself that is the problem, belief in god, belief in climate change caused by man (aka Mann) that is the real problem. When you are willing to “believe” rather that use reason to examine the facts of Nature that is when you take the irresponsible “leap of faith” into the land of being belief stricken with something that is more likely simply wrong than even having a hint of being right. Critical thinking and reason and the scientific method and open science with peer review by anyone are the tools we need to move forward as a society. Not belief in something. Belief and faith are the great mind killers and possibly the death of civilization as well.
The Religion of Climate Change, UN Ki Moon Cult
Yes indeed, sober scientific based discussion still has it’s place. No science is ever settled. If you think climate science is settled then you don’t know about the facts of climate science as much as you think you do. Not only that, but you also don’t understand the scientific method nor science eduction. Questions are essential of all science at all stages. To suppress discussion is anti-scientific.
To make scientific questions such as “mann made climate change” into a religion based upon belief is the height of insanity and irresponsible governance by the court and anyone else.
“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.
Victor Stenger author of “Not by Design: The Origin of the Universe”, “Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World Beyond the Senses”, “The Unconscious Quantum: Metaphysics in Modern Physics and Cosmology”, “Timeless Reality: Symmetry, Simplicity, and Multiple Universes”, “Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe”, “The Comprehensible Cosmos: Where Do The Laws Of Physics Come From?”, “God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist” and “Quantum Gods: Creation, Chaos and the Search for Cosmic Consciousness” interviewed in depth (98 minutes).
The main battle ground is “superstition”, belief and faith verses Reason, Rationality and Scientific thinking.
Al Gore Fortunetelling and doom-saying our future warming the planet with his actual hands waving across the big silver screen in the fantasy science fiction documentary An Inconvenient Truth and in the process breaking the anti-fortuneteller law in Maryland!
A Maryland man [Nick Nefedro] who refers to himself as a Gypsy is claiming discrimination in the case of a Bethesda, Maryland law that forbids “foretelling the future.”
In Montgomery County, Maryland, it is … illegal to accept money for “forecasting or foretelling or for pretending to forecast or foretell the future by cards, palm reading or any other scheme, practice or device.” Although the law has been on the books since the 1950’s, it is being challenged in court by Nick Nefedro, a man who claims gypsy ancestry and who wants to run a business selling his services as a fortuneteller. Nefedro was denied a business permit, and he says banning his predictions is discriminatory against his heritage. The ACLU is backing his claim.
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A possibility that no one has discussed, however, is that Montgomery County prosecutors might insist that Mr. Nefedro prove his fortunetelling abilities. Courts have an understandable and desirable bias toward protecting free speech, but Mr. Nefedro’s free speech rights are not in danger, only his ability to take money for making predictions. If his ability is real, it should stand up to scientific testing. If it does not stand up to such testing, than it is, in simple terms, fraud.
…
In reality, fortunetelling should not be protected free speech any more than yelling “fire” in a crowded theater. Whenever someone claims to make supernatural [or scientific] predictions, those claims should be subject to testing or at least subject to later review for accuracy.” – Fortunetelling Should Not Be Protected Speech
“I don’t think it’s strange for us to have laws that protect against fraud,” said Clifford Royalty, zoning division chief in the Montgomery County attorney’s office, adding that “religion [or science] has nothing to do with it. He’s not made that allegation in the lawsuit.”
“The practice is fraudulent,” Royalty said, “because no one can forecast the future.”
“it is … illegal to accept money for “forecasting or foretelling or for pretending to forecast or foretell the future by … any … scheme, practice or device.“
So this applies to ALL people claiming to FORETELL the future including weather forecasters and climate scientists who use any “scheme, practice or device” known as climate science and a computer and software to do their dirty deeds of forecasting, soothsaying and doom-saying about the end of the world scenarios brought on by Mann, oops, man, with Anthropomorphic Global Warming! Very interesting.
“The underlying purpose is to prevent people from being taken advantage of, because it’s a scam,” Clifford Royalty, a lawyer in the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office, said.
… A federal judge upheld a similar ban in Harford County in 2002, deferring to the county’s assessment of fortunetelling as “inherently deceptive” and citing a 1976 Supreme Court decision, albeit not in a fortunetelling case, that said “untruthful speech” is not protected.” – Washington Examiner
I view the matter in a simple, direct way. If someone wants to sell their services as a fortuneteller (or any other name which means the same thing [such as climatologist or climate scientist or Al Gore]) then they should have to prove them adequate to the task. Plumbers must be able to plumb. Mechanics have to be able to fix your car. Carpenters who build your house have to be able to do the job. If they do a shoddy job, the consumer has recourse.
This means that fortunetellers [, soothsayers, doomsayers, climate scientists, weathermen, movie makers, and others predicting the future] who sell their services as genuine must be able to pass some sort of test showing that they can actually do it. Otherwise they must have a massive sign that says “WE ARE NOT REAL. THIS IS FOR ENTERTAINMENT VALUE ONLY. YOU WILL GET JUST AS GOOD ADVICE THROWING A DART AT THE PAPER.”
I have no problem with those who claim they can see the future, talk to the dead, read your aura, and so on. I merely state that in the interest of consumer protection, they must prove their competency the moment they start charging for it. – Gypsy Bad Fortune.
[W]e already have laws to protect us against fortune telling. The crime is very specific: it’s called fraud. Now we just need to get some law enforcement folks interested in prosecuting it.
So how many climate scientists are working in this part of Maryland (and by precedent potentially all of Maryland)? They are all breaking the law because they don’t hang out a sign on their door or write in their scientific papers “WE ARE NOT REAL. THIS IS FOR ENTERTAINMENT VALUE ONLY. YOU WILL GET JUST AS GOOD ADVICE THROWING A DART AT THE PAPER!”
I think that climate scientists have proven with their bad science that they are not up to the task. I wonder if Pennsylvania has a similar law to address Dr. Mann’sscientific shenanigans:?
The hockey stick debate is about two things. At a technical level it concerns a well-known study that characterized the state of the Earth’s climate over the past thousand years and seemed to prove a recent and unprecedented global warming. I will explain how the study got the results it did, examine some key flaws in the methodology and explain why the conclusions are unsupported by the data. At the political level the emerging debate is about whether the enormous international trust that has been placed in the IPCC was betrayed. The hockey stick story reveals that the IPCC allowed a deeply flawed study to dominate the Third Assessment Report, which suggests the possibility of bias in the Report-writing process. In view of the massive global influence of IPCC Reports, there is an urgent need to bias-proof future assessments in order to put climate policy onto a new foundation that will better serve the public interest.
So are there any people in Maryland who want to make a list of all climate scientists in the State and charge them with “fortunetelling” under the existing Maryland law?
In fact Al Gore’s fantasy film fortunetelling the future of the Earth FORETELLING DOOM and DESTRUCTION as if it really will happen was shown in Bethesda, Maryland, and the lines were very long for many months; in fact I saw it there in Montgomery County myself of all places! These quotes sum up the case against Al Gore nicely: “In Montgomery County it is … illegal to accept money for forecasting or foretelling or for pretending to forecast or foretell the future by … any … scheme, practice or device.” + “In reality, fortunetelling should not be protected free speech any more than yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.” + “The practice is fraudulent because no one can forecast the future.” I trust that the staggering irony of Al Gore yelling mann caused Anthropomorphic Global Warming (AGW), aka FIRE, in a movie theater is not lost on you. Who wants to charge Al Gore under this law? Let’s see guesstimating 50,000 people (we need the actual statistics on this but for the sake of making this point we’ll use this guesstimate of how many) saw the movie An Inconvenient Truth in Montgomery Country in theaters and on DVD that would be 50,000 times the USD$250 fine for Al Gore violating this soothsaying aka fortunetelling law so the fine could potentially be in the range of a whopping USD$12,500,000.00. That might send a message to doomsayers, soothsayers, and climate scientists who predict the future crying wolf repeatedly without verifiable science. It also might take back some of the lucrative profits Al Gore is making by selling “carbon credits”!
Anytime science (papers in particular) is done without SHOWING ALL THE STEPS and providing all the data there is always the chance that some magic steps are involved. By magic we mean fraudulent.
I was about to start this paragraph by saying “To be serious …” but then I realized that this is actually a serious article and not a joke at all, so I’ll start it this way:
The serious nature of fraudulent claims in Climate Science MUST be addressed and those that make claims about the future that turn out to not be correct MUST be held to account for their fraudulent claims especially those that receive money for making said claims. Honest and forthrightness and the highest possible standards MUST BE achieved in Climate Science (and all other sciences) in order to protect the public from those making false claims for personal gain or out of their “beliefs” rather than out of verifiable and Open Source Science that can be vetted and tested by ANY outside party at will.
Two excellent video series by Norman J Wildberger. Very well done and designed to be easy to comprehend. While they start out very simple and basic they get quite deep yet remain as simple as possible. (The bonus series even gets into Relativity, very cool). Wildberger is the math teacher I wish I had all through high school and since, and now through his videos he can be our math teacher! Gotta love online education.
The first series is on the amazing new (and very old) way of doing Rational Trigonometry without using sin and cosine of Classical Trigonometry. It’s Fantastic.
“The new form of trigonometry developed here is called rational trigonometry, to distinguish it from classical trigonometry, the latter involving [cosine, sin and their fellow] functions and the many trigonometric relations currently taught to students. An essential point of rational trigonometry is that quadrance and spread, not distance and angle, are the right concepts for metrical geometry (i.e. a geometry in which measurement is involved).
Quadrance and spread are quadratic quantities, while distance and angle are almost, but not quite, linear ones. The quadratic view is the more general and powerful one. At some level, this is known by many mathematicians. When this insight is put into practice, as it is here, a new foundation for mathematics and mathematics education arises which simplifies Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries, changes our understanding of algebraic geometry, and often simplifies difficult practical problems.
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Rational trigonometry deals with many practical problems in an easier and more natural way than classical trigonometry, and often ends up with answers that are demonstrably more accurate. In fact rational trigonometry is so elementary that almost all calculations may be done by hand. Tables or calculators are not necessary, although the latter certainly speed up computations. It is a shame that this theory was not discovered earlier, since accurate tables were for many centuries not widely available.”
Exerpt from the Introduction to “Divine Proportions: Rational Trigonometry to Universal Geometry” by Associate Professor Norman J Wildberger
Here are a few videos from the Rational Trigonometry series with the full series of 46+ episodes here. These first episodes lay the corner stone of Rational Trig, and it only gets better from there!!! Watch them all a number of times and do the examples. Amazing!
“Why classical trigonometry is hard:
The problem is that defining an angle correctly [in Classical Trigonometry] requires calculus [whereas Rational Trigonometry doesn't]. This is a point implicit in Archimedes’ derivation of the length of the circumference of a circle, using an infinite sequence of successively refined approximations with regular polygons. It is also supported by the fact that The Elements [Euclid] does not try to measure angles, with the exception of right angles and some related special cases. Further evidence can be found in the universal reluctance of traditional texts to spell out a clear definition of this supposedly ‘basic’ concept.” – NJ Wildberger
“Quadrance measures the separation of two points. The easiest definition is that quadrance is distance squared.
… quadrance is the more fundamental quantity, since it does not involve the square root function. The relationship between the two notions is perhaps more accurately described by the statement that distance is the square root of quadrance.
In diagrams, small rectangles along the sides of a triangle indicate that quadrance, not distance, is being measured … .” – NJ Wildberger
“Spread measures the separation of two lines. This turns out to be a much more subtle issue than the separation of two points.” – NJ Wildberger
The spread s between the two lines is the ratio of quadrances. The spread also works out to “square of sine of angle”.
“The spread between two lines is a dimensionless quantity, and in the rational or decimal number fields takes on values between 0 and 1, with 0 occurring when lines are parallel and 1 occurring when lines are perpendicular. Forty-five degrees becomes a spread of 1/2, while thirty and sixty degrees become respectively spreads of 1/4 and 3/4. What could be simpler than that? Another advantage with spreads is that the measurement is taken between lines, not rays. As a consequence, the two range of angles from 0◦ to 90◦ and from 90◦ to 180◦ are treated symmetrically.” – NJ Wildberger
You can find a couple freely available pdf chapters of the book “Divine Proportions: Rational Trigonometry to Universal Geometry” here. Make sure to check out Divine Proportions Overview Chapter 1 as it covers the basics with examples.
You will find some additional pdf papers by the professor here.
The second series is on the Foundations of Math. An excellent review and introduction for everyone at any age.
“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.
The articles linked here raise some very disturbing problems with the manner in which climate science is being conducted. This is especially important due to the HUGE public costs about to be undertaken over the next decades.
“The UK’s Met Office Hadley Centre and University of East Anglia have been refusing access to the data used for their global climate averages and scientific studies.” – slashdot
Opening Science is the way forward, the path through the darkness, the endarkenment of closed source science.
If’s it’s paid by the public purse it must be OPEN data that anyone can see and audit.
Yes, you feel certain that you are right about your science but lets see the actual data and the methods used by that science to prove that your certainty is justified.
Science is based upon the notion of being able to validate or invalidate in whole or in part the “claims” made by various “hypotheses” put forward.
When you “BELIEVE” science you’re just another religion.
When you can’t audit the work of scientists whose work is the basis of public policy then you and the public are being endarkened and kept excluded. But why? For what or whose agenda?
As long as the data, the methods, the algorithms, the statical analysis, the step by step procedures are kept secret the work is suspect to scientific fraud.
Have the guts to open your science to the light of day, it will in the end be better for it once it’s vetted by more eyes and brains and math nuts and others poking holes in it.
ANY AND ALL CLAIMS MADE BY PEOPLE WHO KEEP THEIR SCIENCE CLOSED AND SECRET is suspect of FRAUD. What are they hiding? Are they simply embarrassed to admit that they might be wrong? That they’ve made mistakes? That they are afraid that others might gain an edge in the grant process and shut them out of funding?
Open Source Science is the way forward through the darkness into the light that empower verification and falsification and thus progress EITHER way!!!
When you “BELIEVE” science you’re just another religion. In fact, open source science is the BEST and ONLY WAY to avoid science from becoming the new religion as it has, for example, in the climate debates.
The scientific method is the tool for vetting the works of science and if the work of science is closed and secret and kept close to the scientists chests by refusals to share their data, methods, source codes, procedures, etc… then their work can’t be verified and might as well be works of fiction just like those of any religious cleric or priest or nutter.
If you can’t take others vetting your scientific work then maybe you don’t belong in science?
Open Source Science raises the bar and will in the long run improve the quality of the science that is done. Some progress is being made, much more needs to be done.
Climate science makes extraordinary claims about Anthropogenic Global Warming and Global Warming.
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” – Carl Sagan
Yet when asked for the data that is claimed to provide some of the evidence the data is refused on POLITICAL grounds. Very disturbing.
Regardless of the reasons that the data is not provided the bad science attitude by the MET office hinders actual science from proceeding. Very disturbing.
When you can’t test a scientific hypothesis or read all of the supporting evidence for it you must then rely on “taking their word for it” which is also known as “accepting based upon belief alone”. This is the end of science bit by bit and leads to the path of the dark side, to an age endarkenment.
When people find science open to validate themselves with experiments that they can do themselves or by reading all the evidence and vetting the work of others belief is eliminated and tested knowledge is obtained by that person bolstering the accuracy of their representation of the universe.
Belief is the enemy of science. Open Source science is the path forward that helps to eliminate belief and lay the ground work for a new scientific enlightenment accessible to the masses.
Terminate belief. Grow your knowledge based upon the scientific method. Stop being a science geek who takes it up the ass from authorities just like the religious nut jobs who take it up the ass from The Pope and his ilk.
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.
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.”
On August 7, 1974, shortly after 7:15 a.m., Petit stepped off the South Tower and onto his 3/4″ 6×19 IWRC (independent wire rope core [3]) steel cable. The 24-year-old Petit made eight crossings between the mostly finished towers, a quarter mile above the sidewalks of Manhattan, in an event that lasted about 45 minutes. During that time, in addition to walking, he sat on the wire, gave knee salute and, while lying on the wire, spoke with a gull circling above his head.
Port Authority Police Department Sgt. Charles Daniels, who was dispatched to the roof to bring Petit down, later reported his experience:
I observed the tightrope ‘dancer’—because you couldn’t call him a ‘walker’—approximately halfway between the two towers. And upon seeing us he started to smile and laugh and he started going into a dancing routine on the high wire….And when he got to the building we asked him to get off the high wire but instead he turned around and ran back out into the middle….He was bouncing up and down. His feet were actually leaving the wire and then he would resettle back on the wire again….Unbelievable really….[E]verybody was spellbound in the watching of it.[4]
Petit was warned by his friend on the South Tower that a police helicopter would come to pick him off the wire unless he got off. Rain had begun to fall, and Petit decided he had taken enough risks, so he decided to give himself up to the police waiting for him on the South Tower. He was arrested once he stepped off the wire. Provoked by his taunting behaviour while on the wire, police handcuffed him behind his back and roughly pushed him down a flight of stairs. This he later described as the most dangerous part of the stunt.[5]
His audacious high wire performance made headlines around the world. When asked why he did the stunt, Petit would say “When I see three oranges, I juggle; when I see two towers, I walk.”
He crossed EIGHT TIMES and danced while doing it!!! You’re kidding right? Nope…
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TXrMLKDu5g]
Very amazing. Beyond words amazing. Indelible WOW!
A true tribute.
Man on Wire is an Academy Award-winning 2008 documentary film directed by James Marsh. The film chronicles Philippe Petit’s 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of New York’s World Trade Center. It is based on Philippe Petit’s book, To Reach the Clouds, recently released in paperback with the new title Man on Wire. The title of the movie is taken from the police report that led to the arrest (and later release) of Petit, whose performance had lasted for almost one hour. The film is crafted like a heist film, presenting rare footage of the preparations for the event and still photographs of the walk, alongside reenactments (with Paul McGill as the young Petit) and present-day interviews with the participants.
What in your life gets you to take risks and get to your edge of peak performance?
Philippe Petit (born August 13, 1949) is a French high wire artist who gained fame for his high-wire walk between the Twin Towers (WTC) in New York City on August 7, 1974.[1] For his feat (that he referred to as “le coup” [2]), he used a 450-pound (200 kg) cable and a custom-made 26-foot (7.9 m) long, 55-pound (25 kg) balancing pole.
Tight-rope walker, unicyclist, magician and pantomime artist, Petit was also one of the earliest modern day street jugglers in Paris, having begun his career in 1968. He juggled and worked on a slack rope with regularity in Washington Square Park in New York City in the early 1970s. Other famous structures he has used for tightrope walks include Notre Dame de Paris, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Louisiana Superdome, the Hennepin County Government Center, and between the Palais de Chaillot and the Eiffel Tower.
The documentary film Man on Wire by UK director James Marsh, about Petit’s 1974 WTC performance, won both the World Cinema Jury and Audience awards at the Sundance Film Festival 2008. The film also won awards at the 2008 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, N.C. and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary.
Petit is one of the Artists-in-Residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. He currently lives in Woodstock, New York.
Learning to tight rope walk. Not as easy as Petit makes it look.
Rather than wasting resources on the myth of global warming we should be putting all of our resources into preventing and averting the inevitable asteroid impacts that will befall Earth given time. To do nothing is irresponsible.
The tantalizing signs of a possible medieval Norse presence in Nunavut were found at the previously examined Nanook archeological site, about 200 km southwest of Iqaluit, where people of the now-extinct Dorset culture once occupied a stretch of Hudson Strait shoreline.
A UNESCO World Heritage site at northern Newfoundland’s L’Anse aux Meadows — about 1,500 km southeast of the Nanook dig — is the only confirmed location of a Viking settlement in North America. There, about 1,000 years ago, it’s believed a party of Norse voyagers from Greenland led by Leif Eiriksson built several sod-and-wood dwellings before abandoning their colonization attempt under threat from hostile natives they called “Skraelings.”
But over the past 10 years, research teams led by the Canadian Museum of Civilization’s chief of Arctic archeology, Pat Sutherland, have compiled evidence from field studies and archived collections that strongly suggests the Norse presence in northern Canada didn’t end with Eiriksson’s retreat from Newfoundland.
At three sites on Baffin Island, which the Norse called “Helluland” or “land of stone slabs”, and at another in northern Labrador, the researchers have documented dozens of suspected Norse artifacts such as Scandinavian-style spun yarn, distinctively notched and decorated wood objects and whetstones for sharpening knives and axes.
Two amazing videos and an excellent and clear paper that disprove the AGWH (anthropogenic global warming hypothesis).
CBC Documentary: Doomsday Called Off
“in the period of ~4,000 years ago to ~2,000 years ago, which is actually the Roman Age, ice core temperatures had been decreasing by 2.5c degrees… then temperatures increased to the mideveal warm period ~1,000 years ago. Then temperatures declined till around 1750 AD and came back up in the 18th century and then around 1875 we have the coldest point in the last 8,000 years.” – Jorgen Peder Steffensen, curator, Niels Bohr Institute, Department of Geophysics. Steffensen is involved in ice core research.
All before man made C02 emissions occurred. The coldest point in the last 8,000 years was ~140 years ago! WOW! As you can see in the graph we’re potentially just emerging from this period. Even the worst predictions of increases in warming won’t bring us back to the highest temperatures in the last eight thousand years for a very long time.
The Great Global Warming Swindle
Well worth reading is this excellent paper Disproving AWG.
The main predictions from the AGW models are:
1. The average Earth’s temperature will increase at a rate of 0.20C to 0.60C per decade at least to 2100, and will continue to climb after that if the CO2 continues to be produced by human activity at current predicted rates.
2. The increasing temperature will cause increased water evaporation, which is the cause for the positive feedback needed to reach the high temperatures.
3. The temperature at lower latitudes (especially tropical regions) will increase more in the lower Troposphere at moderate altitudes than near the surface.
4. The greatest near surface temperature increases will occur at the higher latitudes.
5. The increasing temperature at higher latitudes will cause significant Antarctic and Greenland ice melt. These combined with ocean expansion due to warming will cause significant ocean rise and flooding.
6. A temperature drop in the lower Stratosphere will accompany the temperature increase near the surface. The shape of the trend down in the Stratosphere should be close to a mirror reflection of the near surface trend up.
Each of these points is addressed in depth and dispensed with in the paper whose conclusions are:
The final question that arises is what prediction has the AGW made that has been demonstrated, and that strongly supports the theory. It appears that there is NO real supporting evidence and much disagreeing evidence for the AGW theory as proposed. That is not to say there is no effect from Human activity. Clearly human pollution (not greenhouse gases) is a problem. There is also almost surely some contribution to the present temperature from the increase in CO2 and CH4, but it seems to be small and not a driver of future climate. Any reasonable scientific analysis must conclude the basic theory wrong!!
Using Wolfram Alpha for the first time tonight it spit message up when it couldn’t get an answer due to a heavily trafficked servers on it’s first day in operations. Very cool Dave. However, really subjecting Dave to such abuse from the likes of me. Tsk… tsk… tsk… actually it’s quite a cool tool.
Heh, from now on many more web sites will be saying “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that…” when they get an error. Cool. Read the rest of this entry »
In every way imaginable, that is real, science and objective humanism obliterates not just religion but the need for religion as well. Objective Reality, Nature, what is real verses what is fantasy and delusional beliefs that an invisible super being that violates all of, or the vast majority of, the known and well tested laws of science, laws of Nature, and even the nature of Nature is very clear.
Dead bodies don’t rise from the dead once brain death, organ death, heart death, and cell death have set in – not even in modern hospitals can that be achieved. The only gods that exist are the ones within the skulls of believers, the fantasy gods that they construct to avoid the harsh facts of life: that they, that all, will die the permanent death without any life after death. Even the memories of our lives left behind with those still alive will fade with time and the passing of the ages. Even the Earth and all that is on it will perish given time and celestial events in our solar system.
That which makes us unique in space and time and in biology passes into oblivion from whence we came in time. There is no hope of an eternal salvation. Hope itself is a great killer of minds. The kind of hope that supports delusional thinking that that which is impossible in Nature can happen, that hope dooms you and all to a path of delusional fantasies of rising dead bodies, of the doom of death avoided, of walking on water, of all the other miracles that require the other great killer of minds and free will, faith.
Pernicious faith, the evil of the ages roosting within the dark minds of it’s committed adherents. Faith the denier of objective reality. Faith the denier of that which is real and the limits of reality. The dead only come back to life in zombie movies and other silly mythologies only most people can tell that zombie movies are fantasy yet for some reason those same people can’t tell that their jesus is also just a fantasy delusion of epic proportions. The act of faith kills the best minds and brings them into the fold of the cult of death that each and every religion or faith on earth represents. A cult focused on selling life immortal if only you’d make your donations as a good member. The greatest con game perpetrated upon the human species by their fellows.
Oh, I went to the midnight showing of the action fantasy film, “Angels & Demons”. As far as action goes, it’s got that in spades. Intrigue, for sure. Suspense, yup. Delusional fantasies, absolutely tons of delusionals all over the screen spouting their silly beliefs of gods and demons. They even have a pope as an action figure! Never saw that one coming! Overall a good movie if you can stomach the religious nonsense and not take any of it seriously; if you do you know that you’re beyond the typical religious delusional and are into the total nut job category. They even have a really big boom. I’ll have to say that the cinematography was awesome but the music was one of the best parts of the film. Yes, it’s pretty much 24 meets the Vatican conspiracy chest of delusions. Bright light, bright light.
Of course the movie opens with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and spins a technobabble story with, oh scary, antimatter! Yikes. How about some real science to correct the silly myths that Angels & Demons took extreme liberties with.
Don’t know if this last one qualifies as science but what the heck.
Ok, enough of things going slooooowwwly… now for some real speed!!!
WOW!
Too bad they didn’t show the separation of the large External fuel Tank (ET) from the shuttle.
Here are some highlights and other awesome clips, also in HD! Wow, I’ve got those very same kitchen timers (the white ones hanging all over the shuttle)! They are very cool with four count up/down timers plus one count down and one count up timer. Awesome! Read the rest of this entry »
Influenza A virus subtype H1N1, aka swine flu, also known as A(H1N1) or simply H1N1, is a subtype of influenzavirus A and the most common cause of influenza in humans. Some strains of H1N1 are endemic in humans, including the strain(s) responsible for the 1918 flu pandemic which killed 50–100 million people worldwide. Less virulent H1N1 strains still exist in the wild today, causing roughly half of all flu infections in 2006.[1] Other strains of H1N1 are endemic in pigs and in birds.
“We are risen apes not fallen angels.” – Andy Thomson
Science and Religion are highly incompatible for science is based upon the actual evidence of facts of objective reality while religion is based on nothing but faith that crazy ideas that have no evidence are true. Evidence verses nothing but faith. Science wins.
This is a message that I’ve been saying for years now.
This video is certainly part of the counter propaganda against global warming caused by humans hysteria that is so widespread. It’s good to see some excellent debunking ads finally. It’s funny too!!!
A team of scientists explore a Mexican cave filled with giant crystals; some of the largest ever discovered. With temperatures near 120 degrees and over 80 percent humidity, the cave [, in the Naica Mine,] is one of the deadliest environments on earth.
The movie “The Core” got it right!!! Giant underground crystal caves!!! Ok, well sort of… heat… space suits… lava… not a geode but close enough for fun…
Favorite lines from The Core: “What would it take you to get it done in three months?” … “Oh, 50 Billion dollars, I don’t know…” … “Will you take a cheque?” … “Why don’t you use a credit card, you’d get miles?” … “hmmm.”
Everyone knows that C02 is plant food. Plants love it. They literally breath in C02 and exhale what we need to live, oxygen. Our friends the plants NEED C02!
At the current levels (just below 400 ppm) in the atmosphere plants flourish. At levels of 1,000 ppm commercial green house operators find that plants flourish even more!!!
At levels of 8,000 ppm of C02 in the atmosphere (20x the current levels in the atmosphere) humans do just fine operating the fleet of nuclear submarines of the United States of America. Yes, the sailors who can wipe out life on planet Earth live every day for months at a time submerged in a C02 rich environment making critical thinking decisions that impact us all. Without incident for decades now.
C02 is a gas that contributes to the “green house effect”. Yes, green houses benefit from this effect by upping the C02 levels and keeping temperatures warmer.
Some say that increased levels of C02 are a problem because it’s going to destroy the earth somehow.
Yet water, H2O, is the most common green house gas. The earth is covered in 70%+ with water. Since water is a much more potent green house gas shouldn’t we fear water? Many people drown each year, clearly water is dangerous. Many people are killed in floods and tsunami each year, clearly water is dangerous. By this logic water should be banned! No more water! Anything that generates water or that puts steam into the atmosphere MUST be banned! That means that clean running cars that emit water vapor must be banned since they are generating H20, a clearly dangerous green house gas!!!
Clearly all human activities that generate water must be banned!!!
Get some perspective people, especially you so called environmentalists who want to ban C02. Life is a cycle. C02 and H20 are not “evil” nor “good” they just are what they are, molecules. Clearly C02 is not dangerous in the concentrations we have in the atmosphere and it would take enormous generation of C02 to raise the levels to 1,000 ppm and beyond where plants really flourish which isn’t even in the worst case predictions of the freaked out scientists of the IPCC who are predicting doom and gloom.
C02 is essential to life on earth. Plants love it. We love plants. More C02 is better for plants which means a greener Earth!!! Different plants can take advantage of different amount of C02. Read the rest of this entry »
YECs = Young Earth Creationists. Those that think the universe is six days old, where six days is about 6,000 to 10,000 years give or take a few minutes.
Scientists, those that actually test their ideas against objective reality and who are willing to adapt to the verifiable facts of existence given what is REAL in NATURE!
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.” – 
New Pesos Issued
