"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
"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
"Nullis 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
“Scientists from around the world are providing even more evidence of global warming. ‘A comprehensive review of key climate indicators confirms the world is warming and the past decade was the warmest on record,’ the annual State of the Climate report declares. Compiled by more than 300 scientists from 48 countries, including Canada, the report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said its analysis of 10 indicators that are ‘clearly and directly related to surface temperatures, all tell the same story: Global warming is undeniable.’” – Slashdot.org article “Global Warming ‘Undeniable,’ Report Says”
Yikes, start packing for doomsday for the soothsayers are out and about using The Force to intensify propaganda after their self inflicted Climate Gate revelations of their Alarmist Scientist Core Cult members improprieties. Pack light though, it’s going to be a scorcher, allegedly. Hawaii at the North Pole. I really am beginning to wonder if all these alarmist scientists are just rapture christians firing things up for the coming end times? Nostradamus still beats any climate scientist with soothsaying doomsday predictions. Hands down, and he’s been dead a long time. Now how can that be? Let’s explore the science that prevents predictions of complex systems. Read the rest of this entry »
Weather is climate! Climate is an mathematical statistical abstraction. Weather is what is really happening now. Climate is arbitrary math. Nature knows no bounds and isn’t limited by man’s (or Mann‘s) understanding of complex weather systems.
Many records of cold temperatures and record snow falls are currently being broken during this fall and winter season, often with low temperatures not seen in decades.
As someone who lives in the Great White North I certainly wouldn’t mind it a few degrees warmer.
Oh, come back to us Global Warming, it’s too soon for the planet to cool down again.
Some climate, ahem, “scientists” would like us to “believe” their soothsaying predictions of doom and gloom destruction which they read from, among other things, dead tree entrails. In fact they go to lengths to “hide the decline” in their dead tree ring entrails not correlating with temperature after the 1960′s (which of course means that dead tree rings are not viable for temperature proxies unless you have thermometers to monitor them).
What is the difference between “soothsaying” and “prediction”? In science predictions of the future is supposed to be based upon hard scientific evidence. Newton’s equations work, and Einstein’s more accurate equations work better, since they accurately predict the future time and time and time again.
Basing a temperature “reconstruction” upon a highly variable organic system such as dead (or living) tree ring entrails is a highly flawed proposition at best and clearly bad science as the tree ring data diverged and declined from the temperature records after 1960. The fact that that happened falsifies the use of tree ring data for past reconstructions and for future predictions.
If Newton’s or Einstein’s equations had such flaws they would be falsified in a New York minute!
A New York minute is an instant. Or as Johnny Carson once said, it’s the interval between a Manhattan traffic light turning green and the guy behind you honking his horn.
Here is the English Blizzard direct and raw from the intrepid folks with video cameras themselves. I love the comments some of them make. Best one is “Frigging South Pole!” or such.
“Roads full of snow, cars crash and traffic grinds to a halt. It has been snowing for many hours heavily (from Siberia) and many are left stranded, this was as much as i could get as i didn’t want my camera to get wet. Driving a few miles could take hours, no the most idealistic weather for winter. Worst effected regions are the East of England and the South where 10-15cm of snow has fallen in a matter of hours, the ploughers are not in use and roads fallen into mudbaths.”
Let’s look at some of the reasons why climate change is natural. Original bullet points are from Jim McConalogue of the European Foundation, highlighting, links and commentary below the line in each point are by pwl. I’ll be updating this page to flush out the commentary for most of the items as the days go on. Whenever possible I will quote actual scientists who have expertise on a particular point or set of points, and even better I will post a video of them discussing the issues directly. If you have any additional points, counter points, corrections, better links, or additional links you’d like to have added please make a comment.
In compiling this assessment, I am grateful to the real hard-working academic researchers and professors; the integrity and arguments of Roger Helmer MEP; the ‘Friends of Science’ organisation for providing facts and myths on climate change; the United States organisation, ‘No Cap-and-Trade Coalition’; for the detailed research by Dr. Singer in his editing of the report, ‘Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate’, (The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change), published by The Heartland Institute in 2008 and also his report with Dr. Idso, ‘Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC)’, also published by the Heartland Institute in 2009, where many of the central arguments are drawn from. Also, the work and insights by Lord Monckton of Brenchley’s report ‘Climategate: Caught Green-handed! Cold facts about the hot topic of global temperature change after the Climategate Scandal’, Science & Public Policy Institute, 2009 have been useful. I have attempted to credit all other researchers and organisations in the content of the report. Other valuable papers include Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner in Executive Intelligence Review, 22 June 2007 and John McLean’s paper ‘The IPCC can’t count its “expert scientists”: Author and reviewer numbers are wrong’ in January 2009, all of which I have used to compile my pamphlet.” – Jim McConalogue
01) There is “no real scientific proof” that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from man’s activity.
“Evidence is information, such as facts, coupled with principles of inference (the act or process of deriving a conclusion), that make information relevant to the support or disproof of a hypothesis. Scientific evidence is evidence where the dependence of the evidence on principles of inference is not conceded, enabling others to examine the background beliefs or assumptions employed to determine if facts are relevant to the support of or falsification of a hypothesis.
“A person’s assumptions or beliefs about the relationship between alleged facts and a hypothesis will determine if that person takes the facts as evidence. … A person’s assumptions or beliefs about the relationship between alleged facts and a hypothesis will also determine how a person utilizes the facts as evidence. … In summary, beliefs or assumptions about causal relationships are utilized to determine whether facts are evidence of a hypothesis.
Background beliefs differ. As a result, where observers operate under different paradigms, rational observers may find different meaning in scientific evidence from the same event. … Note that a causal relationship between the facts and hypothesis does not exist to cause the facts to be taken as evidence[1], but rather the causal relationship is provided by the person seeking to establish facts as evidence.
Popper provides that a scientist creatively develops a theory which may be falsified by testing the theory against evidence or known facts. Popper’s theory presents an asymmetry in that evidence can prove a theory wrong, by establishing facts that are inconsistent with the theory. In contrast, evidence cannot prove a theory correct because other evidence, yet to be discovered, may exist that is inconsistent with the theory.”
Many of these 100 Reasons provide alternative interpretations of the data or counter evidence that falsify the man made global warming climate change hypothesis.
02) Man-made carbon dioxide emissions throughout human history constitute less than 0.00022 percent of the total naturally emitted from the mantle of the earth during geological history.
03) Warmer periods of the Earth’s history came around 800 years before rises in CO2 levels.
04) After World War II, there was a huge surge in recorded CO2 emissions but global temperatures fell for four decades after 1940.
05) Throughout the Earth’s history, temperatures have often been warmer than now and CO2 levels have often been higher – more than ten times as high.
06) Significant changes in climate have continually occurred throughout geologic time.
07) The 0.7C increase in the average global temperature over the last hundred years is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term, natural climate trends.
08) The IPCC theory is driven by just 60 scientists and favourable reviewers not the 4,000 usually cited.
“The belief that the ends justifies the means may be the true root of all evil.” – Troy Brumley
“Al Gore, First Emperor of the Moon, Head Authority on Mann-Made Climate Change“
“In the United States of America, unfortunately we [alarmists] still live in a bubble of unreality [see photo above]. 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 [for the ends to justify the means and thus] to have an over-representation of factual presentations [aka exaggerate aka lie aka ignore counter evidence aka commit fraud] 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. “
Very cool tool from visualizing data from NASA satellites in 3d in a web browser.
What I’m interested in is not just the visualization aspect but the actual data behind the visualizations since as we know from the Climategate confirmations of scientific fraud in climate science visual images can be highly misleading towards the alleged scientists point of view. Raw data please. All manipulations MUST be FULLY documented with the software source code that made the changes and detailed reasons listed for all adjustments.
If we are to raise our knowledge, skills and competence in using the scientific method to study the Earth, Moon, Sol and other relevant systems we must do some basic learning. Hard science requires making use of hard data without cheating and with showing ones data and any adjustments with justifications and open source code for auditing and proper open peer reviews!
Now let’s see what we can learn from this 3d puppy. My favorite is the GRACE Gravity satellites.
I’ve often wondered what impact the uneven gravity has on the Earth’s climate systems and if the gravity effects are taken into account in the so called climate models. As you can see from the above video the Earth isn’t even an oblate spheroid, it’s a really bumpy place when it comes to gravity. This must impact the weather and thus the climate systems as the atmosphere and water and ice move about.
What is the difference between a soothsayer and an accurate prediction and forecasting foretelling the future weather and climate? Methodology and accuracy of results. First let’s define the terms.
A predictionis a statement or claim that a particular event will occur in the future in more certain terms than a forecast. The etymology of the word is Latin (præ-, “before,” and dicere, “to say“). Howard H. Stevenson writes: “Prediction is at least two things: Important and hard.” Important, because we have to act, and hard because we have to realize the future we want, and what is the best way to get there.
In a scientific context, a prediction is a rigorous, (often quantitative), statement forecasting what will happen under specific conditions, typically expressed in the form If A is true, then B will also be true. The scientific method is built on testing assertions which are logical consequences of scientific theories. This is done through repeatable experiments or observational studies.
A scientific theory whose assertions are not in accordance with observations and evidence will probably be rejected. Theories that make no testable predictions remain protosciences until testable predictions become known to the community.
Additionally, if new theories generate many new predictions, they are often highly valued, for they can be quickly and easily confirmed or falsified (see predictive power). In many scientific fields, desirable theories are those which predict a large number of events from relatively few underlying principles.
A soothsayeris a person who claims to speak sooth (truth or reality, smooth (political savy, gift of the gaff, able to smoothly con), or soft (the soft sell)): specifically one who predicts the future based upon personal, political, spiritual, mental, or religious beliefs rather than scientific facts.
Making up scientific facts or playing “tricks” with them to fit your theory disqualifies one from being a scientist as one is “soothsaying” and very likely committing fraud especially when claims are made that people act upon or when money is involved.
As we are learning from Climategate, clearly the AGW alarmist crowd would rather fudge the data than let the chips fall where they may. Phil Jones, Michael Mann et. al. have a lot to learn from those who accurately predict the weather and climate!
“What is their [Phil Jones Climate Research Unit's] success rate [at predicting the climate using their hypothesis of Anthropogenic Global Warming Climate Change (AGW)]?” – Corbyn
Let’s see. Here below is their infamous hockey stick graph and as the graph below it shows the actual data their success rate is, oh dear worse than zero since they faked the data… as proven with the Climategate revelations.
It seems clear that the CRU forecasts of extreme climate warming of ten years ago have been falsified (i.e. they failed) due to the FACT that the last decade has seen a decline in temperatures. When predicting weather or climate it’s not just your “hypothesis” that is important it’s the actual predictions that you make that succeed or fail to predict the future. You’ve got it wrong Phil Jones, Michael Mann et. al. as anyone can see by looking at the temperatures, and you admit it privately in the Climategate emails, have the guts to be men and publicly admit that your AGW predictions have failed!
The purple line is the rising CO2 levels and as you can see from the blue temperature graph the last decade has declined and not followed the rise in CO2. Funny that. Oh wait, that's direct evidence that the AGW hypothesis failed to predict the last decade and thus falsifies the hypothesis. Oops, darn Nature not cooperating with the hypothesis.
Well it’s the evidence shows it’s conclusive, Phil Jones, Michael Mann et. al. are soothsayers as their Hockey Stick AGW forecasts failed to predict accurately the last ten years.
It’s conclusive Piers Corbyn is on to something significant using the Solar Weather Technique to with high accuracy predict the future weather and climate. Not a soothsayer but a true scientist working his craft.
Let’s explore the Solar Weather Technique of Weather and Climate Forecasting that seems to achieve remarkable results.
“A verification of UK gale forecasts by the ‘solar weather technique’: October 1995–September 1997
In recent years the ‘solar weather’ technique of weather forecasting which takes into account of the influence of the sun has received much attention. No attempt has hitherto been made to determine the success, or otherwise, of elements of these forecasts, which include solar predictors and are prepared 6–11 months in advance of the events they predict. This paper conducts an evaluation of these forecasts but confines attention to the prediction of gales. Skill levels are assessed over different seasons. The results, whilst differing greatly between the seasons, reveal a degree of success that cannot readily be accounted for by chance and suggest that this system of forecasting continues to be assessed over a longer time period to further investigate these findings.“
Further detailed successful results are found on the linked page above.
[Piers] Corbyn’s predictions are based on what is called “The Solar Weather Technique.”[8] The technique “combines statistical analysis of over a century of historical weather patterns with clues derived from solar observations.”[1] He considers past weather patterns and solar observations and sun-earth magnetic connectivity. Conventional meteorology claims that such influences cause minimal impact on the Earth’s atmosphere[9].
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.
…
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.
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.
You’ve got to be kidding. This has everything to do with climate! WOW! The area is being drenched with snow!
Update 1: It turns out that May 2009 (is) was quite cold up here in Canada. See a Canada has Cold May Report. Personally I vote for an increase in global temperatures to say what it was 8,000 to 4,000 years ago during the Roman Age or even a little higher. Brrr… in Vancouver. – pwl
Environment Canada issued a snowfall warning for the region yesterday, still in effect today, stating the city will likely be blanketed with the white stuff by this afternoon.
The forecasted high is 5 C.
“The worst has yet to come,” said Environment Canada weatherman Greg Pearce. “You’re not out of the woods yet.”
About 4.5 cm of the snow landed in the Edmonton area yesterday, forcing unhappy campers to storm from a RV park in droves and keeping sun worshippers indoors.
