"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
Bishop Hill [1] and WUWT [2] are reporting on the success of British beurocrates in letting the Climategate CRU criminals, Phil Jones, et. al. at UEA, escape from penalties for their frauds and cover up under the FOI Laws:
“I was told that while there appeared to be a problem, I needed to be clear that there would be no prosecutions under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, regardless of the final outcome of the investigation. Although withholding or destroying information is a criminal offence under the terms of the Act, apparently no prosecutions can be brought for offences committed more than six months prior. As anyone who has made a UK FoI request knows, it can take six months to exhaust the internal review process before the ICO even becomes involved. The ICO can then take another six months before starting his investigation.”
“Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez has once again accused the United States of playing God. But this time it’s Haiti’s disastrous earthquake that he thinks the U.S. was behind. Spanish newspaper ABC quotes Chavez as saying that the U.S. navy launched a weapon capable of inducing a powerful earthquake off the shore of Haiti. He adds that this time it was only a drill and the final target is … destroying and taking over Iran.”
Maybe Hugo Chavez is using too much of his country’s local white powdery substances mixed in his coffee.
Any weapon capable of causing an earthquake of a 7.0 magnitude would have itself registered as a bomb detonation on the seismic sensors. Bombs and earthquakes have different seismic signatures in the data streams that are recorded.
As is evident in the first few frames of this security camera you can see the building (reportedly a shopping mall type structure) collapse. That’s extremely fast considering that it basically went down on the first few earthquake wave crests in the first few seconds of this 7.0 quake. It really shows the potent power of The BIG ONE! Imagine what that would do in your city.
At seven seconds into the video the building is standing. The camera starts moving at second 8. Smoke from the collapsing building is visible during second 10 and clearly the building falls by second 11. That’s about three seconds from first wave to catastrophic destruction of the structure. That’s not even enough time to comprehend what is happening if you’re standing in the structure before the roof comes down on your head. Yikes.
Cars driving down the road clearly divert from their lanes. At second 25 a truck appears on the left side of the video and attempts to turn left onto the main road and arcs left losing control – having just missed a car by a second or two – and comes to a stop before hitting the collapsing building. Double yikes.
As you can see from this Google Earth Satellite image below annotated with earthquake symbols, most of which have happened between Jan 10th, 2010 and today, Jan 18th, there is a massive cluster of aftershocks to the west of the hard hit area of Port-Au-Prince. What is of note though is the numerous numbers of low magnitude quakes just to the north of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Some of these are actually under Puerto Rico. Too close for comfort.
(Click image to enlarge).
This is quite the number of aftershocks and also reveals the underlying fault lines.
Do these sets of aftershocks under and to the north of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands provide a warning of dangers lurking or has the pressures on the underlying plates been relieved somewhat so that danger has been reduced? I wonder.
Update 20100119: Additional earthquakes: “It’s one week after the Haiti Earthquake and the World has seen earthquakes in Argentina, Venezuela and most recently Guatemala.” – San Francisco Gate (1). How likely are these additional quakes related to the Haiti quake and aftershocks? Could these be adjustments resulting from the Haiti quake? Hmm….
Update 20100120: The quakes continue in the region with another large one hitting Haiti (5.9 with some reports saying 6.1) today.
The 16 January 2010 issue of New Scientist is really interesting as New Scientist admit that they published “non peer reviewed speculations” as if it was science (rather than soothsaying) and that those speculations were treated as if they were peer reviewed science by the politicians who run the IPCC panel and produce the Alarmist Anthropogenic Global Warming Climate Change Hypothesis (that has now been falsified in so many ways). Now let’s get into it.
[Update 20100119: It’s fine if a science magazine publishes “speculation” AS LONG AS it is so labeled! If it’s not labeled as a “speculative possibility” without any evidence then the readers might be inclined to “blindly accept it on faith or trust” or to accept it “on authority” as seems to have happened with the Himalayan Glaciers are Melting Doom and Gloom. New Scientist does have cache as an allegedly authoritative (to some degree) science publication, at least in some circles. As such it is their responsibility to indicate accurately as possible the evidence available for any particular hypothesis. One way science rags such as New Scientist, Nature, Scientific American, Discover, Popular Science, et. al. fall down is in not presenting opposing hypotheses or contrary evidence that falsifies the hypothesis. By only presenting the one side a rosy picture is transmitted into the minds of many of their readers not all of whom have the time nor inclination nor skills to dig deeper. That failure is on the shoulders of the editors and policy makers of those rags. – pwl]
New Scientist magazine’s unnamed Editors write:
Sifting climate facts from speculation
IT WAS a dramatic declaration: glaciers across much of the Himalayas may be gone by 2035. When New Scientist heard this comment from a leading Indian glaciologist [Syed Hasnain], we reported it. That was in 1999. The claim later appeared in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent report – and it turns out that our article is the primary published source. The glaciologist has never submitted what he says was a speculative comment for peer review – and most of his peers strongly dispute it. ” – New Scientist magazine, 16 January 2010, page 3
In the article Fred Pearce writes:
A decade ago, New Scientist reported (5 June 1999, p 18) a comment by the leading Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain, who said in an email interview with this author that all the glaciers in the central and eastern Himalayas could disappear by 2035. Hasnain, of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, has never repeated the prediction in a peer reviewed journal, and now says it was ” speculative”. – Fred Pearce, New Scientist magazine, 16 January 2010, page 11
So the glaciologist who made the comments and New Scientist are both backpedaling their claims which amount to nothing more than the equivalent of soothsaying the future. Shame, shame, shame. When scientists peddle “predictions” without sufficient hard evidence what really is the difference between what they are doing and soothsaying from dead tree entrails? Nothing really.
“So how could such speculation have become an IPCC “finding” which has, moreover, recently been defended by the panel’s chairman [Rajendra Pachauri]?” – New Scientist magazine, 16 January 2010, page 3
You’re kidding right? Rajendra Pachauri is a politician and will attempt to use anything regardless of how verified it is to support his political agenda and personal wealth accumulation agenda as his recently revealed conflicts of interest demonstrate! This shows that the Editors of New Scientist clearly fail to see the highly political nature of the alleged AGW Hypothesis. Are the editors still under the delusion that climate science is a pure science without being driven by a hard core polarized political movement? I can’t believe they are that naive, can you?
“We are entitled to an explanation, before rumour and doubt compound the damage to the image of climate science already inflicted by the leaked “climategate” emails.” – New Scientist magazine, 16 January 2010, page 3
This is a very strange item. Still attempting to unpack it’s full meaning. Thought I’d share it and see what others had to say about it.
It seems that New Scientist, unnamed author, is backpedaling a published claim that was being propagandized by the chief politician of the IPCC to support the political non-science based AGW hypothesis agenda.
The profound deep arrogance of man is revealed in the self imposed delusional mythological belief systems from the Bronze Ages. Many people, purportedly the vast majority of people on Earth, believe that the universe was created for man. How arrogant. How sad. The cartoon above says it well.
Let’s get it through our thick skulls. The universe wasn’t created for human beings. We simple evolved here fighting and clawing our way from sub-cellular life to multi-cellular all the way up to human being. To say that the universe was created for us is so insulting to our ancestors that it isn’t funny- it does them a deep disrespect for it says that their struggle in the continuous chain of life from them to us was unnecessary and make believe just to suit the whims of some arrogant God that want’s to toy with us for his/her/it’s own designs.
Anyone who truly gets the notion of freedom and independence must reject the notions of arrogance implied and supported by the profoundly horrific self conceited notion that the universe was created for us.
“I hope we see this as a bigger moment because the threat that happened to Haiti can happen anywhere in the Caribbean Island Nations. You know, they’re are all in peril because of global warming, they’re all in peril because of climate change. … [undecipherable gibberish] … We have to act now” – Danny Glover, Actor
It’s a truly sad day when idiotic thoughts like global warming are the cause of everything are all the rage uttered from every corner of society.
Let me spell it out for you Danny Glover and all Global Warming Alarmists, EARTHQUAKES are NOT caused by the falsified Anthropogenic (Man Made) Global Warming Hypothesis. Earthquakes are a Natural phenomenon. There are not even glaciers above Haiti so even if we wanted to trigger an earthquake by melting it with heat we could not have caused this quake! Man doesn’t cause earthquakes by burning fossil fuels for our cars or whatever. If you think we do then you know for sure that you’re a complete nutter.
Actually one could make the argument that the utter waste of resources on the imagined fear and subsequent hysteria of global warming has drawn necessary resources away from the solution of REAL problems.
In fact Danny Glover thinking that the Haiti Earthquake disaster is the result of the falsified AGW Hypothesis put him in the same repugnant category of really bad thinking as the horrific comment by Pat Robertson that the Haitians are suffering because they made a deal with the Devil to get out from under French rule!
As we see the Earth isn’t always a hospitable place to live. The planet is constantly changing and moving. Change is Natural. The planet is a moving dynamic place that is constantly changing… what is more amazing is how stable it really has been for so long to support our form of life.
Not to be mean but to clarify a conversation about global warming where there was a mode of confusion about the meaning of “mean” when “median” was meant by the other party. (I apologize for being in pun mode but there are some mean puns in there that were not meant to be avoided). [:)]
The mean may often be confused with the median, mode or range. The mean is the arithmetic average of a set of values, or distribution; however, for skewed distributions, the mean is not necessarily the same as the middle value (median), or the most likely (mode).
This confusion was the case in the conversation. It’s important that all parties get the same meaning for terms being used. This primer is to clarify for anyone who wants to comprehend these basic yet important statistical terms.
Pat Robertson says the Haitians are “cursed” due to a deal with the devil made to get out from “under the heal of the French” and that this earthquake is payment on that deal with the devil. WTF?
Yup, here’s what Pat Robertson, a truly compassionate person, had to say:
“Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon the third, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you will get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it’s a deal.
And they kicked the French out. You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other. Desperately poor. That island of Hispaniola is one island. It is cut down the middle on the one side is Haiti the other is the Dominican Republic. Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etc. Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island. They need to have and we meed to pray for them a great turning to god and out of this tragedy I’m optimistic something good may come.” – Pat Robertson, Evil Slimy Opportunist MF
Pat Robertson is an evil immoral man spinning his bronze age belief stricken mythology at people in their time of need due to a Natural disaster.
If there is any curse it is in the existence of Pat Robertson’s horrific mindset.
The scammer Pat Robertson is proof that God can’t exist and that opportunistic vile evil men can, will and do take advantage of people’s inability to set aside primitive superstitious beliefs.
CO2 CANNOT CAUSE ANY MORE “GLOBAL WARMING”
FERENC MISKOLCZI’S SATURATED GREENHOUSE EFFECT THEORY
by Miklos Zagoni, 2007 IPCC Reviewer, Physicist
Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary
December 18, 2009
The Earth’s atmosphere differs in essence from that of Venus and Mars. Our atmosphere is not totally cloud-covered, as is Venus: globally, about 40% of the sky is always clear. Also we have huge ocean surfaces that serve as a practically unlimited reservoir of water vapor for the air.
With the help of these two conditions, the Earth’s atmosphere attains what the other two planets cannot: a constant, maximized, saturated greenhouse effect, so that adding more greenhouse gases to the mix will not increase the magnitude of the greenhouse effect and, therefore, will not cause any further “global warming”.
The surface temperature of Venus is hot, because the total cloud cover prevents heat from escaping to outer space. Mars’ surface is cold, because there is not enough greenhouse gas to reach the energy-saturation limit. Only the Earth has these two important features that have allowed it to maximize its greenhouse effect, completely using all available energy from the Sun.
This assertion is not a result of desk speculations. Nor is it a special hypothesis based on assumptions of limited application. It is the outcome of detailed spectral radiative-transfer analysis of huge archives of atmospheric data from NASA and elsewhere.
The project started about 25 years ago, when Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi, a Hungarian physicist, began to write a high-resolution atmospheric radiative transfer code — a special computer program that is necessary if we want to calculate the atmosphere’s infrared radiative processes precisely.
Understanding the downwelling and upwelling long-wave fluxes in the atmosphere is essential if we are to compute the Earth’s global energy balance and its greenhouse effect accurately.
A new ruling by the Supreme Court in Canada will allow journalists and bloggers greater protection from defamation lawsuits, establishing the new defence of responsible journalism.
If sued for defamation, journalists will be able to defend themselves by proving that they acted in the public interest and that they acted in a responsible way to gather the information. This rule will still apply even if particular facts are found to be false.” – Canadian Supreme Court Strengthens Press Freedom
This covers anyone blogging from Canada. I’m not sure [but am double checking] that this might cover Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit dot Org fame (assuming he’s resident in Canada). Certainly Stephen set’s the bar for indepth scientific blogging that goes beyond what any journalists that I’ve ever read have done (with the except of a few that have authored of books). One can aim towards Stephen McIntyre’s standards and not go wrong.
Police statement on the Climategate whistle-blower investigation:
“Norfolk Constabulary continues its investigations into criminal offences in relation to a data breach at the University of East Anglia. During the enquiry officers have been working in liaison with the Office of the Information Commissioner and with officers from the National Domestic Extremism Team. The UEA continues to co-operate with the enquiry however major investigations of this nature are of necessity very detailed and as a consequence can take time to reach a conclusion. It would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage.”
It’s seems that anything that isn’t approved by those controlling those in charge at the National Domestic Extremism Team is considered “extremism”.
British Columbia already had laws to deal with irresponsible bad drivers with cell phones being reckless or dangerous.
“MOTOR VEHICLE ACT
Copyright (c) Queen’s Printer,
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
[RSBC 1996] CHAPTER 318
Part 3
Careless driving prohibited
144 (1) A person must not drive a motor vehicle on a highway
(a) without due care and attention,
(b) without reasonable consideration for other persons using the highway, or
(c) at a speed that is excessive relative to the road, traffic, visibility or weather conditions.
(2) A person who contravenes subsection (1) (a) or (b) is liable on conviction to a fine of not less than $100 and, subject to this minimum fine, section 4 of the Offence Act applies.”
“… it’s already against the law to drive without due care and attention OR with undue care and attention.” – RS
The new anti cell phone and device laws were only made to make the life of law enforcement and ICBC biased prosecutors easier.
The problem with the new anti cell phone and device law is that it alters the burden of proof from the prosecutors having to prove that a person was distracted by the use of a phone or other device and assumes that the person is guilty. This is in direct violation of the Canadian Constitution which guarantees every person in Canada the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty (“11(d) to be presumed innocent until proven guilty …”).
This cell phone ban attempts to bypass this important constitutional protection and place the burden upon us saying that we are guilty of diminished capacity just because we were using a cell phone.
It assumes that we are guilty without proving it and thus this law is nullified and void.
On Jan 1st, 2010 the British Columbia Cell Phone and electronic device ban came into effect.
This cell phone ban really isn’t about making the roads any safer. It’s really just about ICBC having an easier time to prosecute people so that they don’t have to do any actual hard work of proving driver distraction in each case as they did last week.
Now ICBC can just magically say that you were distracted without having to actually prove it in your case. That makes their job so much easier that it’s not funny. As a bonus ICBC won’t have to pay for your claim since you’re guilty of a crime by default if you were using a device in your car.
One reason that this law is unconstitutional is that in Canada we have the right to be presumed innocent until we are proven guilty (“11(d) to be presumed innocent until proven guilty …”). This cell phone ban attempts to by pass this important constitutional protection and place the burden upon us saying that we are guilty of diminished capacity just because we were using a cell phone in our hands rather than in a speaker mode. In effect we’ll have to prove that were are not guilty of the assumed crime of diminished capacity or loss of focus or however they magically word it in sly tongued legalese.
The CULT of the Police State deepens in a disturbing way in British Columbia, Canada as of 1 Jan 2010.
It’s going to take a pretty creative excuse to get out of a ticket for violating B.C.’s new distracted driver law.
Effective Jan. 1, anyone caught holding a cell phone, PDA, portable music player or other electronic device while operating a motor vehicle is eligible for a $167 ticket. If the cop can prove you were actually using it, expect three demerit points, too.
That means simply fidgeting with a portable music player while stopped at a light is now against the law, according to RCMP Staff Sgt. Al Dengis, head of Central Okanagan Traffic Services.
“All the police are required to establish is that the individual was holding onto an electronic device,” he said.
Cops don’t have to prove that the device was in use or even on at the time of the offence.
“We simply have to show that you were driving the vehicle and holding the device,” Dengis explained.
This anti-cell phone law is unconstitutional, plain and simple for it assumes that one had diminished capacity when one is using a cell phone or other device in the car while driving. I’d like them to prove that I had diminished capacity even once while using a cell phone at any time for the past two decades.
Sure if a person is in an accident and it can be shown that a cell phone or a distraction was occurring and that that caused the accident that is one thing and the proper burden of proof of a contributing factor.
Failing an actual problem, such as an accident, it is well neigh impossible for them to prove that a driver has “diminished capacity” just because they were using a cell phone. It’s not like the case of alcohol.
However, to assume we are all guilty of diminished capacity just for holding a device or using a cell phone while driving is insanity and fails the burden of proof of guilt [that is required for the government to prove].
“Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez has once again accused the United States of playing God. But this time it’s Haiti’s disastrous earthquake that he thinks the U.S. was behind. Spanish newspaper ABC quotes Chavez as saying that the U.S. navy launched a weapon capable of inducing a powerful earthquake off the shore of Haiti. He adds that this time it was only a drill and the final target is … destroying and taking over Iran.”
Paths To Knowledge (dot Science) 