"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
The Zeitgeist Movement and it’s associated Venus Project are gaining in popularity. This is of concern. Let’s explore why their “Resource Based Economy” won’t work to bring about their desired changes.
Those that wish to impose The Zeitgeist Movement’s and The Venus Project’s “Resource Based Economy” (RBE), or “Resourced Based Economic Model” (RBEM), communicate that in order to implement the RBE they need to control all the resources on the planet, this requires a “Global Resource Control” (GRC). In order to accomplish this they need to “capture (in the true sense of the word and in all ways you can imagine) all the resources on the planet (their dear leader Jacque Fresco says this) and control the allocation (again the dear leaders Jacque Fresco and Peter Joseph say this, listen to them carefully) of those resources. Read the rest of this entry »
It is important to understand the bad ideas floating about out there. After interacting online with a number of “followers” of The Zeitgeist Movement and the Venus Project they insisted that I “do more research” so I did; I watched more videos, searched using the google machine, and interacted with more Zeitgeistians; I found their glorious leader, Jacque Fresco, worshiping communism in a video of his in Cuba.
I’ve asked a number of prominent Zeitgeistians about it and they had absolutely nothing to say. I’ve tossed this article and information graphic memes together to let people know that the founder of these groups believes communism was good and not radical enough.
Peter Gleick’s actions are shocking and atrocious, a sad event for standards in science where we see otherwise dedicated scientists violate their own integrity in furtherance of their belief stricken cause to save the Earth at all costs. It’s an unfortunate pattern of behavior that the end justifies the means.
By using fraud and deception Peter Gleick compromised himself. This is all too familiar in climate scientists dedicated to their cause above their commitment to the scientific method. Peter Gleick likely fancied himself, absurdly, as a whistle-blower of sorts, as DeSmog climate doomsday rapture cultists have characterized him justifying his criminal actions, but the facts now show that there was nothing of substance to the climate issues to be “blown”, just private information stolen in a crime against a think tank who disagrees with Gleick’s world view of CO2 Climate Doomsday Rapture aka CAGW. Nothing to blow the whistle on thus Gleick’s acts are wholly criminal acts not qualifying for whistle-blower status.
The two Climate Gate incidents also fit this pattern but on a much larger scale where an entire clutch of climate scientists, Dr. Mann, Dr. Hansen, Dr, Jones, Dr. Briffa, Dr. Threnbreth, et al., as is evident by the two sets of Climate Gate Emails, had a similar ongoing conspiracy to fudge their numbers, defraud the public, violate the scientific method using secret political actions to block publication of papers, coordinating their actions to the benefit of their pet hypothesis, CAGW, to the benefit of their careers, to the benefit of their funding, to the benefit of their “cause” rather than to the benefit of science or to the benefit of the public paying their bills.
It is obvious that an insider having observed these suspect activities of scientific fraud and cronyism and the resulting gaming of the data to bias towards CAGW plus the fact that funding monies where clearly involved as motivation to career and person adds in the suspect activities of potential criminal fraud not only across state lines but across international borders as well.
The role of the whistle-blower is typically reserved for insiders who observe highly unethical and or criminal behavior going on in an organization who then reports such events and crimes to the public for action by those with the legal obligation to act accordingly and responsibly. Some countries even provide legal protections for such “honest” whistle-blowers who side on the side of doing the right thing rather than letting the crimes continue.
The direct comparison of these two events, ClimateGate and Gleick Fake Gate, leaves one with the bitter taste that, unfortunately, there are many climate scientists willing to engage in unethical actions even crossing the line into scientific fraud (fabrication of data is a no no Dr. Hansen and Dr. Mann) and advancing their own careers using deception (hiding the decline is a big no no Dr. Mann) and, now evidently clearly criminal acts of identity theft, social hacking misrepresentation deception passing oneself as a board member of an organization one is not a member of nor a board member of, receiving stolen documents across state lines for wire fraud, and likely many more charges will be identified as this story develops and unfolds, not to mention the loss of scientific integrity and violating ones commitment to the scientific method and nuking one’s own career with a Tsar Bomba in the process.
So two major cases, Climate Gate I & II (with III in the wind) and Gleick Fake Gate have shown the criminal aniled minds of climate science are active and willing to break the laws that help to keep civilization civil and worse they routinely break the rules of the scientific method claiming they are under attack. Well dah! If you can’t stand the heat get out of the lab!
Science is about testing all claims of hypotheses put forward, it’s the science that is being “attacked” since it’s not hard science of the order of f=ma or e=mc^2. If these two equations had the lack of “predictive value” of the climate science statistical virtual models we’d not be able to build sky scrapers safely let alone have humans visit the moon and robotic probes explore the solar system and beyond!
There is a serious quantitative failure of the field of climate science to keep it self rooted in hard science, sure they put up space satellites and take observations, but it’s the climate scientists methods of analysis that are the key problems (when the frauds and blatant politics are removed that is) they have an over reliance on statistical games and statistical models that disconnect many if not most of their results from the Actual Real Atmosphere and Climate of this Small Blue Marble known as Earth.
“If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.” – Ernest Rutherford
Rutherford’s Rule of Experiments is a very concise and elegant filter that separates true hard science from pseudo sciences such as Climate Science.
Judith Curry hits the head on the nail with Gleick’s [lack of] Integrity: when one “perceives with passion” that the Earth is at risk one’s emotions lead one to compromise ones values and self; and in the case of scientists it seems that shows up as a Passion Bias or a Dedication Bias or as commonly known, Confirmation Bias, but to that we can now add Compromise Bias: these are all the blatant ignoring of the counter evidence that has a damn good habit of falsifying the many claims of CAGW.
What makes a Bad Scientist? What makes a Good Scientist? What makes a Great Scientist? How well they adhere to the scientific method and how well they can shift their point of view to consider what others are telling them. Also being honest and not using deception or fraud is a baseline essential commitment. Read the rest of this entry »
PZ Myers, above, perplexed by the two Islamic Numbed Aniled Minds at the left in the photo below.
Mind Numbing interview questions slammed to the mat by PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins, oh and AronRa (guy in black t-shirt with white triangle and three white dots who makes some really nice points).
These climate scientists bust a move violating the scientific method and the philosophy of science with their CO2 Climate Doomsday Rapture Prophetic rhetoric.
The amazing thing is that they seem to be utterly oblivious to the ethical violations of the scientific method they are committing against the philosophy of science. Their smug arrogance isn’t even he worst part.
We need to start asking those making the wild claims what they actually mean by “climate change”. What constitutes “climate change”? What defines “climate”? Is it just the range of limits of weather during some period of time? What the heck do they actually mean?
What are they actually freaked out about? 1c warmer?
If one looks at climate as being the range of weather over the last ~10,000 years then it’s clear that not much has changed at all and in fact it’s a wee bit cooler by something like -2c to -3c or there abouts. Damn the Romans had it warmer. Read the rest of this entry »
The Facebook user “Ecological Internet” makes some rather alarming statements:
“Earth poised to ecologically collapse bringing down biosphere, humanity & most if not all creatures. Avoidable but requires increase in knowledge & immediate biocentric action. – Ecological Internet on Facebook”
“We know Earth dying and being for all creatures coming to an end – deal with it and commit to reversing – or you are the problem.” – Ecological Internet on Facebook
OK, stop the presses, there is an article about study done by NCAR on the simulation of winds and how that might move water in dramatic ways. That is all fine and good except for the connection to the following religious notions and the fact that US Government Funds were used in this obviously religious study in violation of the strict Separation of Church and State in the USA.
“The parting of the waters described in the book of Exodus that enabled Moses and the Israelites to escape the pharaoh’s army is possible, computer simulations run by researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado at Boulder show.
To test the theory that the biblical account may have depicted actual events, the researchers studied maps of the region, archaeological records and satellite measurements to find a topographical feature where such an event might have been possible. They settled on an area south of the Mediterranean Sea where some oceanographers say a branch of the Nile River drained into what was called the Lake of Tanis, a coastal lagoon 3,000 years ago. Read the rest of this entry »
“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 »
“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.
“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.