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| Science & Technology |
| Barbara Hollingsworth: Who's who on climate fraud |
| 2009-12-05 |
| In 1912, a respected paleontologist at the British Museum confirmed that bones found in a Piltdown quarry came from the "missing link" between apes and humans. Forty years later, the so-called Piltdown Man was proved to be a hoax. Thanks to purloined e-mails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU), global warming is turning out to be the 21st-century equivalent of Piltdown Man. E-mails between a small group of highly influential climate scientists at the center of the worldwide panic over global warming exposed multiple discussions among them concerning their manipulation of data and using various evasive tactics to avoid releasing the facts behind their ginned-up numbers to the public via Freedom of Information Act requests. Here's a rogue's gallery of five major perpetrators of what's turning out to be the biggest scientific hoax in modern history: Geoff Jenkins, chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's first scientific group and self-described "frontman explaining climate change." Jenkins admitted in 1996 to a "cunning plan" to feed fake temperature information to Nick Nuttall, head of media for the United Nations Environment program. At the time, Jenkins predicted temperatures in London would hit 113 degrees Fahrenheit and the Thames River would rise three feet even though 1996 was, in fact, cooler than 1995. Phil Jones, director of the CRU, controlled two key databases that are the primary sources underlying claims by the United Nations and others of a global scientific "consensus" that catastrophic consequences will result from man-made global warming unless trillions of dollars are spent now to prevent it. Jones e-mailed instructions to colleagues to "hide the decline" in temperatures and to pressure editors of academic journals to blackball the work of "climate skeptics." After claiming that the original climate data had been destroyed in the 1980s, Jones was caught urging his CRU colleagues to "delete as appropriate" data requested under Britain's freedom of information laws. Michael Mann, director of Penn State University's Earth System Science Center, is one of the lead authors of the U.N.'s Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change report. Mann was the originator of the "hockey stick" graph that supposedly proved that the Earth's temperature was at the highest level in recorded history. However, it also appeared to eliminate both the Medieval Warm Period, in which surface temperatures were higher than they are today, and Europe's "Little Ice Age." In 2003, Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre exposed the flawed methodology behind Mann's hockey stick. The recent e-mail leak led another scientist to quip: "Dr. Mann is in transition from Penn State to State Pen. We can only hope he does a better job with license plates." Mann has been a committee chairman for the National Academy of Sciences and a member of multiple NAS panels and committees. James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, whose records were also cited as evidence, second only to the CRU data, of incontrovertible man-made global warming. McIntyre also caught Hansen engaging in the same sort of statistical manipulation in which past temperatures were lowered and recent ones "adjusted" to convey the false impression that the nonexistent warming trend was accelerating. After trying to block McIntyre's IP address, NASA was forced to back down from its claim that 1998 was the hottest year in U.S. history. Al Gore, Former Vice President Al Gore is the author of "An Inconvenient Truth," star of the 2006 Oscar-winning movie of the same name and winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his tireless efforts to limit economic development in industrialized countries with a cap-and-trade scheme. Many experts agree that such a system would increase food and energy prices, while wasting trillions of dollars on alternative energy sources (in which Gore is heavily invested). Gore's case rests on the now-discredited theory that carbon dioxide emissions (which are increasing) are heating up the Earth's atmosphere, even though actual global temperatures have been declining for at least a decade. These five, though far from being the only ones, are among the top perpetrators of the Great Global Warming Hoax. They should never be taken seriously again. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #9 I highly recommend an article in the December issue of Scientific American: "What Undersea Vents Reveal about Life's Origins". These hydrothermal vents (not black smokers) are actually producing methane and hydrogen from dissolved CO2. The tiny pores in the rock are taking the place of cells, and metabolic pathways have been found in primitive lifeforms living in the vents which mimic parts of the purely chemical pathways taking place. They've discovered at least one lifeform there which predates both Archea and Bacteria. So, these vents may be the original location of life on earth, with no direct dependence on the sun. The energy source is the methane and reduced hydrogen found in the hot water in the vents. Also, I recommend "Here Be Dragons" by Dennis McCarthy. This is a very recent book - Oxford U Press - on biogeography. It's an excellent and accessible antidote to ID. McCarthy is a fine writer, in the vein of E. O. Wilson and Darwin. Another great choice is the "The Ancestor's Tale", by Dawkins, which traces the continuous evolution of life backwards in time to the ancient organisms mentioned above. Either book would make good Christmas presents for younger people - say at the high school science level. I think Fred would get a small commission if you accessed Amazon via the ad on the 'Burg's front page. |
| Posted by: KBK 2009-12-05 22:53 |
| #8 Self Catalysis (That's 90% of life) only has to be possible for life to occur, and evolution to start. I expect they'll find life wherever there's liquid water and energy. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2009-12-05 22:13 |
| #7 When former Cambridge biochemist Douglas Axe computed the chances that the four amino acids that form DNA could self-arrange themselves into just one functional protein, he found it was 1:10164 -- or less than the odds of finding one marked subatomic particle in the entire observable universe. Granted, my understanding of statistics is minimal at best -- I still am not amused by my Intro. Stats professor's response to how we know the formulae are true, "Well, it seems to work so far." -- but just because the odds are extremely low it doesn't mean that the thing only occurs the very last time. It could happen the first time, then not again until the 10165th... or twice in a row, then not again until 20,230 times later. Statistical probabilities are based on an infinite number of tries, and do not imply regular periodicity. Mr. Wife once worked on a project that required, as I recall, seven different inventions of product and process to make happen. Each invention had something like a 90% probability to come to fruition. Naturally, the product did not go to market, because the total probability was so low (0.90 x 0.90 x 0.90 x 0.90 x 0.90 x 0.90 x 0.90 = ? Go on, pull out your calculator. You know you want to.) Nonetheless, the company made pots of money by putting each of the inventions into pre-existing products, where they did work. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2009-12-05 22:08 |
| #6 Hmmm .... thank you KBK. There are several fallacies in that passage, to my eye, among them that minor changes per mutation somehow disprove the cummulative effects of natural selection in the aggregate over time. But then I've never had any difficulty reconciling my faith with the mechanisms of evolution. |
| Posted by: lotp 2009-12-05 21:52 |
| #5 Others, like Cold War dissidents making furtive contact with the West, arrange discreet meetings to discuss what "evolutionary biologists don't want to talk about, the origins of the information in the digital code of DNA necessary to produce life." When former Cambridge biochemist Douglas Axe computed the chances that the four amino acids that form DNA could self-arrange themselves into just one functional protein, he found it was 1:10164 -- or less than the odds of finding one marked subatomic particle in the entire observable universe. In other words, the evolutionary story now universally taught to students fails to account for the origin of the basic information that forms the very blueprint of life. Yet even though most of the scientific establishment rejects the notion of an intelligent designer, Meyer says nobody has come up with a better explanation. Ironically, attempts to discredit ID have turned it into forbidden fruit on college campuses. Many recruits are grad students who understand the complex nanotechnology of the cell and the dead ends in Darwinian evolution much better than their professors. "It looks like engineering," Meyer says. "Replication. Digital code. We own the metaphors. They know the future is with us." The day before a debate in Shrewsbury, England, commemorating the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth in February, Meyer quietly met with some of the top biologists in the United Kingdom who wanted him to know they "were on our side" despite the "reflexive hostility" shown by evolutionists who resist the theistic implications of ID, but find it easier to brand its adherents as "creationist whackos" than to address the numerous deficiencies in Darwin's theory. "The actual evidence shows that major features of the fossil record are an embarrassment to Darwinian evolution; that early development in vertebrate embryos is more consistent with separate origins than with common ancestry; that non-coding DNA is fully functional, contrary to neo-Darwinian predictions; and that natural selection can accomplish nothing more than artificial selection -- which is to say, minor changes within existing species," writes Discovery Institute senior fellow Jonathan Wells, who has two Ph.D.s from the University of California at Berkeley in molecular and cell biology. "Faced with such evidence, any other scientific theory would probably have been abandoned long ago. Judged by the normal criteria of empirical science, Darwinism is false." Isn't it interesting that the vast majority of Americans have never heard any of these scientific challenges to Darwinism even though the scientific method is based on questioning existing theories? "If we've defined science such that it cannot get to the true answer, we've got a pretty lame definition of science," Axe said. Amen to that. Hollingsworth: Keeping the Lid on and the Science Out |
| Posted by: KBK 2009-12-05 21:28 |
| #4 I'm afraid I don't see that link. Could you post it here? |
| Posted by: lotp 2009-12-05 14:55 |
| #3 Unfortunately, Hollingsworth's article on recent creationist science (linked on that page) shows that her opinion on matters scientific is totally worthless. |
| Posted by: KBK 2009-12-05 12:07 |
| #2 given the opportunity, the UN will fleece the rich western countries as fast and as effectively as possible. It is run by a bunch of 3rd worlders who once they see the comforts of a rich society. lose all moral bearing and simply "go for the money" Its a new "thing" to them ( the comforts of the west ) Rich Western leaders however, dont lose all sense of obligation when the "see the money" as they are very used to having "western comforts" and are by and large, wealthy themselves. You can take the Mud Hut Dweller out of Elbonia but, you cant take the Elbonia out of the Mud Hut Dweller. |
| Posted by: 746 2009-12-05 10:40 |
| #1 More to add to the list: Mick Kelly-East Anglia, Tom Wigley-UCAR, Thomas Karl-NOAA, Gavin Schmidt-GISS, Marguerite Gascoine-East Anglia, Linda Livingston-East Anglia, Geoff Jenkins-Hadley Center, Tom Karl-NOAA, Stefan Ramstorf-Potsdam Univ, Robert Watson-UN. Link. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2009-12-05 09:27 |