GUILTY AS CHARGED

The global warming scientists who hid data and deleted e-mails were found guilty of breaking the law by the Information Commissioner's Office. The finding shows that they breached the Freedom of Information Act when handling requests for their data and statistical techniques. The statute of limitations is only 6 months for this crime, so the scientists will avoid prosecution.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is also having a bad few weeks. Their latest report is under attack. After having to publicly apologize last week for this, they are again having trouble with the "sources" for their report. This time they used a Popular Mountaineering magazine article and a students dissertation that quoted interviews with mountain guides in the Alps to prove the ice was melting in the mountains.

Yep. Hard science.
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HISTORY 101

101 things we should know about American History.
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ACADEMIA VS BUSINESS

Via http://xkcd.com/
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YOU CAN FOOL SOME OF THE PEOPLE...

... And so the saying goes. It looks like most people have not been convinced that we are on the "tipping point" of climactic doom. A Pew Research poll puts Global Warming dead last on a list of 21 items that people thought were "Top Priorities" for 2010.

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COUNTDOWN TO CRAZY

Keith Olbermann, host of Countdown on msnbc, seems a bit upset that Scott Brown (R) was winning in Massachusetts.
Keith: "In Scott Brown we have an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, teabagging supporter of violence against woman and against politicians with whom he disagrees… The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is close to sending this bad joke to the Senate of the United States."

Apparently this is what msnbc thinks is "news". Maybe that is why they are being decimated by FOX.

Jon Stewart has some fun with it:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Special Comment - Keith Olbermann's Name-Calling
http://www.thedailyshow.com/
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

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A CONSENSUS OF ONE

The 2007 IPCC report on global warming won, along with Al Gore, the Nobel Prize. We now find out that the prediction in the report that the Himalayan glaciers had a "very high" probability of "disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner" was based on zero science. Far from being a consensus among climate experts, and peer reviewed, this was a repeated line from a single media interview in 1999 on an Indian scientist. So one guy in an interview over 10 years ago spouts off, "yeah, I think we could loose the Himalayan glaciers by 2035" and it becomes hard science in an international report.

This is absurd and repulsive to us scientists, however, because the climate debate is political and not really science based, it is pretty normal I think. Any results that show a terrible future are trumpeted, other results are ignored.
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Aliens Cause Global Warming

Michael Crichton writes about how science has been hijacked. Starting with Aliens, nuclear bombs and second-hand-smoke, Michael Crichton explains the sorry history of using pretend science to convince the public and the politicians to believe in your cause. He argues this is what is currently happening with the Global Warming debate:

http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech-alienscauseglobalwarming.html

My favorite part:

Let's think back to people in 1900 in, say, New York. If they worried about people in 2000, what would they worry about? Probably: Where would people get enough horses? And what would they do about all the horseshit? Horse pollution was bad in 1900, think how much worse it would be a century later, with so many more people riding horses?

But of course, within a few years, nobody rode horses except for sport. And in 2000, France was getting 80% its power from an energy source that was unknown in 1900. Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Japan were getting more than 30% from this source, unknown in 1900. Remember, people in 1900 didn't know what an atom was. They didn't know its structure. They also didn't know what a radio was, or an airport, or a movie, or a television, or a computer, or a cell phone, or a jet, an antibiotic, a rocket, a satellite, an MRI, ICU, IUD, IBM, IRA, ERA, EEG, EPA, IRS, DOD, PCP, HTML, internet. interferon, instant replay, remote sensing, remote control, speed dialing, gene therapy, gene splicing, genes, spot welding, heat-seeking, bipolar, prozac, leotards, lap dancing, email, tape recorder, CDs, airbags, plastic explosive, plastic, robots, cars, liposuction, transduction, superconduction, dish antennas, step aerobics, smoothies, twelve-step, ultrasound, nylon, rayon, teflon, fiber optics, carpal tunnel, laser surgery,laparoscopy, corneal transplant, kidney transplant, AIDS... None of this would have meant anything to a person in the year 1900. They wouldn't know what you are talking about.

Now. You tell me you can predict the world of 2100. Tell me it's even worth thinking about. Our models just carry the present into the future. They're bound to be wrong. Everybody who gives a moment's thought knows it.

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