No Big Bang? Quantum equation predicts universe has no beginning

[Weird]

in other news ....

Organic farming can reverse the agriculture ecosystem from a carbon source to a carbon sink

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-04/scp-ofc042915.php

Approximately 35% of global greenhouse gases (GHGs) come from agriculture. Some argues that human can reverse global worming by sequestering several hundred billion tons of excess CO2 through regenerative, organic farming, ranching and land use. Increasing the soil's organic content will not only fix carbon and reduce emissions, it will also improve the soil's ability to retain water and nutrients and resist pests and droughts.

To mitigate GHG emissions and retain soil fertility, organic agriculture might be a wise choice for decreasing the intensive use of synthetic fertilizers, protecting environments, and further improving crop yields. Recent research showed that replacing chemical fertilizer with organic manure significantly decreased the emission of GHGs. Organic farming can reverse the agriculture ecosystem from a carbon source to a carbon sink.

To explore the potential of farmlands acting as a carbon sink without yield losses, Jiang Gaoming, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Botany, conducted an experiment on a temperate eco-farm in eastern rural China. Crop residues were applied to cattle feed and the composted cattle manure was returned to cropland with a winter wheat and maize rotation. Crop yield and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were carefully calculated according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories 2006.

This study showed that replacing chemical fertilizer with organic manure significantly decreased the emission of GHGs. Yields of wheat and corn also increased as the soil fertility was improved by the application of cattle manure. Totally replacing chemical fertilizer with organic manure decreased GHG emissions, which reversed the agriculture ecosystem from a carbon source (+ 2.7 t CO2-eq. hm-2 yr-1) to a carbon sink (- 8.8 t CO2-eq. hm-2 yr-1).

Making full use of crop residues as forage for cattle, collecting and composting cattle manure, and replacing part of the chemical fertilizer input with organic manure have been successfully shown to be ideal choices to reduce energy waste and cut GHG emissions without crop yield losses. A combination of organic manure and chemical fertilizer demonstrated the best result in improving soil quality and crop yields, while decreasing GHG emissions. Solely utilizing chemical fertilizer on the farmland not only led to increased GHG emissions, but also deteriorated the quality of the soil.

###

This research was jointly funded by the Key Strategic Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (KSZD-EW-Z-012-2) and the National Science and Technology Support Program, China (No.2012BAD14B00).

See the article:

Haitao Liu, J.L., Xiao Li, Yanhai Zheng, Sufei Feng, Gaoming Jiang. 2015. Mitigating greenhouse gas emissions through replacement of chemical fertilizer with organic manure in a temperate farmland. Science Bulletin, 60(6), 598-606.

Science China Press

http://www.scichina.com/

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

 

[HempKat]

I thought this might be an interesting thought to put out there given the discussion. I have a friend who is very much into the Billy Meier school of thought on the existence of Aliens from other Galaxies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Meier

Anyway he told me once that in one of the contacts Billy had with one of the aliens it was related that at least some of the alien races that have visited earth did so because of a fascination with our concept of religion. Supposedly according to my friend the alien contacting Billy, went on to say they took the idea of religion back home and as a result their home planet became embroiled in war.

 

[Weird]

I have a hard time with this based on the premise that they have the intelligence to communicate with us but not the intelligence to understand the causation when one looks at the universe from a dogmatic viewpoint.

I also think someone claiming to communicate with aliens is as brazen as harold campings interpretation of Christianity.

Wonderful to see the fractal nature of our being appear time and time again.

People are'nt willing to believe the same analog of metaphor with different names because it is not the concepts its the meaning of the labels they are given, meanings which are construed on individual basis and thus have differing connotations albeit a spectrum of , not an unlimited array of interpretations (we simply aren't that much different)

 

[BrainSellz]

Interesting Hempkat.


On another note.
"Fear" could be a new word for religion. To find "God", just go through the Self. No blind faith there. Anytime fear has anything to do with something your about to install or boot up into your mind/matrix/psyche, red flags should go up in your mind/brain.

Even monks are living in fear. Fear of not waking up the next day, or fear they might not get a next breath... even with all the compassion and understanding it's still fear based with a different angle.

Everything you see or look at in life is actually your projection. From the Pineal Glan to the eyeballs is where the ethereal (universe/everything/the all) exists. That's what some would call the spiritual plane.

Then from our eyeballs we project our universe. Everything in front of us is our own projection... we are all one, this allows us to view all projections, still projecting from the one mind. However we can filter our projections as well, by choosing what projections we will allow to project through us.

if something comes into your focus or into your projection you don't want, then remove it. Allowing anything into your projection that you don't want causes scatter brain, an uncontrolled projection. Even turning the dumbo vision on is still your own projection since it is you allowing these things to project through you.

Allowing your mind to think it's just seeing out here is only allowing you to be an observer and not a projector. The key is to both, project and observe. These are fundamentals of learning how to let go. The only thing that matters is your soul/lov.


Anything toxic you wish to read about or delve into will only clog your projector. The entire universe and all of its realities exist within you and nowhere else, from the depths of the most unfathomable things you can think of to the most loving. Nothing exists outside of our minds.

All of this coming from one source. Nothing in life is bad nor good, everything is just and perfect. Hard to grasp but after sone rewiring of the brain this makes perfect sense.

Suffering comes to a halt, so does doubt, fear, and pitty. Life becomes new again, just as if your a new born into the universe. We are not living until we are living. Soul work is of most Importance.

 

[Weird]

Stranger in a strange land and other works from grandfathers of sci-fi covered many of these scenarios interestingly enough.

Did they see the fractal nature of our being and simply project the inevitable?

 

[trichrider]

Researchers Show Neutrinos Can Deliver Not Only Full-on Hits but Also “Glancing Blows”

Released: 30-Dec-2014 11:00 AM EST
Source Newsroom: University of Rochester
more news from this source

Contact Information
Available for logged-in reporters only

Citations Physical Review Letters

Newswise — In what they call a “weird little corner” of the already weird world of neutrinos, physicists have found evidence that these tiny particles might be involved in a surprising reaction.

Neutrinos are famous for almost never interacting. As an example, ten trillion neutrinos pass through your hand every second, and fewer than one actually interacts with any of the atoms that make up your hand. However, when neutrinos do interact with another particle, it happens at very close distances and involves a high-momentum transfer.

And yet a new paper, published in Physical Review Letters this week, shows that neutrinos sometimes can also interact with a nucleus but leave it basically untouched – inflicting no more than a “glancing blow” – resulting in a particle being created out of a vacuum.
Professor Kevin McFarland is a scientific co-spokesperson with the international MINERvA collaboration, which carries out neutrino scattering experiments at Fermilab McFarland, who also heads up the Rochester team that was primarily responsible for the analysis of the results, compares neutrino interactions to the firing of a bullet at a bubble, only to find the bubble was left intact.

“The bubble – a carbon nucleus in the experiment – deflects the neutrino ‘bullet’ by creating a particle from the vacuum,” McFarland explains. “This effectively shields the bubble from getting blasted apart and instead the bullet only delivers a gentle bump to the bubble.”

Producing an entirely new particle – in this case a charged pion – requires much more energy than it would take to blast the nucleus apart – which is why the physicists are always surprised that the reaction happens as often as it does. McFarland adds that even painstakingly detailed theoretical calculations for this reaction “have been all over the map.”

“The production of pions from this reaction had not been observed consistently in other experiments,” McFarland said. By using a new technique, they were able to measure how much momentum and energy were transferred to the carbon nucleus – showing that it remained undisturbed – and the distribution of the pions that were created.

“After analyzing the results, we now have overwhelming evidence for the process,” McFarland says.

The two members of the collaboration who were primarily responsible for analyzing the results were Aaron Higuera, at the time a postdoc at Rochester and now at the University of Houston, and Aaron Mislivec, one of McFarland’s Ph.D. students.

Working with Higuera, Mislivec wrote the computer code that allowed them to sift through the results and get a picture of the reaction. “Our detector gave us access to the full information of exactly what was happening in this reaction,” Mislivec explains. "Our data was consistent with the unique fingerprint of this reaction and determined how these interactions happen and how often." The key to identifying the reaction was finding undisturbed carbon nuclei and then studying the two resulting particles – the pion, which is responsible for shielding the nucleus, and the muon.

Understanding this reaction, McFarland states, “is not going to make a better mousetrap, but it is exciting to learn that this weird reaction really does take place.”

Researchers in the MINERvA collaboration measure low energy neutrino interactions both to support neutrino oscillation experiments and study the strong dynamics of the nucleon and nucleus that affect the interactions.

The work is funded by the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and partnering scientific agencies in Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Switzerland, Peru and Russia.

http://www.newswise.com/articles/re...not-only-full-on-hits-but-also-glancing-blows

 

[waveguide]

Stranger in a strange land and other works from grandfathers of sci-fi covered many of these scenarios interestingly enough.

Did they see the fractal nature of our being and simply project the inevitable?

of course not. you can't do shit without computers and science.

i'm so glad we were born in the age of science so we could be saved by understanding! we must declare a sacred mission to take science to every man woman and child! amen! fractal, bitch!

 

[BrainSellz]

you can't do shit without computers and science.

Only depends on what kind or type of "shit" you are trying to do.

You can't do "shit" without your mind! And with that, your mind, you can do more "shit" than a computer or a "science".

 

[Weird]

Design for Living: The Hidden Nature of Fractals

http://www.livescience.com/42843-fractals-and-design.html

Classical geometry is smooth and regular: straight lines, right angles, perfect circles. Man-made objects, from skyscrapers to iPhones, conform to its rules, but almost nothing in nature does. Nature is messy, craggy and chaotic — or so it seemed until 1975, the year a maverick mathematician, Benoît Mandelbrot, invented the term fractals to describe patterns he had discerned within seemingly irregular shapes found in nature.

Mandelbrot showed that natural phenomena like clouds, mountains, broccoli, human lungs, and (yes) even galaxies are, despite their random appearance, highly organized, their larger forms composed of miniature replicas of those same forms. And those replicas themselves contain even smaller replicas. At the most fundamental level, he showed that each foot of coastline has the same basic jagged texture and shape as a mile of it does, or as 100 miles do.


The nature of fractals

Mandelbrot's revelation presented a new way of perceiving nature, not as something disordered and chance-governed but as something intricately engineered. The resultant field of fractal geometry provides people with a way of defining and measuring these mysterious forms and — when it's applied to the field of biomimicry — re-creating them. And humanity's newfound ability to copy nature's fundamental structures raises an obvious question: Why don't designers do so more often?

This question is at the heart of biomimicry, which seeks to appropriate nature's most successful designs in order to create more efficient and sustainable cities, buildings, and consumer products. "After 3.8 billion years of research and development, failures are fossils, and what surrounds us is the secret to survival," wrote the biologist Janine Benyus in her seminal 1997 book, Biomimicry. Benyus thinks fractals can help us solve a diverse array of design challenges.

For one thing, "fractals really increase surface area," she said. Picture a simple hexagon. Then picture a hexagonal snowflake crystal, within its form a baroque system of ridges that greatly complicates the basic shape without causing it to expand beyond its original boundaries. Cell phone makers, playing off this idea, have already figured out new ways of maximizing signal reception by bending antennas into fractal shapes, adding length without increasing the amount of space the antennas take up.

Structural properties are not just chemistry, they're architecture

Acousticians and concert-hall architects already know that when sound hits a smooth, flat wall, it bounces off and echoes. A wall with a rough surface, on the other hand — one that mimics the fractally textured surface of, say, a bark-covered tree — does a much better job of absorbing sound. Trees are like fractal idea factories: Benyus sees in them a template for highly efficient water distribution, for example.
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"Start with one diameter" (i.e., the trunk), she said. "Branch it, drop down to a smaller diameter, then branch it again." This pattern, which repeatedly finds expression in a tree's branches, its stems, and the delicate veins of its individual leaves, allows water to flow freely over a maximum amount of surface area. "Nothing in our plumbing systems looks anything like that," she said, noting that our pipes "are always taking 90-degree angles. That's why we have big pumps that require lots of energy."

It turns out that strategically embedding fractal shapes into almost anything helps make that thing stronger. Physicists have made concrete more durable and impermeable by using fractals to engineer its ingredients. And researchers at Harvard University's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering recently created a biodegradable alternative to plastic known as shrilk, which owes some of its exceptional strength to the inspiration for its engineering: the fractal layers of an insect's cuticle. "[Many of] the structural properties found in nature are not just chemistry," Donald Ingber, the institute's director, told the Harvard Gazette. "They're architecture."

Finding inspiration in nature isn't new, of course. But actively querying nature about its best practices is. The trickiest part of biomimicry is in knowing not only what to copy, but also when and where. If we really hope to collaborate with nature on new building and design projects, we'll need to rethink our role within it. We'll have to make sure we're balancing our needs with the needs of our larger ecosystem, which — while it may look messy — is actually made up of countless interconnected systems that, fractal-like, mirror the whole.

Fractals invite us to admire nature for its beauty and functionality — to get outside, hunt for these mysteriously repeating forms, and then try to figure out what their purpose might be.

"The nature of fractals is meant to be gradually discovered by the reader," Mandelbrot wrote, "not revealed in a flash by the author." It takes practice, patience and immersion to start seeing them. But once you do, they're everywhere.

This article first appeared as "Design for Living" in OnEarth magazine. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on LiveScience.

 

[RetroGrow]

Nasa might have successfully tested a warp drive, could carry people at speeds as fas

Nasa might have successfully tested a warp drive, could carry people at speeds as fas

Mysterious comments on a forum for space flight fanatics could be a clue to secret Nasa technology

Andrew Griffin
Thursday, 30 April 2015

Nasa may have successfully tested a form of space flight that could carry people to the moon in a few short hours — and eventually let us fly at speeds approaching that of light.

The agency has built an electromagnetic (EM) drive, using technology that shouldn’t be possible in current understanding of physics, according to users on forum NASASpaceFlight.com. Some of those discussing the plan claim to be Nasa engineers that are currently working on the plan — and have been verified as such, according to Cnet.

While the technology behind EM drives has been demonstrated before, the results have been disputed by some who don’t believe that it could work. But a controlled demonstration in conditions like those in space could be enough to begin the work to prove that the project could be used in practice.

Though the technology has been discussed in great length and detail on the forum and elsewhere, it is yet to undergo any peer review and the results of the recent Nasa experiments have not been released publicly.

The device works by propelling objects through space by using magnets to create microwaves, which are then sent through a device to create thrust. If it works, it could overcome the need to carry fuel for propulsion — a huge problem that limits the speed and distance that those journeying in space can travel.

To work, the spacecraft that carried it would need to carry a nuclear power plant to create the energy required to travel through space.

Nasa's official site says that: "There are many 'absurd' theories that have become reality over the years of scientific research.". "But for the near future, warp drive remains a dream," it writes in a post updated last month.

According to the forum users, the technology has been tested at the Johnson Space Center. In 2014, Nasa verified that the claims of Roger Shawyer, who invented the technology, did seem to be true. But those tests took place using low power and not in the kinds of space-like environment that the new testing seems to have been done in.

Speaking to Cnet, one of the scientists involved in the project said that it was looking to release Nasa from the problems of having to build and carry rockets.

"My work at Eagleworks (the lab at JSC where the EM drive is being tested) is just a continuation of my work tackling the fundamental problem that has been hindering manned spaceflight from the termination of the Apollo moon program,” said Paul March. “That being the availability of a robust and cost-effective power and propulsion technology that can break us loose from the shackles of the rocket equation."

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...ple-at-speeds-as-fast-as-light-10215544.html#

 

[RetroGrow]

Scientists Discover the Secret to Keeping Cells Young

Scientists Discover the Secret to Keeping Cells Young

Researchers say it may be possible to slow and even reverse aging by keeping DNA more stably packed together in our cells


In a breakthrough discovery, scientists report that they have found the key to keeping cells young. In a study published Tbursday in Science, an international team, led by Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte at the Salk Institute, studied the gene responsible for an accelerated aging disease known as Werner syndrome, or adult progeria, in which patients show signs of osteoporosis, grey hair and heart disease in very early adulthood.

These patients are deficient in a gene responsible for copying DNA, repairing any mistakes in that replication process, and for keeping track of telomeres, the fragments of DNA at the ends of chromosomes that are like a genetic clock dictating the cell’s life span. Belmonte—together with scientists at the University Catolica San Antonio Murcia and the Institute of Biophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences—wanted to understand how the mutated gene triggered aging in cells. So they took embryonic stem cells, which can develop into all of the cells of the human body, and removed this gene. They then watched as the cells aged prematurely, and found that the reason they became older so quickly had to do with how their DNA was packaged.

In order to function properly, DNA is tightly twisted and wound into chromosomes that resemble a rope in the nucleus of cells. Only when the cell is ready to divide does the DNA unwrap itself, and even then, only in small segments at a time. In patients with Werner syndrome, the chromosomes are slightly messier, more loosely stuffed into the nuclei, and that leads to instability that pushes the cell to age more quickly. Belmonte discovered that the Werner gene regulates this chromosome stability. When he allowed the embryonic stem cells that were missing this gene to grow into cells that go on to become bone, muscle and more, he saw that these cells aged more quickly.

“It’s clear that when you have alterations in [chromosome stability], the process of aging goes so quickly and so fast that it’s tempting to say, yes, this is the key process for driving aging,” says Belmonte.

Even more exciting, when he analyzed a population of stem cells taken from the dental pulp of both younger and older people, he found that the older individuals, aged 58 to 72 years, had fewer genetic markers for the chromosome instability while the younger people aged seven to 26 years showed higher levels of these indicators.

http://time.com/3841620/scientists-discover-the-secret-to-keeping-cells-young/

Note: Stem cell research would not be possible if creationist nitwits had their way.

 

[waveguide]

depends on

facetiousness bro

reply weird -

you see that's what's up with you tavistock bitches. you want to play abusive through and see what happens.

there is no hidden nature of fractals. nature is nature. there is no inherent failure to observe scalar recurrence in knowing that it's called fractal.

words can be used to obscure, demean, (adjectives are good in threes but fuck that) as much if not more than* to elicit. (*representation is not what it is and opportunity for abuse).

you see, if you say it's hidden, people feel like you're showing them some shit if they haven't thought that they've thought too hard about it before. science, representation, and reference, are not the key to truth, awareness, or anything else worth shit.

total parasite. science is the new tavistock religion. bombarded by tavistock bitches telling us

THERE'S SOMETHING REALLY WRONG WITH SOCIETY!!!!

CAN YOU GET WITH IT!!!

YEAH!!!

LET'S RERECORD ALL OUR CDS AT 432HZ!!

dumbshit excuses for keeping people distracted and ineffectual for extricating their culture out of the grasp of you folks or whoever has got you by the balls.

 

[waveguide]

you gotta look out for the folks who are trying to inform you. that's not your good friend.

 

[BrainSellz]

facetiousness bro
.

A sense of humor never hurts.

 

[Weird]

facetiousness bro

reply weird -

you see that's what's up with you tavistock bitches. you want to play abusive through and see what happens.

there is no hidden nature of fractals. nature is nature. there is no inherent failure to observe scalar recurrence in knowing that it's called fractal.

words can be used to obscure, demean, (adjectives are good in threes but fuck that) as much if not more than* to elicit. (*representation is not what it is and opportunity for abuse).

you see, if you say it's hidden, people feel like you're showing them some shit if they haven't thought that they've thought too hard about it before. science, representation, and reference, are not the key to truth, awareness, or anything else worth shit.

total parasite. science is the new tavistock religion. bombarded by tavistock bitches telling us

THERE'S SOMETHING REALLY WRONG WITH SOCIETY!!!!

CAN YOU GET WITH IT!!!

YEAH!!!

LET'S RERECORD ALL OUR CDS AT 432HZ!!

dumbshit excuses for keeping people distracted and ineffectual for extricating their culture out of the grasp of you folks or whoever has got you by the balls.

You are manufacturing connections that don't exist, like a bad acid trip.

 

[Skinny Leaf]

In case anyone didn't know who/what Tavistock is:

Tavistock Institute is headquartered in London. Its prophet, Sigmond Freud, settled in Maresfield Gardens when he moved to England. He was given a mansion by Princess Bonaparte. Tavistock's pioneer work in behavioral science along Freudian lines of "controlling" humans established it as the world center of foundation ideology. Its network now extends from the University of Sussex to the U.S. through the Stanford Research Institute, Esalen, MIT, <http://watch.pair.com/Hudson.html>Hudson Institute, <http://watch.pair.com/heritage.html>Heritage Foundation, Center of Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown, where State Dept. personal are trained, US Air Force Intelligence, and the Rand and Mitre corporations. The personnel of the corporations are required to undergo indoctrination at one or more of these Tavistock controlled institutions. A network of secret groups, the Mont Pelerin Society, Trilateral Commission, Ditchley Foundation, and the Club of Rome is conduit for instructions to the Tavistock network.

[Editor, Tim Aho's note: See Watch Unto Prayer report on The Heritage Foundation founded by Paul Weyrich with funding from Joseph Coors, who also founded and financed respectively the Moral Majority and Council for National Policy.]

Tavistock Institute developed the mass brain-washing techniques which were first used experimentally on American prisoners of war in Korea. Its experiments in crowd control methods have been widely used on the American public, a surreptitious but nevertheless outrageous assault on human freedom by modifying individual behavior through topical psychology. A German refugee, Kurt Lewin, became director of Tavistock in 1932. He came to the U.S. in 1933 as a "refugee", the first of many infiltrators, and set up the Harvard Psychology Clinic, which originated the propaganda campaign to turn the American public against Germany and involve us in World War II.

In 1938, Roosevelt executed a secret agreement with Churchill which in effect ceded U.S. sovereignty to England, because it agreed to let Special Operations Executive control U.S. policies. To implement this agreement, Roosevelt sent General Donovan to London for indoctrination before setting up OSS (now the CIA) under the aegis of SOE-SIS. The entire OSS program, as well as the CIA has always worked on guidelines set up by the Tavistock Institute.

[Editor, Tim Aho: See Watch Unto Prayer report on <http://watch.pair.com/jbs-cnp.html>The John Birch Society & Council for National Policy for information regarding CIA operations on the Christian Right.]

Tavistock Institute originated the mass civilian bombing raids carried out by Roosevelt and Churchill purely as a clinical experiment in mass terror, keeping records of the results as they watched the "guinea pigs" reacting under "controlled laboratory conditions". All Tavistock and American foundation techniques have a single goal---to break down the psychological strength of the individual and render him helpless to oppose the dictators of the World Order. Any technique which helps to break down the family unit, and family inculcated principles of religion, honor, patriotism and sexual behavior, is used by the Tavistock scientists as weapons of crowd control.

The methods of Freudian psychotherapy induce permanent mental illness in those who undergo this treatment by destabilizing their character. The victim is then advised to "establish new rituals of personal interaction", that is, to indulge in brief sexual encounters which actually set the participants adrift with no stable personal relationships in their lives, destroying their ability to establish or maintain a family. Tavistock Institute has developed such power in the U.S. that no one achieves prominence in any field unless he has been trained in behavioral science at Tavistock or one of its subsidiaries.

Henry Kissinger, whose meteoric rise to power is otherwise inexplicable, was a German refugee and student of Sir John Rawlings-Reese at SHAEF. Dr. Peter Bourne, a Tavistock Institute psychologist, picked Jimmy Carter for President of the U.S. solely because Carter had undergone an intensive brainwashing program administered by Admiral Hyman Rickover at Annapolis. The "experiment" in compulsory racial integration in the U.S. was organized by Ronald Lippert, of the OSS and the American Jewish Congress, and director of child training at the Commission on Community Relations. The program was designed to break down the individual's sense of personal knowledge in his identity, his racial heritage. Through the Stanford Research Institute, Tavistock controls the National Education Association. The Institute of Social Research at the National Training Lab brain washes the leading executives of business and government.

Such is the power of Tavistock that our entire space program was scrapped for nine years so that the Soviets could catch up. The hiatus was demanded in an article written by Dr. Anatol Rapport, and was promptly granted by the government, to the complete mystification of everyone connected with NASA

 

[trichrider]

Aliens Cause Global Warming

A lecture by Michael Crichton
Caltech Michelin Lecture
January 17, 2003




Intro: My topic today sounds humorous but unfortunately I am serious. I am going to argue that extraterrestrials lie behind global warming. Or to speak more precisely, I will argue that a belief in extraterrestrials has paved the way, in a progression of steps, to a belief in global warming. Charting this progression of belief will be my task today.

Let me say at once that I have no desire to discourage anyone from believing in either extraterrestrials or global warming. That would be quite impossible to do. Rather, I want to discuss the history of several widely-publicized beliefs and to point to what I consider an emerging crisis in the whole enterprise of science-namely the increasingly uneasy relationship between hard science and public policy.


Cold War Mentality: I have a special interest in this because of my own upbringing. I was born in the midst of World War II, and passed my formative years at the height of the Cold War. In school drills, I dutifully crawled under my desk in preparation for a nuclear attack.

It was a time of widespread fear and uncertainty, but even as a child I believed that science represented the best and greatest hope for mankind. Even to a child, the contrast was clear between the world of politics-a world of hate and danger, of irrational beliefs and fears, of mass manipulation and disgraceful blots on human history. In contrast, science held different values-international in scope, forging friendships and working relationships across national boundaries and political systems, encouraging a dispassionate habit of thought, and ultimately leading to fresh knowledge and technology that would benefit all mankind. The world might not be avery good place, but science would make it better. And it did. In my lifetime, science has largely fulfilled its promise. Science has been the great intellectual adventure of our age, and a great hope for our troubled and restless world.

But I did not expect science merely to extend lifespan, feed the hungry, cure disease, and shrink the world with jets and cell phones. I also expected science to banish the evils of human thought---prejudice and superstition, irrational beliefs and false fears. I expected science to be, in Carl Sagan's memorable phrase, "a candle in a demon haunted world." And here, I am not so pleased with the impact of science. Rather than serving as a cleansing force, science has in some instances been seduced by the more ancient lures of politics and publicity. Some of the demons that haunt our world in recent years are invented by scientists. The world has not benefited from permitting these demons to escape free.

But let's look at how it came to pass.


Drake Equation: Cast your minds back to 1960. John F. Kennedy is president, commercial jet airplanes are just appearing, the biggest university mainframes have 12K of memory. And in Green Bank, West Virginia at the new National Radio Astronomy Observatory, a young astrophysicist named Frank Drake runs a two week project called Ozma, to search for extraterrestrial signals. A signal is received, to great excitement. It turns out to be false, but the excitement remains. In 1960, Drake organizes the first SETI conference, and came up with the now-famous Drake equation:

N=N*fp ne fl fi fc fL

Where N is the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy; fp is the fraction with planets; ne is the number of planets per star capable of supporting life; fl is the fraction of planets where life evolves; fi is the fraction where intelligent life evolves; and fc is the fraction that communicates; and fL is the fraction of the planet's life during which the communicating civilizations live.

This serious-looking equation gave SETI an serious footing as a legitimate intellectual inquiry. The problem, of course, is that none of the terms can be known, and most cannot even be estimated. The only way to work the equation is to fill in with guesses. And guesses-just so we're clear-are merely expressions of prejudice. Nor can there be "informed guesses." If you need to state how many planets with life choose to communicate, there is simply no way to make an informed guess. It's simply prejudice.

As a result, the Drake equation can have any value from "billions and billions" to zero. An expression that can mean anything means nothing. Speaking precisely, the Drake equation is literally meaningless, and has nothing to do with science. I take the hard view that science involves the creation of testable hypotheses. The Drake equation cannot be tested and therefore SETI is not science. SETI is unquestionably a religion. Faith is defined as the firm belief in something for which there is no proof. The belief that the Koran is the word of God is a matter of faith. The belief that God created the universe in seven days is a matter of faith. The belief that there are other life forms in the universe is a matter of faith. There is not a single shred of evidence for any other life forms, and in forty years of searching, none has been discovered. There is absolutely no evidentiary reason to maintain this belief. SETI is a religion.

One way to chart the cooling of enthusiasm is to review popular works on the subject. In 1964, at the height of SETI enthusiasm, Walter Sullivan of the NY Times wrote an exciting book about life in the universe entitled WE ARE NOT ALONE. By 1995, when Paul Davis wrote a book on the same subject, he titled it ARE WE ALONE? ( Since 1981, there have in fact been four books titled ARE WE ALONE.) More recently we have seen the rise of the so-called "Rare Earth" theory which suggests that we may, in fact, be all alone. Again, there is no evidence either way.

Back in the sixties, SETI had its critics, although not among astrophysicists and astronomers. The biologists and paleontologists were harshest. George Gaylord Simpson of Harvard sneered that SETI was a "study without a subject," and it remains so to the present day.

But scientists in general have been indulgent toward SETI, viewing it either with bemused tolerance, or with indifference. After all, what's the big deal? It's kind of fun. If people want to look, let them. Only a curmudgeon would speak harshly of SETI. It wasn't worth the bother.

And of course it is true that untestable theories may have heuristic value. Of course extraterrestrials are a good way to teach science to kids. But that does not relieve us of the obligation to see the Drake equation clearly for what it is-pure speculation in quasi-scientific trappings.

The fact that the Drake equation was not greeted with screams of outrage-similar to the screams of outrage that greet each Creationist new claim, for example-meant that now there was a crack in the door, a loosening of the definition of what constituted legitimate scientific procedure. And soon enough, pernicious garbage began to squeeze through the cracks.


Nuclear Winter: Now let's jump ahead a decade to the 1970s, and Nuclear Winter.

In 1975, the National Academy of Sciences reported on "Long-Term Worldwide Effects of Multiple Nuclear Weapons Detonations" but the report estimated the effect of dust from nuclear blasts to be relatively minor. In 1979, the Office of Technology Assessment issued a report on "The Effects of Nuclear War" and stated that nuclear war could perhaps produce irreversible adverse consequences on the environment. However, because the scientific processes involved were poorly understood, the report stated it was not possible to estimate the probable magnitude of such damage.

Three years later, in 1982, the Swedish Academy of Sciences commissioned a report entitled "The Atmosphere after a Nuclear War: Twilight at Noon," which attempted to quantify the effect of smoke from burning forests and cities. The authors speculated that there would be so much smoke that a large cloud over the northern hemisphere would reduce incoming sunlight below the level required for photosynthesis, and that this would last for weeks or even longer.

The following year, five scientists including Richard Turco and Carl Sagan published a paper in Science called "Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions." This was the so-called TTAPS report, which attempted to quantify more rigorously the atmospheric effects, with the added credibility to be gained from an actual computer model of climate.

At the heart of the TTAPS undertaking was another equation, never specifically expressed, but one that could be paraphrased as follows:

Ds = Wn Ws Wh Tf Tb Pt Pr Pe… etc

(The amount of tropospheric dust=# warheads x size warheads x warhead detonation height x flammability of targets x Target burn duration x Particles entering the Troposphere x Particle reflectivity x Particle endurance…and so on.)

The similarity to the Drake equation is striking. As with the Drake equation, none of the variables can be determined. None at all. The TTAPS study addressed this problem in part by mapping out different wartime scenarios and assigning numbers to some of the variables, but even so, the remaining variables were-and are-simply unknowable. Nobody knows how much smoke will be generated when cities burn, creating particles of what kind, and for how long. No one knows the effect of local weather conditions on the amount of particles that will be injected into the troposphere. No one knows how long the particles will remain in the troposphere. And so on.

And remember, this is only four years after the OTA study concluded that the underlying scientific processes were so poorly known that no estimates could be reliably made. Nevertheless, the TTAPS study not only made those estimates, but concluded they were catastrophic.

According to Sagan and his coworkers, even a limited 5,000 megaton nuclear exchange would cause a global temperature drop of more than 35 degrees Centigrade, and this change would last for three months. The greatest volcanic eruptions that we know of changed world temperatures somewhere between .5 and 2 degrees Centigrade. Ice ages changed global temperatures by 10 degrees. Here we have an estimated change three times greater than any ice age. One might expect it to be the subject of some dispute.


Media Blitz: But Sagan and his coworkers were prepared, for nuclear winter was from the outset the subject of a well-orchestrated media campaign. The first announcement of nuclear winter appeared in an article by Sagan in the Sunday supplement, Parade. The very next day, a highly-publicized, high-profile conference on the long-term consequences of nuclear war was held in Washington, chaired by Carl Sagan and Paul Ehrlich, the most famous and media-savvy scientists of their generation. Sagan appeared on the Johnny Carson show 40 times. Ehrlich was on 25 times. Following the conference, there were press conferences, meetings with congressmen, and so on. The formal papers in Science came months later.

This is not the way science is done, it is the way products are sold.

The real nature of the conference is indicated by these artists' renderings of the the effect of nuclear winter.

I cannot help but quote the caption for figure 5: "Shown here is a tranquil scene in the north woods. A beaver has just completed its dam, two black bears forage for food, a swallow-tailed butterfly flutters in the foreground, a loon swims quietly by, and a kingfisher searches for a tasty fish." Hard science if ever there was.

At the conference in Washington, during the question period, Ehrlich was reminded that after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, scientists were quoted as saying nothing would grow there for 75 years, but in fact melons were growing the next year. So, he was asked, how accurate were these findings now?

Ehrlich answered by saying "I think they are extremely robust. Scientists may have made statements like that, although I cannot imagine what their basis would have been, even with the state of science at that time, but scientists are always making absurd statements, individually, in various places. What we are doing here, however, is presenting a consensus of a very large group of scientists…"


Consensus: I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.

In addition, let me remind you that the track record of the consensus is nothing to be proud of. Let's review a few cases.


Puerperal Fever: In past centuries, the greatest killer of women was fever following childbirth . One woman in six died of this fever. In 1795, Alexander Gordon of Aberdeen suggested that the fevers were infectious processes, and he was able to cure them. The consensus said no. In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed puerperal fever was contagious, and presented compellng evidence. The consensus said no. In 1849, Semmelweiss demonstrated that sanitary techniques virtually eliminated puerperal fever in hospitals under his management. The consensus said he was a Jew, ignored him, and dismissed him from his post. There was in fact no agreement on puerperal fever until the start of the twentieth century. Thus the consensus took one hundred and twenty five years to arrive at the right conclusion despite the efforts of the prominent "skeptics" around the world, skeptics who were demeaned and ignored. And despite the constant ongoing deaths of women.


Pellagra: There is no shortage of other examples. In the 1920s in America, tens of thousands of people, mostly poor, were dying of a disease called pellagra. The consensus of scientists said it was infectious, and what was necessary was to find the "pellagra germ." The US government asked a brilliant young investigator, Dr. Joseph Goldberger, to find the cause. Goldberger concluded that diet was the crucial factor. The consensus remained wedded to the germ theory. Goldberger demonstrated that he could induce the disease through diet. He demonstrated that the disease was not infectious by injecting the blood of a pellagra patient into himself, and his assistant. They and other volunteers swabbed their noses with swabs from pellagra patients, and swallowed capsules containing scabs from pellagra rashes in what were called "Goldberger's filth parties." Nobody contracted pellagra. The consensus continued to disagree with him. There was, in addition, a social factor-southern States disliked the idea of poor diet as the cause, because it meant that social reform was required. They continued to deny it until the 1920s. Result-despite a twentieth century epidemic, the consensus took years to see the light.


Continental Drift: Probably every schoolchild notices that South America and Africa seem to fit together rather snugly, and Alfred Wegener proposed, in 1912, that the continents had in fact drifted apart. The consensus sneered at continental drift for fifty years. The theory was most vigorously denied by the great names of geology-until 1961, when it began to seem as if the sea floors were spreading. The result: it took the consensus fifty years to acknowledge what any schoolchild sees.

And shall we go on? The examples can be multiplied endlessly. Jenner and smallpox, Pasteur and germ theory. Saccharine, margarine, repressed memory, fiber and colon cancer, hormone replacement therap6y…the list of consensus errors goes on and on.

Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.


Consensus Again: But back to our main subject.

What I have been suggesting to you is that nuclear winter was a meaningless formula, tricked out with bad science, for policy ends. It was political from the beginning, promoted in a well-orchestrated media campaign that had to be planned weeks or months in advance.

Further evidence of the political nature of the whole project can be found in the response to criticism. Although Richard Feynman was characteristically blunt, saying, "I really don't think these guys know what they're talking about," other prominent scientists were noticeably reticent. Freeman Dyson was quoted as saying "It's an absolutely atrocious piece of science but…who wants to be accused of being in favor of nuclear war?" And Victor Weisskopf said, "The science is terrible but---perhaps the psychology is good." The nuclear winter team followed up the publication of such comments with letters to the editors denying that these statements were ever made, though the scientists since then have subsequently confirmed their views.

At the time, there was a concerted desire on the part of lots of people to avoid nuclear war. If nuclear winter looked awful, why investigate too closely? Who wanted to disagree? Only people like Edward Teller, the "father of the H bomb."

Teller said, "While it is generally recognized that details are still uncertain and deserve much more study, Dr. Sagan nevertheless has taken the position that the whole scenario is so robust that there can be little doubt about its main conclusions." Yet for most people, the fact that nuclear winter was a scenario riddled with uncertainties did not seem to be relevant.

I say it is hugely relevant. Once you abandon strict adherence to what science tells us, once you start arranging the truth in a press conference, then anything is possible. In one context, maybe you will get some mobilization against nuclear war. But in another context, you get Lysenkoism. In another, you get Nazi euthanasia. The danger is always there, if you subvert science to political ends.

That is why it is so important for the future of science that the line between what science can say with certainty, and what it cannot, be drawn clearly-and defended.


Kuwaiti Oil Fires: What happened to Nuclear Winter? As the media glare faded, its robust scenario appeared less persuasive; John Maddox, editor of Nature, repeatedly criticized its claims; within a year, Stephen Schneider, one of the leading figures in the climate model, began to speak of "nuclear autumn." It just didn't have the same ring.

A final media embarrassment came in 1991, when Carl Sagan predicted on Nightline that Kuwaiti oil fires would produce a nuclear winter effect, causing a "year without a summer," and endangering crops around the world. Sagan stressed this outcome was so likely that "it should affect the war plans." None of it happened.


Second Hand Smoke: What, then, can we say were the lessons of Nuclear Winter? I believe the lesson was that with a catchy name, a strong policy position and an aggressive media campaign, nobody will dare to criticize the science, and in short order, a terminally weak thesis will be established as fact. After that, any criticism becomes beside the point. The war is already over without a shot being fired. That was the lesson, and we had a textbook application soon afterward, with second hand smoke.

In 1993, the EPA announced that second-hand smoke was "responsible for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths each year in nonsmoking adults," and that it " impairs the respiratory health of hundreds of thousands of people." In a 1994 pamphlet the EPA said that the eleven studies it based its decision on were not by themselves conclusive, and that they collectively assigned second-hand smoke a risk factor of 1.19. (For reference, a risk factor below 3.0 is too small for action by the EPA. or for publication in the New England Journal of Medicine, for example.) Furthermore, since there was no statistical association at the 95% coinfidence limits, the EPA lowered the limit to 90%. They then classified second hand smoke as a Group A Carcinogen.

This was openly fraudulent science, but it formed the basis for bans on smoking in restaurants, offices, and airports. California banned public smoking in 1995. Soon, no claim was too extreme. By 1998, the Christian Science Monitor was saying that "Second-hand smoke is the nation's third-leading preventable cause of death." The American Cancer Society announced that 53,000 people died each year of second-hand smoke. The evidence for this claim is nonexistent.

In 1998, a Federal judge held that the EPA had acted improperly, had "committed to a conclusion before research had begun", and had "disregarded information and made findings on selective information." The reaction of Carol Browner, head of the EPA was: "We stand by our science….there's wide agreement. The American people certainly recognize that exposure to second hand smoke brings…a whole host of health problems." Again, note how the claim of consensus trumps science. In this case, it isn't even a consensus of scientists that Browner evokes! It's the consensus of the American people.

Meanwhile, ever-larger studies failed to confirm any association. A large, seven-country WHO study in 1998 found no association. Nor have well-controlled subsequent studies, to my knowledge. Yet we now read, for example, that second hand smoke is a cause of breast cancer. At this point you can say pretty much anything you want about second-hand smoke.


Policy: As with nuclear winter, bad science is used to promote what most people would consider good policy. I certainly think it is. I don't want people smoking around me. So who will speak out against banning second-hand smoke? Nobody, and if you do, you'll be branded a shill of RJ Reynolds. A big tobacco flunky. But the truth is that we now have a social policy supported by the grossest of superstitions. And we've given the EPA a bad lesson in how to behave in the future. We've told them that cheating is the way to succeed.

As the twentieth century drew to a close, the connection between hard scientific fact and public policy became increasingly elastic. In part this was possible because of the complacency of the scientific profession; in part because of the lack of good science education among the public; in part, because of the rise of specialized advocacy groups which have been enormously effective in getting publicity and shaping policy; and in great part because of the decline of the media as an independent assessor of fact. The deterioration of the American media is dire loss for our country. When distinguished institutions like the New York Times can no longer differentiate between factual content and editorial opinion, but rather mix both freely on their front page, then who will hold anyone to a higher standard?

And so, in this elastic anything-goes world where science-or non-science-is the hand maiden of questionable public policy, we arrive at last at global warming. It is not my purpose here to rehash the details of this most magnificent of the demons haunting the world. I would just remind you of the now-familiar pattern by which these things are established. Evidentiary uncertainties are glossed over in the unseemly rush for an overarching policy, and for grants to support the policy by delivering findings that are desired by the patron. Next, the isolation of those scientists who won't get with the program, and the characterization of those scientists as outsiders and "skeptics" in quotation marks-suspect individuals with suspect motives, industry flunkies, reactionaries, or simply anti-environmental nutcases. In short order, debate ends, even though prominent scientists are uncomfortable about how things are being done.

When did "skeptic" become a dirty word in science? When did a skeptic require quotation marks around it?


Global Warming: To an outsider, the most significant innovation in the global warming controversy is the overt reliance that is being placed on models. Back in the days of nuclear winter, computer models were invoked to add weight to a conclusion: "These results are derived with the help of a computer model." But now large-scale computer models are seen as generating data in themselves. No longer are models judged by how well they reproduce data from the real world-increasingly, models provide the data. As if they were themselves a reality. And indeed they are, when we are projecting forward. There can be no observational data about the year 2100. There are only model runs.

This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well. Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right. Because only if you spend a lot of time looking at a computer screen can you arrive at the complex point where the global warming debate now stands.

Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead. Now we're asked to believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future? And make financial investments based on that prediction? Has everybody lost their minds?

Stepping back, I have to say the arrogance of the modelmakers is breathtaking. There have been, in every century, scientists who say they know it all. Since climate may be a chaotic system-no one is sure-these predictions are inherently doubtful, to be polite. But more to the point, even if the models get the science spot-on, they can never get the sociology. To predict anything about the world a hundred years from now is simply absurd.

Look: If I was selling stock in a company that I told you would be profitable in 2100, would you buy it? Or would you think the idea was so crazy that it must be a scam?

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.

I remind you that in the lifetime of most scientists now living, we have already had an example of dire predictions set aside by new technology. I refer to the green revolution. In 1960, Paul Ehrlich said, "The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines-hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Ten years later, he predicted four billion people would die during the 1980s, including 65 million Americans. The mass starvation that was predicted never occurred, and it now seems it isn't ever going to happen. Nor is the population explosion going to reach the numbers predicted even ten years ago. In 1990, climate modelers anticipated a world population of 11 billion by 2100. Today, some people think the correct number will be 7 billion and falling. But nobody knows for sure.

But it is impossible to ignore how closely the history of global warming fits on the previous template for nuclear winter. Just as the earliest studies of nuclear winter stated that the uncertainties were so great that probabilites could never be known, so, too the first pronouncements on global warming argued strong limits on what could be determined with certainty about climate change. The 1995 IPCC draft report said, "Any claims of positive detection of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced." It also said, "No study to date has positively attributed all or part of observed climate changes to anthropogenic causes." Those statements were removed, and in their place appeared: "The balance of evidence suggests a discernable human influence on climate."

What is clear, however, is that on this issue, science and policy have become inextricably mixed to the point where it will be difficult, if not impossible, to separate them out. It is possible for an outside observer to ask serious questions about the conduct of investigations into global warming, such as whether we are taking appropriate steps to improve the quality of our observational data records, whether we are systematically obtaining the information that will clarify existing uncertainties, whether we have any organized disinterested mechanism to direct research in this contentious area.

The answer to all these questions is no. We don't.


Questions: In trying to think about how these questions can be resolved, it occurs to me that in the progression from SETI to nuclear winter to second hand smoke to global warming, we have one clear message, and that is that we can expect more and more problems of public policy dealing with technical issues in the future-problems of ever greater seriousness, where people care passionately on all sides.

And at the moment we have no mechanism to get good answers. So I will propose one.

Just as we have established a tradition of double-blinded research to determine drug efficacy, we must institute double-blinded research in other policy areas as well. Certainly the increased use of computer models, such as GCMs, cries out for the separation of those who make the models from those who verify them. The fact is that the present structure of science is entrepeneurial, with individual investigative teams vying for funding from organizations which all too often have a clear stake in the outcome of the research-or appear to, which may be just as bad. This is not healthy for science.

Sooner or later, we must form an independent research institute in this country. It must be funded by industry, by government, and by private philanthropy, both individuals and trusts. The money must be pooled, so that investigators do not know who is paying them. The institute must fund more than one team to do research in a particular area, and the verification of results will be a foregone requirement: teams will know their results will be checked by other groups. In many cases, those who decide how to gather the data will not gather it, and those who gather the data will not analyze it. If we were to address the land temperature records with such rigor, we would be well on our way to an understanding of exactly how much faith we can place in global warming, and therefore what seriousness we must address this.

I believe that as we come to the end of this litany, some of you may be saying, well what is the big deal, really. So we made a few mistakes. So a few scientists have overstated their cases and have egg on their faces. So what.

Well, I'll tell you.


Bjorn Lomborg: In recent years, much has been said about the post modernist claims about science to the effect that science is just another form of raw power, tricked out in special claims for truth-seeking and objectivity that really have no basis in fact. Science, we are told, is no better than any other undertaking. These ideas anger many scientists, and they anger me. But recent events have made me wonder if they are correct. We can take as an example the scientific reception accorded a Danish statistician, Bjorn Lomborg, who wrote a book called The Skeptical Environmentalist.

The scientific community responded in a way that can only be described as disgraceful. In professional literature, it was complained he had no standing because he was not an earth scientist. His publisher, Cambridge University Press, was attacked with cries that the editor should be fired, and that all right-thinking scientists should shun the press. The past president of the AAAS wondered aloud how Cambridge could have ever "published a book that so clearly could never have passed peer review." )But of course the manuscript did pass peer review by three earth scientists on both sides of the Atlantic, and all recommended publication.) But what are scientists doing attacking a press? Is this the new McCarthyism-coming from scientists?

Worst of all was the behavior of the Scientific American, which seemed intent on proving the post-modernist point that it was all about power, not facts. The Scientific American attacked Lomborg for eleven pages, yet only came up with nine factual errors despite their assertion that the book was "rife with careless mistakes." It was a poor display featuring vicious ad hominem attacks, including comparing him to a Holocust denier. The issue was captioned: "Science defends itself against the Skeptical Environmentalist." Really. Science has to defend itself? Is this what we have come to?

When Lomborg asked for space to rebut his critics, he was given only a page and a half. When he said it wasn't enough, he put the critics' essays on his web page and answered them in detail. Scientific American threatened copyright infringement and made him take the pages down.

Further attacks since have made it clear what is going on. Lomborg is charged with heresy. That's why none of his critics needs to substantiate their attacks in any detail. That's why the facts don't matter. That's why they can attack him in the most vicious personal terms. He's a heretic.

Of course, any scientist can be charged as Galileo was charged. I just never thought I'd see the Scientific American in the role of mother church.

Is this what science has become? I hope not. But it is what it will become, unless there is a concerted effort by leading scientists to aggresively separate science from policy. The late Philip Handler, former president of the National Academy of Sciences, said that "Scientists best serve public policy by living within the ethics of science, not those of politics. If the scientific community will not unfrock the charlatans, the public will not discern the difference-science and the nation will suffer." Personally, I don't worry about the nation. But I do worry about science.

Thank you very much.
http://deoxy.org/wiki/AliensCauseGlobalWarming

 

[waveguide]

thanks skinny leaf -

here's one for trich and weird and their very informative spamola shoved up your **** posts -

 

[trichrider]

RINGS AND RADIAL WAVES IN THE DISK OF THE MILKY WAY


Yan Xu1,2, Heidi Jo Newberg2, Jeffrey L. Carlin2, Chao Liu1, Licai Deng1, Jing Li3, Ralph Schönrich4, and Brian Yanny5


We show that in the anticenter region, between Galactic longitudes of 110° < l < 229°, there is an oscillating asymmetry in the main-sequence star counts on either side of the Galactic plane using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. This asymmetry oscillates from more stars in the north at distances of about 2 kpc from the Sun to more stars in the south at 4–6 kpc from the Sun to more stars in the north at distances of 8–10 kpc from the Sun. We also see evidence that there are more stars in the south at distances of 12–16 kpc from the Sun. The three more distant asymmetries form roughly concentric rings around the Galactic center, opening in the direction of the Milky Way's spiral arms. The northern ring, 9 kpc from the Sun, is easily identified with the previously discovered Monoceros Ring. Parts of the southern ring at 14 kpc from the Sun (which we call the TriAnd Ring) have previously been identified as related to the Monoceros Ring, and others have been called the Triangulum Andromeda Overdensity. The two nearer oscillations are approximated by a toy model in which the disk plane is offset by the order of 100 pc up and then down at different radii. We also show that the disk is not azimuthally symmetric around the Galactic anticenter and that there could be a correspondence between our observed oscillations and the spiral structure of the Galaxy. Our observations suggest that the TriAnd and Monoceros Rings (which extend to at least 25 kpc from the Galactic center) are primarily the result of disk oscillations.
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the galaxy being 50% larger (G=G + .5) means the universe just got larger too. lol
science is evolving an understanding of the natural laws to explain the complications inherent of our senses.
we want to believe science holds answers for metaphysical as well as Theo-philosophical questions. sciences' version of epistomolgy is E=MC2 while religion is requited faith of another dimension.

depending on science to get it right is faith. not just faith in the correctness of the hypothesis, but faith in the discernment of the observer and honesty in translation of results.

we have no way of verifying the above article, nor any means of refutation. we must rely on the authors for verity (faith). it seems no different than religious dogma in relying on abstract thought as basis for belief.

whether or not you believe in god, science, or yourself, you practice faith.

do it well.

 

[Weird]

lol said the person whose life is predicated on computer science, by proxy doesn't that make you corrupt?

whose OS do you program under? whose language do you program in? not your own LOL