Mars’s “Great Galactic Ghoul” may have claimed another victim: Scientists at the European and Russian space agencies were unable to make contact with their ExoMars Schiaparelli lander in the hours after it was slated to touch down on the Red Planet Wednesday.
The lander would have been the first operable spacecraft from either the European Space Agency or the Russian Federal Space Agency to successfully land on Mars. It is part of the ExoMars astrobiology mission, which also put a satellite into orbit around the Red Planet Wednesday.
The UK’s favourite new yellow submarine, Boaty McBoatface, is in training for a grand challenge.
Scientists plan to send the long-range autonomous vehicle under the sea-ice of the Arctic – from one side of the ocean basin to the other. It is a journey of at least 2,500km – and while nuclear subs might routinely do it, the prospect is a daunting one for a battery-operated research vehicle. The trip could happen in 2018 or 2019.
“It represents one of the last great transects on Earth for an autonomous sub,” said Prof Russell Wynn, from the National Oceanography Centre, Boaty’s UK base.
“Previously, such subs have gone perhaps 150km under the ice and then come back out out again. Boaty will have the endurance to go all the way across the Arctic.”
Such a mission would give scientists rare insight into conditions that hold sway under the ice floes’ more persistent regions.
Criminals in the US can be given computer-generated “risk scores” that may affect their sentences. But are the secret algorithms behind them really making justice fairer?
If you’ve seen the hit Netflix documentary series Making A Murderer, you’ll know the US state of Wisconsin has had its problems delivering fair justice.
Now there’s another Wisconsin case that’s raised questions about how the US justice system works.
In the early hours of Monday 11 February 2013, two shots were fired at a house in La Crosse, a small city in the state.
A witness said the shots came from a car, which police tracked down and chased through the streets of La Crosse until it ended up in a snow bank. The two people inside ran off on foot, but were found and arrested.
Winston Churchill said, “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”
The crocodile of human-induced global warming has devoured every politician who appeased it, and that is almost all of them.
As usual, the people pay the price as green agendas, carbon taxes, a multitude of unnecessary regulations, endless lost business and job opportunities amount to approximately $3 trillion to date.
In his October 2010 letter of resignation from the American Physical Society (APS) because it supported global warming without consulting the members, Emeritus Professor of Physics Harold Lewis said in part:
“The global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.”
When are any of these so-called leaders going to look at the so-called evidence and understand the deception? Politicians go along with this socialist agenda because they agree with it, or don’t do their homework and want to appear green. Besides, it is easier to make their citizens pay the price.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created and pre-determined to “prove” that human CO2 was causing warming. This false science became the basis of the Kyoto Protocol. It was designed to punish the 23 “developed” nations by making them pay for their “damage.”That money was to go to a fund to pay the “victims,” the “developing” nations. It was a vast socialist transfer of wealth.
Politicians fell into three camps: those who wanted to pay, those who didn’t want to pay and those who wanted to receive the money. The second group were silenced by the eco-bullies while the first and third used the emotional lever of saving the planet to make the second group pay.
Since then, the false science of the IPCC was exposed through emails leaked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and two of the major “developing” nations, India and China, became major economic powers.
A majority of US senators recognized the problems when the Kyoto Protocol came before the US Senate for ratification. They knew it would cost jobs and hurt the economy. This was such a strong argument that avid proponents urged caution.
In Kyoto, a leading Democratic member of the observer delegation agreed that the treaty was not acceptable to the Senate in its current form. “What we have here is not ratifiable in the Senate in my judgment,” Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said. According to aides in Washington, Kerry wanted Clinton to sign the deal but hold off submission of it until follow-on conferences scheduled for Bonn in June and Buenos Aires in November.
The compromise, called the Byrd-Hagel Resolution, simply agreed to delay the vote on the actual treaty. It passed 95-0.
Gore tried to save the deal. He went off to Kyoto at the 11th hour to beg for some kind of fig leaf he could take back to the Senate, but was sent packing with no concession at all.
(The Chinese, I am told by permanent State Department staff who were in the room, were especially blunt, asking Gore: “We don’t understand you Americans. Do you expect us to be poor forever?”)
Politicians claim they listen to the people, but that is increasingly untrue as current elections and referenda indicate. Polls show global warming and climate change are of minimal concern for most people. A UN poll of some 7 million people listed 14 public concerns. Climate change was last (Figure 1).
(Figure 1)
Figure 2 shows the US public priority trends measured by the Pew Center over the last four years. “Dealing with climate change” was second from bottom of the list until they added “Dealing with gun policy” this year.
(Figure 2)
The percentage has increased slightly since 2013 due to active propaganda from Obama, including the 2015 Paris Climate Conference (COP21). There they approved the Green Climate Fund (GCF) designed to replace the Kyoto Protocol.
The final Paris agreement was a farce because it is not binding. The same conflicts and limitations that plagued Kyoto were now amplified and better understood. Typical of politicians” they all agreed to the GCF in Paris to appear green, but with very different intentions regarding actions.
Countries are supposed to contribute $100 billion annually by 2020. Friends of the Earth complained in May 2015:
“The US $4 billion represents only 42 per cent of the amount that was committed during the Fund’s initial pledging conference in 2014, while at least 50 percent of the funds, or US $4.7 billion, should have been legally committed in order for the GCF to be effective.”
Good, it is a total waste of money anyway. Countries like Canada, with politicians who exploit the environment, global warming, and promote green agendas give away taxpayers money, while putting their industries, and businesses at competitive disadvantages. Harper gave $300 million, and Trudeau has given $2.65 billion so far.
Any country or region that chooses to restrict CO2 production will suffer economic decline. Ontario is a sad example. Even if Canada reduces production by half, it is completely offset by China’s actions.
In the developing world, China and India give lip service to emission reductions policies but their actions, namely building more coal plants, speak louder than rhetoric. China, for example, issued permits for 155 new coal-fired plants in the first nine months of 2015— one every two days.
It is another of those issues that show we cannot afford most politicians anymore. They all distort reality, ignore the evidence, and act as green dictators. The $3 billion Canadian contribution to the GCF is better spent helping First Nations prepare for the harsher realities of the pending global cooling.
“It is generally accepted that the climate warms during periods of strong solar activity (e.g., the Medieval Warm Period) and cools during periods of low solar activity (e.g., the Little Ice Age).” —Lyu et al., 2016
Within the last 1,000 years, global-scale surface temperatures underwent a warm period during Medieval times, centennial-scale cooling during the 14th to 19th centuries, and another warm period since the early 20th century. According to scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed scientific literature within the last several months (2016), these long-term thermal changes are well correlated with long-term variations in solar activity, namely the Medieval Solar Maximum (Medieval Warm Period), Spörer, Maunder and Dalton Minimums (Little Ice Age), andModern Grand Maximum (20th Century). Scientists Zharkova and colleagues (2015) provide a cogent summary with a user-friendly graphic denoting the solar changes and their correspondence with warming and cooling trends.
Whether they admit it out loud or not, many global warming alarmists want more destructive weather events to validate their assumptions. But what happens when they can’t get their “dirty weather,” as Al Gore calls it? Then they’ll just have define down what a disaster is.
Eleven years ago, Gore swore that “the science is extremely clear now.” Global warming was “magnifying” the “destructive power” of the “average hurricane,” he said. Man’s impact on the environment “makes the duration, as well as the intensity of the hurricane, stronger.”
The weather refused to cooperate with Gore and the U.S. went 11 years without a hurricane making landfall. But Hurricane Matthew renewed the alarmists’ faith in their own nonsense. Acting is if 11 days rather than 11 years had passed, Gore said last week that in Hurricane Matthew, “Mother Nature is giving us a very clear and powerful message.”
Cognitive dissonance is a psychological trauma, which prevents most of us from acknowledging our mistakes, even when they are made abundantly clear.
The case of Global Warming is such a case in point. Although it is obvious to any sentient being that everything everywhere is cooling by itself and that heat has to be generated, the Global Warmers insist that the globe is getting hotter and hotter and that we must restrict some gases so that we can keep the non-existent temperature of the Globe to within 2 degrees Celsius.
Although this is palpable nonsense, we have people appearing on Sky Television and other channels, assuring us that it is beyond question that Climate is changing, and the inference is that it is changing all because of the exhausts of wicked man and the flatulence of livestock. Well, the various climates are changing all right – who can deny that? So I am not a denier or a contrarian – oh no! I fully believe in Climate changes, I acknowledge Global Warming and Global Cooling happening all the time.
To: Dr Margaret Chan,
Director-General, World Health Organization
Cc: Mrs Marie-Eve Héroux
Technical Officer, Air Quality & Noise
WHO European Centre for Environment and Health
Re: WHO’s Environmental Noise Guidelines for Europe
Madam,
The World Council for Nature (WCFN) strongly disapproves the WHO’s refusal to take into account the testimonies of victims of an emerging disease, the Wind Turbine Syndrome (WTS). We also object to the refusal of a number of national health authorities to measure infrasound emitted by wind turbines, or to conduct epidemiological studies among victims. It would appear that these organizations are incapable of resisting the pressure applied by political and/or special interests to deny the sufferings caused by wind farms, in spite of overwhelming evidence compiled and analysed during 15 years by eminent specialists (1), starting with conclusive US Department of Energy-financed studies conducted by Dr. Neil Kelley (1985, 1987).
WCFN is concerned by the evidence of wind turbines’ ill effects on animals and people. We are surprised that health authorities have endorsed the wind industry’s self-serving contention that “nocebo” is at the root of residents’ complaints. What about the animals? Can their alarming behaviors, physiological anomalies, miscarriages, still-born or deformed offsprings, and even deaths en masse (2) be explained by articles they “read” (?) on the Internet? The logical conclusion is that these health officials are either incompetent, or following a political or private interest agenda.
Highlights: The solar activity period, are determined in the precipitation time series; The QBO’s action on precipitation is opposite to solar activity’s; The sun acts on precipitation in two ways.
Abstract
The time series of sunspot number and the precipitation in the north-central China (108° ∼ 115° E, 33° ∼ 41° N) over the past 500 years (1470–2002) are investigated, through periodicity analysis, cross wavelet transform and ensemble empirical mode decomposition analysis. The results are as follows: the solar activity periods are determined in the precipitation time series of weak statistical significance, but are found in decomposed components of the series with statistically significance; the Quasi Biennial Oscillation (QBO) is determined to significantly exist in the time series, and its action on precipitation is opposite to the solar activity; the sun is inferred to act on precipitation in two ways, with one lagging the other by half of the solar activity period.
Michael Kruegerat German skeptic site Science Skeptical here writes that in 2015 global CO2 emissions reached another new all-time record high, despite all the elaborate climate conferences and hundreds of billions of dollars invested in curbing global “greenhouse gases”.
Krueger asks: What have all the climate conferences brought us since the first UN conference took place in Berlin in 1995?
Over the past 20 years global fossil fuel CO2 emissions have skyrocketed some 50%, from 22.2 billion tonnes per year to 33.5 billion tonnes in 2015. The 2015 figure was a new record high, defying the prognoses of experts who had expected to see a trend reversal by now.
Such egregious breaches of scientific protocol are serious, but mercifully rare. Far more prevalent – and therefore even more damaging – are research practices that fall into an ethical “grey zone” between overt misconduct and scholarly best practice. Academic misconduct refers to forms of fabrication, falsification and plagiarism (FFP) – in other words, the terrain of fraudsters, con artists and cheats. Questionable research practices (QRPs), however, are more difficult to pin down but typically involve misrepresentation, inaccuracy or bias. Recent research suggests that academics are becoming more adept at employing QRPs that skirt around the edges of misconduct, like athletes who optimise their performance with artificial enhancements without technically breaking the rules. To put it into perspective, one study found that only 2 per cent of scientists admit to FFP, while almost a third admit to engaging in QRPs.
One prominent example of a QRP is “HARKing”, standing for “hypothesising after the results are known”. Normally, researchers follow the standard scientific practice of developing a hypothesis and then testing it against the facts. But HARKing involves constructing or changing a hypothesis after the data have been collected and analysed. If this is concealed from journal editors, the integrity of the scientific process is compromised. Yet, strictly speaking, HARKing is not considered academic misconduct, even if it is frowned upon by many researchers.
In a new study, we highlight the problem of questionable research practices in the business school. Management scholars tend to publish articles that use the hypothetico-deductive method to show the effects of, say, leadership styles on organisational performance. Here, the study of management is seen as a scientific discipline that adheres to rigorous methodological standards. By the same token, journal editors will retract published articles if they fall short of these standards.
However, we found evidence that QRPs are widespread in this field. For example, it is common for researchers to play with numbers to get the best (read: most publishable) outcome. This could involve removing outliers to confirm their hypothesis or fishing within the data to find unanticipated results. Such practices fall into the grey zone if they are hidden from editors and reviewers during the peer-review process. Unlike FFP, QRPs are more difficult to detect. As one respondent acknowledged, “I can just delete like 100 data points [and] you would never know it. How would you know? How would anybody find out?”
Consequently, highly ranked journals may be flooded with papers with results that are simply too good to be true. This was aptly shown by a recent study that identified a “chrysalis effect” in business research – that is, how subpar results in doctoral dissertations miraculously transform into beautiful peer-reviewed publications. The implication is that researchers manipulate their hypotheses or misrepresent their data to meet the exacting standards found in academic journals.
The most common explanations for the prevalence of QRPs include inadequate methodological training and the pressure to publish. However, the chrysalis effect points to another explanation: the demands and expectations of highly ranked journals encourage researchers to engage in questionable research practices. This is highlighted by one of our respondents, who reported that journals sometimes insist that “you come up with a hypothesis that you didn’t have before, and then test it and then report that as a confirmatory analysis in the paper – which is actually not allowed”. There is, of course, a paradox here. To live up to the unrealistic ideal of science promoted by top-tier journals, scholars may find themselves transgressing this ideal.
The question is what should be done to discourage QRPs. The standard answer is for journals to improve the ethical guidelines for authors and strengthen the peer-review process. Others have called for more openness in science, such as publicly registering hypotheses or establishing central data repositories. But this does nothing to address the role that journals play in fostering QRPs.
One alternative is to develop a “transparency index”, as proposed by the founders of the Retraction Watch website. This would provide a numerical metric of the journal’s transparency in a number of areas, such as peer review, retraction record, mechanisms for detecting misconduct and procedures for dealing with questionable research practices. The transparency index could also determine whether journals compel authors to acknowledge changes to their method or hypothesis during the research process. Establishing such an index would refocus attention on how journals often serve to reproduce – or even foster – bad academic habits.
Of course, most journals would be unlikely to adopt this index if it clashed with their much-prized impact factor. So we may continue to rely on post-publication peer-review websites such as PubPeer to hold researchers and journals to account.
******
Nick Butler is assistant professor in the Stockholm Business School at Stockholm University, Sweden. Helen Delaney is senior lecturer in management and international business at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Sverre Spoelstra is senior lecturer in the department of business administration at Lund University, Sweden.
More than half of misogynistic posts by Twitter users in the UK and America are written by women, according to a new large-scale study. A report that analysed 19 million tweets over four years found three million posts including insults aimed at women. The users who had posted the insults were more likely to be female than male.
The research, conducted by social media monitoring company Brandwatch, found the people of Co Tyrone, in Northern Ireland and Methyr Tydfil, in South Wales, to be the most prolific offenders.
Yet the report, to be published by anti-bullying charity Ditch the Label, included words such as “bitch” that have been assimilated into common usage and are not always deemed offensive.
The charity said the findings demonstrated policy should to be aimed at reducing misogyny among both sexes.
The Los Angeles Times (October 16, 2016) reports: “Nearly 200 nations have reached a deal, announced Saturday morning after all-night negotiations, to limit the use of “greenhouse gases” far more powerful than carbon dioxide in a major effort to fight climate change.
The talks on hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, were called the first test of global will since the historic Paris Agreement to cut carbon emissions was reached last year. HFCs are described as the world’s fastest-growing climate pollutant and are used in air conditioners and refrigerators. Experts say cutting them is the fastest way to reduce global warming.”
However, CFCs and HFCs are the safest gases for use in refrigeration. But in accord with their unfailing agenda of destruction, Greenies have now got both banned. So more dangerous gases will have to be used. Air conditioners that explode or burst into flames coming to a place near you shortly.
A scientist is by practice a skeptic. As Douglas Yates said,
No scientific theory achieves public acceptance until it has been thoroughly discredited.
The public definition of skeptic is different from that for science, which is
Not easily convinced; having doubts or reservations.
For the public, it is more properly that of cynicism.
believing that people are motivated by self-interest; distrustful of human sincerity or integrity:
This is why the epithet “global warming skeptics” easily marginalized those who questioned the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on anthropogenic global warming (AGW).
It is difficult to challenge the work of others even as a scientist because it goes against the gregarious and collective nature of humans and Groupthink. It is more difficult today because of changing views in the society that spill over into science.
In his farewell speech (1/17/1961) President Eisenhower raised the issue of the Cold War and role of the U.S. armed forces. He described the Cold War: “We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method … ” and warned about what he saw as unjustified government spending proposals and continued with a warning that “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence whether, sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” (Wikipedia)
The Magellan spacecraft was launched by NASA (5/4/1989) to use radar to map the surface of Venus. This ended an eleven year gap in U.S. interplanetary probe launches.
All right, if our intellects are not material but our bodies (obviously) are, how the twain meet? The meat starts in paragraph 8.
Chapter 56 In what way an intellectual substance can be united to the body (alternate translation) We are using the alternate translation again this week; the primary is still down.
1 Having shown that an intellectual substance is not a body or a power dependent on a body, it remains for us to inquire whether an intellectual substance can be united to a body.
2 In the first place, it is evident that an intellectual substance cannot be united to a body by way of mixture.
“magnifying” the “destructive power” of the “average hurricane,” he said. Man’s impact on the environment “makes the duration, as well as the intensity of the hurricane, stronger.”
It would appear that these organizations are incapable of resisting the pressure applied by political and/or special interests to deny the sufferings caused by wind farms, in spite of overwhelming evidence compiled and analysed during 15 years by eminent specialists (1), starting with conclusive US Department of Energy-financed studies conducted by Dr. Neil Kelley (1985, 1987).
