Genes and environment play dynamic role together

The well-established view that intelligence is largely genetically fixed and hardly malleable has been discarded. A team of Dutch research methodologists at VU University Amsterdam, the University of Amsterdam and Tilburg University propose that the high heritability of intelligence stems from a dynamic interplay between genes and environment that takes place throughout the course of development. The interplay results in individual differences in knowledge and skills, and in this way differences in intelligence arise. The role of education, culture, and society is crucial in this process; they enable genetic effects to arise. The larger the environmental influences, the larger the genetic effects. Their paper will be published in the upcoming edition of Psychological Science. Empirical results contradict mainstream intelligence theories Research methodologists Kees-Jan Kan, Jelte Wicherts, Conor Dolan en Han van der Maas investigated how well intelligence theories actually predict empirical results. To this end, they listed the predictions from mainstream intelligence theories and collected relevant results that have been published in the scientific literature over the last decades, and which pertained to intelligence test scores from thousands of subjects across the world.The team showed that on essential aspects empirical results were opposite of the predictions from mainstream theories of intelligence. Surprisingly, it also turned out that the larger the genetic influences on completing intelligence tests are, the larger is also the dependency on education and culture. Heritability estimates of clearly culture-depended knowledge and skills, such as vocabulary, spelling, and general knowledge, are the highest among all abilities that are measured by intelligence test batteries, hence higher than heritability estimates of less culture-depended abilities such as working memory, spatial ability, reasoning, and processing speed. This pattern did not follow from mainstream theories of intelligence, in which intelligence is interpreted as a biological trait.The old idea: nature versus nurture

Toxic Lakes and Radioactive Waste

The wind industry promotes itself as better for the environment than traditional energy sources such as coal and natural gas. For example, the industry claims that wind energy reduces carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming.

But there are many ways to skin a cat. As IER pointed out last week, even if wind curbs CO2 emissions, wind installations injure, maim, and kill hundreds of thousands of birds each year in clear violation of federal law. Any marginal reduction in emissions comes at the expense of protected bird species, including bald and golden eagles. The truth is, all energy sources impact the natural environment in some way, and life is full of necessary trade-offs. The further truth is that affordable, abundant energy has made life for billions of people much better than it ever was.

Another environmental trade-off concerns the materials necessary to construct wind turbines. Modern wind turbines depend on rare earth minerals mined primarily from China. Unfortunately, given federal regulations in the U.S. that restrict rare earth mineral development and China’s poor record of environmental stewardship, the process of extracting these minerals imposes wretched environmental and public health impacts on local communities. It’s a story Big Wind doesn’t want you to hear.

Steel Greenhouses and General Electric Lightbulbs

What is heating…

The “steel greenhouse” provides a basic schematic for the meme of the atmospheric greenhouse effect, among other sources.  Sometimes the terminology goes by the phraseology of “backradiation”, and sometimes it goes by that of “heat trapping” or “heat flow restriction”, and others, as the need arises.  There is little consistency, and these terms can all mean very different things physically, which is curious for a supposedly scientific concept.

Generally, the underlying concept is that a heat source which is enclosed in some relevant fashion will “become” warmer because, variously, A) radiation from the source of thermal radiation directed back to the source of radiation (i.e. backradiation) by the enclosure leads to the source becoming warmer, because i) radiation from the cooler passive enclosure, either reflected or absorbed and re-emitted from the passive enclosure and back to the warmer source, becomes thermally absorbed by the surface of the warmer source which leads to the warmer source becoming warmer still, or ii) heat trapped by the enclosure leads to the source of heat inside the enclosure to become warmer as the source struggles to radiatively emit the same amount of thermal energy to the outside of the passive enclosure, or B) as the source of heat warms the cooler enclosure, the source of heat is lead to become warmer still as the cooler enclosure warms up to equilibrium with the source of heat, in order to maintain the temperature difference between the source and the passive cooler enclosure.

Applied to the atmosphere, the terminologies are such that the atmosphere heats the surface of the Earth with backradiation, or that the atmosphere traps heat from the surface thus leading to the surface becoming warmer in the attempt to cool, etc.  It is the presence of a cooler object, i.e. cold atmospheric gas, that by some method, leads to the source of heat of the cooler gas, which is the ground surface, to become warmer.

None of these statements are physically valid or are supported by traditional or modern physics.

Let it be clear, the only physically valid statement that could be made is that:

The atmosphere becomes warmer, if it absorbs more heat.  

Likewise:

The surface becomes warmer, if it absorbs more heat.

I will let Pierre Latour speak here, from a private email discussion:

“The Stefan-Boltzmann equation gives intensity of radiation, W/m2, emitted by a body at temperature T. It is analogous to fluid pressure, kg/m2. Stefan and Boltzmann called it intensity, not heat transfer, because it is intensity, not heat transfer. (It becomes heat transfer in maximum case emitting to 0K surroundings, so it is a max heat transfer. Real transfer is always less.) All bodies radiate with an intensity and they all experience a pressure. But for a fluid to flow there must be a driving force, a pressure difference. Physics teaches the fluid flows from high pressure to lower at a rate proportional to the pressure difference. The pressure at the bottom of the sea is high but uniform so no fluid flow.

For radiant energy to flow, transfer from one body to be absorbed by another body, heating it, there must be a driving force and that force for radiant energy transfer is an intensity difference. Physics teaches that the radiant heat flows from high intensity, to lower intensity, at a rate proportional to the difference (TH4 – TL4). Two identical glowing radiators facing each other radiate intensely but without any heat transfer between them.

The GHGT error is assigning to that second intensity term in the radiant heat transfer law an energy flow from cold to hot. Just because there is an algebraic term in the equation for cooler body radiating intensity does not mean it corresponds to a rate of heat transfer from cold to hot.

Atmospheric CO2 radiates with same intensity in all directions but the direction and rate of heat transfer to surroundings depends on surrounding’s radiating intensity. Energy transfer is asymmetric. So if the K-T 333 back-radiation arrow signifies direction of downward radiation intensity in all directions, ok, if they point it in all directions. But K-T labeled their diagram energy flows, and their back-radiation arrow 333 cannot be a flow, absorbed by surface, warming it further. Hence we have the dispute about semantics of physics which GHE believers dismiss with derision. “

If the atmosphere gets warmer by absorbing more heat, then something already warmer than the atmosphere (particularly its own source of heat, the surface) doesn’t need to become warmer-still in this process.  The atmosphere is simply heated to higher temperature by something warmer than it, up to the point where they’d be equal in temperature.  And that’s it.

Two Australian scientists, Dr Robin Warren and Dr Barry Marshall won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2005 for their pioneering cure of peptic ulcers.  What is most revealing about ‘established science’ is that these gifted and dedicated doctors had made this discovery in 1982.  Establish orthodoxy moves at a snail’s pace when confronted with unorthodoxy.

The ‘settled science’ of peptic ulcers for decades was based on gastric samplings that showed an acidic or lower pH than normal.  This indicated that the patient obviously had a dietary imbalance, best cured by alkaline tinctures, or curiously enough, dairy products which were themselves acidic.  It is inexplicable that the science community clung to this false premise for so long.

What Warren/Marshall research was able to show was that the bacterium, H. Pylori, was the cause of the ulcer and the increased acid was from the bacteria’s waste.  Millions suffered needlessly for decades while ‘experts’ dithered and obstructed this important medical breakthrough.

The established experts were unable to accept the overwhelming evidence of successful treatment based on this theory.  To prove his findings, the courageous Dr Marshall infected himself with H. Pylori and then cured himself with his own antibiotic treatment.  It is the determined skeptic that delivers the hope and promise of science to humanity.

Given the low level of the lay public’s understanding of science, it is a real challenge to provide meaningful debate to the established leadership and not over-reach the populace.  Along with the restraints of article brevity, all concepts must be simplified and each article self supporting.  This articles is best viewed in context with the previous companion article.

Heat is energy in transit from warmer systems to colder systems.

My name is Judy Ryan. I am a retired epidemiologist in Canberra, Australia. I became a global warming skeptic in June 2012 during a course run at the University of the Third Age by Marjorie Curtis. Marjory is a retired geologist and encouraged our class to write letters to the media questioning the science behind Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW). She was unaware at the time of just how well that idea would resonate with me and what the result would be. Needless to say, Marjory and I have become good friends and she is the co-signer on the public letters that I write to prominent climate alarmists. (CA’s)

Climate skepticism was regarded by many as a key factor in the result of the recent Australian elections. But our enduring goal is to defeat scientific corruption, then delay its recurrence for as long as possible. We realize that if we let this global warming scam die gracefully, its perpetrators may insidiously start on the next one. 

Marjorie and I decided to focus on the issue of possible scientific corruption in our public letters because (1) scientific discussion with CA advocates can inadvertently lend credibility to the underlying scam, (2) it is easier for the general public and the media to understand, and of much more interest to them.

Scientific research has changed the world. Now it needs to change itself

A simple idea underpins science: “trust, but verify”. Results should always be subject to challenge from experiment. That simple but powerful idea has generated a vast body of knowledge. Since its birth in the 17th century, modern science has changed the world beyond recognition, and overwhelmingly for the better.

But success can breed complacency. Modern scientists are doing too much trusting and not enough verifying—to the detriment of the whole of science, and of humanity.

Too many of the findings that fill the academic ether are the result of shoddy experiments or poor analysis (see article). A rule of thumb among biotechnology venture-capitalists is that half of published research cannot be replicated. Even that may be optimistic. Last year researchers at one biotech firm, Amgen, found they could reproduce just six of 53 “landmark” studies in cancer research. Earlier, a group at Bayer, a drug company, managed to repeat just a quarter of 67 similarly important papers. A leading computer scientist frets that three-quarters of papers in his subfield are bunk. In 2000-10 roughly 80,000 patients took part in clinical trials based on research that was later retracted because of mistakes or improprieties.

What a load of rubbish

Even when flawed research does not put people’s lives at risk—and much of it is too far from the market to do so—it squanders money and the efforts of some of the world’s best minds. The opportunity costs of stymied progress are hard to quantify, but they are likely to be vast. And they could be rising.

How do we know Anthony Watts of WUWT supports junk climate science? Just take a look at his latest foray on Twitter for the proof. Below are copies of an exchange (October 18, 2013) between Anthony Watts and Simon Conway-Smith as featured on the climateofsophistry.com blog. In them Mr. Watts is making some bold but irrational claims about the supposed greenhouse gas effect (GHE) and carbon dioxide (CO2) warming.

To us at “Slayersland” or more correctly, Principia Scientific International (PSI), these tweets demonstrate that Watts doesn’t understand the concept of the null hypothesis. He seems incapable of applying it to discredited ‘science’ that asserts carbon dioxide is a gas adding/trapping heat in our atmosphere making it warmer. Watts and others are still hanging on to the belief, despite growing evidence to the contrary, that CO2 must cause warming.

But as Conway-Smith suggests, the black and white facts of the past 17 years are proving to be an inconvenient truth. Global thermometers show no warming trend despite huge increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Doesn’t that then prove the null hypothesis – CO2 is not a warming gas?

Evaluation of “Climate Change Reconsidered II – Physical Science”

What’s good about it.

The above report was recently issued by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). It was coauthored by Craig D. Idso, Robert M. Carter, and S. Fred Singer together with an equally distinguished group of scientists who served as lead authors, contributing authors, and reviewers. The report is a well documented and thoroughly researched analysis of the hypothesis put forth by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that recent increases in atmospheric CO2 caused by human emissions from fossil fuel combustion is causing, or will cause, dangerous global warming and climate change. Such warming has been observed in the late twentieth century as atmospheric CO2 was measured to increase. According to the IPCC paradigm increases in atmospheric CO2 precede, and then cause, parallel increases in temperature.

A large number of governments, professional societies, scientific journals, journalists, the print media, the TV media, and even some corporations, generally accept the validity of that IPCC paradigm. Accordingly, there has been a concerted effort to reduce CO2 emissions, or to tax such emissions, or to replace fossil combustion sources by alternative energy sources. A smaller number of governments or organizations have rejected that IPCC paradigm and NIPCC is among them. The NIPPC report being reviewed here documents the observations and measurements that contradict the paradigm.

While NIPPC concedes that CO2 is a “mild greenhouse gas” that might cause some mild heating, such heating far from representing a “climate crisis” would actually be beneficial to mankind. The Global Climate Models produced by the IPCC have predicted drastic warming up to 6 C for decades to come. Those predictions have been falsified by the data. In fact, during the past 16 years, even as atmospheric CO2 concentrations have increased by 8{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}, the Earth’s average temperature has not increased. While prior to 1995 there was a parallelism between the CO2 increase and temperature rise, such a parallelism does not prove causation, and in fact that parallelism has ceased since the mid- 1990’s. In geologic time, the Earth’s temperature has oscillated naturally between +4C and -6 C relative to current values. Those fluctuations are driven by glacial coolings and interglacial warmings caused mainly by changes in the ellipticity of the Earth’s orbit. The Earth’s overall warming since 1860 corresponds to its recovery from the Little Ice Age as modulated by ocean-atmosphere oscillations and variations in solar activity.

Even more telling is the CO2 data from those ice core measurements as obtained from air bubbles trapped in the ice. They show a parallelism between CO2 and temperature with minima in CO2 occurring near the lowest temperatures of a glacial cooling. The maxima in CO2 occur near the highest temperatures of a glacial warming. But if one analyses the data carefully, one finds that the changes in temperature always precede the changes in CO2 by several hundred to a thousand years. The same precedence is observed during the most recent glacial warming cycle that we are currently experiencing. Those observations conclusively falsify the IPCC theory that CO2 is the primary forcing agent for temperature changes. Quite the contrary, it is the temperature changes that are the cause of the CO2 changes. Even shorter term variations in CO2 over the last several decades also display somewhat similar behavior with sea surface temperature changes inevitably leading to atmospheric CO2 changes. There is still more to be learned from such data and we will return to it again.

As Britain is battered by 99 miles per hour wind and “boiling” seas maverick long range weather forecaster, Piers Corbyn provides thousands of his loyal customers with yet another astonishing performance. Londoner Corbyn, who runs the WeatherAction forecasting service, is today touting his “End Game” special forecast that more accurately (from two days ahead) foresaw the blistering storm track that left a wake of destruction further South than the UK MetOffice and Standard Models had predicted.

But what is so incredible is not that Corbyn’s forecast was more accurate than others, but that he first predicted this severe storm a full six weeks before it struck. The 67-year-old gave this bullish news release earlier today:

“Everything Piers Corbyn warned about this storm (named his storm by thousands) from 6 weeks to 6 hours ahead confirmed while UK MetOffice knew nothing or dithered.”

The ‘Piers Corbyn Storm’ of October 2013, the most serious in Britain and Ireland, North West France and  the Low Countries for decades, was predicted – in detail to within one day from six weeks ahead – by WeatherAction.

PubMed today launches a pilot version of PubMed Commons,

“a system that enables researchers to share their opinions about scientific publications. Researchers can comment on any publication indexed by PubMed, and read the comments of others.”

In general, we’re big fans of post-publication peer review, as Retraction Watch readers know. Once it’s out of its pilot phase — and we hope that’s quite soon — PubMed Commons comments will be publicly available. So this is a step forward — but only a tentative one. That’s because of the first bullet point in the terms of service commenters agree to:

Only those individuals listed as an author on a PubMed citation may make comments in PubMed;

If possible, provide detailed references to papers (eg. page numbers, figure pointers) and unpublished data; refer to external websites if a longer comment or reference to other work is necessary;

Do not describe or share unpublished work by others;

Comments should not contain discriminatory, racist, offensive, inflammatory, or unlawful language;

Comments should not contain partisan political views;

Comments should not have explicit commercial endorsements.

So PubMed Commons isn’t exactly a town commons, unless you happen to live in a town whose residents are all scientists.

Stanford’s Rob Tibshirani, who was involved in organizing PubMed Commons, wrote in a blog post prepared in advance of the launch:

“One would like the system to be inclusive as possible but many scientists would not be interested in posting comments in a system with a high proportion of irrelevant or uninformed comments. NIH also needed a rule for who could post that would be pretty clear cut and not based on e.g. some judgment of the experience or knowledge of the participants. The decision was made that comments could only be posted by authors of papers in PubMed. This would make the situation symmetric in that all people who comment can have their own work commented on. It would also include a large number of potential participants and would meet NIH’s need for something unambiguous. Unfortunately it would leave out many people who could add valuable input, including many graduate students, patient advocates, and science journalists. I’m a little worried about this restriction, as I want to make the system open to as many users as possible. But hopefully that is a pretty wide net, and it may be widened further in the future.”

We’re a bit worried about this restriction, too.

Tool making and communication skills are easily distinguishing features between human beings and other species on this planet.  When coupled with a natural curiosity and the ability learn from our mistakes, we have lifted most humans from the vulgar realities of our ancestor’s existence.  For those bent on controlling others, tools and communication must be controlled and manipulated.

The ‘great humanitarian’, Vladimir Lenin said “the way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation”.  The great philosopher, Bertrand Russell said “western populations would gladly accept serfdom if it was packaged as saving the Earth”. 

Hubble and the Big Bang

In 1929, when spectral analysis revealed a ‘red shift’ in distant galaxies, astronomer Edwin Hubble speculated that this might be due to acceleration away from Earth and a possible expanding universe.  Before he could reflect on other possible explanations, a radio interview stumbled onto the phrase “Big Bang” and a run-away train left the station.  Dr Hubble was uncomfortable with both the concept and the catchy nick-name, but he had a ‘conflict of interest’ on this issue.

In a Times magazine interview, on December 14, 1936, titled “Science: Shift on Shift”, Dr Hubble makes his opposition clear.  One reason that he was not more forceful was because he was begging the government for funding of the Mount Palomar telescope.  Public interest was necessary during the tight depression era federal budgets to complete this project.

The Hooker 100 inch telescope was then showing farthest light sources to be moving at 25,000 miles per second.  Dr Hubble, during his 1936 interview, stated that he was “willing to abandon the expanding universe to mathematical cosmologists”…pending erection of the 200 inch Palomar telescope…”which may finally settle the question”.

Shall I tell you a secret? The Sun warms the Earth and the Earth warms the atmosphere. Have you got that? It took me a while to ponder over this. I got it from my Climate guru, my personal trainer in all matters scientific. Actually Hans is my third personal trainer, and he will not mind if I say I don’t believe a word he says. That’s right – I don’t believe a word he says, until I have my own evidence for what he explains.

If the Sun warmed the atmosphere, the top of the atmosphere, or at least the top of the Troposphere, would be hot – but it isn’t – at 33,000 feet it is about minus 55C. I don’t have to tell you guys that do I? Just ask anyone who flies and watches the monitor on board. So radiation from the Sun encounters mass and the earth and the oceans warm the atmosphere from the bottom up.

Some smart-arse disagreed with this. He said to me: ‘Sit on a cold brick wall on a frosty morning and see just how warm the earth is!’ Well that smart arse had a point. So now let me share with you a second secret. The Sun warms the Earth and Oceans and the Earth and Oceans warm or cool the atmosphere.

Ah, that makes a difference, that makes sense, doesn’t it? When the Sun shines down on the sand even on the Riviera, the sands are often too hot for the feet. Even more so in the Sahara. So the atmosphere likewise gets hot and the temperature rises. When the sun goes down the sands cool rapidly, even the Bedouin will make a fire and drink hot tea. When the earth cools down so does the atmosphere.

As public concern over man-made global warming continues to fall independent scientists speak out against relentless pro-green censorship in the mainstream media. Sinking ever deeper into such unethical bias is The Los Angeles Times which will no longer publish letters from climate change deniers, Times letters editor Paul Thornton wrote earlier this month.

Among independent scientists enraged by such a blatant anti-science and undemocratic approach are respected analysts, Professor J. Scott Armstrong and Dr. Martin Hertzberg.

Prof. Armstrong, of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and an expert in the field of Long-Range Forecasting, says that such “Censorship of skeptic global warming views by the press has been going on for many years.” 

While former U.S. Navy meteorologist, Dr Hertzberg, agrees with Armstrong that the climate alarmist case is now shown to be “so weak that even with widespread censorship, citizens are not persuaded.”

Like Armstrong, Hertzberg is delighted to see that more savvy citizens are turning to alternative sources of information and open debate on the Internet to better inform their decisions. 

It is on the world wide web where readers can freely find Armstrong’s study into the reliability of the alarmist claims of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Independently scientists found that the IPCC “violated 72 of 89 relevant scientific forecasting principles” despite claims by the LA Times and others that government-sponsored climatologists are reliable scientific authorities. Armstrong lamented that there is only one published peer-reviewed paper that claims to provide scientific forecasts of long-range global mean temperatures. That paper is a 2009 article in the International Journal of Forecasting by Kesten Green, Willie Soon and Professor Armstrong, himself.

Like hermit crabs, climate alarmists scramble to find new ways to hide, when put in a box

As children playing on the beach, we discovered a fascinating behavioral pattern among hermit crabs. Place a dozen in a cardboard box, and within minutes the crabs exit their shells and try to occupy another. This mild stress-induced response probably reflects their life-long drive to continue growing by repeatedly commandeering larger shells, to protect their vulnerable soft bodies.

Similarly, climate alarmists are now scrambling to find new shelter from the stress coming from a public that increasingly realizes their doom-and-gloom predictions of climate chaos are based on shoddy data, faulty computer models and perhaps outright deception. The alarmist scientists have put themselves in a climate cataclysm box, and are desperate to protect their reputations, predictions and funding.

Despite the absence of warming in actual measured temperature records over the last 16 years, and near-record lows in hurricane and tornado activity, they still cry “wolf” repeatedly and try to connect every unusual or “extreme” weather event to human emissions of plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide. (Actually, people account for only 4{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of all the CO2 that enters Earth’s atmosphere each year.)

Alarmists used their predictions of climate catastrophe to demand that the world transform its energy and economic systems, slash fossil fuel use, and accept lower living standards, in response to the politically manufactured science. Even as growing evidence conflicted with their dogma, the money, fame and power were too good to surrender for mere ethical reasons.

The impact on energy prices, national economies, jobs and people’s lives has been profound and negative. For example, in response to the unfounded alarmism, Germany moved aggressively toward wind and solar energy over the past 15 years – both politically and with taxpayer and investment spending. It also shied away from more nuclear power and saw its economy contract and energy-intensive companies shed jobs and threaten to move overseas. Now Germany is burning more coal and building new coal-fired power plants, in an attempt to reverse the economic disaster its “green” and “climate protection” policies unleashed, but its actions are still sending shock waves at investors around the world.

Science‘s John Bohannon has recently revealed the extent of poor or non-existent peer review in some journals that call themselves peer-reviewed, as Retraction Watch reported on here.

Now, an open-access publisher based in Rijeka, Croatia, called InTech, has cancelled its journal that was targeted and exposed by Science’s investigation. The journal was going to charge 400 euros to publish the paper by Bohannon.

The International Journal of Integrative Medicine has been “discontinued”, does “not accept submissions” and “is no longer active” states the publisher’s website.

The notice, posted just a day after Science published its piece, says:

“We regret to inform you that as of October 4th, 2013, the International Journal of Integrative Medicine is no longer active.

Authors who have paid the Article Processing Charge (APC) when submitting their research paper to this journal, will be refunded in full.

Articles published in the International Journal of Integrative Medicine up-to-date, will remain available online on the journal’s webpage.

For any further information regarding the International Journal of Integrative Medicine, please contact us at [email protected].

In an e-mail from InTech, which I already reported in Croatia’s Jutarnji List, InTech blames its scientific editors who operate outside the actual firm.