Flu is actually a pretty nasty disease. People say they’ve got “the flu” when they’ve really only got a cold, but a genuine bout of influenza knocks you off your feet for several days, and is a major killer in the elderly; an outbreak in 2011 killed around 600 people.  But don’t worry! Since 2006, during the avian flu scare, the Government has spent £424 million stockpiling a drug called Tamiflu.

Unfortunately for the Government, and for elderly people, and for people who don’t want to spend a week in bed aching and sweating and vomiting, it seems that Tamiflu doesn’t work very well.

The Cochrane Library, the great centre for epidemiology and public health data, has carried out a huge meta-analysis, a study combining the data from dozens of smaller trials, into Tamiflu and another “neuraminidase inhibitor”, Relenza. Cochrane Reviews are hugely authoritative works, a sort of gold standard if you’ll forgive the cliché. And, five years after the UK and US began spending billions to buy millions upon millions of doses, the Cochrane Library has reported.

On average, flu symptoms last for seven days. With treatment with a neuraminidase inhibitor, they last, on average, for 6.3 days. Consider the front page held.

It’s worse than that for Tamiflu and Relenza. Even that limited improvement was unclear in children, and “there was no evidence of a reduction in hospitalisations or serious influenza complications (confirmed pneumonia, bronchitis, sinusitis or ear infection) in either adults or children,” says the Cochrane Review.

Are you expecting a salacious, perhaps even a lascivious story? Sorry to disappoint you as this is not about sex but BED, an acronym that stands for “Banana Equivalent Dose” and it has nothing to do with the bananas’ prescribed curvature in Europe either (rescinded).

Anthony Watts is a Jester. So Mr. Watts posts a “guest article” from a person named Stephen Wilde, a person who has nothing to do with me or any of the Slayers, and who’s physics musings neither I nor the Slayers have ever promoted, and goes on to associate Mr. Wilde with us and calls Wilde’s musings “Slayer physics”.

Well, this is how this guy Anthony Watts operates – cheap lies.

In a later comment, Watts claims that the Slayers send him articles every week hoping he’ll post them.  This is another lie, we don’t send our own writing to Watts (this is Watts thinking himself a gatekeeper, it would appear), and never have, except when requested.  And when requested, look at how Watts responds:

http://climateofsophistry.com/2013/06/05/slaying-watts-with-watts/

It’s worth re-reading that article if you already have, just to remind yourself of what Anthony Watts believed he could engage in and get away with of sophistry and abuse of science.

So the guy challenges us to demonstrate the physics we’re talking about – essentially that cold doesn’t heat up hot! (seriously, this is what Anthony Watts has a difficult time understanding…) – and when we produce for him exactly what is requested, he ignores it and goes on a rant about light bulbs being able to produce more power than you put into them by having them shine on themselves, because we had had a picture of a light bulb in our article answer to him:

http://climateofsophistry.com/2013/05/13/slayers-putting-up-not-shutting-up/

Anthony Watts thought he could just ignore the physics and text of our response, and so he  just says “you guys have a picture of a light bulb in your article, so, if I turn on the light bulb and it gets hot, then it debunks your article”.

No that doesn’t make any sense at all and it doesn’t address the actual physics of the article, but do you think Anthony wants to care about that?  When pressed on the issue that in science experimentation, and pedagogy, it is important to understand the actual underlying physical principles at work in order to properly quantify the results of an experiment, Anthony Watts replied:

“And yet, in the diagram proposed in the essay by Postma, such fine details were not mentioned nor required. Demanding them now post facto doesn’t fly.”

So according to Anthony Watts’ understanding of how science works, demanding scientific accuracy after someone botches an experiment is not legitimate.  So in fact, according to Anthony Watts, if you botch an experiment, any subsequent criticism of it is invalid.  The experimenter wasn’t wrong, it is the person pointing out that the experiment was done incorrectly who is wrong. (!) I don’t think even a child would invent such a scheme.  Well, an insecure bully child would.

As you’ll see in the review of the article links, not only did Anthony Watts botch a very basic experiment, he and Curt Wilson didn’t even quantitatively analyse their results to see if more power was being produced than was being put it.  I mean the whole thing was a rather embarrassing expose of the bully mindset and its insecurities, and it would be embarrassing for Anthony Watts if he wasn’t just such a complete idiot.  That’s the advantage of being that stupid: you just don’t know when you’re making a fool of yourself.

Here, I’ll put in order the sequence of events and other articles I’ve had the misfortune of having to write involving Anthony Watts:

http://climateofsophistry.com/2013/05/13/slayers-putting-up-not-shutting-up/

http://climateofsophistry.com/2013/06/05/slaying-watts-with-watts/

http://climateofsophistry.com/2013/06/17/closing-with-watts/

http://climateofsophistry.com/2013/10/18/burning-watts-with-watts/

http://climateofsophistry.com/2013/11/08/anthony-watts-and-robert-brown-are-liars-or-at-least-very-stupid-idiots/

At first glance this simple question appears to be lifted from a first year, undergraduate class in meteorology, because everyone who has even a rudimentary understanding of the thermodynamics of the atmosphere knows that water vapor decreases the lapse rate, i.e., the rate at which the air temperature changes with altitude—ascending air cools at a certain rate as it “does work” against its progressively less dense surroundings and descending air warms at a certain rate as its progressively more dense surroundings “does work” on it.

            As countless weather balloon soundings have shown water vapor decreases this lapse rate and it has even been observed that this attenuation becomes more acute as both the temperature and the humidity increase.  One wonders then why the country’s most prestigious universities in classes across the hall are teaching their students that water vapor increases the lapse rate via a hypothetical “greenhouse effect”.

Princeton         “The greenhouse effect is a process by which thermal radiation from a planetary surface is absorbed by atmospheric greenhouse gases, and is re-radiated in all directions. Since part of this re-radiation is back towards the surface, energy is transferred to the surface and the lower atmosphere. As a result, the temperature there is higher than it would be if direct heating by solar radiation were the only warming mechanism.”

University of California, Riverside

“What is the greenhouse effect?

“This refers to the retention of the sun’s warmth in the Earth’s lower atmosphere by greenhouse gases. These gases (primarily carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide) act as a thermal blanket for the planet, warming the surface to a life-supporting average of 59 degrees Fahrenheit (15 degrees Celcius).”

Texas A&M University

“55{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the heat that warms the atmosphere is quickly re-radiated radiated back to the earth (324 W/m2). This warms the earth and the lower atmosphere.”

Columbia University

“Some of the emitted radiation [from the surface] passes through the atmosphere and travels back to space, but some is absorbed by greenhouse gas molecules and then re-emitted in all directions. The effect of this is to warm the Earth’s surface and the lower atmosphere. Water vapor (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2) are the two largest contributors to the greenhouse effect.”

Boston University

“We have demonstrated how the ‘natural’ greenhouse effect (e.g. H2O, natural CO2) elevated surface temperature.  Next time we will extend this simple model to show how the addition of greenhouse gases increases surface temperature.”  

            Now, you might be saying, “What are you talking about?  None of these definitions mentions a ‘lapse rate’,” but notice that each one of these definitions of the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis asserts that “greenhouse gases” only warm the “surface and the lower atmosphere.”  Not one of them asserts that “greenhouse gases” warm the entire troposphere or the upper troposphere.  Doing so, of course, would be foolish since the upper troposphere in the mid-latitudes is commonly as cold as -60 °C and can be as cold as -80 °C!  By default then, when one asserts that there exists a thermodynamic process within the atmosphere that only warms the lower troposphere and not the upper troposphere one is asserting that that process increases the lapse rate—the temperature differential between lower tropospheric air and upper tropospheric air that is quantified in °C/km.  Indeed, it has even been suggested by some that if there were no “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere there wouldn’t even be a lapse rate.

            “Without the destabilization provided by the greenhouse effect, convective overturning would slow and quite possible cease altogether. The atmosphere would eventually become isothermal, as the full depth of the atmosphere would achieve the same temperature as the surface through thermal conduction; without IR emission, the middle and upper troposphere would have no way to cool itself in the face of this heating.” Roy Spencer

            The mental construct that “greenhouse gases” either create or at least augment the lapse rate can also be seen in this mathematical hypothetical being taught at Boston University . . .

Science is rife with corruption, incompetence, dishonesty and fabrication–and now, thanks to a frank resignation letter by the US’s top scientific misconduct official we have a better idea why.

David E. Wright, a respected science historian, has just quit his job as director of the Office of Research Integrity (ORI; part of the Department of Health and Human Services) and is scathing about his experiences there.

In his resignation letter, he accuses his boss HHS Assistant Secretary for Health Howard Koh of running an organization which is “secretive, autocratic and unaccountable.”

He writes to Koh:

In one instance, by way of illustration, I urgently needed to fill a vacancy for an ORI division director.  I asked the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health (your deputy) when I could proceed.  She said there was a priority list.  I asked where ORI’s request was on that list.  She said the list was secret and that we weren’t on the top, but we weren’t on the bottom either. Sixteen months later we still don’t have a division director on board.

His experiences at ORI, he adds, have confirmed all his worst suspicions about the workings of federal bureaucracy.

According to the World Health Organisation’s recent report, ‘Night Noise Guidelines for Europe’ [1], environmental noise is emerging as one of the major public health concerns of the twenty-first century. It observes that, “Many people have to adapt their lives to cope with the noise at night,” and the young and the old are particularly vulnerable.

This is because hearing in young people is more acute and, in older people, a loss of hearing of higher sound frequencies renders them more susceptible to the effects of low frequency noise. It is a particularly troublesome feature of the noise generated by wind turbines due to its impulsive, intrusive and incessant nature.

A recent case-control study conducted around two wind farms in New England has shown [2] that subjects living within 1.4 km of an IWT had worse sleep, were sleepier during the day, and had poorer SF36 Mental Component Scores compared to those living further than 1.4 km away. The study demonstrated a strongly significant association between reported sleep disturbance and ill health in those residing close to industrial wind turbines.

The major adverse health effects caused seem to be due to sleep disturbance and deprivation with the main culprits identified as loud noise in the auditory range, and low frequency noise, particularly infrasound. This is inaudible in the conventional sense, and is propagated over large distances and penetrates the fabric of dwellings, where it may be amplified. It is a particular problem at night, in the quiet rural settings most favoured for wind farms, because infrasound persists long after the higher frequencies have been dissipated.

Sleep is a physiological necessity and the sleep-deprived are vulnerable to a variety of health problems [2,3]. particularly Cardiovascular Disease in which nocturnal noise is an important factor [4]. Sleep deprivation in children is associated with increased bodyweight [3,5], which is known to ‘track’ into later life, and predisposes to adult disease. That is why “Encouraging more sleep” is a sensible target in the Public health Agency’s current campaign to prevent obesity in children. It also causes memory impairment because memories are normally reinforced in the later, Rapid Eye Movement, phase of sleep; again, it is the young and the old who are most affected. Sleep deprivation is associated with an increased likelihood of developing a range of chronic diseases including Type II Diabetes, cancer (eg breast with shift work [6]), Coronary Heart Disease [7,8] and Heart Failure [9]. 

“What is Physics?” This not-for-profit conference has been organised independently of any academic or research institute or of any scientific society. There are no commercial, industrial or political interests involved. This is uncommon but ensures that no influence is exerted upon speakers or participants to force compliance with the authority of any that seek to foist dogmatic views upon Mankind in order to turn a profit, be it financial or social standing. Contemporary physics has lost contact with physical reality. Mysticism and fancy has resulted in quite irrational notions being proposed to account for the physical Universe. This conference is a return to rational physics in terms that are comprehensible to any educated person, not just a small group of specialists.

There were great horrors, but what many children remember is missing their supper.

The earthquake struck at 5:36 p.m. Alaska Standard Time on Good Friday. When the first shaking hit, many parents were in the kitchen, fixing dinner. For more than 4 minutes, the earth buckled and lurched all across southern Alaska. Few people returned home to their meals that night. In Anchorage, the ground cracked open and giant fissures swallowed children whole, killing them in front of their siblings.

Landslides launched tsunamis that swept away coastal villages before the shaking even ended. In Seward, spilled oil slicked the water and caught fire. When the earthquake-triggered tsunami hit minutes later, the wave was blazing. “It was an eerie thing to see — a huge tide of fire washing ashore,” survivor Gene Kirkpatrick told National Geographic magazine in 1964.

In 50 years, no earthquake since has matched the power of the March 27, 1964, Great Alaska earthquake. Now ranked a magnitude 9.2, the second-largest ever recorded, the earthquake radically transformed the young state. Important coastal ports, roads and rail lines were destroyed. The liquefied ground in Anchorage led to the country’s strictest seismic building codes (now outpaced by California). President Lyndon Johnson ordered a comprehensive scientific study of the earthquake.

The geologic discoveries transformed how we understand the Earth.

At least 120 computer generated nonsense papers have been reviewed and published in publications of the  Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and Springer, as well as conference proceedings. The fakes have just been discovered by a French researcher and are being withdrawn.

Cyril Labbé found a way to spot artificially-generated science papers, and published it his website and lo, the fakes turned up en masse. In the past, pretend papers have turned up in open access journals–this time the fake papers appeared in subscription based journals. But the man who caught the fakes says he cannot be sure he’s caught them all, because he couldn’t check all the papers behind paywalls.

According to Nature:

The publishers Springer and IEEE are removing more than 120 papers from their subscription services after a French researcher discovered that the works were computer-generated nonsense.

Over the past two years, computer scientist Cyril Labbé of Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, has catalogued computer-generated papers that made it into more than 30 published conference proceedings between 2008 and 2013. Sixteen appeared in publications by Springer, which is headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany, and more than 100 were published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), based in New York. Both publishers, which were privately informed by Labbé, say that they are now removing the papers.

Dutch Professor Richard Tol has resigned from the Climate Panel of the UN. Professor Tol disagrees with the biased negative conclusions of the latest UN climate report. The consequences of climate change are being systematically over-estimated, according to him. 

“The Panel is directed from within the environment lobby and not from within the science.”

Global warming has been the cry of government climate scientists since the 1980’s. But actual government data proves global cooling has taken over from warming during this century, as per the official U.S. satellite records (see graph).

What’s interesting about this graph? Well, first we see that, since 1977, the world temperature has been consistently hotter than the 20th century average. But if we look more closely, we can see that the heat has been abating since 1998.This data has been collected by NCDC (National Climatic Data Center) which is part of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), a scientific agency of the US Administration. NOAA is an international leader for temperature data. The two others are NASA’s GISS in the US, and the UK’s University of East Anglia’s CRU (Climate Research Unit), working jointly with the Hadley Center (of the Met Office).

The GISS webpage cannot be accessed presently at: http://www.data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp, but HAD-CRUT did publish their graphs for February, which confirm the new cooling trend:http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/HadCRUT4.pdf

Government-financed scientists, who collect and interpret the data, have in the past done their best to “hide the decline” (Climategate). Today, unfortunately, climate science continues to be corrupted by billions of dollars of government money. NOAA are arguably less corrupt than the other two, but they are still misleading and dishonest in the way they present things.

The International Court of Justice in The Hague has spoken: In a 12-to-4 judgment the court found that Japan was in breach of its international obligations by catching and killing Minke whales and issuing permits for hunting Humpback and Fin whales within the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, established by the International Whaling Commission well after the commission had come into effect (New York Times).

The National Science Foundation has fantasies of Broadway. It is funding what it thinks is a hot commodity: a new musical titledThe Great Immensity that is focused on climate change at the cost of $700,000 to taxpayers. The website for the production reads:

In a thrilling and timely production, presented in association with the celebrated investigative theater company, The Civilians, The Great Immensity is a continent-hopping thriller following a woman, Phyllis, as she pursues someone close to her who disappeared from a tropical island while on an assignment for a nature show.

But this is science, so how about the hard data that undergirds the plot? Not to worry:

The Great Immensity explores the environmental crisis drawing upon research and interviews conducted in two distinct locations: Barro Colorado Island (BCI) in the Panama Canal and the city of Churchill in arctic Canada.

Just in case your curiosity is piqued and you have your own tale of climate change disaster to tell, the website wants you to get involved:

The characters from the play are here to share with you the latest in environmental art, science, and action, and to demonstrate how people around the world are having a positive impact on the big issues that we are facing.

There is a shock coming, your morning double-double or latte might soon cost you double-double as well. Coffee plantations are under attack from—you may have guessed it—“climate change.” The wholesale “climate” and soon consumer prices for coffee beans are rising sharply as coffee plantations are experiencing production problems.

What’s the Cause?

As D. Carrington reports in The Guardian, “climate change will brew a bad-tasting, expensive cup of coffee.”

As (nearly) everyone knows, coffee trees grow best in a sunny but cool climate, sort of like the North Pole in summer or the South Pole in winter. But don’t take my word for that. Just trust the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) whose numerous models have all been predicting calamitous “climate change” for the last twenty-plus years. It’s not that their models were wrong, nature just delivered an unexpected and yet to be explained “pause.”

Cause of the “Pause”

The cause of the “pause” really is not the models’ or modellers’ fault. The real problem is that nature has difficulties reading their reports and properly interpreting them. Obviously then, we need to train nature better, perhaps a pre-JK class “feel-good” assignment would do to rectify that.

In any event, sunspots, solar cycles and other scientific explanations of the “pause” could then easily be explained-away. Given the right political will we may even be able to make nature conform to the models. 

Today, we live in a very different world from the one that Norman Borlaug was born into. It’s a world with less preventable misery, less hunger, and more hope for the hungry . What a legacy for this humble farmer from Iowa — this unlikeliest of revolutionaries, this man who changed the planet with a grain of wheat. (Mitch McConnell, The Washington Times, 25 March 2014) 

Congress gave a place of honor Tuesday to agriculture visionary Norman Borlaug, adding his statue to the Capitol’s Statuary Hall, but congressional leaders said an even better way to carry on his legacy is to continue his research to feed the world. Congressional leaders unveiled a bronze statue of the Iowan on Tuesday, which would have been his 100th birthday and is also National Agriculture Day. (Jacqueline Klimas, The Washington Times, 25 March 2014)