First, Einstein was right. Then he was wrong. Then he was right due to a loose wire. Now he may have been wrong due to an oscillator. Many of us would just throw up our hands and say everything is relative with Einstein, but scientists at OPERA say that a second equipment problem may have led to a too conservative reading of the 730-kilometer journey of the neutrinos reported by the European Organization for Nuclear Research or CERN.
The oscillator is used to provide time stamps to synchronize the GPS systems which measure the travel time. The scientists believe that the oscillator problem may have canceled out the cable problem . . . and that the little neutrinos did move faster than the speed of light — beyond the cosmic speed barrier of 186,282 miles per second (299,792 kilometers per second). That would contradict Einstein’s theory. So I guess we have to treat Einstein like a big dummy again . . . absent another loose cable or spilled coffee cup.
I am just waiting for a finding that neutrinos are sentient with a wicked sense of humor . . . and hovering around 299,791 kilometers per second just to mess with us.
Source: CBC
Trouble in the Heartland
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/26/1067860/-Trouble-in-the-Heartland
Excerpt:
The Heartland Institute is a right-wing organization originally created in the oh-so appropriate year of 1984 in part to downplay the danger of smoking. When that gig started drying up in the 90s they had to find new donors and a new cause, fast. One of the biggest clients they landed was the fossil fuel industry, interested in using similar tactics to combat pollution regulations and especially the growing body of data on climate change.
This month internal documents reportedly from Heartland came to light showing the disturbing lengths to which the institute would go to further their sponsors’ interests. Via the Wiki:
The documents showed that the institute planned to provide climate sceptical materials to teachers in the USA to promote their ideas to school children. Furthermore, it can also be read, that climate sceptics were being paid by The Heartland Institute, namely the founder of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change Craig Idso ($11,600 per month), physicist Fred Singer ($5,000 plus expenses per month), geologist Robert Carter ($1,667 per month) and a single pledge of $90,000 to meteorologist Anthony Watts.
Prof. Naomi Oreskes, coauthor of The Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, added via email, “The recently released documents confirm what many scholars had suspected: that the Heartland institute continues the disinformation techniques originated by the tobacco industry. Moreover, the documents suggest that, if anything, their tactics have become even more reprehensible, moving from targeting adults who might chose to smoke, to children, in their classrooms, trying to learn.”
I don’t care if you think it’s real or not. There is NO EXCUSE for this…
@Bron: I do not glom onto consensus, I have seen the data and formed my own conclusions: It is indisputable.
I think most of the readers here would agree I am very unlikely to engage in any kind of group-think, I have stuck to my non-common-wisdom guns many times in this forum.
You, however, sing only one note.
Tony C:
That may be true but I have a pretty good bullshit meter.
AGW doesnt pass the smell test. Sorry but the sun is what provides the energy for climate change. There are probably currently, unknown mechanisms which contribute as well.
My question is how do you know limiting CO2 wont trigger some unknown mechanism which is currently in stasis because of man made CO2?
You dont and neither do climate scientists.
I find people who have been educated beyond a level to which they are able to comprehend usually glom on to consensus because they arent confident enough in their own abilities and so use group think as crutch.
Tony C:
the earth can support 36 billion people with what we have now according to a UN study on population. If we lost 2/3 of the arable land we could support 13 billion people.
You need to quit being the Thomas Malthus of the modern age.
You are just trying to scare people.
You guys are hysterical, not in the sense of being funny.
Definition of HYSTERIA
1: a psychoneurosis marked by emotional excitability and disturbances of the psychic, sensory, vasomotor, and visceral functions
2: behavior exhibiting overwhelming or unmanageable fear or emotional excess
@Bron: I am sure, I often find that the more ignorant a person is the easier it is for them to scoff. That is Tony’s Maxim: The less you know, the more certain you can be.
Elaine:
No, I was just curious why you [warmers] think deniers are shills for corporations when it can and does work both ways.
That warmers are somehow pure as the driven snow with no ulterior motives except the betterment of mankind.
Tony C:
now you are making me laugh.
@Gene: And not much point really (in solving differential equations). Some trigonometry might prove useful, I guess, some basic chemistry. But we are going to lose the electric forges and steel (and other metal) producing facilities, I imagine, most of that big equipment breaks down often enough to be lost within a few years, not to mention the complete collapse of their markets and distribution infrastructure.
Heck, five decades from now the civilized world might be hard pressed to find seeds that can be cultivated into edible crops without advanced pesticides and fertilizers we would not have in a collapse.
Elaine,
Projection isn’t just for movie theaters anymore.
Gene,
It appears Bron may be ascribing his own motives and inclinations as a climate change denier to people like you and me who believe the great majority of climate scientists. We’re only in it for the money–and, of course, we’re not above lying.
Yep. Not a lot of time to solve differential equations when you’re busy trying to kill that deer or other animal you need to survive and make sure you’ve got potable water and a safe place to sleep and can defend what is yours by yourself and and and . . .
@Bron: Why do you think you would still have modern technology?
The 350 million people that survive will be almost entirely composed of low-tech cultures that do not require electricity, roads, refrigeration or non-locally produced food to survive. The habitable and arable area of the Earth will be shrunk to about 1/3 of its current acreage, and people do not starve quietly: Long before global warming and starvation kill us, there will be global war for the land, water, and resources left, and the infrastructure that supports a high tech culture will be lost in the struggle to survive and eat.
So it won’t be just the population that returns to the dark ages, it will be the technology and civilization along with it. The perpetuation of high tech knowledge demands high tech itself; it takes about ten years after high school to train somebody to know what I know, and in the event of a societal meltdown where people have to engage in labor to find their food, education will likely stop where it did then, and where it stops in primitive society today: At about the sixth grade level, because learning anything beyond basic arithmetic will be a waste of time for people that areg going to be tending the farms and flocks of their masters.
The Inner Workings of the Denial Machine
by David Suzuki Scientist; broadcaster; Chair, the David Suzuki Foundation.
2/26/12
http://www.themarknews.com/articles/8210-the-inner-workings-of-the-denial-machine
Documents expose the Heartland Institute, a “charitable” organization, as engaged in secretive lobbying and public-relations efforts aimed at stalling measures to protect the environment.
When hackers broke into an internet server at East Anglia University in the U.K. and selectively released massive amounts of correspondence from the world’s leading climate scientists, folks at the Chicago-based Heartland Institute were quick to exploit it.
Heartland president Joseph Bast wrote: “The release of these documents creates an opportunity for reporters, academics, politicians, and others who relied on the IPCC to form their opinions about global warming to stop and reconsider their position.”
He may have been correct, although “reconfirm” would have been a better word than “reconsider” as seven independent investigations cleared the scientists of any wrongdoing and confirmed the credibility of their research.
Now the tables have been turned on the libertarian “charitable” organization, which devotes its resources to questioning the reality of climate change and the dangers of secondhand tobacco smoke, among other issues.
Heartland is just one of many organizations dedicated to spreading doubt and confusion about legitimate science. These groups share a lack of transparency and an agenda to promote corporate interests at the expense of human health, the environment, and even the economy (if we believe the economy should function primarily in the interests of citizens rather than corporations).
Recently, someone – since identified as climate scientist Peter Gleick – sent documents from the Heartland Institute’s board of directors’ Jan. 17 meeting to a number of people and organizations, including DeSmogBlog, a website devoted to exposing the spin around climate-change denial. The documents confirm much of what we already knew about Heartland, although they provide interesting details about its connections and motives.
Not surprisingly, the Heartland people don’t see this as “an opportunity for reporters, academics, politicians, and others” to learn more about the secretive group’s agenda. Instead, Heartland posted a statement on its website saying, “honest disagreement should never be used to justify the criminal acts and fraud that occurred in the past 24 hours.”
Unlike most environmental and social-justice organizations, including the David Suzuki Foundation, the Heartland Institute doesn’t publicly reveal information about where it gets its money and what it does with it.
These documents indicate that Heartland has offered U.S. weatherman blogger and climate-change denier Anthony Watts close to $90,000 for a new project. They also reveal that Heartland funds other prominent deniers, including “Craig Idso ($11,600 per month), Fred Singer ($5,000 per month, plus expenses), Robert Carter ($1,667 per month), and a number of other individuals … ”
The papers also confirm that the institute’s primary mission is to discredit the established science of human-caused climate change. And even though it has received funding from wealthy individuals and corporations in the fossil-fuel and tobacco industries, including the Koch brothers and RJR Tobacco, it gets most of its money from a single anonymous donor, who has ponied up as much as $4.6 million in a single year, 2008.
If these groups were truly engaged in questioning the science, using valid scientific methods and principles, it wouldn’t be a problem. Science is strengthened through scrutiny and challenges; that’s how it works, and that’s what the peer-review process is about. But these organizations are engaged in secretive and dishonest lobbying and public-relations efforts aimed at stalling measures to protect the environment and health. Gleick has admitted that he made a mistake in posing as someone else to obtain the documents. The unidentified East Anglia hackers were also wrong to have stolen the emails, and the Heartland Institute is wrong when it lies about the most serious threat to humanity.
Three wrongs don’t make a right, but there are some differences. In the East Anglia case, the investigations turned on those who were hacked and ultimately proved that the climate scientists, although human, are engaged in sound and verifiable science, and that they have been subjected to years of harassment and bullying for their work. The Heartland documents show that the organization is using its taxpayer-supported status to spread lies and misinformation.
It’s about time these “merchants of doubt” were exposed. It’s time to get back to real science as practised by scientists. We must get beyond the false debate about the reality of climate change and into the real debate about what to do about it.
(Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Editorial and Communications Specialist Ian Hanington.)
Bron,
If I have an agenda, it is to help fight ignorance and to cast light on climate change deniers funded by fossil fuel and other corporate interests who spread “disinformation” and who bully and threaten climate scientists, question their motives, and work to ruin their reputations. If solar, wind, and fuel cell technologies reap billions of dollars in profits, I won’t get a penny of it.
Some people still think the world is flat too, Bron, despite all evidence to the contrary. Like the preponderance of evidence that causes the majority of climate scientists to say AGW is a real phenomena. You’re entitled to your opinion, no matter how misguided, but you aren’t entitled to your own facts. Oh, wait, I forgot. Objectivists are entitled to their own facts because they are the stick by which the whole of existence is measured. You don’t think AGW is real so the vast majority of professional climate scientists who do must be full of bullshit and you two laymen with minimal or no scientific training must be right.
(sarcasm) That makes perfect sense. (/sarcasm)
Tony C:
That would leave 350,000,000 million people. Last time the world had 350,000,000 people was somewhere between 1300 and 1500 AD.
With modern technology, we would get to 7 billion faster than 10,000 years faster than 300 years. We like to multiply.
Brevity may be the essence of wit, but bullshit is the essence of AGW.
It is possible for scientists to be in agreement on the fact of global warming and the human cause of it without being in agreement about what should be done about it.
Thus we are led to the interesting situation of having a problem we can all identify but cannot do anything about because nobody wants to give up their pet solution.
Thus I believe that nothing will be done about it at all, and the problem will pretty much solve itself by killing 95% of the world population, thus severely reducing our production of greenhouse gasses, and maybe ten thousand years after the reset we can give this whole “civilization” thing another shot.
So . . . do you still beat your wife, Bron?
Groucho called. He wants his joke back. He also said to tell you brevity is the essence of wit.