5.13.2020
10.09.2018
2.15.2018
9.08.2017
1.29.2016
3.21.2010
The Blue Pages
Vote with your money.
I was browsing through The Blue Pages and noted that I need to change my shopping behavior a bit.
It's for sale at amazon.com: Click to check it out.
I was browsing through The Blue Pages and noted that I need to change my shopping behavior a bit.
It's for sale at amazon.com: Click to check it out.
Tainted Teaparty
Rep. King thinks that the racist and gay-bashing slurs are no big deal.
A few bad apples in the barrel, or is the barrel hopelessly tainted? Here's a screen shot of their website that I took earlier today.
I just looked again, and the slur has been removed.
http://www.teapartyorg.ning.com/
A few bad apples in the barrel, or is the barrel hopelessly tainted? Here's a screen shot of their website that I took earlier today.
I just looked again, and the slur has been removed.
http://www.teapartyorg.ning.com/
2.16.2010
The Real Climate Controversy
This was an opinion piece first published in the Albuquerque Journal, rescued and republished by Mark Crispin Miller in his blog, News from the Underground. I read the piece and judged it important enough that I think more people need to be aware of the situation, so I am publishing it here today.
Please read this, then ask yourself: WHO has the most to gain by falsifying data?
It is one thing to be ignorant of the facts, or so afraid of change as to resist the facts on the table. These are the flat earthers of our time.
It is quite another character altogether who sets out to falsify data for financial motives. The stakes are high and I fear they have obfuscated the facts and delayed our will to act urgently so that what awaits us is the equivalent of the 2006 tsunami a thousandfold.
God help us.
Read.
---------------
*The Real Climate Controversy*
*By Mark Boslough*
/Albuquerque physicist/
http://www.abqjournal.com/opinion/guest_columns/152149149349opinionguestcolumns02-15-10.htm
Global warming is occurring. It is caused by human activities.
Both the theoretical basis (fundamental laws of physics) and
observational evidence for warming are incontrovertible. The first
decade of this century was the warmest ever recorded in human history,
just as the models predicted. The current decade will almost certainly
be warmer.
But it's not just the atmosphere that is heating. Ice is melting
at an accelerating rate, and sea level is rising. Weather patterns are
changing as the atmosphere and oceans adjust their flow in response to
the warming. These phenomena were all predicted. They have been
independently verified many times, using many methods, by researchers
throughout the world. The successful predictions of global warming
theory represent a major scientific achievement.
In 1998, a team of scientists combined thermometer measurements
with preinstrumental temperatures determined from tree rings and other
natural records. The resulting graph demonstrated how exceptional the
recent rapid warming has been, rising so sharply that it looked like the
blade of a hockey stick. The "Hockey Stick" graph became an iconic
symbol of global warming, even though it was only one of many lines of
evidence. The general validity and significance of the Hockey Stick has
since been reproduced by several independent groups of scientists.
Nevertheless, the idea of human-caused global warming has offended the
cherished belief system of some individuals who, for philosophical or
self-interested reasons, are convinced that people cannot possibly
affect the global temperature - regardless of the laws of physics.
Because the Hockey Stick had become a symbol, its authors became the
target of a political smear campaign.
In 2005, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., referred to global warming
as the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." Reps.
Joe Barton, R-Texas, and Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., sent a letter to the
Hockey Stick scientists, demanding that they immediately provide them
with extensive documentation about what the politicians claimed were
"methodological flaws and data errors" in their work.
Barton and Whitfield held Congressional hearings, and asked for
a review of the Hockey Stick by a panel led by Edward Wegman, a
statistician with no background in or understanding of climate science.
The Wegman panel wrote a report that criticized the statistical methods
used by the scientists. Climate change denialists embraced this
criticism. Ever since they have claimed that the Hockey Stick has been
discredited and, in a leap of logic, that global warming is not real.
To many researchers, the investigation was nothing more than an
anti-science witch-hunt. Scientists play by well-defined rules. They
require peer-reviewed publication, logic and evidence. Science is like a
hockey game that only works if fans understand it and teams play by the
rules. The politicians knew their side could not win against a
world-class "hockey team." They chose instead to create confusion and
sow doubt.
Their tactic was to act like unruly fans and throw hundreds of
decoy hockey pucks onto the ice and then take advantage of the chaos. As
any sports fan knows, when a fight breaks out on the ice or in the
stands - that becomes the story. The idea was simply to delay any
action. They didn't have to win the game. All they needed to do was
disrupt it.
The embattled scientists were understandably angry and were not
always
circumspect in their private messages. They did not expect political
activists - willing to tap phones and break into computers - to steal
their correspondence. They hadn't done anything wrong, but their words
were twisted and taken out of context. E-mails were published by
bloggers and broadcast by media for whom controversy and conflict trumps
accuracy and fair play. This non-scandal became known as "Climategate."
The actual scandal is associated with the Hockey Stick
congressional inquiry. Last month a blogger called "Deep Climate"
demonstrated that, in a cruel irony, the Wegman team actually used
material plagiarized from a textbook written by one of the scientists
under investigation. Even worse, the meaning of the stolen text was
changed. The supposedly unbiased referees seemed to have been in on the
plan to disrupt the game.
New evidence continues to mount. Independent investigator John
Mashey* has released a report in which he meticulously builds the case
for a corrupt and probably criminal conspiracy to mislead Congress in
the Hockey Stick investigation. Members of the mainstream media who have
tried so hard to create a scandal out of Climategate finally have a real
scandal to investigate; one that appears to involve a deliberate
high-level scheme to undermine research, create confusion and impede
progress on science-informed climate policy.
* http://deepclimate.org/2009/12/17/wegman-report-revisited/
Please read this, then ask yourself: WHO has the most to gain by falsifying data?
It is one thing to be ignorant of the facts, or so afraid of change as to resist the facts on the table. These are the flat earthers of our time.
It is quite another character altogether who sets out to falsify data for financial motives. The stakes are high and I fear they have obfuscated the facts and delayed our will to act urgently so that what awaits us is the equivalent of the 2006 tsunami a thousandfold.
God help us.
Read.
---------------
*The Real Climate Controversy*
*By Mark Boslough*
/Albuquerque physicist/
http://www.abqjournal.com/
Global warming is occurring. It is caused by human activities.
Both the theoretical basis (fundamental laws of physics) and
observational evidence for warming are incontrovertible. The first
decade of this century was the warmest ever recorded in human history,
just as the models predicted. The current decade will almost certainly
be warmer.
But it's not just the atmosphere that is heating. Ice is melting
at an accelerating rate, and sea level is rising. Weather patterns are
changing as the atmosphere and oceans adjust their flow in response to
the warming. These phenomena were all predicted. They have been
independently verified many times, using many methods, by researchers
throughout the world. The successful predictions of global warming
theory represent a major scientific achievement.
In 1998, a team of scientists combined thermometer measurements
with preinstrumental temperatures determined from tree rings and other
natural records. The resulting graph demonstrated how exceptional the
recent rapid warming has been, rising so sharply that it looked like the
blade of a hockey stick. The "Hockey Stick" graph became an iconic
symbol of global warming, even though it was only one of many lines of
evidence. The general validity and significance of the Hockey Stick has
since been reproduced by several independent groups of scientists.
Nevertheless, the idea of human-caused global warming has offended the
cherished belief system of some individuals who, for philosophical or
self-interested reasons, are convinced that people cannot possibly
affect the global temperature - regardless of the laws of physics.
Because the Hockey Stick had become a symbol, its authors became the
target of a political smear campaign.
In 2005, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., referred to global warming
as the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." Reps.
Joe Barton, R-Texas, and Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., sent a letter to the
Hockey Stick scientists, demanding that they immediately provide them
with extensive documentation about what the politicians claimed were
"methodological flaws and data errors" in their work.
Barton and Whitfield held Congressional hearings, and asked for
a review of the Hockey Stick by a panel led by Edward Wegman, a
statistician with no background in or understanding of climate science.
The Wegman panel wrote a report that criticized the statistical methods
used by the scientists. Climate change denialists embraced this
criticism. Ever since they have claimed that the Hockey Stick has been
discredited and, in a leap of logic, that global warming is not real.
To many researchers, the investigation was nothing more than an
anti-science witch-hunt. Scientists play by well-defined rules. They
require peer-reviewed publication, logic and evidence. Science is like a
hockey game that only works if fans understand it and teams play by the
rules. The politicians knew their side could not win against a
world-class "hockey team." They chose instead to create confusion and
sow doubt.
Their tactic was to act like unruly fans and throw hundreds of
decoy hockey pucks onto the ice and then take advantage of the chaos. As
any sports fan knows, when a fight breaks out on the ice or in the
stands - that becomes the story. The idea was simply to delay any
action. They didn't have to win the game. All they needed to do was
disrupt it.
The embattled scientists were understandably angry and were not
always
circumspect in their private messages. They did not expect political
activists - willing to tap phones and break into computers - to steal
their correspondence. They hadn't done anything wrong, but their words
were twisted and taken out of context. E-mails were published by
bloggers and broadcast by media for whom controversy and conflict trumps
accuracy and fair play. This non-scandal became known as "Climategate."
The actual scandal is associated with the Hockey Stick
congressional inquiry. Last month a blogger called "Deep Climate"
demonstrated that, in a cruel irony, the Wegman team actually used
material plagiarized from a textbook written by one of the scientists
under investigation. Even worse, the meaning of the stolen text was
changed. The supposedly unbiased referees seemed to have been in on the
plan to disrupt the game.
New evidence continues to mount. Independent investigator John
Mashey* has released a report in which he meticulously builds the case
for a corrupt and probably criminal conspiracy to mislead Congress in
the Hockey Stick investigation. Members of the mainstream media who have
tried so hard to create a scandal out of Climategate finally have a real
scandal to investigate; one that appears to involve a deliberate
high-level scheme to undermine research, create confusion and impede
progress on science-informed climate policy.
* http://deepclimate.org/2009/12/17/wegman-report-revisited/
1.21.2010
Fwd: [MCM] Healthcare giants FREAKED by Scott Brown's win
From News From the Underground (Jerry Policoff:reporting)
There was a juicy tidbit buried in paragraph 17 of an Associated Press story this morning:
"Nearly as shaken by the Massachusetts vote were health care provider groups that have supported the Democratic effort, such as drug makers, hospitals and doctors.
"While few were making public statements, industry groups that stood to gain millions of newly insured customers were worried that such potential gains were in jeopardy, according to lobbyists speaking on condition of anonymity to describe confidential conversations."
So much for phony industry pretences that they opposed this bill. That was a total ruse. It went largely unnoticed by the mainstream media that the insurance industry poured millions into Martha Coakley's campaign. Why would they do that when she supported the Senate bill and Brown opposed it? Silly question. It is because they supported it too.
Jerry Policoff
Face Book Causes: HealthCare4ALLPA
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