Life

Expelled

Has anyone seen any good movies lately?   I mean like ones released by Hollywood.  There have been perhaps three movies I've even been vaguely tempted to go to in the last year.

Well, there's one coming out that has my interest up.  Ben Stein's Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed.   It is about our institutions of higher learning and how anyone who doesn't accept their version of the truth gets burned at the stake.

Science, for the last several hundred years,  has been based on the scientific method and mathematical proofs.  Experiments must be rigorous, controlled, and repeatable.  The mathematics can be easily checked.   

Science in the last decade has taken on a whole new meaning.  Science has become what the high priests say it is.   Anyone who argues is attacked on a personal level and every attempt is made to destroy them.   Evidence, mathematical proofs,  controls, and facts have all given way to political correctness.  Reporters for the major media,  having no education whatsoever in science,  accept what they are fed by the high priests.

Global warming is an excellent example.  The New York Times declares the debate is over.  That most credible scientists accept the theory of man-caused global warming.  That anyone who even points out man-caused global warming is just a theory is accused of being a denier and in the pocket of the big oil companies.  Any true scientific research which might contradict this dogma is simply not funded, and those responsible for trying to do the research have their tenure denied and their reputations attacked.

I have not seen the movie Expelled,  but I certainly intend to see it.  In it,  writer, comedian, and financial guru Ben Stein looks at another one of the sacred cows,  the theory of evolution,  and how those who dare question it are destroyed.  Even if someone should point out that Evolution is only a theory,  a point which Darwin himself would readily acknowledge,  they are destroyed.

America is rapidly becoming a third world country.  Our currency is becoming worthless and our workforce uneducated.   If we are to pull out of this tailspin,  we must turn our schools and universities back into what they once were,  world leaders in education and research.  If no scientist dare question the politically correct dogma,  we are simply back to the dark ages.

Expelled comes out April 18th.  I hope it hits harder than the rather slow moving trailer on the website.  It's an important message.  Check it out. 

Ben Stein's Blog

Hurricanes and Global Warming Part II

As Ernesto turns back towards us,  I'd like to add some further perspective to yesterday's post.  The Hurricane prediction models that fail us so regularly are based on the complete lifecycle data of hundreds of hurricanes.  These models,  trying to predict a relatively local weather phenomenon, have the benefit of having very complete data of previous storms.

In contrast,  global climate models are largely based on satellite data,  which has been around for about forty years.  If you want to be generous,  they can use the uncalibrated data on global weather taken over the past two hundred years.  From this, they are trying to predict a climate that has been in progress for four billion years.

This would be like geologists trying to describe the surface of the earth based entirely on a single square kilometer.   What other scientific field would try to extrapolate such important predictions on such a statistically insignificant amount of data.   The answer is none.  No true scientist would make such predictions with so little data.  It's not repeatable;  it's not provable; it's not science. 

This is why so many actual climate scientists quietly cast doubts on these predictions.  They would be more vocal if they weren't afraid of witch trials like Al Gore's senate hearings.

Hurricanes and Global Warming

Naturally,  the Global Warming Advocates jumped on the 2004-2005 hurricane seasons as further proof of man-made global warming.   Fortunately,  the actual climate scientists as well as the forecasters at the National Weather Center and elsewhere have not been quite as quick to make this leap of faith.

The forecasters at NOAA have done us a further service.  They have tried to forecast hurricanes.  Now remember,  millions and millions of dollars have been put into building these computer models.   Millions more are spent each year on refining these models and running them on our largest supercomputers.   Also note that any time one of these models is run,  all current conditions are known.

Now observe the forecasts based on these models for Hurricane Ernesto:

Hurricane Ernesto Projected Track as of August 25, 2006   11 a.m.

 

 

   

   

   

   

   

                                                       

                        

Hurricane Ernesto Projected Track as of August 27th, 2006 11 a.m. (48 Hours later)

                              

                                     

                                          

                                          

                                    

                                             

                           

                        

Hurricane Ernesto Projected Track as of August 27th, 2006 5 p.m.  (Six hours later)

                           

                              

                                    

                                       

                                       

                                          

                

                   

Hurricane Ernesto Projected Track as of August 28th, 2006 8 a.m. (Fifteen hours later)

             

                        

                              

                              

                                    

                                 

                                       

                                 

Hurricane Ernesto Projected Track as of August 28th, 2006 2 p.m. (Six hours later)

These predictions for the track of Hurricane Ernesto are over a total period of just over three days.  They represent the most advanced scientific forecasting models available run on our largest supercomputers. 

Based on these predictions,  many billions of dollars were lost and made in oil futures and the stocks of various companies.  Governments and corporations spent millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours planning logistics, evacuations, and trying to prepare for disaster.   The mental stress caused by these incorrect models on affected populations is extreme.

Now the Global Warming Advocates (I am reluctant to use the word scientists, most of them aren't, at least not in climatology and meteorology) want you to believe their models can predict the climate one hundred years from now.   They want to make changes that will bankrupt entire economies and cost trillions of dollars.  Look at the maps above one more time and ask yourself,  are you willing to believe them?

See also:

        - It's the Power, Stupid

        - The New York Times Lies Again

        - And More Fair and Balanced Coverage

        - Now We Do Science by Polls?

There you go again, Al

As President Reagan would say,  “There you go again, Al.”   Al Gore just can’t seem to help himself.   He just gave an interview to Eleanor Clift of Newsweek.   The article , ironically entitled ‘At Some Point, Reality Has Its Day’  touts his new movie “An Inconvenient Truth”.

 

Al Gore makes it to the second question before proclaiming “When I was an undergraduate I was privileged to sign up for a course offered by the first person to measure CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere.”

 

Hate to tell you Al,  people have been measuring carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for a long, long time,  even before you created the Internet.

 

Why Al, are you pathologically incapable of sticking with the truth?  And since you can’t seem to achieve this basic level of integrity,  why should we listen to the rest of your assertions? 

 

In fact, your record is much worse than merely uttering amusing falsehoods,  you have actively tried to suppress the truth.  As documented recently in the Wall Street Journal , you used your position in the Senate to hold hearings to slap down professors of climate science who dared to disagree with your fantasies.

Here I quote Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT ( certainly not known as conservative university,  but still known as a good one.):

 

“All of which starkly contrasts to the silence of the scientific community when anti-alarmists were in the crosshairs of then-Sen. Al Gore. In 1992, he ran two congressional hearings during which he tried to bully dissenting scientists, including myself, into changing our views and supporting his climate alarmism. Nor did the scientific community complain when Mr. Gore, as vice president, tried to enlist Ted Koppel in a witch hunt to discredit anti-alarmist scientists--a request that Mr. Koppel deemed publicly inappropriate. And they were mum when subsequent articles and books by Ross Gelbspan libelously labeled scientists who differed with Mr. Gore as stooges of the fossil-fuel industry.”

Hollywood is the perfect place for your fantasies.   You won’t learn any more about truth or logic there,  but you should have a good time. Good luck with your movie.

p.s.  Gore’s professor may have been Dr. Charles David Keeling,  credited as the first person to continuously measure atmospheric CO2.