- 3 January 2020
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Showing posts with label junk science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label junk science. Show all posts
Friday, June 5, 2020
Saturday, May 2, 2020
Wednesday, January 15, 2020
Warmest -take your pick- Nonsense
It must be a new year, since the climate fraudsters tote this meme out every new year:
2019 Was Second-Warmest Year on Record, Federal Climate Scientists Say
The world experienced near-record global temperatures in 2019, federal climate scientists said. The year capped what the scientists said was the warmest decade in modern times.
In an annual climate report, scientists at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which independently track world temperatures, each ranked last year as the second-warmest since systematic record-keeping began in 1880. It was, they said, a year of intense heat waves and wildfires, accelerated melting of ice caps, flooding and rising seas.
“The decade that just ended is clearly the warmest decade on record,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. “Every decade since the 1960s clearly has been warmer than the one before.”
During 2019, the average temperature across global land and ocean surfaces was 1.8 degree Fahrenheit (0.98 degree Celsius) above the 20th-century mean, with 95% certainty, according to the NASA calculations. The NOAA scientists calculated the average global temperature as 1.71 degrees F (0.95 degree C) above the average for 1901 to 2000. Each agency uses slightly different data sets and techniques to arrive at their results.
This is a couple of years old, but this is a useful guide to the 'warmest ... on record' nonsense: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/02/18/overheated-claims-on-global-temperature-records/
Saturday, January 4, 2020
Oops: Nobel Prize-winning scientist Frances Arnold retracts paper
Nobel Prize-winning scientist Frances Arnold retracts paper
MILLENNIUM PRIZE
American scientist Frances Arnold, who won the Nobel Prize for chemistry, has retracted her latest paper.
Ms Arnold shared the prestigious award in 2018 with George P Smith and Gregory Winter for their research on enzymes.
A subsequent paper on enzymatic synthesis of beta-lactams was published in the journal Science in May 2019.
It has been retracted because the results were not reproducible, and the authors found data missing from a lab notebook.
Reproduction is an essential part of validating scientific experiments. If an experiment is a success, one would expect to get the same results every time it was conducted.
Ms Arnold came forward with the news herself on Twitter on 2 January.
"For my first work-related tweet of 2020, I am totally bummed to announce that we have retracted last year's paper on enzymatic synthesis of beta-lactams. The work has not been reproducible," she tweeted.
"It is painful to admit, but important to do so. I apologize to all. I was a bit busy when this was submitted, and did not do my job well."
That same day, Science published a note outlining why it would be retracting the paper, which Ms Arnold co-authored with Inha Cho and Zhi-Jun Jia.
"Efforts to reproduce the work showed that the enzymes do not catalyze the reactions with the activities and selectivities claimed. Careful examination of the first author's lab notebook then revealed missing contemporaneous entries and raw data for key experiments. The authors are therefore retracting the paper."
The announcement is the latest example of the "reproducibility crisis" facing the sciences.
In October 2018, the journal Nature wrote online that there was "growing alarm about results that cannot be reproduced".
An earlier survey conducted by the journal found that more than two-thirds of researchers had tried and failed to reproduce another scientist's experiments.
Reaction to Ms Arnold's tweets was mostly positive, however, as her colleagues commended her honesty.
"Can I please express my respect for you bringing this to everyone's attention. This shows that anyone can make an honest mistake and acting to correct that is the best response. Thank you," wrote Dominique Hoogland, a researcher at King's College London.
Ms Arnold is a widely respected chemical engineer, whose work pioneering "directed evolution" won her the €1m (£0.8m) Millennium Technology Prize in 2016.
She is also on the board of directors for Google's parent company Alphabet.
Wednesday, December 4, 2019
Ruthless science
He Jiankui’s original research, published for the first time, could have failed, scientists say
"Excerpts from the manuscript were released by the MIT Technology Reviewto show how Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui ignored ethical and scientific norms in creating the twins Lula and Nana, whose birth in late 2018 sent shockwaves through the scientific world."
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
Climate change didn't cause the fires bad government policies did.
Jerry Brown Blames Trump, Republicans for California Fires: ‘The Blood Is on Your Soul’
Former California Governor Jerry Brown told Congress on Tuesday that President Donald Trump and the Republican Party were responsible for the ongoing California fires because of their opposition to drastic climate change policies.
“California’s burning while the deniers make a joke out of the standards that protect us all,” Brown told the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday, as quoted by the San Francisco Chronicle. “The blood is on your soul here and I hope you wake up. Because this is not politics, this is life, this is morality. … This is real.”
Brown was testifying against efforts by the Trump administration to rescind California’s waiver that previously allowed it to set its own emissions standards for vehicles — effectively giving the state control of the entire auto industry. The administration argues that California’s policy is actually worse for the environment because higher standards make new cars — which are more energy-efficient than old cars — more difficult for consumers to buy.
The ongoing California wildfires have a variety of causes. The immediate cause of the Getty Fire in Los Angeles, for example, appears to be a tree branch that was blown by high winds into power lines, according to the Los Angeles Times. Critics fault California and its utility companies for spending money on complying with “green” initiatives rather than on burying power lines. Others also cite homeless camps, where past fires have started, and poor forestry management policies that have barred the clearing of brush that can provide fuel for wildfires.
But Brown and other Democrats have identified climate change as the cuplrit, even though there is no scientific evidence to support that claim. In 2015 and in 2017, Brown also blamed climate change for wildfires in California, though scientists disagreed, calling Brown’s arguments an example of “noble-cause corruption.”
California Democrats are facing new criticism at home, as utility companies have begun cutting power to electricity customers in peak fire conditions — a new practice for which the state government seems to have been unprepared.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Photo: file
Sunday, October 20, 2019
'There's no version of incarceration that's human and fair'...the next step in the progressives to building a Mad Max society/Clockwork Orange. The rehabilitation fantasy remains
Rikers Island: Tales from inside New York's notorious jail
GETTY IMAGES
Vidal Guzman was 16 years old when he entered Rikers Island jail for the first time. As he crossed the bridge over to the island, a prison guard told him to "get ready for Gladiator School".
In Vidal's first week, he says, he saw two teenagers hang themselves.
"That shaped my mind," he says. "They say that Rikers is everywhere in some shape or form. Rikers doesn't leave you."
This week New York City Council voted to close Rikers Island jail, which has housed high-profile inmates including Tupac Shakur, Sid Vicious, and Mark David Chapman - the man who killed John Lennon.
Council speaker Corey Johnson described the jail as "a symbol of brutality and inhumanity".
"As a city, we must do everything we can to move away from the failed policies of mass incarceration," he told councillors.
GETTY IMAGES
The detention centre is due to close by 2026 and will be replaced by four new jails under an $8.7bn (£6.7bn) proposal put forward by New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.
'Attack on your soul'
Johnny Perez also first came to Rikers when he was 16 - arrested for gun possession. In and out of jail until he was 21, Johnny was eventually given a 13-year sentence for robbery. He has been incarcerated in nine different prisons across New York state.
Was Rikers the worst? He laughs. "Yeah."
- Obama bans solitary jail for juveniles
- What age should children have a criminal record?
- NY teen jails 'violent and unsafe'
"In Rikers, the officers give you a knife. They'll sell you a razor," he explains. "I've bought drugs from correction officers who've turned around and told me they're going to put me in solitary if my mother doesn't meet them in a parking lot to pay them."
And solitary confinement, he says, is a "second-by-second attack on your soul".
"There's only one person you come into contact with and talk to, and this person is also responsible for locking you in and out of your cage," he says. "If this person doesn't even look you in the eye or talk to you, it kind of chips at you."
THE GUARDIAN
Glenn Martin also first entered Rikers as a 16-year-old when he was charged with shoplifting. Last year, Rikers moved its youngest inmates out following a change in the ending the detention of under-18s in adult jails.
"It's old, dilapidated, rusted," he says. "It was frightening. It was a place where I had to learn quickly. If you allow people to take advantage, you can't live there."
He says he was stabbed four times during his time in Rikers.
"It's a place where you have to choose: predator or prey."
'We all had the same story'
Like 90% of the inmates in Rikers, Vidal, Glenn and Johnny are black or Hispanic. All three are now anti-jail activists.
One of Vidal's early childhood memories is the sound of his mother's stomach grumbling as she gave him her last remaining food.
Speaking of his fellow prisoners, he says: "We all had the same story: a father figure who was incarcerated or wasn't in their life."
When he was five, Vidal was homeless for a year. Not much later he was on the streets, getting involved with gangs. By the age of 12, he was dealing drugs.
VIDAL GUZMAN
Johnny's story is similar. He came to New York from Cuba at 10 months old.
"When I was 16 years old, I wasn't trying to decide if I would go to band camp or karate school - I wasn't even thinking about college," he says. "I'm helping my mother, who is alone, to help feed my brothers."
He says that in his community, which has very little trust in the police, people carry knives or guns as a means of protection. Incarceration becomes inevitable, he says.
He says "there needs to be a deeper understanding of how people come to break the law".
"They're actually reacting to something in their life and usually it's a public health issue," he argues, citing poverty, mental health and food insecurity as major factors.
"If you steal a coat to stay warm, you go to jail for that."
'Everything sends the message that you have no value'
Vidal says when he was released from Rikers, he "didn't know how to come home".
"I was not talking to anyone, waking up early in the morning being really defensive, thinking I would be in a fight," he says.
"If you treat people like an animal, what do you think they are going to act like? An animal."
With a criminal record, he found it impossible to get a job. Within a couple of years he was back in jail.
Glenn says that everything about incarceration "sends the message you have no value. If people treat like you have no value, you start believing other people have no value either. "
GLENN MARTIN
Glenn says that for the last 20 years, the closure of Rikers is all he's thought about.
He says his joy about Rikers' closure is tempered - the devil is in the detail.
"It's one thing to achieve closure but it's equally important what happens next."
His life after incarceration has not been smooth sailing.
In 2014, he set up the advocacy group JustLeadershipUSA, which he left last year amid allegations of sexual misconduct, which he denies.
'There's no version of incarceration that's human and fair'
He believes that incarceration should be abolished altogether, arguing it does not work.
"There's no version of incarceration that's human and fair," he says.
Johnny's reaction to the announcement is similarly restrained - he says he is not popping champagne.
"We are still at a position where people are being incarcerated in New York. People with mental health concerns, people who have committed non-violent crimes - do they truly impose a threat to society?"
GETTY IMAGES
But Johnny also believes that abolition of incarceration cannot happen overnight and the closure of Rikers marks progress - a position that as a black man, he says, is not easy to take.
"But to go from 12 city jails to four - even if we have to build those four - I almost have the responsibility to support that.
"Starting clean is definitely a step in the right direction."
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