As Wall considers whom will replace Gantefoer in finance when his Jan cabinet shuffle comes, some say Chevy, some say McMorris.

A Timely and excellent comment differentiating the activities of scientists and pseudo-scientists expounding about their belief systems. The general population is not adequately trained to be able to make this distinction and the news readers and columnists almost by definition fall into the belief system camp because of their choices in education. As difficult as it may seem, it remains the duty of scientists to patiently explain the scientific method to their friends and acquaintances and to show as often as possible that no matter what your belief system, careful observations made by scientists with proven integrity and reviewed by their peers will always, over time, resolve the conflicts between science and belief.The old saying that any technology that is beyond the understanding of the masses is accepted as magic is even more true today. Very few people understand that the numerical solution of large numbers of non-linear partial differential equations is at best problematic and normally may generate totally false results. It is fun for the mathematicians to try to make enough assumptions to allow somewhat stable outcomes but to bet the world's economy on the outcome is not advisable.
Well spoken Vitruvius, you are clearing the smog of deceit very effectively.

Please don't lose faith in good science. For every scientific whore espousing AGW and lying about the data, there were dozens of good, ethical working scientists and engineers who were trying to right the problem; and who do good scientific work every day. But bad science will be with us always (like the poor), from Canadian mice that don't like cyclamates, to dentists pushing non-amalgam fillings, because they have mercury, to cancer causing cell phones. These scientific whores are at the beck and call of any government, industry, or political ideology that will buy them.

Wow. The G&M has quit even doing ANY stories related to the climate...or if they are, they are hiding them in the online edition.

Harper could go to Copenhagen, and as long as he used the word "climategate" in every single sentence, he could tell them to all flick off, and I don't think that G&M would report it.

Tonight's South Park had my favourite exchange from the show:

Satan: Saddam! .. but I killed you.."

Saddam: Well, you know, where was I gonna go? Detroit?

vit ?

a very pretty little essay..gripping from the first word to the last...balanced and yet lithe...and just deep enough for a common understanding but expressed elegant enough for a lord....rounding up with charity and a wry smile...altogether cheerable...lifted me up it did.....

i am lifting a glass of wine to you...

False priests indeed. Plus useless reporters.

Polar bears eating young due to shrinking sea ice: Scientists

Bill Watkins, a zoologist with Manitoba Conservation, reports he hears about one or two cases of cannibalism a year. He said it's possible more cases have been seen this year because more tourists are on the land, but he also suspects a climate change link.

"We would really need several years of data like this to confirm that something unusual's going on," he said. "While it's very suggestive of an impact of climate change, it's a little early to confirm that definitively."

Read it all at:
http://www.thestar.com/news/sciencetech/environment/article/731873--polar-bears-eating-young-due-to-shrinking-sea-ice-scientists

Posted by: loki at November 26, 2009 9:30 PM

"Sorry for the longwinded programming history note but of all the criticisms that have been leveled at CRU, the one regarding use of GOTO is the most trite. What just occurred to me while examining the CRU code (the amount of which seems surprisingly small) is that the easiest way of understanding this type of FORTRAN code would be to convert it back to a flowchart and then look at the flowchart to sort out what is going on. I'm tempted to write a program to do this as it would be a fun exercise given the essentially unlimited memory and CPU resources I now have available but will first search to see if anyone has done this."

Wow! And I mean that in a good way.

That would be excellent, Loki. Which thread was the entire comment on?

In a Pajamas Media exclusive titled "Climategate: Alarmism Is Underpinned by Fraud", decorated scientist Ian Plimer punches a hole in the climate-Moonies' A-zone. Excerpt:

"In the geological past, there have been six major ice ages. During five of these six ice ages, the atmospheric carbon dioxide content was higher than at present. It is clear that the colorless, odorless, non-poisonous gas called carbon dioxide did not drive past climates. Carbon dioxide is plant food, not a pollutant.

"Humans have adapted to live on ice sheets, deserts, mountains, tropics, and sea level. History shows that humans and other organisms have thrived in warm times and suffered in cold times.

"In the 600-year long Roman Warming, it was 4ºC warmer than now. Sea level did not rise and ice sheets did not disappear. The Dark Ages followed, and starvation, disease, and depopulation occurred. The Medieval Warming followed the Dark Ages, and for 400 years it was 5ºC warmer. Sea level did not rise and the ice sheets remained. The Medieval Warming was followed by the Little Ice Age, which finished in 1850. It is absolutely no surprise that temperature increased after a cold period.

"Unless I have missed something, I am not aware of heavy industry, coal-fired power stations, or SUVs in the 1,000 years of Roman and Medieval Warmings...."

Plimer suggests the beahviour of the CRU "is that of criminals", and adds:

"The same crooks control the IPCC and the fraudulent data in IPCC reports. The same crooks meet in Copenhagen next week and want 0.7% of the Western world’s GDP to pass through an unelected UN government, and then on to sticky fingers in the developing world.

"You should be angry. Very angry."

Read the whole thing.

Tis getting even better:
Who's to blame for Climategate?
The publication of damning emails about climate change could literally change the world. Gordon Rayner reports.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6672875/Whos-to-blame-for-Climategate.html

'Tis getting better and better, justsaying.

James Delingpole, at the Telegraph:

"I've just had a great, very sympathetic interview about Climategate on LBC radio (London’s main commercial news and talk station) with Petrie Hosken. She told me she has been simply inundated with callers, all of them utterly unconvinced that human influence has made any significant on so-called 'Global Warming'. She was desperate to get a few balancing calls from people who do believe in AGW but just couldn’t find any.

"Can you imagine this happening a year ago? Or even a month ago? Until Climategate, we 'Sceptics' were considered freaks – almost as bad as Holocaust deniers – beyond the pale of reasonable balanced discussion. Suddenly we’re the norm. Climategate has finally given us the chance to express openly what many of us secretly felt all along:

"AGW is about raising taxes; increasing state control; about a few canny hucksters who’ve leapt on the bandwagon fleecing us rotten with their taxpayer subsidised windfarms and their carbon-trading; about the sour, anti-capitalist impulses of sandal-wearing vegans and lapsed Communists who loathe the idea of freedom and a functioning market economy.

"We know it’s all a crock and we’re not going to take it.

"This is our Berlin Wall moment! They can’t stop us now!"

Pardon me if I'm a little slow to embrace any on-line document with the words "climate" and "change" that come up when I hit keys "control" and "f." However, your telling of the "tail"that has been wagging this dog in recent days has been wonderful to experience.

I did note that whereas you did say at one point: "So, to be clear," you avoided to more forceful pedantry of the President in saying "Let me be clear." It's a lot like "let them eat cake." Both are pure myth.

Somebody's fixed the polar bear video:

http://www.youtube.com/hippysympathizer#p/u/0/tNfwnJ9I4Xc

On a lighter note....

Anyone else see the Rider flag flying from the Welcome to Alberta sign?

So will Harper grow a pair before he goes to Copenhagen?

Or is he still drinking the Strong kool-aid?

I suppose as always with him, it's neither.

A startling claim...if true this may be a huge climategate story.
Vincent Gray on Climategate: ‘There Was Proof of Fraud All Along’ (PJM Exclusive)
IPCC expert reviewer Gray — whose 1,898 comments critical of the 2007 report were ignored — recently found that proof of the fraud was public for years.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/vincent-gray-on-climategate-there-was-proof-of-fraud-all-along-pjm-exclusive/

Hey Justsaying....

There's no point in reading that Star story, the first sentence says it all.

I quote.."Scientists say shrinking Arctic sea ice may be forcing some polar bears into cannibalizing young cubs."

The KEY word is "MAY" as in may be forcing...

This story was lifted from the back pages of the National Enquirer, right beside the Obama has a gay lover story, just below the aliens control our food supply story, need I go on?

I've been to Suzuki's web site, at least this morning, there was nothing stated about the emails. I have no sympathy for the man. He's a nasty, mean spirited man. I know someone who bumped into in the waiting lounge at Pearson, started talking to him about global warming (and this guy was a Chemist), and Suzuki stormed away. He couldn't believe it!

There is nothing wrong with science, but there is something wrong with the main stream media not reporting on cheating scientists.

William, the National Enquirer has been breaking some actual stories the last couple of years, with actual boots on the ground investigation, before the MSM. Sometimes weeks before.

Which is rather frightening, frankly. I could almost believe a story about Barry hitting for the other team, particularly given his choice of a Klingon as First Lady.

Anyway, I was just over at Slashdot, they posted some blork about the NY Times blog and climate change. The comments and the moderation are just amazing. Climate "deniers" are the new enemy. Wahoo. They're all grabbing up their pitchforks and torches to run the "deniers" out of town.

Forcibly reminded me of why I never post there anymore. The place is infested with idiots.

I don't think anyone even suggested that science, per se, is to blame for any of this nonsense, anymore than the majority of men and women of Holy Orders are to blame for the few guilty of personal sin. Or, for that matter God-fearing people who believe in the phenomena and truth of Faith.
"All good moral philosophy is but a handmaid to religion." Francis Bacon.

the first order from one world government

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20091127/trinidad_091127/20091127?hub=TopStoriesV2

Speaking of reporting stuff...

I did a Craigslist post in my city under "politics" called "Follow The Money". It was real matter of fact and simple. Posted a link to a website detailing how Goldman Sachs is invested in carbon trading and what have you. All fact.

Somebody flagged it of course. What a cesspool of humanity. But then you knew that ;)

Again, many thanks to SDA for getting truth out there.

Devo, Craigslist is great for some things but when it comes to politics, I'm convinced it's an alternative hang-out for DailyKos & CBCNews hatemongers when they want to relax!

Email Wall and tell him to appoint me finance minister. Me and my big black felt marker.

I just read the comments following Gore's interview on the Canada AM site. The comments were nearly all anti-Gore. Did you guys all go over there or (hope, hope) is that the general sentiment of their audience?

Are you sure you could take the heat, Kate? /sarc.

Ah hoo hoo ha ha ha...

Vitruvius, a thoughtful assessment of the situation.

larben, agreed. It is not the science, but the pimps that are prostituting it.

Point Of Law

[ HH: Is it fair to say, Mark Steyn, that everything that the tobacco companies were ever accused of doing with data about cigarettes is now true about the CRU and its global warming data?

MS: Yeah, that's absolutely, that is actually a good way to put it. I mean, I think this idea...they've corrupted the very essence of science. They've corrupted peer review, they've had editors from journals fired who disagree with them, they've corrupted the data. They basically are the antithesis of science. They decide the result, and then figure out how you need to set up the computer model to get the result. This is disgraceful.]

Showin' showin' showin'
Keep those emails showin'
Keep those emails showin'
the hiiiide....

James Lewis' "Climategate: It's the Totalitarianism, Stupid":

"The global warming fraud is simply machine politics on the international level. Mark Steyn has coined the word 'tranzi' for the transnational left that runs the UN, the European Union, most European capitals, and both left coasts of the United States. Tranzis are the political machine of our time.

"The good news is that 'anthropogenic global warming' — the most costly and widespread scientific fraud in history — just crumbled to fairy dust. We have emails from some of the biggest malefactors to prove it...."

You probably know there's a facebook page "small dead animals".

"Devo, Craigslist is great for some things but when it comes to politics, I'm convinced it's an alternative hang-out for DailyKos & CBCNews hatemongers when they want to relax!"

Hey Robert, I had give it the old college try ya know.

"Like other frauds and bubbles documented therein, this one is now bursting due to the inadequacies of its own undergirding."

These people are getting better at building bubbles though and the press isn't giving both side of the story when the bubble builders get caught red handed. Eventually they'll put a cardboard box on the table and call it a bubble, the press will say it's the greatest bubble ever built. People will be to scared to point out otherwise.

It's like the Emperor Has No Clothes. Except instead of everybody agreeing with the boy who points it out, they beat him to death. The nest time the Emperor goes for a stroll everybody stays quiet.

It's more "Brave New World" than "1984".

Great essay Vit. Reminds me of other similar stampedes of Lemmings facilitated by the MSM. Remember the 1990's and gun control? Cost us $2 Billion for something the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention studied and found useless in preventing crime. The Ozone hole? The great Millennium computer crash? The small public company I worked for spent near $1 million upgrading computers to deal with that fraud.
I hope my grandchildren survive to laugh about all this in History class.

.
.
Quite, and, 'tis true. Well said, V.

You see, the mere simplicity of it all is very clear, very succinct.

Everybody should agree that global warming, cooling, or climate change, are chaotic physical phenomena. Therefore, the significance of such phenomena has everything to do with the time-span of the observations.

And with varying degrees of consequence there will ALWAYS be global warming and cooling. There will ALWAYS be climate-change. As it was in the past, so it is now, and forever it shall be.

What is more, computer models, predictions, or distant forecasting are useless with respect to chaotic events. There will always be greater maximum and lesser minimum temperatures. There will always be stronger storms and higher floods.

Why does an engineer use double-exponential distributions (statistics of extremes) when she designs a new big bridge? Because winds and floods are chaotic, and she must design according what might be expected to occur in say 50 or 100 years. The statistics of chaotic and random events are very different.

In time there will be worse alarmists than the Goracle or the Scarezuki. There will be weaker, misfit, alleged Presidents.

There will even be greater writers and minds than Steyn -- that is, if the Creator extends his patience with mankind.

In the meantime here's yet another morsel of naked naiveté from out-West somewhere...

"A climate of denial" by BRIONY PENN, earlier known as Lady Godiva. Now, known as some sort of greeny, lefty, eco-peeker.

She says...

"Are Canadians cooling on global warming? Yes, but it’s not entirely blameable on the cold winters we’ve had for the last two years."

Read the rest at focusonline.ca before they pull it. In any case, it's good for a laugh or two.

All the calculations and reading and thinking about global-warming over the last 20 years, now, the evidence of blatant fraud, make me recall...

"He who stick head in oven, come out with baked bean"
.
.

Great perspective. Be good to get back to open, transparent, and healthy science. The net now allows all scientific data to be posted online - be a great resource and help prevent this sort of thing going on. He who controls the information controls the populace.

Thanks for the commentary, Vit.

A refreshing breeze.

HoadleyBob wrote: "The general population is not adequately trained to be able to make this distinction"

What's more ironic is that the MSM now has the ability (via sophisticated computer graphics made by *real* scientists) to promote and communicate the understanding of technology.

What happened instead? A scare campaign of (literally) worldwide proportions.

The Phantom wrote: Anyway, I was just over at Slashdot...

I've got that page in a tab waiting for a look. I expect more of the same down-modding of comments that question AGW.

Slashdot's got a pretty impressive moderation system (I used to moderate there and gave up*), but I have to wonder if it's tilted by either the owners or a self-installed group.

PiperPaul

* my UID is relatively low, have "Excellent Karma", but anything I've ever posted on global warming has been modded into oblivion. Any time I got mod points the subject was inevitably something not relevant to me.

Its not the science that is the problem here it is the inherent desire of man to know the future. It doesn't matter if it is the soothe sayer examining the chicken entrails or the scientist looking at the tree rings or even the religious preacher expounding on what he sees as forthcoming disaster. The fact remains that the future is not ours until we get there. Until then it all talk of future is idle speculation. Until we get there we have no idea if the Titanic we have built is truly unsinkable.

Long ago in a far away land a Wise Man once said, "Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come, and shall deceive many. And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.... Indeed many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many".

Could this be 3 SDA posts in a row from me?

Crap, I'm nearing 50, maybe I'm getting forgetful.

After checking out many of the +5 rated posts at Slashdot I realized that, to a large extent, I'm reading the thoughts of much younger people and people whose major interactions with the real world may actually be heavily influenced by computers.

I'll just go get my cane and hobble out of here now.

Are the conservatives about to sign on at Copenhagen? I hope not because it's like your dog turning on you. After raising up that pup from reform roots to a full grown trustworthy party, it would sure hurt to have to put it down. Signing anything at all would be a unfortunate turn of event's for Mr. Harper's government. As a conservative I should be sure of what he will do... but I'm not.

From Dennis at November 26, 2009 10:50 AM from a different post

"...there is a long way between raw weather records that were made for immediate use in understanding weather and turning that into a climate quality data set. Stations move, the instruments change, the time at which the measurements are taken, cities grow, trees grow etc. All of these things can create false trends. Therefore everyone needs to homogenise the data before you can trust it for climate trends. Unfortunately we can't go back to the 19th Century to do it properly, and so we have to make do the best we can. - gavin]"

Weather data is used to forecast (predict) short term weather. It calculates the highs, lows precipitation etc based on (IIRC) 2 snapshots, 12 hours apart, a day ... worldwide, synchronized to GMT. As such, I would think it rare that any station would be submitting the actual High, low, etc - this some of the "raw" data (for example Saskatchewan stations might be submitting at 6am and 6pm local time).

So the guy sitting in Australia's outback would check his station twice a day - he was not expected to continuously monitor the station for a high/low (and who would know what it was except him?). At some point the station was upgraded to continuous sensors - not all stations worldwide were upgraded at the same time, I suspect years difference. And sensors fail. None of this is a problem for weather forecasting - there is a massive problem using the raw data for climate forecasting.

For historical climate data, they have to manufacture every piece of it. It's like using info that you gained from setting up an outhouse to build a skyscraper. There is no baby in this bathwater. Guesstimates based on guesstimates based on guesstimates ...

I do believe that when they (the group of "Team") started out, they were true scientists.

Al Gore is running again !! From an angry mob.

From a Chicago bookstore, down the back alley.

Fleeing, while trying to promote his latest book.

Titled 'A Plan To Solve The Climate Crisis'

A crisis alright - brought on by Big Al conning the world into drinking the climategate koolaide.

Re: "Carbon dioxide is plant food, not a pollutant."

Wait a minute. Does that mean the rationale for cutting carbon dioxide is to hinder plant life and thus cause food problems for humanity? It would fit in with the extreme left agenda, which is to control the world, or failing that, to eliminate the human race.

Just wondering ...

More on Climategate:

http://townhall.com/columnists/PaulDriessen/2009/11/28/cleaning_out_the_climate_science_cesspool

EBD my original post was in: http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/012740.html#comments

PiperPaul: After I got all enthusiastic about writing a program to convert source code to flowcharts I first binged it (boycotting google now) and found lots of programs out there which do just that to facilitate reverse-engineering. Haven't found a program yet that is open source, but the most expensive was $100. Unfortunately any software project that I start on that my wife knows about has to first deal with her "have you searched the internet to find out if someone's written a program to do what you're planning on doing". My excuse that it takes me less time to write a program than to figure out the documentation doesn't seem to hold much weight anymore.

Anyway, that may not be necessary for us to start tearing the code apart in detail as programming heavyweights such a Eric Raymond have started analyzing the code. Eric Raymond is the libertarian open source advocate who is the author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Eric's blog is at: . One great quote from a recent post:

We know, from experience with software, that secrecy is the enemy of quality — that software bugs, like cockroaches, shun light and flourish in darkness. So, too. with mistakes in the interpretation of scientific data; neither deliberate fraud nor inadvertent error can long survive the skeptical scrutiny of millions. The same remedy we have found in the open-source community applies – unsurprisingly, since we learned it from science in the first place. Abolish the secrecy, let in the sunlight.

Thanks loki. I'm definitely not in your class (I'm not being sarcastic) but I at least try to comment in my "hand-written" HTML. Yeah, I know it's not *real* coding, but I can pretend.

"secrecy is the enemy of quality". That's a great statement, and true.

Harry: "[Suzuki's] a nasty, mean spirited man."

On top of which he's a lousy scientist.

From a reliable source who knew one of Suzuki's summer assistants years and years ago, the "great doctor" apparently simply disregarded experimental data which didn't support his hypotheses.

Is anyone surprised? This TV-tyrant is a snake oil salesman par excellence who has pulled the wool over the public's eyes for decades. He's not about to see his easy wealth and decadent lifestyle slip away without a (dirty) fight.

Yesterday I was watching an episode of The Ascent of Man. Bronowski was cautioning that science should never become a tool of politics or a closed association of the elite. He revealed his disgust of trendy pseudosciences and western cultural decay/cowardice. A very perceptive man who accurately predicted the direction of both science and western culture. In the AGW "science", his worst fears about politics and western culture have been realized

Of course not all scientists should be discredited because of a few bad apples but they will be. Too few scientists spoke out when they should have, too few are speaking out now.

Posted a link to a website detailing how Goldman Sachs is invested in carbon trading and what have you. All fact.

'Climategate' is what you get when big money co-opts a cause for its own profit. Hopefully it will be enough to derail Copenhagen, but don't count on it.

Those who say carbon trading was a scheme to divert money from the first world to the third world are badly mistaken. This was never in the cards. The transfer of wealth was to be from first world middle class, what's left of it anyway, to the global elites. Do you really think the 4 or 5 billion people living in abject poverty were to see a single red cent from this?

And you don't need carbon trading for this transfer of wealth to take place, it already happens. Goldman Sachs will pay 23$ billion in year end bonuses. Your bailout dollars at work. This is a country were 40 million people are so poor, they need food stamps to eat. Where countless millions lost their jobs and their homes. With an allegedly 'socialist' administration.

What have those 'bankers' don to deserve 23 billion? Nothing. None of them grew any food, built anything, fixed anything, or invented anything. Parasites, every last one of them.

And don't give me that pap about 'the top 1% pay 40% of the income tax'. I call bullshit. If scientists can fudge climate data, the wealthy elites can pay others to fudge economic data.

Sorry for the Chinese Water Torture, but it should not be forgotten that the Judeo-Christian faith, despite its many foibles, including excommunication of Galileo, has more often than not been the Gatekeeper of Western Culture.

'Cut off the cultus (system of religious worship) and you have no culture: Eeba dee, eeba dee, that's all folks.

Well said Vit, but..but. A tool is nothing but a dumb Tool!

The elitist blatant denial, of some, provides an insight into the future role of science.

Copenhagen will act as a turd Comb Filter, separating stake holders into camps of science/politics/gangsters/sales (MSM),...

The world wide Carbon WAR is next... all about nothing.

Since this whole climategate broke out , I have delighted in debated with devote AGWers only to discover that their main premise for believing this lie is the "melting ice caps" one women had lived in her home for over 50 years and had taken pics of the ice covered mountains near her home every year - 50 years worth of photos and yes they show that the glacier has melted significantly - to her this all the proof she needs, seems others are believers due to melting ice caps around the world as well. My response is a simple one: these people are believing this ice should not be melting because it has been there for thousands and thousands, if not millions, of years. Well therein lies another lie. Evolution has the world believing that the earth is billions of years old and only changes at turtle speed. The fact is - we do not know how long the ice has been there to begin with. According to Suzuki and others, there use to be a huge waterfall in the great lakes that was above water and is now under water - apparently this change took place only a few hundred years ago, yet we are suckered into believing that the ice caps have been there since the last ice age. I say bullshit. Look how the tsunami of 2004 changed the topography and geography of Indonesia and Sri Lanka in day. Seems few even consider this melting is normal and the evolutionists are wrong - the earth is not billions of years old. There starting point is a false one, so all information or conclusions based on thes false assumptions are going to be wrong.

Nice post, Vitruvius. I like the reference to Charles Mackay and his deservedly famous work, "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds".

A commonly referenced quote from that book is: "Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."

With regard to AGW and the politics thereof, they (we) have surely gone mad as a herd, but we are now moving into sense recovery mode. It is happening slowly, as Mackay said, but the momentum is now becoming discernible.

India is now Canada’s most crucial/important ally in Asia.

India is a bulwark in the war against Islam.

This deal is crucial to Saskatchewan* and for Canada.
…-

“Canada, India ink nuclear deal

“Ottawa and Delhi have concluded negotiations on a deal allowing Canadian companies to resume sales of uranium and nuclear technology to India for the first time since it used Canada’s technology to develop warheads 35 years ago.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whose minority government is eagerly courting Indo-Canadian voters and India’s nuclear industry market, made the announcement today while at a Commonwealth leaders’ summit in Port of Spain, Trinidad.

“This agreement is a testimony to the undeniable potential that Canada and India can offer each other and the world,” Mr. Harper said in a statement after meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canada-india-ink-nuclear-deal/article1381488/
…-

*Saskatchewan:

“Uranium

A significant portion of the world’s known uranium resources are located in Saskatchewan. Uranium deposits in Saskatchewan’s are large, contain high-grade ore and can be extracted at production costs below those in many other parts of the world. Saskatchewan’s uranium resources are sufficient for more than 40 years at current rates of production.”

http://www.ir.gov.sk.ca/Default.aspx?DN=3564,3541,3538,3385,2936,Documents

LC Bennett mentioned: "The Ascent of Man. Bronowski".

But, Darwin's opus magnum is:

"Descent of Man [ 1871 ]
Charles Darwin [ 1809 - 1882 ]

Chapter VII - On the Races of Man"
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/charles_darwin/descent_of_man/chapter_07.html

Now, in 2009, appears the descent of Mann.

Evolution in process.

Today, Mark Steyn touched upon something that I also thought about yesterday. Here's Steyn's analysis: http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NWI1MDg3ODM4OWU2MDE4MGI2NGU3MWYzNDcxN2RmMjE=

He refers to an op-ed by Michael Gershon in the WaPo. I guffawed when Gershon wrote this:

"[Journalism is] a profession -- the journalistic tradition of nonpartisan objectivity. Journalists, God knows, didn't always live up to that tradition. But they generally accepted it, and they felt shamed when their biases or inaccuracies were exposed. The profession had rules about facts and sources and editors who enforced standards."

He then goes on to smear Cable TV News channels and blogs, like this one. BUT he REFUSES to acknowledge what a HORRENDOUS job the print MSM, especially the WaPo and NYTimes have been doing.

I wonder how a psychologist would describe this denial?

Very nice comments, vitruvius. My own view is that another term for this endless dyad is the conflict between ideology and reality. I'll maintain that this dyad is part of our essential psychological make-up and thus, we'll never move fully into either realm. But, it's quite the battle between these two.

The ideological realm is the imaginary. We humans are unique in having an imagination that we can actually visualize and articulate. We can 'picture' what it would be like if we did such and such. Therefore, unlike any other species, we don't need to wait around for the biological appearance of wings; we invent cars and airplanes. Thus, we are uniquely adaptive by virtue of our imagination.

Alas, the downfall of our imagination lies in its very essence; this mode exists..but only in the imagination. And some of us make the error of thinking that it COULD exist in reality. If only we did this and that, then, we'd actually grow biological wings. The 'this and that' is usually some strategy of material purification, i.e., changing the real matter of which we are formed, and purifying it to achieve our idealistic goal.

Politically, we are very involved in the imaginary world, which we define as 'in the future' and which some call utopian. The thing about utopians, whether they be the leftists in the US Democratic Party or the Liberal/NDP/Bloc in Canada or the European Union or the Communists or the Fascists...is that all of them are focused on the imaginary realm. Not the real world. They seem to find a great deal to despise in the real world. And in real people.

And, to get to this utopian imaginary world, they've got to mash up and beat up and pound down...real material things. Real people. Real events. So, utopian realms are always filled with hubris, with tales of future glory and yet, are authoritarian and anti-democratic.

The other thing about the imaginary realm in the political scenario is that rarely, do 'real people' actually vote them in as their utopian selves. The EU government is not a result of any vote of real people. The Liberal/NDP/Bloc Coalition and its attempted takeover of Canada was deliberately done to prevent any election or 'tainting' by real people.
Even Obama's election, though a valid election, was a fraud because he wasn't presented as a utopian but as someone based in reality.

The real world operates in the complex networked realm of individual and discrete material things: individual people, local environments, local resources...finite, discrete yet interconnected, yet biologically adaptive and with no 'end state' of purity or utopia. This is the world, or should be, the world of science. It's accountable; it has to be, because it has no imagination.

The thing is, we need both worlds. Only humans can articulate and be empowered by the imaginary world, but we must acknowledge that it has to be restrained and indeed, must respect, the real world.

John Sobieski and Charles Martel were the gate keepers of civilization or we all would be wearing robes.

Europe is first . We are next.

http://www.muslimmafia.com/

It's not that I disagree with you, Vito, quite the contrary. But I wonder if there isn't a very serious problem revealed here? Society has long recognized the value of science, and has agreed to spend substantial amounts of money on science - and the money, and the institutions, which we have been at such pains to dedicate to science, have effortlessly been appropriated and turned to non-scientific and anti-scientific purposes. And no whistles blown, and no consequences when the truth comes out. Shouldn't we be gravely concerned? Can science survive if the resources we devote to it are used against it?

Thomas Woods is the author of the superb Meltdown.
Mises article: Thomas Woods: The Forgotten Depression of 1920

SYNOPSIS:
President Harding cut the budget nearly in half between 1920 and 1922. Tax rates were slashed for all income groups. The national debt was reduced by one-third. .

MND comment:
The piece contains an excellent description of Austrian business cycle theory and explains how the artificial Fed expansion of bank credit distorts the capital structure causing a cluster of errors (technical term: clusterf**k) among entrepreneurs who acted upon false signals about the availability of REAL savings.

an early hoax. not as dangerous as the AGW hoax.but guaranteed to get you into hot water.

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/Hoaxipedia/A_Neglected_Anniversary/

The Forgotten Depression of 1920 by Thomas Woods
(Woods is the author of the superb Meltdown.)

LINK: http://tiny.cc/TPJAi

SYNOPSIS:
President Harding cut the budget nearly in half between 1920 and 1922. Tax rates were slashed for all income groups. The national debt was reduced by one-third.

MND comment:
The piece contains an excellent description of Austrian business cycle theory and explains how the artificial Fed expansion of bank credit distorts the capital structure causing a cluster of errors (technical term: clusterf**k) among entrepreneurs who acted upon false signals about the availability of REAL savings. The "Austrians" believe that the regular occurence of booms and busts are NOT, pace almost everyone else, a feature of free market capitalism -- that capitalism is NOT "inherently unstable".

The science is never bad. but sometimes the theories or equations are a inaccurate.

for example.
The precession of Mercury is 5600 arc seconds per century. Newtonian mechanics, taking into account all the effects from the other planets, predicts a precession of 5557 seconds of arc per century.[77] In the early 20th century, Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity provided the explanation for the observed precession. The effect is very small: the Mercurian relativistic perihelion advance excess is just 42.98 arcseconds per century, therefore it requires a little over twelve million orbits for a full excess turn.

It took a better theory to predict this. however, the scientists did go down several wrong paths such as looking for an inner planet and obstructions . what they didnt do at the time was fudge the data and say that the orbit was not showing procession.

ah jeez the old scotch and soda tune. lemme tell you about the 1st time I heard it. true story.

it was 1970, I was living at a farmhouse cum church cum hippy commune(for some). one of the regulars with contacts in the music business came up with the idea of a free concert to close out the summer.

quick version: we had our free concert, an unsurpassed success (you could tell by the amount of litter on the front lawn !!! LOL !!!). so the next night we all got drunk to celebrate. I got the idea to call the local radio station in the late hours to thank them for the free promotion ads they did for us and made a request for 'Mississippi Queen' by Mountain:
3w.youtube.com/watch?v=qFhM1XZsh6o

in a drunken state that is.

the d.j. came on soon after suggesting a more apropos tune, thus I heard the Kingston Trio's ode to alcohol for the 1st time whilst intoxinated.

to cap it off next day a couple more of the regulars chided me about being drunk on live radio but congratulated me for my thoughtfulness.

it all happened summer of 1970.

Speaking as an engineer who imagines making changes to the real world and who then designs and implements said changes, in order to effect his imagination, I would have to agree that imagination and reality are both good ideas, ET. Nevertheless, when it comes to the matter of science in and of itself: we are talking about an epistemological methodology. So if one hears someone say something like, "the science was bad", then (unless they are actually arguing that discovering the truth is bad) they are not speaking well. What they should be saying is that the work wasn't good science, or in extreme cases such as this one, that the promulgators of the fraud weren't actually doing science at all.

In that sense, EBT, science doesn't care whether or not we are doing it; as an epistemological methodology science survives whether or not homo sapiens does. But more importantly, perhaps, you are I think overgeneralizing when you apply the malfeasance of a particular group of people who were fraudulently claiming to be doing science to the many people and organizations who actually are properly doing proper science. Remember, what you read in the media and in blog comments is only marginally related to the truth.

Should we be gravely concerned, EBT asks? In my opinion, if you like being gravely concerned (and I must admit that before the blogosphere I had no idea that so many people like being gravely concerned so much) then I'd say go for it. Otherwise I wouldn't worry about it too much because (1) there's nothing much you can do about anyway, other than pandering to populist demagoguery, which is just as bad, (2) it will all change to something else soon enough anyway, it always does, and (3) you've probably got better things to do (unless of course you're one of those people who gets their jollies by sitting around getting angry in blog comments all day, in which case, hey man, have fun).