Grab a beverage.
Climate etc.- How we know that the sun changes climate (II). The present
The IPCC is ignoring a large body of evidence that the Sun affects climate in ways that cannot be explained by these energy changes alone. We have space to review only a few of these unexplained effects. Let’s start with the surface.
As Terence Corcoran notes, it’s no longer debatable that the productivity of the Canadian economy has taken a beating recently. The problem is that most analysts seem to believe that the problems arose from too little government oversight over the economy, not too much.
Faced with the medical pandemic, Ottawa ordered unprecedented social and economic closures to “flatten the curve” of contagion. To offset the inevitable economic decline, government spending soared and the Bank of Canada unleashed a major monetary expansion, claiming at the time that it could do so with minimal inflationary disruption. The Bank was wrong.
In Road to Freedom, Stiglitz argues that post-pandemic shortages, inflation and unemployment were the product of free-market failure rather than state interventions and bungled monetary policy. When COVID struck, everyone turned to the government to save the economy “and it worked remarkably well.” Therefore, he says, we need more government. “It wasn’t a one-time thing,” he claims. “As the world faces the existential crisis of climate change, there is no alternative but government action.”
What could possibly go wrong?
Reason- The Case of the AI-Generated Giant Rat Penis
An illustration featuring a rat with a cross section of a giant penis set off a firestorm of criticism about the use of generative artificial intelligence based on large language models (LLMs) in scientific publishing.
What if you put your hand in a particle accelerator?
SDA been sayin’.
Nature- Scientists tried to give people COVID — and failed
The first participants got the same tiny dose of the ‘ancestral’ SARS-CoV-2 strain as did those in the first trial. When nobody developed a sustained infection, the researchers increased the dose by more and more in subsequent groups of participants, until they reached a level 10,000 times the initial dose. A few volunteers developed short-lived infections, but these quickly vanished.
The Lancet Publishes CDC Studies on Misinformation, Hoping You Forgot The Lancet and CDC Spread Pandemic Misinformation
New York Post- Bisexual and lesbian women die younger: study
A study from the Pilgrim Health Care Institute found that bisexual women die 37% younger than heterosexual women and that lesbian women die 20% sooner. Scientists say this is likely due to the toxic social stigmas these women face about their sexuality.
National Post- Ontario resident who wants both a vagina and penis wins public funding for unique surgery
Ontario has been ordered to pay for unique surgery for a resident who is seeking to have a vagina constructed while leaving their penis intact.
Denying the procedure would infringe on the person’s Charter-protected right to security of the person, an Ontario court said in its ruling.
Article contentThe unanimous decision by a three-member panel of judges of Ontario’s Divisional Court could expand access to “bottom surgery” for people who identify as non-binary, meaning neither fully male nor fully female.
Daily Sceptic- Prostate Cancer Screening Doing “More Harm Than Good”, Study Finds
The largest study to date investigating the PSA (Prostate-specific antigen) blood test, which is used as a screening tool in some European countries, found it had a small impact on reducing deaths, but also led to a worrying level of over-diagnosis.
The results of the trial show that an estimated one in six cancers found by the single PSA screening were over-diagnosed leading to unnecessary treatment of tumours that would not have caused any harm in someone’s lifetime.
“However, this research highlights that a PSA test for early detection can do more harm than good – it’s simply not accurate enough and can lead to some men having tests and treatment that they don’t need.”
Surely, no one meant this literally: Can a Butterfly in Brazil Really Cause a Tornado in Texas?
Almost everyone has heard the claim that a butterfly can flap its wings in one part of the world and cause a chain reaction of events that ultimately results in a major event on the other side of the world. For example, a butterfly wing flap in Brazil could cause a tornado in Texas. Indeed, this concept has permeated popular society. . .
In academia, the concept of the butterfly effect apparently first appeared in an article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society by J. Smagorinsky in 1969, but the specific question “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” was introduced by Ed Lorenz at the 1972 Meeting of AAAS Section on Environmental Sciences.
Good Lord, it seems some do.
. . . existing numerical models cannot accommodate a disturbance as small as the flap of a butterfly’s wing, meaning we cannot accurately predict the resulting weather phenomena using numerical models.
But despite the lack of scientific evidence supporting the idea that a butterfly wing flap could create a tornado in Brazil, the prevailing opinion, even among many in the atmospheric science community, continues to be that it is, indeed, possible.
The nation’s first outdoor test to limit global warming by increasing cloud cover launched Tuesday from the deck of a decommissioned aircraft carrier in the San Francisco Bay.
The experiment, which organizers didn’t widely announce to avoid public backlash, marks the acceleration of a contentious field of research known as solar radiation modification. The concept involves shooting substances such as aerosols into the sky to reflect sunlight away from the Earth.
The move led by researchers at the University of Washington has renewed questions about how to effectively and ethically study promising climate technologies that could also harm communities and ecosystems in unexpected ways. The experiment is spraying microscopic salt particles into the air, and the secrecy surrounding its timing caught even some experts off guard.
“Since this experiment was kept under wraps until the test started, we are eager to see how public engagement is being planned and who will be involved,” said Shuchi Talati, the executive director of the Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering, a nonprofit that seeks to include developing countries in decisions about solar modification, also known as geoengineering.
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days: Another surprising discovery made inside the Lovelock cave was a handprint embedded in the rock face that measured twice the size of an average human palm.
Surprisingly, they found that in human-modified habitats, animal activity actually increased with human activity, by around 25 percent.
After 15 years of deliberation, a team of scientists made the case that humankind has so fundamentally altered the natural world that a new phase of Earth’s existence—a new epoch—has already begun.
Soaring greenhouse gases, the spread of microplastics, decimation of other species, and fallout from nuclear tests—all were submitted as evidence that the world entered the Anthropocene, or era of humans, in the mid-20th century.
But the proposal was rejected in a contentious vote that has been upheld by the International Union of Geological Sciences, the field’s governing body said in a statement published on its website on Thursday.
The decision “to reject the proposal for an Anthropocene Epoch as a formal unit of the Geologic Time Scale is approved”, it said.
The only thing funnier than losing the vote is the notion that it could be determined by vote.
Joseph Varon- (facebook link) Finally, after 4 years, The Lancet just published a paper that confirmed what we were doing 4 years ago, and many of our colleagues thought we were crazy! Our treatment modality saved many lives. Patients come first, politics last!
“Psychological researchers in Finland have created an assessment to help measure an individual’s commitment to principles of social justice and made some surprising findings across the Finnish population — including a negative correlation between progressive ideals and levels of happiness.”
“Their findings, published in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, suggest other Western nations may see similar patterns among their socially conscious citizens.”
What a COVID-19 Food Fight Says About Scientific Discourse
I first wrote a version of this post almost three years ago when I learned that I was blocked on Twitter by some prominent virologists soon after I called for an independent investigation of COVID-19 origins. Since then, I have observed public discussions of COVID-19 origins among virologists continue to devolve into ever-greater depths of name calling, juvenile insults, and more troublingly, efforts to damage careers and reputations.
Of course, I’ve seen this all before up close and personal in public discussions of climate, and as you might guess, I have some thoughts.