Another Missing Plane

According to early reports: An Air Asia plane travelling from Surabaya, Indonesia to Singapore has lost contact with air traffic control, Indonesia’s Metro TV reported on Sunday.
Reuters: … the plane had asked for an unusual route before it lost contact.
More info: Airline Reporter
#QZ8501 Twitter feed.
Update.

The Sound Of Settled Science

Opening shots in the War on Antibiotics?

I therefore read with interest and anticipation a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine with the title “Microbiota, Antibiotics, and Obesity.” The connection of antibiotics with obesity had not previously occurred to me; perhaps the real reason why so many people now have the appearance of beached whales was about to be revealed to me.
The Danish authors of the article start by telling us that the worldwide problem of growing obesity is more complex than commonly assumed, and that “dietary and genetic factors have but partial roles in the development of obesity.” But how partial is partial?

What Would We Do Without Peer Review?

Inside Philanthropy;

Since editor and physician Ivan Oransky and science writer Adam Marcus launched Retraction Watch in 2010, the blog cataloging retracted articles in science journals has drawn a lot of attention, and had more fodder than it can keep up with.
Now, thanks to a two-year grant from the MacArthur Foundation, Retraction Watch is going to expand from a scrappy watchdog to a full-fledged monitoring program that will catalog nearly all retractions issued by major journals in a database, and do deeper analysis of the root causes.

Related! Implausible Results from the Use of Invalid Methods

Skepticism

Yet another IT pro expresses doubt about the whole “Nork’s did it” narrative.
Sony has a pretty bad reputation for lax security in their systems and a long history of cracks. Add to that 5000 layoffs ending March, 2015 and you have the recipe for an internal breach.
I never bought that the Nork’s did it, and especially cast doubt when the FBI trotted it out. You know the same FBI that totally investigated the IRS.
The only question I have remaining is why the FBI (read: the political class) would want to false-flag the crack.

We Don’t Need No …

Bjorn Lomborg;

With the completion of the latest report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we can now see that this narrative is mostly wrong. The first installment of the IPCC report showed that there is indeed a climate problem – emissions of greenhouse gases, especially CO₂, lead to higher temperatures, which will eventually become a net problem for the world. This result was highly publicized.
But the report also showed that global warming has dramatically slowed or entirely stopped in the last decade and a half. Almost all climate models are running far too hot, meaning that the real challenge of global warming has been exaggerated. Germany and other governments called for the reference to the slowdown to be deleted.
The second IPCC installment showed that the temperature rise that we are expected to see sometime around 2055-2080 will create a net cost of 0.2-2% of GDP – the equivalent of less than one year of recession. So, while the IPCC clearly establishes that global warming is a problem, the cost is obviously much less than that of the twentieth century’s two world wars and the Great Depression.
Again, not surprisingly, politicians tried to have this finding deleted.

The Sound Of Settled Science

WUWT;

Mike Wallace is a hydrologist with nearly 30 years’ experience, who is now working on his Ph.D. in nanogeosciences at the University of New Mexico. In the course of his studies, he uncovered a startling data omission that he told me: “eclipses even the so-called climategate event.” Feely’s work is based on computer models that don’t line up with real-world data — which Feely acknowledged in email communications with Wallace (which I have read). And, as Wallace determined, there is real world data. Feely, and his coauthor Dr. Christopher L. Sabine, PMEL Director, omitted 80 years of data, which incorporate more than 2 million records of ocean pH levels.
Feely’s chart, first mentioned, begins in 1988 — which is surprising as instrumental ocean pH data has been measured for more than 100 years since the invention of the glass electrode pH (GEPH) meter. As a hydrologist, Wallace was aware of GEPH’s history and found it odd that the Feely/Sabine work omitted it. He went to the source. The NOAA paper with the chart beginning in 1850 lists Dave Bard, with Pew Charitable Trust, as the contact.
Wallace sent Bard an email: “I’m looking in fact for the source references for the red curve in their plot which was labeled ‘Historical & Projected pH & Dissolved Co2.’ This plot is at the top of the second page. It covers the period of my interest.” Bard responded and suggested that Wallace communicate with Feely and Sabine–which he did over a period of several months. Wallace asked again for the “time series data (NOT MODELING) of ocean pH for 20th century.” Sabine responded by saying that it was inappropriate for Wallace to question their “motives or quality of our science,” adding that if he continued in this manner, “you will not last long in your career.”

Emphasis mine. I’ll leave it to you to guess how it ends. (h/t TimR)

Reader Tips

Earlier today in the comments SDA reader kcdist linked to a touching personal video that nicely embodies the underlying spirit of Christmas. As commenter Ken (Kulak) put it,

Good for you and the others. Love is a major part of the Christmas celebration.

Yes it is. So gather the family ’round to watch Carmen’s generosity being repaid in kind.
Beauty.
Merry Christmas everyone!

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