The Sound Of Settled Science

Unsettled Science 29 Comments

Nature;

When a team of cosmologists announced at a press conference in March that they had detected gravitational waves generated in the first instants after the Big Bang, the origins of the Universe were once again major news. The reported discovery created a worldwide sensation in the scientific community, the media and the public at large. […] Now, serious flaws in the analysis have been revealed that transform the sure detection into no detection. The search for gravitational waves must begin anew. The problem is that other effects, including light scattering from dust and the synchrotron radiation generated by electrons moving around galactic magnetic fields within our own Galaxy, can also produce these twists.
[…]
The BICEP2 incident has also revealed a truth about inflationary theory. The common view is that it is a highly predictive theory. If that was the case and the detection of gravitational waves was the ‘smoking gun’ proof of inflation, one would think that non-detection means that the theory fails. Such is the nature of normal science. Yet some proponents of inflation who celebrated the BICEP2 announcement already insist that the theory is equally valid whether or not gravitational waves are detected. How is this possible?
The answer given by proponents is alarming: the inflationary paradigm is so flexible that it is immune to experimental and observational tests. First, inflation is driven by a hypothetical scalar field, the inflaton, which has properties that can be adjusted to produce effectively any outcome. Second, inflation does not end with a universe with uniform properties, but almost inevitably leads to a multiverse with an infinite number of bubbles, in which the cosmic and physical properties vary from bubble to bubble. The part of the multiverse that we observe corresponds to a piece of just one such bubble. Scanning over all possible bubbles in the multi­verse, every­thing that can physically happen does happen an infinite number of times. No experiment can rule out a theory that allows for all possible outcomes. Hence, the paradigm of inflation is unfalsifiable.

It’s like climate science on a universal scale.

Climategate: Tortured Temperatures

climategate2 Unsettled Science Y2Kyoto 8 Comments

Continued…

In 2007 I started monitoring a few GISS stations. Amundsen-Scott, Vostok, Halley, Davis in Antarctica. Then a few more over the years. It was just to check some of the claims of data changing. Also to see if I could plot the temps over time. Some small changes at first, but nothing of concern.
In 2008 I added more stations such as Nuuk, to check more claims. It is easy to save the temp files for each station. Picking a few stations at random points around the GISS globe, up to about 12.
Goddard was right. Past data points were changing. Usually small amounts on a monthly basis. Some station data did not change at all, but only the new monthly data were added.
In 2009 I was saving monthly data for 15 stations.Every month the most recent data is added to the end of each file. But, scanning past data it became apparent that some historical station data was being “revised” almost completely. That means that a time plot shifted by enough to notice on a temperature plot. Usually the “new” plot showed that the past became cooler. Small amounts, maybe one tenth of a degree. When I got to 20 stations, I noticed that one or two sets of data were being extensively revised every month. At the end of 2009 there was a sudden revision of more stations by larger amounts. Almost always the data before 1960 was getting cooler.
By 2010 I was up to 30 stations, plus the Antarctic four.
Akureyri, Bartow, Beaver City, Concordia, Crete NE, Ellsworth, Franklin, Gothenburg, Hanford, Honolulu, Hilo, Jan Mayen, Kodiak, Kwajaalein, La Serena, Loup City, Minden, Nantes, Nome, Norfolk Island, Nuuk, Red Cloud, St. Helena, St. Paul, Steffenville, Thiruvanantha, Truk, Wakeeny, Yakutat, Yamba.
Downloading 30 sets of temperature data to save. Then putting all data into an excel file to make plots. Then comparing time plots to see where individual data points had changed. It became clear that a regular revision of about 10 percent of all GISS stations was taking place on a monthly basis.
Every month in 2010, three of the 30 stations has changes to past data points that were visible by plotting. Looking at every point for every station is not possible, but scanning at random shows that many stations have small changes. 2011 was about the same, but at the end of 2011 was another substantial change to many stations.
In early 2012 my 10 year old hard drive died. I had a separate backup, but it was found to be virus infected to the extent that I could not save all data. I still have the drive and can open some files but can’t copy files to another drive.
In 2012 GISS began making larger changes to more past data. Some stations were showing monthly changes that could only be described as “erratic” with some large shifts for a couple months, followed by data returning to values from months earlier. Sometime in December 2012 was a very large change in past data for many stations. Some stations showed data that stopped in 2007 or 2008. In March 2013 those stations were suddenly “restored” and resumed showing complete data up to March 2013.
Every month GISS changes past data by small amounts to some historical data. Some stations are being selected for larger revisions at random times. For some stations, portions of data from decades ago vanishes completely. The numbers are replaced with “999.9″ indicating no data. Months later those same past data points re-appear, just as they were before, sometimes with small adjustments. If what is happening to a sample of 30 stations is any indication of the entire GISS data set, then I’d say that there is an Orwellian plot to manipulate the past.
There is no record of these past changes, it would be impossible to verify or reproduce those changes. Over the years, the past keeps getting colder.

h/t John Groves

Wynning!

Political Animal 25 Comments

Financial Post;

The outlook on Ontario’s debt rating was lowered today to negative from stable by Moody’s Investors Service, citing a “greater challenge to return to balance” following weak growth and “higher than previously anticipated deficits projected in the next two years.” […]
The announcement comes the same day Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government, which won re-election June 12, opened a session at the provincial legislature. During the campaign, Wynne pledged to re-introduce her fiscal plan that Moody’s had earlier described as “credit negative.”

We Don’t Need No…

Alternative Subsidy 8 Comments

What could possibly go wrong?

Adding wind farms, solar panels and smart meters to the power distribution system opens additional portals through which hackers can attack the grid, according to computer security experts advising governments and utilities. Where traditionally the grid took power from a few sources, it’s now absorbing it from thousands.
The communication networks and software that link green energy sources to the grid as well as the electronic meters that send real time power usage to consumers and utilities are providing new back-door entry paths for computer hackers to raise havoc with the grid. The disclosure this week that hackers known as “Dragonfly” and “Energetic Bear” gained access to power networks across the U.S. and Europe in the past 15 months is a reminder of how vulnerable the system has become.

h/t Maz2

Renegade Regulator

CSA 15 Comments

Restore CSA;

Mustafa is a manager at CSA, he has a staff, a whole group of engineers report to him. Throughout the years of his rule, every engineer knew to tow the line, that Mustafa wanted products certified without regard to actual testing or safety. “If an employee did not push these projects through, they were harassed and eventually removed from the company.”
Some employees wanted these practices cleaned up, but they suspected that Internal Audit’s Cindy Mao would betray them rather than protect them, and some knew that HR was up to its neck in whistleblower firing practices. Several employees, on their own, turned to CSA executive Rich Weiser to clean out the corruption and to protect them from Internal Audit. And Rich Weiser had the power to clean the place, he was the CSA’s Executive Vice President for US & Mexico.
One by one, these employees approached Weiser’s office, each unaware that others had come before them, and each hoping to help restore CSA. Kathleen Decker is Rich Weiser’s assistant, and she wasn’t a fount of kindness. She told them “to quit or commit suicide.”

What’s The Opposite of Diversity?

Children R Our Future Freespeechers 16 Comments

F.I.R.E. strikes back:

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education announced a major litigation effort Tuesday against universities that maintain clearly illegal speech codes.
With help from the law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine, FIRE is suing several universities that manifestly and unconstitutionally deprive their students of First Amendment rights.
“Universities’ stubborn refusal to relinquish their speech codes must not be tolerated,” said FIRE President Greg Lukianoff during a press conference.
For now, suits have been filed against Ohio University, Iowa State University, Chicago State University, and Citrus College in California. These universities have all trampled students’ free speech rights, according to FIRE.
Lukianoff explained that FIRE would not hesitate to expand the suits until all universities abandon their speech codes, which were ruled unconstitutional decades ago but have endured at more than 50 percent of colleges, according to the foundation’s research.

h/t

Reader Tips

Reader Tips 20 Comments

Tonight we are entertained by radio comedy legend, Phil Hendrie, and one of his characters, Bobbi Dooley. While listening to his guest’s over the top fears about Y2K, think about the latest fear mongering going on from the likes of Prophets Gore & Suzuki. For a little sanity on the subject, the Global Warming Swindle, recommended by ‘sasquatch’ the other day, will have you sleeping soundly tonight.
Your fact-filled reader tips are appreciated, as always, in the comments.

Danger: Patriarchal Space!

Uncategorized 8 Comments

The Guardian’s Laurie Penny is unhappy about… something:

As so often in Laurie’s mental landscape, dark forces are at work although the evidence has been lost in a mysterious warehouse fire. We are, however, pointed to the “front pages of celebrity magazines,” on which, obviously, all sane people model their own, actual lives. We’re told that “Successful women on the verge of mental and physical collapse… is a myth that pleases the powerful,” though who the powerful might be is also far from clear. Can she mean the overwhelmingly female readership of Heat magazine?

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