(Even) More Evidence for Climate Change

This is a great piece of evidence to add to the mountain - great because it's a simple one that even people with no formal science can understand: There is a new and emerging field of research called 'ice patch archaeology' which is basically about finding out about the past from cool and interesting things that are dropping out of glaciers as they melt. It's new because before the glaciers were not melting before and melting glaciers are proof of global warming:

To the untrained eye, University of Colorado at Boulder Research Associate Craig Lee's recent discovery of a 10,000-year-old wooden hunting weapon might look like a small branch that blew off a tree in a windstorm. Nothing could be further from the truth, according to Lee, a research associate with CU-Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research who found the atlatl dart, a spear-like hunting weapon, melting out of an ice patch high in the Rocky Mountains close to Yellowstone National Park.

Lee, a specialist in the emerging field of ice patch archaeology, said the dart had been frozen in the ice patch for 10 millennia and that climate change has increased global temperatures and accelerated melting of permanent ice fields exposing organic materials that have long been entombed in the ice.

"We didn't realize until the early 2000s that there was a potential to find archaeological materials in association with melting permanent snow and ice in many areas of the globe," Lee said. "We're not talking about massive glaciers, we're talking about the smaller, more kinetically stable snowbanks that you might see if you go to Rocky Mountain National Park."

Simples.

More Climate Creationism

Even more linkages between the voodoo cult of anti-evolution and the bat-shit crazy of climate change denial. Here's the new Texas Republican Party Platform on science teaching:

Realizing that conflict and debate is a proven learning tool in classrooms, we support objective teaching and equal treatment of all sides of scientific theories, including evolution, Intelligent Design, global warming, political philosophies, and others. We believe theories of life origins and environmental theories should be taught as challengeable scientific theory subject to change as new data is produced, not scientific law. Teachers and students should be able to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these theories openly and without fear of retribution or discrimination of any kind.

Yeah - teach the debate: teach the science debate as to if the earth was formed by cooling gases and space debris or in fact created by the giant Mbombo. No science teacher should be in trouble for teaching the Mbombo theory as fact.

Fucking idiots; yes, teach this stuff in cultural studies, literature, history and/or religion classes but science? Mbombo says no.

In Science a Scientific Law comes from repeated observations that the same thing happens over and over and over. That's why it's a law and not a trend or tendency. If there was new data showing that what we thought happened under a law, did not happen over and over and over - then it ceases to be a law and becomes a a trend or tendency. I think the Texas Republican Party are confusing legal laws with the Scientific laws. Somebody who can't understand the difference between legal laws and Scientific laws should not be writing science policy.

I think the Texas Republican Party are confusing logic with dogma.

But then this is the Texas Republicans - and you don't mess with the Texas Republicans - even if they are bat-shit crazy ('cos they're armed).

They are also a nasty bunch of homophobic pricks too. Climate change deniers; with friends like there...

666 Science and the Method Machine Death Cult

Catchy title for a post about climate change. But I promise there will be a little Satanism later on... So there has been some important new research about the consensus on climate change:

Here, we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that 1) 97-98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; and 2) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.

Translated this means the more science a scientist does in the area of climate change (as indicated by publishing papers on the subject) the more they think that climate change is real, humans are causing it and we need to act. Simples. It also shows the less science a scientist does in the area of climate the less likely they are to think that climate change is real, humans are cuasing it and we need to act now. Not only that the different is stark - the dividing line between the two groups is 97-98% of active climate scientists think climate change is real,humans are causing and we need to do somthing and only 2-3% don't accept this view. It's not a 100% consenus, but it's within 2/3% of being one, and that is very, very strong for science. This study also confirms pervious studies looks at the same issues.

Now to the Satanism bit. (And this made me laugh out loud when I saw it) There is an Australian blogger called Jo Nova and she's not a climate scientist, nor does she do any research on science. But she thinks she knows best. She decided to comment on the above research using the same insightful and analystic techniques used by celebrity blogger Perz Hilton... To dismantle the evil warmist research, Jo re-created the cover of the science journal to stick it to the man!! Yeah!!! Here is the before:

And here is the Satan-inspired after:

Amazing - Super-dooper-Nova! Can you see what she's done there? Clever shit! It's now issue '666'. Rofl! 'Proceedings of the National Academy of Science' becomes (wait for it...) 'Proceedings of the National Academy of Sorcery' Fucking genius. Here's my fav bit... 'Evidence? Who needs it! We vote for Laws of Nature'...

Hang on? 'Evidence? Who needs it! We vote for Laws of Nature' Wtf?? That makes no sense...is this a view into her neo-con mindset? Crazy is as crazy does. The who thing is beyond parody. 'Tis said that any sufficiently advanced technology would be considered magic by more less technologically-advanced people. Here we see Jo demonstrating that any sufficiently advanced scientific method (all of it) would be considered sorcery by less logically-advanced bloggers.

Love the cover Jo - your photoshop skills are clearly considerably more developed that your logic and science ones.

Jo Nova is bat-shit nuts. (Yes I am name-calling - it's as sophisticated as Jo's cover re-desgin.)

Climate Change Deniers Freeze Up

Back in March this year, the climate change deniers were crowing that there was slightly more sea-ice than in February...

But March brought good news for the Polar Bears, and bad news for the Catlin Expedition and any others looking for bad news. Instead of ice extent declining through March like it usually does, it continued to increase through the month and is now at the high (so far) for the year. If it keeps this trend unabated, in a day or two it will likely cross the “normal” line.

But then it went and dropped off a cliff and is now well below the average and the touted 'return to average' never happened. Instead we're tracking record lows. Reality's a bummer.

Here's how the denailist wanted things to look (on a pretty graph):



But here's how it ended up looking :(



(hattip to wottsupwiththat)

Wikileaks Under Attack

Please read...as the first casualty of war is not truth - that's always a casualty - but open information... WikiLeaks reporting the sad killing of civilians via US botched airstrikes - and rather than trying to find out what happened - the US is trying to shoot the messenger - Wikileaks:

One of our alleged sources, a young US intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning, has been detained and shipped to a US military prison in Kuwait, where he is being held without trail. Mr. Manning is alleged to have acted according to his conscious and leaked to us the Collateral Murder video and the video of a massacre that took place in Afghanistan last year at Garani.

The Garani massacre, which we are still working on, killed over 100 people, mostly children.

Mr. Manning allegedly also sent us 260,000 classified US Department cables, reporting on the actions of US Embassy's engaging in abusive actions all over the world. We have denied the allegation, but the US government is acting as if the allegation is true and we do have a lot of other material that exposes human rights abuses by the United States government.

Mr. Manning was allegedly exposed after talking to an unrelated "journalist" who then worked with the US government to detain him.

Some background on the Manning case:

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/06/11/transcript-daniel-ellsberg-says-he-fears-us-might-assasinate-wikileaks-founder/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/leak/
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/wikileaks-chat/
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/state-department-anxious/
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2010/06/143011.htm

[ note that there are some questions about the Wired reportage, see: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/13/video-wikileaks-foun.html#comment-809677 ]

WikiLeaks a small organization going through enormous growth and operating in an adverserial, high-security environment which can make communication time consuming and the acquisition of new staff and volunteers, also difficult since they require high levels of trust.

To try and deal with our growth and the current difficult situation, we want to get you to work together with our other supporters to set up a "Friends of WikiLeaks" group in your area. We have multiple supporters in most countries and would like to see them be a strong and independent force.

Please write to friends@sunshinepress.org if you are interested in helping with Friends of WikiLeaks in your area. You will receive further instructions.

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