Global Warming Scientific Consensus: A Hoax?!?

Only seven percent of the last three year's scientific papers on climate change explicitly endorse a weakened form of the so-called consensus. (Thirty-eight percent implicitly accept.)

The weakened "consensus" tabulated: "Humans were having at least some effect on global climate change."; not the super-hyped, so-called consensus that: "Man is the 'primary' cause of warming", and that global warming will cause one or more catastrophes.

Say it ain't so, Vice President Gore!

(With apologies to Joseph Jefferson "Shoeless Joe" Jackson (Career batting av. - .356, 3rd highest), the Chicago White Sox, and Major League Baseball.)

I report and link. You decide. - J :)

Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers "implicit" endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no "consensus."

The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of consensus here. Not only does it not require supporting that man is the "primary" cause of warming, but it doesn't require any belief or support for "catastrophic" global warming. In fact of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.

From a Daily Tech .com article, Less Than Half of all Published Scientists Endorse Global Warming Theory, more follows:

Survey: Less Than Half of all Published Scientists Endorse Global Warming Theory [/] Michael Asher (Blog) - August 29, 2007 11:07 AM

Comprehensive survey of published climate research reveals changing viewpoints [/] In 2004, history professor Naomi Oreskes performed a survey of research papers on climate change. Examining peer-reviewed papers published on the ISI Web of Science database from 1993 to 2003, she found a majority supported the "consensus view," defined as humans were having at least some effect on global climate change. Oreskes' work has been repeatedly cited, but as some of its data is now nearly 15 years old, its conclusions are becoming somewhat dated.

Medical researcher Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte recently updated this research. Using the same database and search terms as Oreskes, he examined all papers published from 2004 to February 2007. The results have been submitted to the journal Energy and Environment, of which DailyTech has obtained a pre-publication copy. The figures are surprising.

Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers "implicit" endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no "consensus."

The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of consensus here. Not only does it not require supporting that man is the "primary" cause of warming, but it doesn't require any belief or support for "catastrophic" global warming. In fact of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.

These changing viewpoints represent the advances in climate science over the past decade. While today we are even more certain the earth is warming, we are less certain about the root causes. More importantly, research has shown us that -- whatever the cause may be -- the amount of warming is unlikely to cause any great calamity for mankind or the planet itself.

Schulte's survey contradicts the United Nation IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report (2007), which gave a figure of "90% likely" man was having an impact on world temperatures. But does the IPCC represent a consensus view of world scientists? Despite media claims of "thousands of scientists" involved in the report, the actual text is written by a much smaller number of "lead authors." The introductory "Summary for Policymakers" -- the only portion usually quoted in the media -- is written not by scientists at all, but by politicians, and approved, word-by-word, by political representatives from member nations. By IPCC policy, the individual report chapters -- the only text actually written by scientists -- are edited to "ensure compliance" with the [[U.N. nations political compromise]] summary, which is typically published months before the actual report itself. [/] By contrast, the ISI Web of Science database covers 8,700 journals and publications, including every leading scientific journal in the world. [My ellipses and emphasis]

The Left's Ongoing Viet Con

The facts reported below are, as far as I know, uncontested by the knowledgeable and honest.

I report and link. You decide. - J :)

From a IBD Editorials .com article, The Left's Ongoing Viet Con:

The Left's Ongoing Viet Con [/] By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, August 27, 2007 4:20 PM PT

Vietnam: Nothing destroys conventional wisdom like the truth. Those on the anti-war left don't like to be reminded that the fruits of their policies are death and defeat. But the lie they agree upon is not history.

[[(Picture Caption:]] CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite reports from the site of extensive bombing as he covers the aftermath of the Tet offensive for the TV special "Report from Vietnam by Walter Cronkite," during the Vietnam War in 1968. Cronkite broke from the standard of objective journalism when he concluded the broadcast with his observation that the war would end in a stalemate. But the offensive that American media touted as a success was in fact a military disaster for the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese.[[)]]

In 1975, Sydney Schanberg wrote a piece for the New York Times about the consequences for the region of our abandonment of South Vietnam. [/] It bore the Orwellian title: "Indochina Without Americans: For Most A Better Life." Substitute "Iraq" for "Indochina" and you have the Iraq plank in the 2008 Democratic party platform.

Last Saturday, the Los Angeles Times ran a piece by Andrew J. Bacevich, a Boston University history professor and Vietnam War veteran, that fellow vet John Kerry could have written, and which could have borne a similar title regarding Iraq without Americans.

Professor Bacevich takes President Bush to task for reminding the Veterans of Foreign Wars last week that, far from enjoying a better life, the people of Indochina, after they were betrayed by Democrats, became victims of the "killing fields" of Cambodia, inmates of the re-education camps of Vietnam or, if they were lucky, boat people in the South China Sea.

The consequences of following the Democrats on Iraq, Bush said, would result in a similar human catastrophe and a greater terrorist threat to America.

Bacevich's piece is titled "Vietnam's Real Lessons," yet it is he who ignores the truth by writing about a "U.S. defeat" in an "unconventional war." [/] The U.S. military was never defeated in any battle. Not until 1975, after a Democratic Congress cut off aid in a fit of post-Watergate pique, did Saigon fall to an army of 570,000 North Vietnamese regular soldiers and some 900 Soviet tanks, well supplied and armed by their Soviet and Chinese benefactors.

For two years, South Vietnam stood on its own without U.S. boots on the ground. Had we continued military and economic aid, it would be standing today — like South Korea, which we did not abandon.

South Korea was no Athenian democracy back then, and yet we did not throw it to the wolves. Bacevich says we should look at "the condition of Vietnam today." He should look at the condition of South Korea [[today]].

One of the first actions of the Democratic "Watergate babies" was to vote to deny South Vietnam $800 million in military aid, including ammunition and spare parts.

Five weeks after that vote, a surprised and delighted North Vietnam began planning an armored invasion of the South, knowing we had grown war-weary and would not help.

Bacevich speaks of a "Republic of Vietnam, created by the United States," that was not "able to govern effectively or command the loyalty of its people." Yet, as history shows, Vietnam did not fall to a popular uprising by pajama-clad patriots.

The 1968 Tet offensive by the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese was a military disaster. Gen. Giap failed in his plan to seize and hold 13 of 16 provincial capitals and trigger a popular uprising. The communist forces lost upwards of 50,000 killed and as many wounded.

After Tet, the Viet Cong were effectively finished as a fighting force, with the NVA taking over. North Vietnam's 1972 Easter offensive also failed.

It was these failures that led to the January 1973 Paris Peace Accord. But when a Democratic Congress legislated an end to U.S. operations in Indochina that summer, it also stopped U.S. air support of a friendly Cambodian government under siege by Hanoi and the Khmer Rouge.

Former Rep. Tip O'Neill, D-Mass., who was later to become speaker of the House, declared at the time that "Cambodia is not worth the life of one American flier."

The rest — as they say, professor — is history. [My ellipses and emphasis]

Harry Potter Magic: Mechanical Not Occult

I report and link. You decide. - J :)

In a prior thread, Potter Magic Symbol of Technology, I linked several articles showing that Potter magic has much more to do with imagined technology than supernatural religion.

Following the google of "harry potter magic technology" to the second 10 results, the notion of mechanical versus occult magic made its appearance.

From a BreakPoint .org article, Witches and Wizards:

Witches and Wizards [/] By Chuck Colson [/] 11/2/1999

[...] It may relieve you to know that the magic in these books is purely mechanical, as opposed to occultic. That is, Harry and his friends cast spells, read crystal balls, and turn themselves into animals—but they don't make contact with a supernatural world.

Other parents are concerned with the dark themes and violence in the books. After all, Harry's parents are murdered in book one, and throughout the books, Harry is pursued by followers of a murderous wizard named Voldemort. But as the author, J. K. Rowling, points out, "the theme running through all of these books is the fight between good and evil." The plots reinforce the theme that evil is real, and must be courageously opposed.

As this theme unfolds, so do the characters of Harry and his friends. They develop courage, loyalty, and a willingness to sacrifice for one another—even at the risk of their lives. Not bad lessons in a self-centered world. [...]

From a CBN.com Spiritual Life article, The Potter Magic:

OPINION [/] The Potter Magic [/] By Anne Morse [/] BreakPoint Online -

[...] The books are great fun—but should Christian parents worry about their use of magic? After all, the Bible strongly condemns involvement with witchcraft.

It may relieve parents to know that the magic in these books is purely mechanical, as opposed to occultic. Harry and his classmate[s] are born with the ability to perform magic—much as real life kids are born with musical or mathematical ability. Students at Hogwarts learn to cast spells, read crystal balls, and transform hedgehogs into pincushions—but they don’t attempt to contact the supernatural world.

But isn’t it wrong to expose kids to any kind of magic and witchcraft? [/] Wheaton College professor Alan Jacobs has a wonderful response to this concern. In the journal First Things, Jacobs notes that it’s only recently that magic and science were viewed as occupying different realms.

"For much of their existence," Jacobs writes, "both magic and experimental science were viewed as a means of controlling and directing our natural environment." It took several centuries of dedicated scientific experiment "before it was clear to anyone that the ‘scientific’ physician could do more to cure illness than the old woman of the village with her herbs and potions and muttered charms." Magic was gradually viewed as a false discipline.

This history helps us understand the role of magic in the Potter books. The author "begins by positing a history in which magic is not a false discipline," Jacobs writes. Instead, magic, like science, is "a means of controlling the physical world." In this world, Jacobs writes, "magic works as reliably, in the hands of a trained wizard, as the technology that makes airplanes fly and refrigerators chill the air."

No less a Christian than C. S. Lewis makes the distinction between mechanical and supernatural magic in his Narnia series for children. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Father Christmas gives magical gifts to the Pevensie children. To Susan, he gives a horn, guaranteed to summon help during times of great need. To Lucy, he gives a vial containing an elixir that will heal even the deadliest injury. The magic of horn and elixir works without the need for the children to call upon supernatural beings. They are perfect examples of mechanical magic.

Like J. K. Rowling, Lewis has created a world in which magic works, and in these fictional worlds it is not magic per se that is morally troublesome.

In Prince Caspian, by contrast, Lewis describes a less innocent form of magical power. A dwarf named Nikabrik desires to bring back the long-dead White Witch to help the Narnians defeat their human enemies. When Prince Caspian realizes what he is proposing, he’s outraged. "So that is your plan, Nikabrik! Black sorcery and the calling up of an accursed spirit. And I see who your companions are—a Hag and a Wer-Wolf!" The prince and his animal allies instantly kill the three (Just, one might add, as the Old Testament commands).

In a sense, whether or not mechanical magic "works" in the Potter books is beside the point. At Harry’s Hogwarts School, one educational goal overrides all others: To help students develop the character and the moral discernment to use a particular technology—in this case, magic—for the common good.

In that sense, the Potter books teach children a great lesson: They, too, must develop moral discernment about real-life technologies—such as the Internet—along with the character to exploit them in ways pleasing to God.

If the Potter books can teach kids to harness technology for good instead of evil, then I say more power—scientifically speaking, of course—to Harry Potter and his wizard friends. [/] Anne Morse is associate editor and senior writer for BreakPoint. [My ellipses and emphasis]

Harry Potter Magic a Symbol of Technology

I report and link. You decide. - J :)

Much as the giant world wide machine in E. M. Forester's "The Machine Stops" was not future technology but a symbol of the 19th century British Empire:

The magical underground culture in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series would seem to be a symbol for the marvels of technology that have appeared among us without much wide spread understanding of the underlying science or of the ways in which we are being changed.

I am not alone in this notion. A Google of "harry potter magic technology" turned up the following among the first ten hits.

From a First Things article, Harry Potter's Magic:

[...] As Arthur C. Clarke once wrote, "Any smoothly functioning technology gives the appearance of magic." [/] The fundamental moral framework of the Harry Potter books, then, is a familiar one to all of us: it is the problem of technology. (As Jacques Ellul wrote, "Magic may even be the origin of techniques.") Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is in the business of teaching people how to harness and employ certain powers - that they are powers unrecognized by science is really beside the point - but cannot insure that people will use those powers wisely, responsibly, and for the common good. It is a choice, as the thinkers of the Renaissance would have put it, between magia and goetia: "high magic" (like the wisdom possessed by the magi in Christian legend) and "dark magic."

[...] The educational quandary for Albus Dumbledore, then - though it is never described so overtly - is how to train students not just in the "technology" of magic but also in the moral discernment necessary to avoid the continual reproduction of the few great Dark Lords like Voldemort and their multitudinous followers. [/] The clarity with which Rowling sees the need to choose between good and evil is admirable, but still more admirable, to my mind, is her refusal to allow a simple division of parties into the Good and the Evil. [/] [...] "Exactly," said Dumbledore, beaming once more. "Which makes you very different from [Voldemort]. It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

[...] Perhaps the most important question I could ask my Christian friends who mistrust the Harry Potter books is this: is your concern about the portrayal of this imaginary magical technology matched by a concern for the effects of the technology that in our world displaced magic? The technocrats of this world hold in their hands powers almost infinitely greater than those of Albus Dumbledore and Voldemort: how worried are we about them, and their influence over our children? Not worried enough, I would say. As Ellul suggests, the task for us is "the measuring of technique by other criteria than those of technique itself," which measuring he also calls "the search for justice before God." Joanne Rowling's books are more helpful than most in prompting such measurement. [...] [/] Alan Jacobs is Professor of English at Wheaton College.

From an Amazon.com review:

"Science in the Harry Potter books?" "Yes," Highfield, science editor of London's Daily Telegraph, emphatically answers, approaching the topic in a thoroughly playful manner. He is dead serious, however, about using the Potter corpus as the launching pad for a wonderful foray into genetics, biology, quantum theory, behaviorism, mythology, folklore, and more, bolstered by drawing on and extrapolating from the work of a great variety of scientists and scholars. Magic, like science, he states, affords many insights into the workings of the human brain, which he designates as the greatest wizard of all. Whether dealing with flying broomsticks, Quidditch, or Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, Highfield demonstrates how Muggle science has a leg up on many of the phenomena in Harry's world.

From a BBC article, Potter magic charms Nokia chief:

[...] When mobile phone makers look for inspiration for future products, one would expect they look to science fiction. [/] [...] But Yrjo Neuvo, Chief Technical Officer of Nokia mobile phones, reads JK Rowling's Harry Potter to get him thinking. [/] [...] JK "is very good when it comes to predicting the future", according to Dr Neuvo, and "many of the things she is painting in her books can be implemented in phones in five to 10 years. It's really exciting," he says. [My ellipses and emphasis]

"A Girl's Guide to Gadgets" article link: Harry Potter should have swapped magic for technology - it would have been way easier

From a Use It.com article, In the Future, We'll All Be Harry Potter:

[...] The world of magic is a world where inanimate objects come alive; it's as if they had computational power, sensors, awareness, and connectivity. [/] By saying that we'll one day be like Harry Potter, I don't mean that we'll fly around on broomsticks or play three-dimensional ballgames (though virtual reality will let enthusiasts play Quidditch matches). What I do mean is that we're about to experience a world where spirit inhabits formerly inanimate objects.
Much of the Harry Potter books' charm comes from the quirky magic objects that surround Harry and his friends. Rather than being solid and static, these objects embody initiative and activity. This is precisely the shift we'll experience as computational power moves beyond the desktop into everyday objects.

Next-Generation Magic [/] Here are some examples of agency in Harry Potter's objects, and how we'll achieve similar powers in the future: [[From the article link page down for half a dozen detailed examples.]]

[...] Don't Harm the Muggles [/] Harry Potter's world resembles the world of computers in another way as well: In the Harry Potter books, the population consists of two distinct groups -- a small group of wizards, and a much larger group of Muggles (standard-issue humans) who know nothing about magic or the dealings of wizards.

[...] In the Harry Potter books, the ethical wizards have agreed to leave the Muggles alone and not do magic tricks on them. It seems that computer wizards have something to learn from Harry Potter, because they often use their power in ways that are harmful to regular people. [/] [...] . Designers who inflict poor usability on the world and its Muggles are wicked wizards indeed.