Sunday, December 07, 2008

Intelligent design falsified by cdesign proponentsists' intellligence decline

I have just finished watching a fascinating documentary on SBS, called Judgment Day, about how a bunch of weird Christian extremists tried to introduce stealth creationism into the science class of Dover High School as an alternative to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. This was obviously Dover, Pa, in the US, and not Dover, England. 

They called this stealth creationism Intelligent Design (ID).  Actually they didn't originally, they called it creationism, but obviously realised this would not fly in a science class with sharp students, so they rebadged it as ID — and gave it scientific trappings. It was part of a 20 year plan to make science (the gift that gives everyday)  subordinate to bible 'teachings' (the gift that gives every day... after you are dead).  All this was uncovered in the gruelling court case that followed, Kitzmiller v. Dover, along with the creationists' original planning document detailing the deception, The Wedge Strategy.

To cut a long story short, Judge John E. Jones III finally ruled that ID was an assault on the the US constitution because it ignored the first amendment, which provides for separation of religion and state. To prove this the prosecution had to establish that ID was originally a creationist theory, and this did this by subpoenaing all the drafts of the ID Trojan text-book, Of Pandas and People

Ironically, these drafts established evidence that the intent always was religiously motivated deception, such as the evolution of the term creation to Intelligent Design via search and replace. At least these creationists don't typeset in lead anymore. It was found there were approximately 150 uses of the root word "creation", such as "creationism" and "creationist", were systematically changed to refer to intelligent design. Definitions remained essentially the same, with "intelligent design" substituted for "creation", and "intelligent creator" changed to "intelligent agency." But, unfortunately for the god botherers, the final draft still contains vestigal organs evidencing these deceptions: The term "creationists" was changed to "design proponents", but in one case the beginning and end of the original word "creationists" were accidentally retained, so that "creationists" became "cdesign proponentsists".

The judge ruled againt them, and the rest is history. The poor bugger received death threats to himself and his family soon after, and now lives under federal protection. Charming, those so called Christians.

Watching the program, I was repeatedly reminded of the contemporary anti-science offence of AGW denial. One of the main claims AGW deniers make about AGW is that it is the new green faith — a religion.

Given the precedence that Kitzmiller v. Dover sets, you would think that cashed-up think-tanks in the US pushing AGW denial would at least attempt to prevent anthropogenic global warming from being taught in the science-class, and at least relegated to religion class.

But they won't. And, this indicates that they don't have the conviction.

 

Climate change tougher than Sydney roofs

Great!

The Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) called on the Federal and State governments to toughen the Building Code of Australia and address the problem of "brittle buildings".

It seems research conducted by Professor Alan Jeary, a structural design specialist from the University of Western Sydney's school of engineering, concludes that roofs tiles will not withstand the onslaught of a summer storm season. Sydney's present roofing materials - up to 75 per cent ceramic tile and 10 per cent slate - were easily damaged by relatively minor hail storms.

In the past 20 years, Sydney has been hit by five significant hailstorms, which have caused more than $6 billion damage. Climate change research indicates that the problems could get much worse.

Saturday, December 06, 2008

AGW deniers desperate in their death throws.

Desmogblog asks why we have seen such a flurry of activity from the global warming denial lobby, lately:

Barack Obama has promised to lead the nation in a massive climate intervention and reengage with the international community on climate change. The past weeks have also seen progressive environmentalist Rep. Henry Waxman take over as chairman of the House Energy and Environment Committee and Senator Barbara Boxer announce plans to introduce two major climate bills early next year. The first hearing that she will hold in January will be titled, "How Fighting Global Warming is Good for the Economy and Will Create Jobs."

In other words, the deniers are gearing up for yet another fight against reality--this time, political reality as much as scientific reality. Unlike President George W. Bush, who at best played the role of apathetic substitute teacher to the United States, President-elect Obama is preparing to lay down the law.  He’s made it clear that our planetary fever will be taken seriously under his watch.


It's not worth underestimating these guys. Afterall -- with big fossil-fuel backing them, it's clear they aren't running out of cash anytime soon. 

Andrew Bolt: The climate concerned are Nazis

Andrew Bolt reckons "the Global Day of Climate Action, which, to judge from this Friends of the Earth ad requires greenshirts to stage rallies eerily similar to the ones once seen at Nuremberg".



What an uncut dick-head! What a prize scumbag this Andrew Bolt is. Only he can be flippant about 6 million murdered Jews and Gypsies, and 80 million dead all up. Put it down to the evidential success of his self-lobotomy.

Here we see the outcome of the operation -- watch closely as he misinterprets a straight-forward graph: 

UPDATE



And with sea levels now refusing to rise, too, I guess the Rudd Government can ice its policy and plans to take in the Tuvalu islanders as “environmental refugees”. 

See, lobotomy successful. What? More proof, I hear you say:

UPDATE 2

Global warming theory is still being questioned, despite the efforts of the mainstream media and the Left to declare the debate closed. From a new study published in Climate Dynamics:

Evidence is presented that the recent worldwide land warming has occurred largely in response to a worldwide warming of the oceans rather than as a direct response to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) over land… Although not a focus of this study, the degree to which the oceans themselves have recently warmed due to increased GHG, other anthropogenic, natural solar and volcanic forcings, or internal multi-decadal climate variations is a matter of active investigation.

And in news just at hand, Bolt's demonstrated ability to survive without a brain has thrown the whole medical ethical area of when to turn off a life-support system into chaos.

Thursday, December 04, 2008

This isn't Funk — it's the Flying Spagetti Monster

Heathens! What's this, a creepy schism?

The full Old Greg (minus ending)


Old Greg -- The Ending


Monday, December 01, 2008

Oceans cooling. Not.

A common misconception about measuring global warming, one that deniers prey upon, is that the average global temperature is the whole story. Ergo, if the last ten years of lower atmosphere temperatures plateau, the warming must have stopped, so the meme goes... on and on.

No so, according to Josh Willis, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who specialises in estimating how much heat the ocean stores annually:

"The oceans are absorbing more than 80 percent of the heat from global warming,” he says. "If you aren’t measuring heat content in the upper ocean, you aren’t measuring global warming."

And so goes a fascinating NASA Earth Observatory feature story of how a conundrum facing scientists, that climate models predicting rising ocean temperatures mismatched observations, was solved.

Cheney grounded $100 million climate satellite

Desmogblog is right into the unfolding story of the Bush Administration's interference with NASA's climate science research. This time it is allegations of Cheney's hand in the mothballing of the DSCOVR satellite question :

An unnamed source within NASA intimately familiar with the mothballed Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) mission spoke to Desmog Blog on the condition of anonymity.

The story is incredible.

The big question has always been: who would want to kill a $100 million fully completed climate satellite that has sat in a box since the 2000 presidential election - even though dozens of leading scientists have demanded it be launched?

“Apparently Cheney was the hatchet man”, said the source. “Bush tried the keep his hands clean so he didn’t actually have direct involvement. It almost reminds me of the way Nixon used to operate…He assigned Cheney to be the hatchet man job on DSCOVR… Bush’s fingerprints weren’t on it but Cheney’s were… That’s what we heard through the grapevine.”

All allegations, though. No nitty gritty yet. Watch this space.