Science
The NCSE’s Behind-the-Scenes Role in the Sternberg Affair
Over a year ago I urged readers of UD to provide me with behind-the-scenes correspondence showing that the NCSE (National Center for Science Education) and others had attempted to derail Richard Sternberg’s career after The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington published an article on intelligent design by Stephen Meyer while Sternberg was still its managing editor (go here and here). I was finally sent that information. The following link takes you to the Congressional Report on the Sternberg Affair along with that correspondence, which is given in the appendix (the file is 3Mbytes): www.uncommondescent…/Sternberg_Cong_Rep_App.pdf Note especially Eugenie Scott’s role in this affair.
William Crawley interviews Richard Dawkins on the BBC
William Crawley, with whom I attended Princeton Theological Seminary in the mid-90s, did a bang-up job interviewing Richard Dawkins for the BBC earlier this year. Crawley probes Dawkins’s views on religion as well as his religious background:
Has Darwinism Contributed Less to Science than Alchemy?
On another UD thread there was discussion about an amazing piece of biological molecular machinery and the deficiencies of Darwinian processes to account for it. The bottom line is that Darwinists are looking in the wrong place for an explanation (random variation and natural selection), just as alchemists did when trying to figure out how to transform lead into gold (chemistry doesn’t deal with the nucleus of the atom). They both represent entirely inapplicable explanatory categories for the problems under consideration.
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[Off Topic] Why Scientists Are Opposed to DCA Use
I finally figured it out. It’s because scientists have not officially blessed its use. To take a drug that scientists say you shouldn’t try yet is to commit a horrible transgression against the authority of the scientific clergy. Even when you’re dying of stage 4 cancer and no scientifically sanctified therapies are available you are not allowed to wander off the reservation and try unsanctified remedies. You should instead just die quietly without making any waves. http://www.thedcasite.com http://www.buydca.com Disclaimer: I am not affiliated in any way with the above sites. I have no financial interest in DCA. I have no friends or family suffering from cancer who stand to benefit from DCA.
Global-warming theory and the eugenics precedent
Heard on the street: “I am a working scientist with a mortgage and family to support. I am paid to conduct research into Evolution. Who will pay me to conduct research into Intelligent Design?” Filed under “Follow the money”. The article below makes a similar point about eugenics “research” in the past and global warming “research” today.
Global-warming theory and the eugenics precedent by John Linder, U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, February 19th, 2007
Excerpts follow. Go to the link for the full article. Read More ›
Get Yourself Informed on Temperature Anomalies
Satellites have been accurately measuring the temperature of the troposphere all over the face of the earth since 1979. You can view a map of the globe with all temperatures above and below average mapped out in red (above) and blue (below) month by month for over 25 years. Anyone can plainly see that global warming is regional. Near the equator, both above and below it, is almost always uncolored or blue. South America, Central America, and the lower U.S. are experiencing cooling. Most of Africa is cooling. Austrailia is cooling. Southern Europe and Southern Asia are cooling. The air over almost all the Pacific and Mid, and South Atlantic is cooling. Greenland is heating up. Northern Asia and Northern Read More ›
Global Warming and Forest Fires
Global warming alarmists today remind me of the scientific consensus on controlling forest fires 40 years ago. How many of you recall seeing Yogi Smokey the Bear adverts saying “Only YOU can prevent forest fires”? In fact, as we learned the hard way, fire suppression turned out to be a bad thing. Nature had adapted herself to periodic forest fires. Certain trees had become resistant to harm from low intensity fires but would be destroyed in fires where 50 years worth of fuel had accumulated. Periodic fires cleared the landscape and species that had adapted to freshly cleared ground cover got their turn at bat. Decades of fire suppression set up our forests for disaster. Similarly, the earth has undergone Read More ›
Antarctic temperatures disagree with climate model predictions
I just love being eventually proven right but vindication usually doesn’t come to me this quickly. As I was trying to tell Mike Dunford, including my now prophetic-appearing conjecture that manmade CFC-caused ozone depletion is a real global warming culprit, unlike the mythical C02 effect…
Last year, Bromwich’s research group reported in the journal Science that Antarctic snowfall hadn’t increased in the last 50 years. “What we see now is that the temperature regime is broadly similar to what we saw before with snowfall. In the last decade or so, both have gone down.”
“In some sense, we might have competing effects going on in Antarctica where there is low-level CO2 warming but that may be swamped by the effects of ozone depletion.”
–David Bromwich, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Department of Geography, Byrd Polar Research Center, Ohio State University
Thanks for playing, Mike. Better luck next time.
The Sound of Miller-Urey and Prebiotic Chemistry Exploding
“My own PhD thesis advisor, Robert B. Woodward, was awarded the Nobel Prize for his brilliant syntheses of quinine, cholesterol, chlorophyll and many other substances. It mattered little if kilograms of starting material were required to produce milligrams of product. The point was the demonstration that humans could produce, however inefficiently, substances found in nature. Unfortunately, neither chemists nor laboratories were present on the early Earth to produce RNA.”
“The analogy that comes to mind is that of a golfer, who having played a golf ball through an 18-hole course, then assumed that the ball could also play itself around the course in his absence. He had demonstrated the possibility of the event; it was only necessary to presume that some combination of natural forces (earthquakes, winds, tornadoes and floods, for example) could produce the same result, given enough time. No physical law need be broken for spontaneous RNA formation to happen, but the chances against it are so immense, that the suggestion implies that the non-living world had an innate desire to generate RNA. The majority of origin-of-life scientists who still support the RNA-first theory either accept this concept (implicitly, if not explicitly) or feel that the immensely unfavorable odds were simply overcome by good luck.”
–From Scientific American, by Robert Shapiro, professor emeritus of chemistry and senior research scientist at New York University, author or co-author of over 125 publications, primarily in the area of DNA chemistry.
New Kansas Science Standards Redefine “Science”
Go here and you’ll be able to download a “Comparison Document” that shows how the new Kansas Science Standards deviate from the old. The change that particularly struck me was the following: Old characterization of science: “scientific knowledge describes and explains the natural world.” New characterization of science: “scientific knowledge describes and explains the physical world in terms of matter, energy, and forces.” Besides defining intelligent design out of existence, this new definition defines what have traditionally been regarded as distinctly human traits, such as free will and consciousness, which science studies, also out of existence. It’s all to the good that the scientific materialists have introduced this ideologically charged definition of science, perhaps not for the Kansas students who Read More ›
An experiment that hints we are wrong on climate change
An experiment that hints we are wrong on climate change
Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist, says the orthodoxy must be challenged From The Sunday Times, February 11, 2007
Global Warming – Exposing the Lies
I did a little googling looking for the raw data from satellite temperature measurements and came upon this wonderful, objective web page at NASA with charts all updated in real time as new measurements arrive. I could start quoting all the frank admissions of broken atmospheric models, declining atmospheric temperatures that NASA documents but you never hear about in the mainstream media, and all sorts of fascinating stuff that just plain debunks the global warming bunkum. But I’d rather you all read for yourselves and have fun in the comments sifting through this treasure trove of objectivity about our global climate. Atmospheric Temperature Data At NASA
[Off Topic] Cosmic Rays Blamed for Global Warming
Cosmic rays blamed for global warming
The amount of warming predicted by theoretical modeling of CO2 in the atmosphere is several times more than what has actually been measured. This is indicative of deep flaws in the theory or the measurements. Here’s an alternative theory that accounts for the measured amount of warming instead the hysterical hand-waving theoretical predictions we are being deluged with by the sensationalist mainstream media, environmentalist whackos, and vested interests in the scientific community.
The Sound of the Molecular Assumption Exploding
Pitt Professor Contends Biological Underpinnings Of Darwinian Evolution Not Valid
“The history of organic life is undemonstrable; we cannot prove a whole lot in evolutionary biology, and our findings will always be hypothesis. There is one true evolutionary history of life, and whether we will actually ever know it is not likely. Most importantly, we have to think about questioning underlying assumptions, whether we are dealing with molecules or anything else,” says Schwartz.