Mormons Christians? Romney: Oh yeah. Pastor Jeffress: Nope, cult. Joel Osteen: I guess so, not purest? Mormon history: A different universe than the Bible.

I have been observing all the folks recently claiming that MA governor Mitt Romney has the Republican presidential nomination all wrapped up.  But there is this elephant in the room that Texas pastor Robert Jeffress had the temerity to actually mention.  That is, Romney is a Mormon and the underlying differences between Bible Christianity and the Mormon church are manifold and massive.  If the Mormons wish to say they are just another religion like Islam, Buddhism, Shinto, Hinduism - or whatever - then so be it.  But in the last 25 years the MC has engaged in an aggressive image-scrubbing which has been quite a thing to behold, trying to establish the MC as "Christian".  So, if the MC wishes to be considered as Christian, then Christians are quite right to designate the Mormon Church as a cult.
And Christian pastors by and large (big-time guy Joel Osteen notwithstanding) agree with Pastoir Jeffress.  According to a poll recently released by LifeWay Research, a majority of pastors surveyed agree with the Southern Baptist pastor. LifeWay Research director Scott McConnell says 75 percent disagree with the statement: "I personally consider Mormons (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) to be Christians."  See:

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Church/Default.aspx?id=1457432

So what's up?  Here is analysis recently sent by a friend:

= = = = = = = = = = =

Mormonism Christian? Absolutely not.

Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, is clearly a "false prophet" by Bible definition which says if a prophet misses in one thing, he is not a prophet of God. Among numerous bizarre and clearly disproven BOM claims is that of North American natives of Jewish descent. Y-Chromosome genetic tests and other genetic techniques comparing NA natives and world Jewry show Joseph Smith's dreamed up Book of Mormon is just that - dreamed up. Despite the blustering and tears of the "conservative" Mormon political commentator Glen Beck, try this:

http://www.godandscience.org/cults/dna.html

But why not Christian? Just a few:


(a) (Mormon founder) Joseph Smth's involvement with occult practice in New England got him booted from church,


(b) (Mormon founder) Joseph Smith had too many (waaaay too many) wives, plus adulterous relations with others. Brigham Young was an apple that did not fall far from Joseph Smith's tree.


(c) Smith and followers were chased out of Missouri because too many were cattle thieves and worse. After the death of Joseph Smith in Illinois (read the details in Richard Abanes book to see if this guy really was a "martyr"), a Mormon exodus from Illinois soon followed for much the same reason as their exit from Missouri. The Mormon Trail the Mormon church tries to dramatize as a path of flight from persecution was in fact a flight from prosecution,


(d) Mormonism claims God is evolving but Bible says God is unchanging,


(e) Mormonism claims Jesus is spirit brother of Satan, while Bible is clear:  Jesus is Son of God and creator while Satan is a created being,


Summary of (d) and (e): Mormon god is not the Bible God, Mormon Jesus is not the Bible Jesus.

(f) Mormonism says we are becoming gods, while the Bible says the ultimate sin of Satan was desiring to be "like the most high." Really, this one is the most serious of all because it sets this most central of Mormon teachings at the center of Satan’s rebellion. .

(g) Bible says the blood of Jesus is sufficient to pay for all sin, including murder. So I and other Christians would affirm Texas axe murderer Karla Faye Tucker and Milwaukee serial murderer (plus homosexual abuser and cannibal) Jeffrey Dahmer would both be saved due to in-prison conversions before their deaths. Christians acknowledge that the physical death of the murderer is clearly and unquestionably required by scripture, but also affirm that (spiritual) salvation may be obtained even by the condemned murderer – but only by the blood of Jesus and by nothing else. On the other hand, Mormons claim that a blood crime (murder) requires the blood of the murderer be shed for salvation. Remember why Utah murderer Gary Gilmore requested execution by firing squad about 30-35 years ago? He followed Mormon teaching that his own blood shed was required for spiritual salvation along with the blood of Jesus. This is a few galaxies away from Christianity.


(h) The “eternal” doctrine of polygamy lasted until it was convenient to change it for political purposes. For example, President Brigham Young on July 18, 1855 (Journal of Discourses) said, “If any of you will deny the plurality of wives and continue to do so, I promise that you will be damned.” But around 1891 this teaching was conveniently set aside so Utah could be accepted into the Union.

(i) About the “negro”, Joseph Smith Jr., founder of the Mormon Church, in 1843 said, “Had I anything to do with the negro, I would confine them by strict law to their own species …” (January 2, 1843. HC, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1976/1980, vol. 5, 217-218.) Blacks prior to 1978, according to Mormon doctrine, could not attain “godhood” or hold any church office. But in 1978 the Mormon doctrine regarding blacks conveniently changed to become more acceptable to mainstream America and to set the stage for the church’s push to change its image from clearly outspoken opponent of Christianity to begin to appear simply as one more Christian group.

(j) Are you aware of the Mormon Oath of Vengeance against the United States? This oath was required for the followers of Brigham Young. It was sent in 1850 to the U.S. Congress by none other than William Smith, brother of Joseph, after Brigham Young had ascended to the presidency of the church. It was printed by the Government Printing Office in 1905 as part of testimony received in considering if Utah Senator Reed Smoot should be fit to continue to serve. Perhaps the millions of Christians, decried by some as anti-Mormon bigots, may be merely well-informed. Here it is:


“You do solemnly swear in the presence of Almighty God … that you will avenge the blood of Joseph Smith upon this nation, and so teach your children; that you will; from this day henceforth and forever, begin and carry out hostilities against this nation, and keep the same a profound secret now and forever, so help you God.”


..... and on and on it goes. And you wonder why I will not vote for Romney or any other Mormon. There it is. Not bigotry, merely following my duty to be part of an informed electorate.

.....

And I (D.U.) am aware that there is more to be said.  All the above and more can be found in many books documenting the history and teachings of the MC.  From No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), by Fawn McKay Brodie, to One nation under gods: A history of the Mormon Church (New York, London: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2002) by Richard Abanes.  Abanes' unsanitized account of the Mountain Meadow Massacre (you can find sanitized accounts by the MC using any search engine) is a jaw-dropper. 

Enough for now.

Respectfully submitted,

D.U.

P.S. And about evolution, the usual topic of this blog: Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, in reponse to Texas Governor Rick Perry's statements in support of divine creation, tweeted:  "To be clear, I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming.  Call me crazy."
Find the discussion on the ABC News post: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/08/jon-huntsman-comes-out-swinging/
Well, of course Huntsman can say that.  If you are a Mormon believing God has evolved from man-like to God and man is evolving as well in the same way, why not say you believe in evolution? He can if he wants to - it is still a free country for a while.  It's just not Biblical.

Deja vu all over again. Federal debt per family "improves" like WOW.

Well - I am back after hiatus of more than a year. My slight bepuzzlement at the US congressional budget "deal", with R's and D's square dancing down Pennsylvania Avenue, has suckered me in yet again to blabbing here.


First, recall my post of June 30, 2009, as I considered the last federal FY of Bush (W) and the first nearly completed FY of Obama (H). Now archived in:

http://darwin-is-dead.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_archive.html

I wrote June 30, 2009: 

"So I thought I just might run the numbers as a quick intro to what I really want to get to today. Again using the 2007 number of 111.2 million households, that means that each American household was blessed with a one-year increase of a RECORD $4100 in the 2007-2008 Federal budget (ending September 30, 2008). That is about what my two old used cars are worth combined. But, hey, you ain't seen nuthin' yet. The projected 2008-2009 one-year Federal deficit pencils out to $16,600 per household. And you were worried about paying off that washer and dryer on your credit card? That is just dust on the scales compared to the Fed deficit numbers. It's like you just bought a new car and your kids signed the promissory note. Oh - and another new car next year, and the next, and ..."

Coming now to the 2011-12 budget deal, I find the picture has actually "improved" (from $16,600 increase in federal debt per year per household) to only an increase of $14,600 per household in the coming Fed fiscal year. So please forgive my prior cynicism - how insensitive it was of me. 


Here are the numbers for the recent 2011-12 budget "deal":

Households 113 M (per census)
Federal budget (spending) $33,800 per household
Federal income $19,200 per household
Increase in federal debt (in one year only) $14,600 per hh.
And the "cuts" totaled $341 per family per year.

Shall we joyfully sing and dance? Maybe barefooot on the White House lawn? If the aforeused word "bepuzzlement" is a word, this is surely ...

Respectfully submitted - but with bepuzzlement,

D.U.

P.S.   Darwin is still dead, his toxins linger. More soon I hope.
P.P.S. This post modified Aug 16 to correct Fed budget number and Fed spending figure. I left off one zero from each. But the $14,600 increase in family debt for the first FY of the budget "deal" was correct.

I guess I should apologize to the Oregonian, eh? How about 2035 vs 2350?

WOW!

I just opened my daily Oregonian this morning. After searching through its august pages, I (Eureka!) stumbled across a column mentioning the phony Himalayan glacier melting projections published in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 report. Those absurdly outer-space projections were the subject of my last post.

So, OK, I was wrong.

How so? In yesterday's post, I admitted that I expected to NEVER see a fair admission of AGW scientific misconduct (or just a screwup if you will) in the Oregonian. And there it was in today's paper - a short column hidden on page A-7, just inside the back page splashed with Macy's ads.

Funny, though. The AP report datelined in Geneva made the IPCC's "poorly substantiated estimates of the rate of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers" to be, well, pretty ho-hum. The tone was more appropriate to discussing a hangnail than a glioblastoma.

And, even after searching and finally finding the report in the Oregonian, if you did not read the OneNewsNow article, you would never know about the lame excuse offered that they switcherooed a few digits to get 2035 instead of 2350 for the projected Himalaya-glaciers-a-bye-bye date. So if you only read AP stuff bylined in Genevea, you may never get a glimmer of how over-the-top some of this "expert" issued AGW propaganda really is.

Is AGW likely? Yes, of course. In fact almost certain. Is it a dire threat to mankind on this third rock from the sun? A very thin maybe, but surely not so likely. Some global warming would appear in fact to increase global food production (as admitted by the IPCC). On the long-term, the smaller CO2 "trigger" to produce humongous and disastrous H2O greenhouse gas warming is far far far from clear. Check with meteorologist Professor Emeritus William Gray at Colorado State U on that one before deciding what you really know.
http://darwin-is-dead.blogspot.com/2009/12/agw-best-place-to-hear-both-sides-is-in.html

I think all we the public ask is OBJECTIVE information. Then we have a much better shot at good sound decision making. That is the way democracy should work. The pseudo-science aristocracy that has brought us Copenhagen and the global warming hysteria (and "Climategate") clearly has not served us well.

So, Oregonian, there is my apology, such as it is. Maybe the Daily Columbian across the river could start running other news sources and make up for internet-induced advertising income losses by selling papers in north Oregon to a fact-hungry public.

Respectfully submitted,

D.U.

UN Report on Himlayan glaciers bogus. 2035 or 2350?

This one is just to good (or bad), too titillating (or too sad) to let it go by.

Here is a headline I just saw. Don't want you to miss it.

UN climate report riddled with errors on glaciers

Read it here:
http://www.onenewsnow.com/AP/Search/US/Default.aspx?id=862752

And if you are wondering why your friendly Darwin despiser always manages to be on top of the global warming bubble, it is because I subscribe to a daily email from onenewsnow which provides links I can follow at my choosing. I see stuff which I will NEVER see in my local fishwrapper, the Oregonian.

Here is just a glimpse. The rest you can get at the link above..

UN climate report riddled with errors on glaciers
SETH BORENSTEIN - 1/21/2010 12:56:34 AM

Five glaring errors were discovered in one paragraph of the world's most authoritative report on global warming, forcing the Nobel Prize-winning panel of climate scientists who wrote it to apologize and promise to be more careful.

The errors are in a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N.-affiliated body. All the mistakes appear in a subsection that suggests glaciers in the Himalayas could melt away by the year 2035 _ hundreds of years earlier than the data actually indicates. The year 2350 apparently was transposed as 2035.

The climate panel and even the scientist who publicized the errors said they are not significant in comparison to the entire report, nor were they intentional. And they do not negate the fact that worldwide, glaciers are melting faster than ever.
But the mistakes open the door for more attacks from climate change skeptics.
"The credibility of the IPCC depends on the thoroughness with which its procedures are adhered to," Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, told The Associated Press in an e-mail. "The procedures have been violated in this case. That must not be allowed to happen again because the credibility of climate change policy can only be based on credible science."

The incident follows a furor late last year over the release of stolen e-mails in which climate scientists talked about suppressing data and freezing out skeptics of global warming. And on top of that, an intense cold spell has some people questioning whether global warming exists.
In a statement, the climate change panel expressed regret over what it called "poorly substantiated estimates" about the Himalayan glaciers.

"The IPCC has established a reputation as a real gold standard in assessment; this is an unfortunate black mark," said Chris Field, a Stanford University professor who in 2008 took over as head of this part of the IPCC research. "None of the experts picked up on the fact that these were poorly substantiated numbers. From my perspective, that's an area where we have an opportunity to do much better."
Patrick Michaels, a global warming skeptic and scholar at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, called on the head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, to resign, adding: "I'd like to know how such an absurd statement made it through the review process. It is obviously wrong."

Well now, D.U suggests that if the IPCC's "gold standard" performance allows who-knows-how-many reviewers and editors to allow the year 2350 to be transposed to 2035 for melting Himalayan glaciers, it's just a fools-gold standard. Were they drinking Al Gore's intoxicating kool-aid? And note that it was three out of four digits misplaced, not a mere transposing of two digits out of four. Ummmm, how/why?

It's no longer time to ask for an apology. It is no longer time to accept a promise to be more careful. It's not even time to ask for explanations - unless it is before a criminal court. The time of "Oh, my bad" is long gone. It is time to issue pink slips. Maybe the big broom from the Massachusetts senatorial election can be used at NCAR in Colorado and GISS in New York - oh, and surely for the discredited and suspended Mann at Penn State as well. See
(http://toryardvaark.wordpress.com/2009/12/20/climategate-copenhagen-ends-and-discredited-climatologist-michael-mann-breaks-his-silence/).

The Brits can take care of their guy Phil Jones at East Anglia U themselves. Is "keelhaul" still an operational word in British English?

And is there any way I could do a short sale on carbon credits? I could use some spare change.

And now that I know whom I can not trust, could someone please tell me whom I can trust?

Submitted with overflowing gratitude to the East Anlgia mole, and overflowing scorn toward the cabal who have done unimaginable damage to the reputation of science in our time.

D.U.

Bad bed bugs more benign, but Alliterating "Boninite" Confounding

Yo y'all.

Just a couple of brief items today as I peek at the most recent issue of Science News, January 16, 2010. Both items are reminders and corroboration of longstanding creationist talking points.

First item relates to the resurrected bedbug population in the USA. Today's newbie generation has likely never heard the old grunt generation's oft-heard "Sleep tight, and don't let the bedbugs bite" - unless the young'uns are enrolled to live on campus at a university. It seems the increasingly international student population in US universities has brought stowaway bed bugs galore from around the world in luggage and clothing. Maybe the upside of the high-resolution airport body scanners would be to detect lurking bedbugs in an incoming visitor's underwear - or wherever.

Anyway ... in the Science News article "Dry ice in a jug attracts bedbugs", (Science News, January 16, 2010, p.8), ends a very humorous yet interesting article with this:
"In North America, bed bugs are back after being dead for decades. 'We have lterally skipped a generation of knowledge with this pest,' said Stephen Kells of the University of Minnesota in St. Paul.
Long-ago studies may not help control today's pesticide-resistant strains coddled by centraol hating, said Andrea Polanco-Pinzon of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. But on the bright side, the modern strain she studies doesn't live as long without feeding as strains documented in earlier research, she said."

The point? For a long time, creationists have correctly been pointing out that mutation-driven population changes in an organism, for example in its ability to survive in a modified environment (for example with the introduction of an antibiotic), invariably result in a weakened and less viable organism. As Dr. John Sanford points out in Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome (FMS Publications, Waterloo, NY, 2008), a mutation-driven phenotype change (what the critter actually changes into) may be beneficial in a selected environmental niche while the genotypic change (what is the DNA change) will almost certainly be harmful in the overall range of all populations. This is precisely true in the note above - even for the lowly bedbugs who just can't go as long between meals as their forebears.

Second item: a spectacular underwater volcano eruption about 200 kilometers southwest of Samoa was caught in the act on video taken by a remotely operated submarine ("Sub records volcano video", Science News, January 16, 2010, p. 14). Especially interesting to your friendly blogger was the last paragraph:

"Rocks snatched from the volcano include boninite lavas, a chemically distinct type of lava previously found only around extinct volcanoes that erupted more than one million years ago."

Young earth creationists (YECs) have long pointed out discordant rock "ages" from recently appearing structures such as underwater volcanoes and island formations. So here is a lava type being formed even as the cameras were rolling, identical to lava types "known" to be a million years old. The question becomes, "since we know the age of the boninite formed today, can we really be sure the other appearances of boninite are really a million years old?"

Well, can we?

Respectfully submitted,

D.U.

More on the recently outed pseudo-science phenomenon

Greetings dear D-is-D readers wherever you may be.

Several of my recent posts have lamented the apparent deprivation of integrity in science, both in "Climategate" and in the origins controversy. So I just received an email from Mark Cadwallader, Board Chairman of Creation Moments lamenting the same. If my rusty brain is working correctly, I believe Mark was one of the student shakers and movers at the University of Californa - Santa Barbara in the Students for Origins Research group about 25 years ago. They published some really great stuff for a bunch of newbie students. So I am confident that Mark has been well informed of the controversies of science for more than two decades. I provide most of his email below, verbatim. Enjoy!

Respectfully copied from and credited to Mark Cadwallader,

D.U.

"Another Pseudo Science ExposedThursday, January 7th, 2010.

January 2010. Dear Friend of Creation, What a revelation! Distorting science to promote a political and ideological agenda! We creationists have known this to be true for years. Scientists can certainly be biased, or even dishonest in some cases. By now the story is well known. In late November thousands of e-mails and many important documents from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia University in Britain were exposed on the Internet. These documents revealed a determined effort by scientists to conceal data that undermined their hypothesis of man-made global warming, to blacklist other scientists who sought to test the theory or challenge their agenda, and to take control of and redefine the “peer-review” process for climate change research! The CRU has been a prime source for the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which promotes and imposes the costly global-warming agenda upon the entire world. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Energy (DOE) have also based their regulations of carbon dioxide upon the IPCC’s reports. As with evolutionism, a pseudo-science is being used to support an agenda which grows out of the depravity of man. While evolution is a pseudo-science driven by man’s sinful desire to rid himself of accountability to his Maker, the pseudo-science that says we need to curb CO2 emissions (an atmospheric gas essential for life on Earth) comes from the lust for power, money, prestige and global control – as people turn their lives, liberty and wealth over to global power players. Billions of dollars are already being transferred as “carbon credits” with governments actively allocating tax credits and funds in attempts to supposedly manipulate Earth’s future temperature, creating what has become one of the world’s largest industries (and making Al Gore personally worth hundreds of millions of dollars). What I like about these “Climategate” revelations is that they give us credibility with people who may have had a hard time believing creationists when we claim the subversion of information by the so-called “scientific consensus.” With Climategate, they can see a modern example of a joint propaganda effort maintained by academics, government and media walking in lockstep to preserve a pet theory. It’s a great illustration for our case against evolution! In the case of Climategate, we have had the benefit of the Internet, so that the documents and correspondence between the key players have been made public to millions of people in a hurry. By contrast, the early frauds of Haeckel’s drawings, Piltdown Man, and other purported evidences of evolution remained hidden from the public for years, allowing the pseudo-science of evolution to become and remain entrenched. Now you can hardly read an official academic, government or media report in natural science without running into a just-so story of evolution being thrown in gratuitously and extraneous to the point. Scientists are human and, therefore, flawed and corruptible. They can be bought or intimidated. They can cleave to a pet ideology, special interest, club of coworkers or to the investment of time and money into their own training. They can manipulate their way through the Scientific Method to please the right people and qualify for funding, advancement, recognition and prestige. Let me quote Dr. William Gray, renowned hurricane forecaster and Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University (CSU), who has devoted his entire career of more than half a century to the study and forecasting of meteorological and climate events.Rising levels of CO2 are not near the threat these alarmists have portrayed them to be. There has yet to be an honest and broad scientific debate on the basic science of CO2’s influence on global temperature. The global climate models predicting large amounts of global warming for a doubling of CO2 are badly flawed. They should never have been used to establish government climate policy…. The last century’s global warming of about 1 degree Fahrenheit is not a consequence of human activities….1 It is a problem, arguably beyond the reach of science, to try to reconstruct the history of things from evidences in the present day, without a true witness of the history – whether it be the history of average temperatures or the history of life on Earth. We have to make assumptions about the past that will automatically influence our conclusions about the past. And so people tend to pick the assumptions which give them the conclusions they want – consciously or subconsciously. Data has been discarded, ignored, cherry picked or modified to bolster claims. Dissenting scientists have been marginalized, ostracized and ridiculed. Scientific journals have been co-opted so that dissenting research can be excluded under the rules of “peer review” set by the scientists in the seats of power. Sounds just like evolutionism doesn’t it? Pseudo-science invented by the depravity of man. Creation Moments is putting forth the message of honest debate in science. As with global warming, so, too, do we need honest debate for evolution. We need scientists to admit their biases. What we do not need is intimidation and censorship. And yet, that’s exactly what is happening. Those who believe in global warming and evolution are doing everything possible to silence the opposition. And they are successful because they have far more funding than we do.
...
www.creationmoments.com

An inconvenient untruth in Copenhagen gores Big Al's credibility

OK, OK. ... So I said yesterday I was packing it in for Christmas. I just had to unpack for a few minutes to mention this one.

Al Gore claimed in Copenhagen on Monday, December 14, 2009, that according to "fresh" research, he could report that the arctic ice cap could be virtually ice-free in summer months within five to seven years. Problem was, the researcher he was citing happened to be in the neighborhood and kind of said (approximately), "Ummm ... Al, not sure how you got that."

When I heard this I Googled and got:

Results 1 - 10 of about 196,000,000 for in copenhagen al gore claimed polar ice caps melt in seven years

So I guess maybe I'm wasting my time blogging on this one since, with 196 million hits, it's not like I am sharing any secrets here.

Well, in case Google goes bankrupt and closes their portals, here is one post from The Times for you. For further bemusement, you may feel free to Google away the same.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/copenhagen/article6956783.ece

Mr Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years. In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”
However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast.
“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”
Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.

Thanks to The Times and others for their reports, allowing us home folks to enjoy some of the more warming Copenhagen moments without overly expanding our carbon footprints.

Gratefully submitted,

D.U.

P.S. As I remember Al Gore walking over and smugly standing right in front of George W. Bush during the presidential debate, now I will be watching to see how the climate cartel throws Big Al under the bus as it pulls out of Copenhagen. You can bet it is already done.

AGW: the best place to hear both "sides" is in Fort Collins, Colorado

Greetings global warming survivors wherever you may be.

Again I am posting only a few hours after my last post about the (allegedly) cherry-picked Russian climate data.

What now? I am clearing the decks for Christmas. Shutting it down. But if you are interested in the global warming controversy (more precisely, anthropogenic global warming, or AGW) and if you have a technical bent to sift through fluff versus substance, this is for you.

February 19, 2008, began a written "debate" in the Fort Collins (Colorado) Forum newspaper between Dr. Kevin Trenberth - head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder - and Dr. William Gray, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. It is absolutely amazing to me that the best thorough exchange I have seen on the entire AGW controversy would be scooped by a small town newspaper in northern Colorado.

For your holiday reading, click on the link below and follow the links to read Dr. Gray's initial article, Dr. Trenberth's reply, and one more round of rebuttals:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=4177

And watch with great discernment which argues more from the critical science of cloud physics and which attempts to fly beneath cover of the logical fallacy of "appeal to authority" (as in "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has spoken." ! ! ! ! ! ! ! )

Have a happy Jesus Birthday and a God-blessed 2010.

Submitted with the joy of the season,

D.U.

A Bowl of Unpleasant Cherries for Mr. Obama in Copenhagen

Here it is mid-December and U.S. President Obama will soon be flying back from an Obama-adulating global warming conference in Copenhagen to land in a monster snowstorm in the northeastern US. Ironic, no?

So it is time to talk about picking cherries.


Just for reference, here are a few of Oregon's choice Hood River cherries - sweet and world famous.

But the topic is not picking cherries, but rather "cherry picking", as in selectively choosing what you want and ignoring anything less than the most desirable.

In my memory, the most delightful use of the term "cherry picking" was the Doonesbury cartoon a number of years ago that inferred that U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney was cherry picking Iraq intelligence data like a man selecting lingerie for his wife.

That one has now been far outdone.

Be there any truth in the matter, the Russians are now accusing the global climate cartel member in Britain (recently and famously hacked) of cherry picking Russian climate data. The accusation?

"Meanwhile, a new climate scandal is gaining momentum. The Moscow-based Institute for Economic Analysis (IEA) has accused the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research of the British Meteorology Office of only using statistics from weather stations in Russia that fitted its theory on global warming, and ignoring those that did not."
http://rt.com/Top_News/2009-12-18/data-cherry-picked-climatologists.html?fullstory

Just to keep this in perspective, it is good to remember that RT.com is an English language Russian news port. And a country (Russia) that sends an assassin to Britain to poison someone they don't like with a lethal radioactive cocktail should be held somewhat suspect at times.

But I don't see this one going the way the global warming hysterionicals would like it to go. I know personally that Russia has had excellent and extensive climate data collection systems. Their published records may be checked against the claims the above article makes. But Hadley-CRU has been holding back release of the data used to compute their global warming figures. The November 20, 2009, sensational news of the hacking and release of East Anglia University's Climate Research Unit (CRU) files and emails has forced some partial release of the Hadley-CRU data set. And it looks like that partial release is what has made the Russian IEA analysis possible - just in time to greet U.S. President Obama in Copenhagen.

While the Russian claim remains to be verified, it all tastes like a very delicious bowl of cherries to me, while Mr. Obama may find the aftertaste quite bitter. But then his insensibilty to go on to Copenhagen with the "Climategate" scandal growing by the day may indicate that his taster is not functioning very well. In his frenzy to offer up big chunks of U.S. taxpayer change (yes, "Change you can believe in" ) to support a $100 billion (per year) warming fix, the foul bowl of cherries may not even get his attention. Sensibilities be damned.

A bit more from the RT.com article (in case the link dries up):

"In a report this week, the IEA says the HadCRUT’s study of climate change ignored data from three quarters of the weather stations on the territory of Russia. This includes “more than 40% of the area,” which was not included, not due to missing data, but “for some other reasons.”
That means 40% of Russia’s territory is unrepresented in the world’s most important temperature record.

...

Moreover, of the data available for the same location, the British researchers chose incomplete sets of temperature with growth trends over complete ones that did not fit into the global warming model. Also, data from stations located in cities – which are always likely to be warmer due to waste heat generated by local industries and homes – were preferred over those in remote areas, the IEA says.
All in all, the institute evaluates the difference between the growth of average temperatures between 1870s and 1990s, based on all data available for Russia and those delivered by HadCRUT, as at least 0.64 degrees Celsius.
The report goes on to say that if similar practices, which the IEA bluntly calls “overstating the scale of the warming by HadCRUT”, were used in the selection of raw data from other regions of the world, global estimates for climate change should be seriously amended."

This one is going to fun to watch.

Submitted with a whole bunch of conflicted feelings,

D.U.

P.S. I am not a global warming denier, I am a global warming realist. And I have intimate understanding of the pitfalls of taking meteorological-hydrological-climatological models as infallible dispensers of truth. Like twenty-something gaming addicts for whom cyberspace becomes their real world, climate modelers chained to a computer terminal with the heady hope of saving the planet while modeling 100 years into the future can warp one's view of what is real and what is not. I suspect that many of the climate modeling warm-mongers have not been operational forecasters humbled by the occasional busted forecast. At Copenhagen, their arrogance remains unshattered. But tomorrow?

P.P.S. "But would not some warming increase global food production?" I have been wondering? You can look for the IPCC "admission" mentioned by Nigel Lawson, Energy Secretary in Margaret Thatcher's first government in the early eighties, in the UK Daily Mail opinion piece April 5, 2008, that:

"So far as food production is concerned, it is not clear why a warmer climate would be a problem at all. Even the IPCC concedes that for a warming of anything up to 3 per cent, 'globally, the potential for food production is projected to increase'. Yes: increase."

Read this and more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-557374/The-REAL-inconvenient-truth-Zealotry-global-warming-damage-Earth-far-climate-change.html

The oh-so-pure peer review process can get a little dirty

Yo.

The concept of peer review has worked wonderfully for science and scientists for such a long time now. The basic premise of peer review is to get honest and qualified analysis and recommendation for publication or non-publication of academic papers. And it works very well - when the process is practiced with the intended integrity. But that is not always the case. Not all folks running around in white lab coats have hearts and hands as white as their lab coats.

In earlier posts I mentioned that the peer review process has long been rigged in the discourse over human origins. Lots of good technical material supportive of Biblical creation has been written by highly credentialed scientists but denied publication by the peer review process. Denied not because of poor science but because of viewpoint discrimination. Discrimination seemingly on behalf of of Mr. Charles Darwin but in reality designed to free mankind from the social mores of a Holy God. Discrimination against the Creator - the Creator who not only designed stuff with the greatest of complexities, but managed to fully integrate the whole package with profound robustness.

The nasty and snipy business that peer review can become was so beautifully outed by the global superhero CRU-HACKER. And following is a supporting comment (in the global warming venue but oh so applicable to the science of origins as well):

Dr. John Brignell, a UK Emeritus Engineering Professor at the University of Southampton who held the Chair in Industrial Instrumentation at Southampton, accused the UN of “censorship” on July 23, 2008. “Here was a purely political body posing as a scientific institution. Through the power of patronage it rapidly attracted acolytes. Peer review soon rapidly evolved from the old style refereeing to a much more sinister imposition of The Censorship. As Wegman demonstrated, new circles of like-minded propagandists formed, acting as judge and jury for each other. Above all, they acted in concert to keep out alien and hostile opinion. 'Peer review' developed into a mantra that was picked up by political activists who clearly had no idea of the procedures of science or its learned societies. It became an imprimatur of political acceptability, whose absence was equivalent to placement on the proscribed list,” Brignell wrote.

Excerpted from:
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/3308/Ignorant-Skeptics-UN-Scientist-Prof-Trenberth-says-only-poorly-informed-scientists-disagree-with-UN--Appeals-to-Authority-The-IPCC-has-spoken

Submitted in hopes of enlightenment of the oh-so-enlightened ones.

D.U.

The death of science in our generation

Greetings all.

When the world has just been informed that Rihanna has a new tattoo, why would I be ruminating about such a trivial issue as the death of science?

Well, just 'cuz it's my thing I s'pose.

The EPA announced a finding of earthling endangerment from CO2 and cohort greenhouse gases a couple of days ago. Frankly, the arrogance and scientific bankruptcy of that "finding" just got my goat. And so I woke up this morning thinking about it.

I hope you in your life have had sun-splashed drives to Southern California beaches (or cruising Sunset after the sun goes down) with the radio blaring the 60's We Five song :
(get the ringtone: http://www.lyriczz.com/lyrics/we-five/14814-you-were-on-my-mind/ )

"When I woke up this morning, you were on my mind.
And you were on my mind.
I got troubles, whoa-oh, I got worries, whoa-oh,
I got wounds to bind;
So, I went to the corner, Just to ease my pain.
Said just to ease my pain
I got troubled, whoa-oh, I got worried, whoa-oh,
I came home again,"

So when I woke up this morning, I could not shake the thermageddon craze (global warming hysteria) driving the EPA announcement and stonewalling the opposition of so so many concerned scientists.

So to ease my pain I began to ponder, "What has happened to science?" And why in the world was I feeling compelled to blab away about global warming hysteriorthodoxy on a blog devoted to exposing phony Darwinian and neo-Darwinian evolution? Suddenly, Eureka! Of course!

Science is dying.

And as evolution signals the death throes of science at the hands of amorality, so "Climate-gate" exposes the death-throes of science at the hands of political ideology and expediency.

But to understand death, you must first understand birth. Where and how did modern science develop? To set straight the science-versus-God dogma of historical science revisionists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Nancy Pearcey and Charles Thaxton published The Soul of Science (Crossway Books, 1994), explaining in convincing fashion that the Biblical Christianity was "not a menace but a midwife" to the birthing of modern science. Few understand how the Judaeo-Christian principles of the Bible provided the fertile ground necessary for the development of modern science when and where it appeared historically. Pearcey and Thaxton cover several necessary philosophical underpinnings for development of science in the first chapter of the book. In discussing Christianity and the scientific revolution, they clearly develop the idea that science is "an invented instituition." Modern empirical science did not just arise out of thin air or from a barren philosopical landscape. Here are a few of the connections they offer as examples of how a Biblical view of nature provides specific assumptions about nature that allow and encourage study of the natural world:

(1) nature is a reality => not an “appearance” or “illusion”;
(2) God made it => nature has value => it is worthy of study;
(3) Nature is good, but not a god => de-deification of nature;
(4) Rational Creator God => rational world capable of study;
(5) Belief in an orderly universe => “natural law”;
(6) “God saw that it was good” => precision, not “fuzziness”;
(7) “Man in image of God” => rational man can understand;
(8) Man must look and see (observation required);
(9) Must work “for glory of God and benefit of mankind.”
(10) “God’s ways higher than our ways” => we must seek to understand God’s rationality, do not impose our own;

As I read The Soul of Science about 15 years ago and then reread it only a few years ago, I wondered what the death of science might look like in a post-Christian society such as our own today. And I guess now we see the answer. It is not that Nature and Science cease publication. Not at all, since those and other prestigious journals continue to publish more and more wonderful discoveries weekly. But those journals, as all of our daily meaningful activities, depend on healthy functioning of certain social and economic structures to keep daily life moving along smoothly. It seems clear to me that it is in those necessary supporting structures that the piper must be paid. And the payment will indeed be painful.

First, the decay of social structures due to Darwin and friends:
Darwinian evolution gives mankind a somewhat respectable way to run away from God, even in the light of clear evidence of God's handiwork in the created universe. This opens the way for (not quite!) conscience-free exercise of pride, greed, and lust. The social fruit of a tree with such poisonous roots will not at all look like the bountiful blessing of a pleased Heavenly Father. Daniel Dennett (Darwin's Dangerous Idea) describes Darwinism as a "universal acid" that eats through just about every traditional concept and leaves in its wake a revolutionized world-view. Maybe that is Dennett's delight, but for sure, it's gonna hurt. It already does.

Second, the decay of economic structures.
Due to the exercise of earthly wisdom rather than divine wisdom in government, business, and personal finances, we have likely been tipped. What does that mean? It means going past the point of no return. Just like at some point Bernie Madoff knew that his financial pyramid was lost, he knew the day would come when it would all come down. Except by the merciful intervention of a gracious God, there go we as a nation as well. As I posted several months ago, "we will not get a grip on the dollar until we get a grip on the divine," referring to principles of Deuteronomy Chapter 28, The Holy Bible. The sub-prime bubble exposed a lack of integrity in the business and personal finance sectors (and likely in the government sector as well). And now "Climate-gate" and the EPA endangerment finding reveals our leadership's integrity impoverishment and how it seems destined to add to our growing fiscal impoverishment.

Now I'm done with this post.

I could go on and on and quote and copy all kinds of information about good scientists who are appalled at the cabal of climate "experts" that have fudged data, cornered the market on debate, and refuse in their own vainglorious pride to heed concerns raised by serious and technically sound researchers.

But you don't need me to do that. Just Google "Climate scientists skeptical of climate change", and then maybe go look for U.S. Senator Inhofe's 2008 U.S. Senate Minority Report from Environment and Public Works. The report gives over 650 (and growing) dissenting international scientists disputing anthropogenic (caused by man) climate fears.

And the beat goes on .... while B. H. Obama flies to Copenhagen with his "settled science" decision firmly in his pocket. Isn't that fine?

Listen carefully? Do you hear anything? Pause to feel - is anything shaking? Do you feel the very foundations shaking?

Sadly submitted,

D.U.

Where Oh Where is the Oregonian Newspaper ? ! ?

Beginning with a corner of the world known as Oregon (but almost universally known as Ory-gone to the uninitiated).

(I) First the good news.

The Oregon State University Beavers football team will go up against the University of Oregon (also known as the University of California at Eugene to the granola and Birkenstocks crowd) Ducks in only 10 days with winner-take-all for the PAC-10 Rose Bowl berth. Is that so cool! In my young and foolish days, my must-see game was Trojans vs. Bruins (recall O.J Simpson versus Gary Beban 21-20?). But now that I am older and wiser, Beavs and Ducks it is. Go Beavs!

(II) Absent news coverage.

Now the puzzling news. Portland's Oregonian newspaper is AWOL (official lingo that means hiding in a dark corner somwhere) in reporting substantive news about the global-warming computer hacking scandal-outrage-coup-whatever.

Remember a few years ago when Oregon's U.S. Senator Bob Packwood's lady-groping under banquet tables was outed by the Washington Post while such shenanigans had apparently been known to local Oregonian news staff for quite some time? The bumper sticker said it all:
"If it matters to Oregonians, read it in the Washington Post."

Well, here we go again. It has been four days since the sensational release of files hacked out of England's University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit raised stunning questions about professional misconduct, bias, and stonewalling. See my prior post:
http://darwin-is-dead.blogspot.com/2009/11/climategate-peer-reviews-precursor-to.html

But I have been looking in vain for anything of substance in the Oregonian about the whole affair. Are Los Angeles and Miami are still expected to go under water before too long? And, more immediately, are American families going to be expected to bear the $3,000 per year for the next 20 years to pay for the ill-advised cap-and-trade business if the global warming hysteria continues and we sign away our sovereignty in Copenhagen next month?

In Saturday's (Nov 21) edition I pored over section A looking for coverage. Result? Nada. Earthweek on page 2 had nary a peep. I did find something about overweight students and that Senator Burris got scolded.

Then came Sunday, Nov. 22. I actually looked for climate change scandal coverage before I read the game summary of the Ducks-Arizona contest. Oh look, there it is buried on page A-17 (could not go on A-18 since that was a full page ad for Macy's). An article "Hackers leak climate emails, stoking debate" with three and a half short columns. Not much ink and even less substance, but the most serious omission was making no mention of possible manipulation of the peer-review process. When you can control who gets to speak at the table and who can not, a lot of chicanery can come down. And so it appears.

And now today, Monday, Nov. 23. Since my expectations for Oregonian coverage had been abandoned, I read the comics and sports before looking for the Climategate coverage. Aha - there it is! All 5 column inches of it hiding on the bottom of page A-6. It is a London article giving the nonsubstantive reply of Kevin Trenberth of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Colorado. Trenberth "believes the hackers who stole a decade's worth of correspondence ... deliberately distributed only those documents that could help attempts by skeptics to undermine the scientific consensus on man-made climate change." My response? Hey, skip the outrage already. Answer the questions raised. Those questions are numerous and weighty, especially with the Copenhagen summit coming up next month as 191 nations will consider a new global treaty on limiting emissions of greenhouse gases. The Oregonian failed in colossal fashion to address and inform on a critical critical issue. Shame, shame.

But the Oregonian is not alone among U.S. media sleeping through the climate change inquiry. The "surreal scientific blunder" reported by the UK Telegraph on Nov. 16, 2008 [note this corrected from 2009 on Dec 4, 2009], was similarly underreported. If it was in the Oregonian, I missed it. And I usually at least skim headlines in Section A. See the Newsbusters Nov. 16, 2008 [corrected from 2009 on Dec. 4 2009] , coverage at:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2008/11/16/uk-paper-notes-surreal-scientific-blunder-global-temps-measurement-us-me

Oh, and WaPo had a substantive article Sunday, Nov. 22:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/21/AR2009112102186.html?nav=hcmodule

Shades of Senator Packwood. Maybe the names on desks at the Oregonian have changed but the result is the same. If it matters to Oregonians, check WaPo.

(III) And from a couple of my moles:

After the hacking was outed on November 20, I followed up with personal contacts to inquire. Quotes from "Climate Scientist A", with whom I had some professional contact in Washington D.C. a few decades ago, and from "Climate Scientist B", who is known to "Climate Scientist A":

Climate Scientist A: "With respect to the Gore/Mann hockey stick, I will quote Mark Twain, "Get your facts first, then you can distort them as much as you please." The follow-up is "Lies, damn lies and statistics."

Climate scientist B: Regarding the apparent global warming peer review abuses suggested in the hacked emails, "...what an amazing vindication this is. We knew all along that this was happening, but lacked proof. Now we have it."

Submitted rejoicing in amazing vindication indeed,

D.U.

More on "Climategate". Should NASA's Dr. James Hansen be "tried for high crimes against humanity and nature" ?

Yo all.

Still about good science and a followup on my last post about "Climategate."

Backing up a year and a few days prior to "Climategate" to a "GISSgoof" outed November 16, 2008. And where to get some background for that?

Maybe by quoting chief global warming hysteriologist Dr. James Hansen, since 1981 serving as Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in NY. Dr. Hansen, speaking to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on June 23, 2008 ,

( http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,370521,00.html )

said that heads of major fossil-fuel companies who spread disinformation about global warming should be "tried for high crimes against humanity and nature."

Sounds very authoritative. Well, it should be since GISS is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures. So what do we know about Dr. Hansen? According to the UK Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/3563532/The-world-has-never-seen-such-freezing-heat.html

("The world has never seen such freezing heat" by Christopher Booker, 16 Nov 2008)

"If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore. Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change. (He was recently in the news here for supporting the Greenpeace activists acquitted of criminally damaging a coal-fired power station in Kent, on the grounds that the harm done to the planet by a new power station would far outweigh any damage they had done themselves.)"

But Booker's Telegraph article exposes a slight blunder on the part of Hansen and GISS:

"A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.
So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running. (Emphasis mine. DU)

The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.

So by what standard should the GISS (and Dr. Hansen) performance be measured, in light of his zealously litigious and prosecutorial attitude toward major fossil-fuel companies? Jesus said this: "For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." (Luke 6:38, NIV).

Let's see, disinformation about global warming tantamount to "high crimes against humanity and nature" was it? And maybe put perpetrators of the infamous and thoroughly debunked Gore-Mann "hockey stick" graph on the hot seat as well.

Submitted with respect for the Watts(s) and McIntyre(s) of the world who demand truth, integrity, and transparency in science that impacts profoundly on public policy. Don't back down guys.

D.U.

P.S. The policy issue is the same in the life origins controversy - crying for integrity and transparency.

P.P.S. More on the American media AWOL (Absent Without Official Leave) on the hacker global warming revelations in next post. It's all so puzzlingly ugly.

P.P.S. (Added Nov 23, 2009, 9:18PM). UK's globalist PM Gordon Brown wrote an article for Newsweek (Sep. 26, 2009) entitled, "Copenhagen or Bust." He wrote "As scientists spell out the mounting evidence both of the climate change already occurring and of the threat it poses in the future, we cannot allow the negotiations to run out of time simply for lack of attention. Failure would be unforgivable. ... And if it is necessary to clinch the deal, I will personally go to Copenhagen to achieve it..." And your friendly blogger is wondering if the Brits have enough grit to clip GB's wings in light of the big big question marks about the science.

P.P..S. The "GISSgoof" outing date was mistakenly posted originally on this post to be Nov. 16, 2009. Corrected to Nov. 16, 2008 as of Dec 5, 2009. DU.

"Climategate" Peer Reviews Precursor to "Monkeygate" Peer Reviews ? ?

Greetings to all you cyberspace seekers of truth. I hope today you land on solid ground in your search.



Mark this date on your calendars ... November 20, 2009 ... as the day global warming hysteria died. It may take a while to get to the funeral, but can the demise of the evolution fairytale be far behind?


Have you heard today how hackers got into email and record files of some climate change scientists in jolly old England and posted them on an anonymous internet server in Russia? The result - embarrassing exposure of conspiracy, collusion, professional misconduct, and whatnot on the part of folks at the very highest levels of scientific trust who want to wish dramatic global warming into reality instead of just oberving facts like good scientists should. Read a few of the more damning summaries here:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/


Or if you Google something like "Hackers release global warming emails and records on Russian website" you will likely find overloads of information.

And since your friendly darwin-is-dead blog is primarily devoted to seeking good sound science properly considered, I find this big news.


But, moreover,


what might be the implications for the creation-evolution controversy?


The telegraph.co.uk blogger commented:


"And, perhaps most reprehensibly, a long series of communications (were) discussing how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process. How, in other words, to create a scientific climate in which anyone who disagrees with AGW (Al Gore's "Anthropogenic Global Warming") can be written off as a crank, whose views do not have a scrap of authority."


Here is one quote mined from the hacked emails which revealed the conspiracy to squeeze out global warming skeptics :

“This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…What do others think?”
“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”“It results from this journal having a number of editors. The responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let a few papers through by Michaels and Gray in the past. I’ve had words with Hans von Storch about this, but got nowhere. Another thing to discuss in Nice !”


The point? Viewpoint censorship is ominously alive and well at the highest levels of "science". How did they try to do it? By seeking to assure that dissenters to the global warming hysteria would not be able to publish in peer-reviewed journals, then claim that the great bulk of peer-reviewed literature was in agreement with the global warming scenario. How clever. How insidious. How lacking in the scientific integrity the public should and must demand.


But the same happens almost daily with the creation-evolution controversy. Good technical articles that may cast some doubt on the just-so tales spun by evolutionists are routinely dismissed in the peer review process. Do you doubt this? Go ahead and Google "Dr. Jerry Bergman, viewpoint discrimination" and you will find piles of affirmation before your eyes.


This might be a good time for an insider ( I would never suggest a hacker) get a peek at emails and files at Eugenie Scott's rabidly ideological U. S. Center for Science Education ( a phony appellation if there ever was one) or some other such defender of the Darwin-myth faith.


A "Monkeygate" might be a good sequel to "Climategate".


Gleefully submitted,


D.U.


P.S.
An enthusiastic tip of the hat to George Taylor, former Oregon State Climatologist in Corvallis, who was forced out of his position by the global warm-mongers a year or so ago. George was a straight shooter showing professional care, restraint, integrity, and responsibility in his response to the irresponsible disinformation that has infected the climate sciences in the last several years. George - I hope the next governor will give you a medal, a special governor's coffee cup, and some back pay. GBU.


P.P.S.
Just for fun, how about a 1979-2010 24-month running sum plot of global cyclone energy (supposedly related to global warming and more hurricanes and cyclones due to warmer feeder waters). This from Florida State University:

http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/

Maybe that Florida coastal real estate will not be such a bad buy afer all.