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jesusdontmakerotgut
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Name: Fred
Country: United States
State: California
Gender: Male
Interests: God first and foremost, the bible etc.
Computers, AI, logic & computer-related math, vacuum tubes, puzzles, hiking, poetry, guitar, writing, basketball. I'm a Warriors fan which means that if the world is incinerated by nuclear disaster, I will be one of the survivors, along with the cockroaches.
Expertise: I've been called a renaissance man, which
means I'm not an expert in anything. But
I think I'm a world-class parable interpreter.
Occupation: Computer related
Industry: Nonprofit
Message: message meEmail: email me
Member Since:
6/30/2004
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| Some years ago, a scientist published a diagram called the "Hockey Stick" diagram. Here it is:
Basically it shows the temperatures ambling along for a thousand years or so and then suddenly taking off like a rocket. This chart serves as the basis for most of the climate change alarmism---it even appeared in the UN Climate Change group's report in 2002.Unfortunately for the scientist and the UN, a guy with too much time on his hands tried to repeat the math that the chart was based on, and he found that it was based on flawed statistics. Among other things it managed to do away with something called the Medieval Warm Period, which many other sources had found, namely a period of increased temperatures that allowed, for example, the Vikings to colonize Greenland. After a lot of hemming and hawing, the UN removed the graph from its reports---the later reports no longer use it. Recently some researchers tried to resurrect the graph with other data. But it only got worse. The scientists who did the work artificially selected trees they were using to get estimates of temperature, so that they used a very small sample to show warming---even when they knew there were other samples that were more numerous that indicated no warming at all. However---nobody knew this because they REFUSED TO SHARE THEIR DATA! One of the co-authors of the papers debunking the original hockey stick made repeated requests that these researchers share their data, which were refused, even when they had published papers in journals that REQUIRED SHARING THE DATA, like Science, and like Nature. Here's a comment about it: Despite the fact that these papers appeared in top journals like Nature and Science, none of the journal reviewers or editors ever required Briffa to release his Yamal data. Steve McIntyre's repeated requests for them to uphold their own data disclosure rules were ignored. Finally, however, the new researchers made the mistake of publishing in a journal that actually enforced its data sharing rules. Here's the comment about the data:
It turns out that many of the samples were taken from dead (partially fossilized) trees and they have no particular trend. The sharp uptrend in the late 20th century came from cores of 10 living trees alive as of 1990, and five living trees alive as of 1995. Based on scientific standards, this is too small a sample on which to produce a publication-grade proxy composite. The 18th and 19th century portion of the sample, for instance, contains at least 30 trees per year. But that portion doesn't show a warming spike. The only segment that does is the late 20th century, where the sample size collapses. Once again a dramatic hockey stick shape turns out to depend on the least reliable portion of a dataset. But an even more disquieting discovery soon came to light. Steve searched a paleoclimate data archive to see if there were other tree ring cores from at or near the Yamal site that could have been used to increase the sample size. He quickly found a large set of 34 up-to-date core samples, taken from living trees in Yamal by none other than Schweingruber [one of the co-authors] himself!Had these been added to Briffa's small group the 20th century would simply be flat. It would appear completely unexceptional compared to the rest of the millennium. In other words, they selected data that showed warming when other data they were aware of (because they themselves had collected it) would have indicated no warming.
So what's the point of dwelling on this? In this day and age Science makes the claim that through objectivity and following the scientific method, the truth can be found. And yet, when it all comes down to it, Science itself is subject to the sinfulness of humanity. All of the safeguards Science claims to have are useless if people ignore them. The temptation to power is so strong that it often leads people to deny their own best principles.
Science can't save us from ourselves.
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| I've been a non-believer in "Global Warming" --- that is, man-made global warming --- ever since I read a numerical analysis of the effects of CO2 back in the 80s. The analysis said that most of the effect of CO2 on warming would come from the first increment of CO2 --- going from, say, 0 to 100ppm, and from that point on, each doubling of the CO2 would have a smaller impact, until it completely blocked the wavelength CO2 was sensitive to. From that point on it wouldn't matter how much CO2 you added, there would be no way it could cause more warming.
Besides the fact that there has been much more CO2 in the atmosphere in prehistoric days than today, and even an ice age when CO2 was over 1000ppm, there was also the question of what the actual temperature of the earth was, both today and in the past.
A bunch of researchers in that area were making headlines for the past 20 years or so claiming that temperatures were taking off. Al Gore made a movie, won a peace prize, and made millions of dollars with investment projects based on the notion that CO2 was going to cause major changes in the climate.
Unfortunately for these researchers, someone hacked their computers and released a large amount of email, data and source code to the internet. The result has been an uproar. Here's a quote about it, responding to another nobel prize winner, Paul Krugman.
“I’ve spent 4 decades studying global climate change and as a scientist I am appalled at Krugman’s cavalier shrugging off the Hadley email scandal as ‘just the way scientists talk among themselves.’ That’s like saying it’s alright for politicians to be corrupt because that’s the way they are. Legitimate scientists do not doctor data, delete data they don’t like, hide data they don’t want seen, hijack the peer review process, personally attack other scientists whose views differ from theirs, send fraudulent data to the IPCC that is used to perpetuate the greatest hoax in the history science, provide false data to further legislation on climate change that will result in huge profits for corrupt lobbyists and politicians, and tell outright lies about scientific data.”
What I find particularly annoying is the way these people have hijacked the process. There are quotes in the hacked email about how when a scientific journal publishes a paper by someone disagreeing with Human-Caused Global Warming, they pressure the journal to fire the editor that allowed the paper to be published, or threaten to boycott the journal, or otherwise try to force the suppression of dissenting papers. The email revealed that they did this several times, not just once. It was part of their strategy. Then they would complain that nobody in the non-global-warming camp was publishing papers, and so they could not be taken seriously. Peer-reviewed science was the only way to go. It was a heads-I-win, tails-you-lose argument. If they didn't publish in "respectable, peer reviewed journals" they weren't legitimate science. But if they did, the journals would be attacked to prevent publishing these kinds of papers.
One more aspect of the whole thing is the ad-hominem regarding money. People who disagreed with global warming often had a hard time getting funding. They would get money from oil companies because the government wouldn't support their research. Then people would say that they'd been corrupted by oil money. However, if you compare the amounts involved, you find that over two decades the biggest oil company investing in this research has spent about $23 million, while the US government has spent $79 BILLION. If money corrupts, there is certainly plenty more room for corruption on the pro-global-warming side than on the anti- side.
There's a web site that covers the controversy, called Icecap.
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| Here's a quotation from Lord Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain:
Parenthood involves massive sacrifice: money, attention, time and emotional energy. Where today, in European culture with its consumerism and its instant gratification because you're worth it. In that culture, where will you find space for the concept of sacrifice for the sake of generations not yet heard? 'Europe is dying, exactly as Poledious said about ancient Greece in the third pre-Christina century. The century which is intellectually as similar to our own - the sceptics, epicureans and cynics. He wrote this: 'the fact is, that the people of Hellas had entered upon the fools path of ostentations, avorous and laziness. Were therefore unwilling to marry, or if they did to bring up the children born to them. The majority were bringing up at most one or two.' 'That is where Europe is today. That is one of the un-sayable truths of our time. We are undergoing the moral equivalent of climate change and no one is talking about it. Albert Camus once said 'the only serious philosophical question is why should I not commit suicide.' I think he was wrong; the only serious philosophical question is why should I have a child? Our culture is not giving an easy answer to that question.'
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| I've been wanting to see the movie Gran Torino for quite some time. Finally my wife borrowed it from the library. It was as good as I'd hoped. It has all those wonderful Christian themes---alienation and reconciliation, love, redemption, sacrifice, even atonement.
I mention Pulp Fiction in this context because I've noticed that for some reason, perhaps just because of sheer talent, people who are not Christians seem to be making Christian movies. Of course they don't do it on purpose. Perhaps it's just that the story is so compelling that they can't help it. It's the best story out there. Sad that we Christians can't find ways to tell it that are as powerful as Gran Torino or even Pulp Fiction.
Apart from the Christian themes, Walt Kowalski and the 1972 Gran Torino are symbols of America, the archetypal America of the 20th century. In one sense it was not true, and somehow the vision got lost after winning the Cold War, and it could never be ultimately true. But this movie shows the ideal---the courage, the integrity, the desire to live and let live but nevertheless to stand up for the right, the willingness to lay down one's life for someone thousands of miles away, even the desire to try to make amends for the tragedies that follow upon defeats like Vietnam.
Walt and the '72 Gran Torino symbolize one more thing: a way of living and an ideal that is passing away and becoming lost. The America of the 20th century is almost gone. Nobody understands it anymore and nobody really wants it. And when it's gone something that at least tried to be good will be gone with it.
Here's a link to the theme song lyrics and a video of it being performed.
BTW hearing Clint Eastwood growl out the lyrics at the end of the movie was incredible.
NOTA BENE: Both Gran Torino and Pulp Fiction are rated R for language and violence. In both movies the bad language is pervasive.
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| - I haven't used Xanga much recently. Since I finished seminary I've mostly been preaching and working. At one point my boss was on the verge of firing me. Somehow things have come to the point where he and another person are dickering over how much of my time they each get. The other guy wanted half my time---my boss wants to give him a day and a half at most. I think the current situation is preferable to the previous one!
 - I've been accumulating topics for writing a book. I want something that collects what I think are the important ideas about Christianity and organizes them coherently. Some of these ideas are:
- The Eternity and Personhood of God (yes, these go together!)
- The Trinity
- Why the Word?
- The Great Web---connectedness and how it forms us
- The Church---what and why?
- Walking with God
- Resurrection---what it isn't and what it is
- The way of Grace
- God really is love
- Righteousness vs. morality
Right now I'm obviously in the brainstorming phase. If I can write something compelling on all the above topics I think it will begin to take shape. - Recently I was given an iTouch by Apple. Those of you who know me will also know that I haven't willingly bought anything by Apple for a long time. However, I liked the iTouch, especially after I jailbroke it. Now I have all kinds of fun "apps" on it, mostly free ones that were on one of the rogue "app stores" that you can use after you jailbreak your iTouch or iPhone. Today I found that there are people out there who have hacked the code for my digital camera and come up with their own firmware for it! I was amazed! For example, I was wishing I could take "raw" format pictures, not .jpg pictures because .jpg loses a bit of quality especially for pictures of the sky (like the moon). Then I found that this new firmware allows exactly that! There are so many features that I'm just amazed. To be honest I had only begun to learn the features of my camera, and now there are literally a dozen or more new ones that this free firmware upgrade gives. I think it's really neat that there are still people out there, the true "hackers", who are trying to get every bit of performance out of whatever hardware they have.
- I am frustrated about keyboards. At work I had to start using a USB keyboard because I'm using a KVM switch to switch between two computers in my office, and that only takes a USB keyboard. But my former keyboard was an old AT style keyboard that I kept (I actually have 2 of them, hoping that at least one will work). I got an adaptor to make it work with a PS2 connection. I have similar keyboards on my computer at home. So I was wondering if I could plug these keyboards into USB ports. I bought some adaptors that let you do it but they weren't actually converters, they just rewired the connections so they'd fit in a USB port. So they didn't work, I needed something that actually converts from PS2 to USB signals and everything. I found on the internet that there's a company that makes adaptors for this very purpose! My life is saved! Or at least my keyboards are saved!
- For some time I've been playing with the idea of starting a weekly blog. Not here on Xanga, because I don't like the way Xanga is putting ads all over my pages. The ads make their own statement and it's not always the statement I want to make. Since I have a web server set up, it wouldn't be too hard to get a blog running on it. But I guess it's hard enough that I've been too lazy to do it. Perhaps I should just get a free blog like on blogger.com or something like that.
- Some of my recent posts have been kind of hard on Obama. According to Jimmy Carter, this means that I'm a racist. I just want to assure everyone that I'm not a racist. Some of my best friends are half-white Indonesian Kenyans born in Hawaii. (Actually the last part was a bit of humor. I don't really have any friends that are half-white Indonesian Kenyans that are born in Hawaii.)
- I suppose this is enough randomness for one post.
*EDIT* Re-reading #3 it seems like I am saying that Apple gave me the iTouch. That's not what I meant. My nephew gave me the iTouch; Apple gave it to him when he bought an Apple computer. What I was trying to say was that the iTouch was "made" by Apple. So much for my writing skills....
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