Quote from BlueFlame :

I just think it's sickening that people believe these so called 'scientist' theories. Why should 'science' cause people to give up more of their hard earned money? It shouldn't but it does.

I've been thinking about how it is that so many people believe in AGW, and I think there are a few good reasons why normally rational people fall for something that, it turns out, is actually utter bullshit. I've described AGW as a "trojan religious belief".

1. People reject religion as irrational, unprovable and illogical.
   
2. They embrace science because they perceive it as the opposite of religion.
   
3. They believe that scientists are dispassionate and will only state proven theories as fact.
   
4. They fail to recognise dogmatic/political conviction in advocacy research/science because they don't expect to find it, or because they believe that systems in place will prevent bad science from becoming mainstream.
   
5. They don't/can't understand the science and appeal to authority for the bottom line mantras and claims.
   
6. They unquestioningly accept claims in post-normal science (Climatology) mistakenly believing it is traditional science (Galilean), established by due scientific process in accordance with the scientific method.
   
7. They desire to be forward-thinking, intelligent and virtuous. They believe that belief in AGW is a means of expressing this.
   
8. The cycle is complete and a religious dogma without scientific foundation becomes established.
   

This is how new religions are born.

Quote from BlueFlame :

http://news.discovery.com/eart ... ouse-losing-our-cool.html



Feast on this what you will, but I think anyone with a brain can figure that this ties in with the rest of the lies.

I did my best on that site to hammer out some facts with Shawn Wheeler. Unfortunately, he decided to turn and run rather than face down his religious beliefs.

I had been working with a chap called David Holland, trying to get his submission to the Russel enquiry up to scratch. Unfortunately by the time I'd got involved, Sir Muir had already decided to reject Holland's submission and refused to accept any further submissions. We were expecting the enquiry to deliver its findings last Tuesday or Wednesday, ahead of the election, but it didn't happen. Quite a surprise there. But bloody hell, the things I've learned about the behaviour and antics of the Hockey Team would make your toes curl.

Has anyone read the Hockey Stick Illusion by Andrew Montford yet? It's supposed to be a brilliantly written book.

Haven't tried yet, but my guess is that "thine Shakespearean" should be "thy Shakespearean".. the word "thine" usually prefaces a word with a vowel. "To thine own self be true", "Physician heal thy self" etc.

[e] -- [smug grin] 100% correct

Having a wtf moment, here. I've just done a side-by-side comparison of the http://ironhorseracing.forumotion.com/ website in the four browsers I check site visuals in - Microsoft IE8; Google Chrome; Mozilla Firefox; Opera.

The site is visually indifferent to the browser used in all important respects, as far as I can tell. For a laugh, I did a completely irrelevent source validation at w3c. It was a complete joke, most of the errors identified were down to the validator failing dismally to comprehend the code. That's quite normal.. these validators are pretty dumb. They throw up stupid errors for things like the "&&" operand in Javascript.

So that all begs the question.. WTF? Are there actually people out there who are markup nazis? The site works, get over yourselves.

Removed the offender's name in accordance with forum policy. Hopefully the person responsible will receive the arbitrary auto-ban at some point soon.

Quote from Crashgate3 :

A lesson in website design

Foley huck!

I've dropped the most recent pic and comments. It's too soon after the fact to joke about the crash. Remember, guys, there are lots of nationalities here and this is an emotional subject for some.

Quote from samjh :

You'll find a lot of dodgy doings in any endeavour, including science. Unfortunately, pioneering research and discovery seem to be most prone to abuse, as they typically involve the biggest stakes in funding and reputation. Peer-review is a facilitator for debate and discussion, not a guarantee of accuracy or honesty.

Yup. It seems one of the more severe breakdowns in procedural science is that a developing field hasn't properly been overseen, and environmental science departments have been left to set their own standards. Tens of millions to the UEA for 3 permanent CRU staff.. tempting to look the other way.. or not look too closely, huh?

But I do blame Acton, because it was the university's responsibility to oversee its research department, and the university reaped the benefits of government grants to fund their advocacy research. I just don't see Jones being morally or legally vindicated. He knew he was junking the science, and that's why he hid his data and tired himself out circumventing FOI requests.

I'd be very surprised if the same scenario isn't repeated in university environmental science departments around the world. When you look over the science that's supposed to underwrite the supposedly "settled science" AGW hypothesis, I find it inconceivable that it could have been performed under the auspices of attentive universities.

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

Welp, Sam's got his mind made up.

Yeah, I have now. I've spent the last 4 months reading scientific papers, journals, blogs and comments. I just hope that, if I went digging, I wouldn't discover the same level of sham science, mutual masturbation and advocacy at the pioneering edge of something important, like nuclear or medical research, because we'd be ****ed.

Quote from samjh :

I was surprised by this also. However, I am aware that research bodies may be subjected to non-disclosure agreements regarding raw data.

Sweden refuted UEA's misrepresentation of their position. Sweden never said they didn't want THEIR data released. They said they didn't want CRU's value-adjusted version of their data to be released. Canada's data is available on their website. When they said "no" to the CRU releasing their data, they didn't say their data couldn't be released. They simply said they'd rather the CRU provided links to their own public-facing datasource directly, rather than releasing the CRU's value-adjusted version of Canadian data, modified by Phil Jones.

These realities were grossly misrepresented by Acton, who has actually set himself up for prosecution, giving false or misleading information at a Parliamentary Enquiry.

Quote from samjh :

Actually the panel didn't conclude that the science is robust. They merely found no reason to question the science. The scope of the inquiry was into allegations of data manipulation and the disclosure of raw data.

It's not even that they didn't find a reason to question the science. They said that, with 1 day of evidence, they didn't even look at it. They did press the Muir enquiry to go public, though, which I think was probably Stringer mucking in.

Quote from samjh :

The validity of the resulting science is something that another inquiry would have to determine.

Unfortunately, with Boulton in one enquiry and Oxburgh in the other, the chances of any other enquiries being better than this sham are less than optimal.

Quote from samjh :

I was surprised that the panel reached its conclusion after only a day of oral testimony. I wonder if they took time to thoroughly examine the primary evidence (ie. the emails). The emails probably could have been subpoenaed from the University; even if the perpetrators deleted them, the original copies may have still existed in backup storage.

I was disappointed to be unsurprised at finding no reference to Steve McIntyre, whose parliamentary submission was comprehensive and damning.. and about whom much of the email content concerned or referenced.

Quote from samjh :

Beware. We don't know about the veracity of the emails on that website. Obviously the author of the website claims they are genuine, but who's to know?

Yeah, we do. I've done my own comparisons of the emails at eastangliaemails.co.uk to double-check. They're the same set I have in the original FOI zip. Unless they've improved on it, though, their search feature was only matching results in the first 1000 or so characters of the emails. But the validity of the emails isn't in question. It's just a good online way for sceptics to cross-reference and link to specific emails.

This enquiry hasn't done anything to strengthen climatology as a science, and it's done a lot to increase broad scepticism of it. It's made me a lot more involved and vocal in the debate, and it's given me a lot more ammunition to fire at those friends who are "believers" but who don't understand the science. Usually I find I have to get elbow-deep in the scientific process, the problems with climatology's statistical analysis, or problems in its base data/collection methods in order to highlight reasons for scepticism. This enquiry is easier to point at, and say "whitewash" with much simpler justifications. It's helped my case, anyway.

Quote from Sir moi 407 :

So, is the global warming caused by human CO2 or not? ^^

Probably not. The theory that we are is unproven, and the evidence to support the hypothesis is either incomplete or absent. Some of the data even shows evidence of tampering to create a warming signal where there isn't one.

So.. bottom line.. there's more evidence of fake science than there is of science proving man-made global warming.

Quote from amp88 :

Sounds more like a PR exercise than an investigation. Looking forward to the other 2 inquiries.

You're absolutely right, of course. Over at Spiked, Frank Furedi bagged the whole thing perfectly. It was a "ritual". He explains how and why... http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8368/

I must say that the title is atrociously misleading. The "panel" - i.e. the parliamentary enquiry - didn't examine the data at all. Neither did it say, anywhere in the report (which I read the very minute it was released) that it found the data to be valid.

It's small wonder that a recent poll found that only 1% of people believe mainstream media is the best source for information on climate change.

Quote from menantoll :

I remember you said yourself many times that being an admin of CTRA took all the fun out of racing for you.

I'm not saying that the ethos is wrong, as I agree. That way is one good way of ensuring good impartial adminning. Very hard to implement full time though without completely losing the will to carry on.

Very true. For me, it transpired that I was a much better admin and web developer than I was an LFS racer.. so I was able to plough on with CTRA for a long time after my enthusiasm for racing had fallen away. I also had back-up from a group of admins that were brilliant at their job for a long time, despite the task being pretty much thankless across the board.

I did still race from time to time, and I was able to limit myself to using the same CTRA reporting system as everyone else. The ability to think driver when you're driving and think admin when you're not is something everyone/anyone can achieve, with a bit of self-discipline.

While it's tempting (boy is it tempting) to serve up instant retribution in the server if you get crashed out, by kicking/banning the driver you *think* was responsible for wrecking you, you will always retain credibility and the upper hand (and so will your servers) if you don't do anything that any other driver couldn't do, while you're driving.

The point is that, if you admin from the driving seat, the issue you have to address stops being the original incident and becomes, instead, your "abuse of power". FTR, I'll always regard a driver who uses admin powers (because he's an admin) to make his opinion count more than anyone else in the server as an abuser of power. Save the replay, look at it later. Once you've kicked someone from the server in which you were racing, you're then expected to defend your actions later. You're on the back-foot.. and that's not where you want to be, when you're an admin and when your server's credibility is on the line.

And add to that, you'll lose a driver that's probably an otherwise decent guy, but whose only real offence is his vocal and entirely correct disgust at an admin's abuse of privilege. It is my experience that ~80% of all racing incidents look different in the replay from how they looked at the time, and it's my experience that driving seat admining only ever serves to escalate the problem, and never EVER resolves it.

I haven't been racing for a long time, so I don't really know what the current state of play is. I do know, though, that no servers operate a strict policy of driver/admin separation and it's my opinion that this is the greatest shortfall on servers today.

It's an interesting discussion and a nice idea, but I'm afraid I don't see a CTRA-like system being implemented in the foreseeable future. I see people having a go at similar implementations but despite the vast capabilities of systems available to them, like Ario for example, everybody that I've seen try simply fails to grasp the CTRA's distinction.

1. You CAN NOT admin from the driver's seat.
   
   
2. You CAN NOT process your OWN incident complaint.
   
   
3. You CAN NOT show perceivable or demonstrable bias.
   
   
4. You CAN NOT vary your regulatory implementation on favouritism or server status.
   

Nobody, yet, has adhered to any of these fundamental administrative self-moderation principles. I see that the spirit is willing, but it is very clear that the flesh is weak.

It's their servers, and it's their rules. I don't question that for a second.. but until a server administration suite steps up to the plate and delivers FIRMLY, on ALL the above principles collectively and without wavering, we'll never see anything close to a CTRA-like system.

I've benefited from his advice once or twice, so I'm reticent in agreeing.. but yeah, he can be a bit of a twonk. On JPG vs RAW, he's clearly a plonker.

I looked over the tussle between Ken Rockwell and Petteri Sulonen. I came down firmly on Sulonen's side. If you think your unedited straight-from-your-camera photos aren't post-processed, it's because you don't understand how a digital image is captured.

[edit] for info, Rockwell shoots in JPG and Sulonen shoots in RAW.

Rockwell: http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/raw.htm

Sulonen: http://www.prime-junta.net/pon ... rkflow/_RAW_workflow.html

I may have posted these links before.. can't remember.

MrSir, please use your S2 account to post S2 content.

I'm just sickened and disgusted, and I consider that to have been one of the most severe abuses of posting privileges I've seen on this forum in a long time.

Nobody bothered to report, though. You guys prefer long goodbyes or something?

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

Not terribly useful on a kit lens, though.

A long wide-aperture telephoto prime? Maybe...

Definitely more worth having on a longer telephoto, I agree, but still a great deal better with than without, on a short and fairly slow kit lens. The non-VR kit lens is no faster.

Quote from boothy :

What the obsession with VR lenses?

They're useful, and a lot more versatile than non-VR.

Quote from blackbird04217 :

Does anyone know of a way to get text left-aligned "Blah Blah" and then some text right-aligned "Ha Ha" but both of these on the same line?

Create a containing div, then two divs within. Replace BB with HTML..

[div]
[div style="float:left;width:49%"]Left text here[/div]
[div style="float:right;width:49%"]Right text here[/div]
[/div]

That'll provide a 2-column layout. I presume that's what you're looking for.

Quote from Yuri Laszlo :

Have you tried sharpening up a bit the bottom of the image 3?

I was actually thinking of softening the image overall The branches are more harsh than I think they should be. The lower half of the image could do with a bit of burning, maybe.

Quote from mcintyrej :

I've been studying Ansel Adams for my A level dissitation and I must say, one of the best photographers I've ever seen.

Ditto. I'm in awe of his work - particularly love his Yosemite photos.