Tag: Science

SCIENCE IS COOLING OFF THE GLOBAL WARMING HOT AIR MACHINE

Some of you may recall my post of a few weeks ago where I cited an NPR story that, despite its best efforts, wasn’t able to deny that evidence exists to question the existence of global warming.

No sooner had I climbed off the soapbox than my friend itsallgoodbaby21 jumped up on it. While he was up there, he showed us this – an article from our friends at the BBC.

Add to all of that this new testimony from a former greenhouse gas, global warming adherent (thanks, guypithecus) and you begin to see the whole pathetic human-induced climate change fantasy start to unravel.

The upshot of the story from the BBC, which proves almost as effective at burying the lead as their North American counterparts at NPR, is that “temperatures have not risen globally since 1998 when El Nino warmed the world.” (They finally get around to sharing this tidbit in paragraph #11 of their story.)

What’s happening here is obvious: real, objective science is proving that the data created by ideological, bogus science has been flawed or inconclusive.

Sadly, the credibility of science in general is going to suffer as a result.

When the “progressive” ideals and hippie ideology started to take hold in the culture back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the mainstream American Protestant denominations decided that they’d been too literal about things like sex and drug use and morality, in general. It was time to change the way these things were perceived and used within the church.

When Carl Sagan and a new breed of scientists arose out of the 1960s and 1970s, they advocated the idea that science should serve mankind and “the greater good” or “greater consciousness”. The idea that science was a servant of the truth was tossed aside in favor of an ideology that had a so-called nobler agenda for all mankind.

The mainstream Protestant churches whored themselves to cultural expediency. Science whored itself out to gaining power and influence.

The truth, however, still exists. Although, with neither science nor faith as her companion, she grows lonely.

FAERIES, VAMPIRES AND GLOBAL WARMING

There was a time when it was just common knowledge that faeries flitted about unseen and that we just had to accept that as fact. Believe, believe, believe.

There was also a time when common knowledge held that there were vampires roaming the earth and we just had to accept it as fact that some of us would die from their cold, lust for our blood. Oh, you may not see them. But they’re there.

Today, we’re beyond all that. We allow science and objective data to lead us to conclusions despite any preconceived notions we may biasly carry. Right?

Not so fast.

Despite the fact that above-linked story is from NPR, a liberal mouthpiece, and that it does its best to gloss over the scientific issues this raises, the truth in the story is indisputable:

There is considerable scientific evidence that global warming, and the associated role of humans in global warming, is a scam.

Let’s start with the introductory paragraph:

“These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren’t quite understanding what their robots are telling them.”

Or it could mean that global warming has been misrepresented all along. But that possibility isn’t raised because, after all, everybody knows there’s global warming, right?

Ooo, duck. Another faerie.

“In recent years, heat has actually been flowing out of the ocean and into the air. This is a feature of the weather phenomenon known as El Nino. So it is indeed possible the air has warmed but the ocean has not. But it’s also possible that something more mysterious is going on.”

The “mysterious” part is that no one has asked the multi-trillion dollar question: Were we even right about global warming in the first place?

Then there’s this:

“Sea level rises when the oceans get warm because warmer water expands. This accounts for about half of global sea level rise. So with the oceans not warming, you would expect to see less sea level rise. Instead, sea level has risen about half an inch in the past four years. That’s a lot.”

Geologists have repeatedly uncovered strata evidence that indicates sea level shifts of 1-2 feet within a 10-year period are not only fairly common, but routine when factored over hundreds of thousands of years. But we’re supposed to believe a half an inch is “a lot”? Come on.

“One possibility is that the sea has, in fact, warmed and expanded — and scientists are somehow misinterpreting the data from the diving buoys.”

Clearly another unmentioned possibility is that the sea has not warmed nor expanded and the the data is perfectly fine. But the vampires come around the talk show circuits each week and tell us global warming will kill us all unless we let them protect us.

In fact, despite the clear line that this evidence draws to the validity of global warming itself, the writer nor any of the scientists acknowledge the possibility – even in the remotest sense – that global warming theories themselves might need to be reviewed.

Good thing these vampires are real and are there to protect us from global warming, isn’t it?

Isn’t it?

Golden Rule

 

Why Do Good Things for Others?
Brain Study May Offer Clues

Monday, Jan. 22 (HealthDay News) – People may not perform selfless acts just for an emotional reward, a new brain study suggests.

Instead, they may do good because they’re acutely tuned into the needs and actions of others.

Scientists say a piece of the brain linked to perceiving others’ intentions shows more activity in unselfish vs. selfish types.

“Perhaps altruism did not grow out of a warm-glow feeling of doing good for others, but out of the simple recognition that that thing over there is a person that has intentions and goals. And therefore, I might want to treat them like I might want them to treat myself,” explained study author Scott Huettel, an associate professor of psychology at Duke University Medical Center, in Durham, N.C.

He and lead researcher Dharol Tankersley, a graduate student at Duke, published their findings in the Jan. 21 online issue of Nature Neuroscience.

For decades, psychologists and neuroscientists have puzzled over the tendency of humans to engage in altruistic acts — defined by Huettel’s group as acts “that intentionally benefit another organism, incur no direct personal benefit, and sometimes bear a personal cost.”

Experts note that altruism doesn’t seem to provide individuals with any survival edge, so how and why did it evolve?

To help solve that puzzle, Heuttel’s team had a group of healthy young adults either engage in a computer game or watch as the computer played the game itself. In some sessions, the computer and participants played for personal gain, while in other sessions, they played for charity.

The researchers used high-tech functional MRI (fMRI) to observe “hot spots” of activity in the participants’ brains as they engaged in these tasks.

Participants were also asked to complete a questionnaire aimed at assessing their personal levels of selfishness or altruism.

Huettel said he was surprised by the study results.

“We went into this experiment with the idea that altruism was really a function of the brain’s reward systems – altruistic people would simply find it more rewarding,” he said.

But instead, a whole other brain region, called the posterior superior temporal cortex (pSTC), kicked into high gear as altruism levels rose.

The pSTC is located near the back of the brain and is not focused on reward. Instead, it focuses on perceiving others’ intentions and actions, Huettel said.

“The general function of this region is that it seems to be associated with perceiving, usually visually, stimuli that seems meaningful to us — for example, something in the environment that might move an object from place to place,” he explained.

This type of perception would have allowed humans’ more primitive ancestors to quickly pick out a potential threat – a crouching lion, for example – from amid a mass of less important stimuli.

It’s much less clear why pSTC activity gets ramped up in the brains of altruistic people, however. “That was really surprising to us,” Huettel said.

The researchers found that pSTC activity was highest when study participants were observing the computer play the game on its own – not when they were playing themselves. “That gets to this idea of agency – watching somebody else play the game,” Huettel said. “You are thinking, ‘Oh, the computer pressed the button – somebody else did that.’ ”

The bottom line, he said, is that altruism may rely on a basic understanding that others have motivations and actions that may be similar to our own.

“It’s not exactly empathy,” he said, but something more primitive. “We think that altruism may have grown out of – at least in part – such a system.”

Another expert said the Duke study raises even more questions than it answers.

“It’s a really interesting study,” said Paul Sanberg, director of the Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair at the University of South Florida College of Medicine, in Tampa. “It would be really interesting, now though, to see if people who had damage to that [brain] area were much less altruistic.”

Huettel said he’s pondered that possibility. “For example, we don’t know if people who are sociopaths, or people who are autistic, might show differences in this region,” he said. “It’s a good question, but we don’t have data that shows anything one way or another. This is just a jumping-off point.”

Sanberg said the study also showed only an association between heightened pSTC activity and altruism, not a direct cause-and-effect relationship. “That needs further study,” he said.

But the Florida neuroscientist said this type of work is helping unravel the mysteries of human consciousness and behavior.

“These functional studies with high-level human behaviors are shedding important light on the contribution of different brain areas,” Sanberg said.