Science on Trial: School Children Putting Grown Scientists In Their Place
A 16 year old schoolgirl from Portland, Maine, says there is no need to fear global warming. Earth will survive and prosper, without any near-term climate disasters. A 13 year old schoolboy from Germany, on the other hand, says asteroid Apophis has a 1 in 450 chance to hit Earth --not 1 in 45,000 as NASA had claimed. If Apophis collides with an artificial satellite on its 2029 flyby of Earth, its chances of hitting Earth in 2036 will be significant.If the asteroid strikes a satellite in 2029, that will change its trajectory making it hit earth on its next orbit in 2036.But while the German schoolboy tweaked the nose of NASA scientists with his bad news, the American schoolgirl from Maine is tweaking the nose of Nobel Prize winning inventor of the internet, Al Gore.
Both NASA and Marquardt agree that if the asteroid does collide with earth, it will create a ball of iron and iridium 320 metres (1049 feet) wide and weighing 200 billion tonnes, which will crash into the Atlantic Ocean.
The shockwaves from that would create huge tsunami waves, destroying both coastlines and inland areas, whilst creating a thick cloud of dust that would darken the skies indefinitely. Source
Kristen had no fear. She took on Al Gore the Nobel laureate, Academy Award winner and former vice president. She went after Jim Hansen, one of NASA's top climate scientists. E-mail poured in, mostly from skeptics happy a young person had taken up the cause.The fact is, it isn't necessary to have a long list of degrees and credentials to get the science right. You just have a nose for the truth, and be careful and smart. The history of science is a record of distinguished and accomplished scientists making horrendous mistakes. Apparently, it is not just the history of science, but the present as well. And probably the future.
"I got a letter in the mail on my birthday from a senator," she says.
...Mainstream scientists would argue that many of the issues on her Web site are red herrings or have been put to rest — and Kristen did get emails from people challenging her science. But after a few exchanges, she says, her opponents backed down. ...
...And the truth is, for people who want to get down into the details, climate change science can get very hairy. There are oceans to consider, which can absorb heat, water vapor and cloud cover to account for. NPR
It is important to focus on the likely disasters, not the fantasy disasters of politicized science like CAGW. Humans have only so many resources under their control for catastrophe preparedness. If they spend all their resources and potential on what turns out to be a hoax, the genuine catastrophe is apt to turn out the lights for a long time.
Update: New information suggests that NASA is sticking to their original calculations, and claims to the contrary were wrong. Live by the scoop, die by the scoop. Update: Al Gore claims that this new information exonerates him of all wrongdoing in his carbon trading scam. Gore is now demanding a presidential pardon. ;-)
Update 16April08 from Slashdot comments:
This just in: Kindergarten kid corrects 13 year old student's earlier correction of NASA calculation...Chance of impact now 1 in 4.
Toddler's have be banned from using calculators for fear they will doom us all...
Doom Us All, I tells ya!___Source
Labels: apocalypse now, climate
posted by al fin at 6:35 pm
4 Comments:
Climate change denialists... they're wicked at any age! ;)
A little-acknowledged point about CO2 & global warming:
In the last sixty years, humans have contributed an extra .01%'s worth of CO2 to the atmosphere, by volume.
Meanwhile, the Earth's thermal retention has increased on a fairly steady trendline for the last century and a half by a whopping .35%.
Now, we are told that CO2 is responsible for the 'supermajority' of the warming. If we call that merely two-thirds, that still yields a 20:1 ratio between contribution and impact.
This is a physical impossibility -- and not one AGW proponent I've spoken to yet has been able to account for this over-amplification.
Nor, frankly, have any been able to account for the fact that CO2 contributions didn't start to become significant until nearly a century after the warming began -- and when CO2 contributions really got underway, temperatures started to decline for a few decades.
The holes in IPCC-style anthropogenic global warming theory are large enough that planets can fall through them.
Michael: Yes, so wicked they cannot be tamed.
Conrad: The contradictions certainly exist between the data and the theory/models. The difference between scientists and clone minds is that the clone minds say the contradictions do not matter--the models are true regardless of data.
The scientists tries to get the best data, then works on the underlying assumptions to make them fit the data, than tries again with his best models, then devises experiments to falsify the assumptions (hypotheses) if he can.
Climate science has short-circuited the scientific process, and jumped to the conclusions first. Next models are devised to support the pre-existing conclusions. All that is left is to force the data to fit the models that support the a priori conclusions.
You ain't kiddin'. I just had to go through a conversation with a fellow who tried to say that the discrepancy "could be explained" by CO2 acting as a doping agent.
Which is, of course, nothing at all like what any of the mainstream IPCC-consensus climatologists are saying. They are insisting that it is a direct by-volume contribution.
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“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act” _George Orwell
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