Regenerus

A “Bombshell” study was recently published in the Journal Social Science Research which set off a firestorm.  The author of the research, Mark Regenerus, had concluded that children who were raised by gay parents were socially disadvantaged compared to their peers.  The forces of political correctness, mainly gay advocates along with their allies in academia couldn’t have that.  So charges of scientific misconduct were filed against the professor.

Regenerus was exonerated of any misconduct with the university only finding minor errors, which are errors which do not affect the conclusion once factored in.  Most studies will have a few of those (Rose, 2012).  You can bet that given its conclusions the paper and the research behind it were investigated thoroughly.  The University of Texas at Austin was under a lot of pressure from its peers to find misconduct and ruin this man’s academic career.  Since then the Gay community and its friends in academia have been bashing the study and its author nonstop with the article BOMBSHELL: Corruption Uncovered In Regnerus Anti-Gay Study Scandal (Marshall, 2012) being a prime example.

In the hit piece by Marshall, a gay advocate, the organizations willing to pile on include “1) the American Psychological Association; 2) the California Psychological Association; 3) the American Psychiatric Association; 4) the National Association of Social Workers; and 5) its California Chapter; 6) the American Medical Association; 7) the American Academy of Pediatrics; and 8) the American Psychoanalytic Association.”  This is a who’s who of organizations, led by the American Psychological Association, which buckled under the pressure exerted on them by gay activists starting in the 1970s and embraced homosexual behavior as normal and become advocacy organizations for the gay lifestyle.

If the good professor hadn’t been exonerated I would call this the pot calling the kettle black given the lunacy which constitutes gay studies and the ongoing papers presented which condemn conservatives and others who believe in traditional morals as moral degenerates and which are openly presented in gatherings of academia.  With all due respect those folks are in no position to criticize Mr. Regenerus.

Yet they think nothing of it.  In a world where science must now conform to a political agenda in the fields of the social sciences, all research done must conform or not see the light of day.  We saw graphically displayed for us in the field of climate science an ongoing conspiracy to suppress research which didn’t conform to the political agenda and keep it out of the journals.  We also saw something of the same thing when a paper on intelligent design was published by Dr. Stephen C. Meyer in the Smithsonian affiliated journal, the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (Cashill, 2007).  That scandal back in 2006 revealed an ongoing conspiracy in the scientific community not to allow the publishing of any article suggestive of an alternative theory to evolution in any journal, no matter how well argued.

This writer finds such behavior disturbing.  As a society we have allowed the sciences to be high jacked to serve as propaganda.  Clearly those who do so are using it to manipulate people to allow things they would not otherwise permit.  When something wears the imprimatur of “science” then the average person assumes it must be true.  That gullibility is being exploited to disarm our fellow Americans, get them to accept immoral behavior as good and get them to allow government control over activities they would not normally allow.

We do live in a society where the people are free to accept whatever behavior they choose and permit more government control in their lives if they so choose.  This writer accepts that as a given.  However my problem is when science is used fraudulently to manipulate them into decisions based on misleading information.  And that is what this writer sees going on and why he writes about it.

Sources

Cshill, Jack, Intelligent Design Suppression Scandal Rocks Smithsonian, retrieved 09/19/2012 at  http://cashill.com/intellig_design/supression.htm

Marshall, Jennifer, The Foundry, retrieved 09/19/2012 at   http://blog.heritage.org/2012/08/31/case-closed-at-ut-austin-regnerus-exonerated/

Rose, Scott, BOMBSHELL: Corruption Uncovered In Regnerus Anti-Gay Study Scandal,  Retrieved 09/19/2012 at http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/bombshell-corruption-uncovered-in-regnerus-anti-gay-study-scandal/legal-issues/2012/08/29/47670 

Flat Ocean Tmeperatures For 55 Years!

Here’s an interesting piece of new out of Anthony Watt’s site:

Trenberth's Missing Heat Still missing.

It seems the ocean temperatures aren’t rising as expected, or even touted, just a mere 0.09C rise in the last 55 years!  And this isn’t denier whooie, its authoritative research published in Geophysical Research Letters!  Now that is interesting!

More on Muller

I blogged earlier about the Berkley study which was hyped as the final refutation of Global Warming skepticism.  Well, Anthony Watts, who has had access to the study for some time now has blogged on the much hyped paper:

Berkley Surface Temperature Project Puts PR Before Peer Review.


I am gratified to see Watts express early on some of the same concerns I had with the paper.  Watts tells the story behind the scenes so to speak about how this whole thing was turned into a planned major media event where they forged ahead in spite of warnings about the quality of the data.  Just as I thought, the data used was seriously flawed, though not in the way I thought it might be.  In this case the uncertainty of the data is so high, 70% of the stations with an uncertainty of almost five degrees, that it is useless for reaching the conclusions arrived at.

There is another article, a polemic, which puts the paper in terms easily understood by the layman.  It also addresses the straw-man argument which was advanced by the media.  Watt's touched on that.

The Death of Global Warming Skeptics, Or The Birth of Straw Men?

Carbon Dioxide and Global Warming.

I just finished listening for about and hour to a fascinating discourse given by Professor Murry Salby given in Australia:

Global Carbon Dioxide Emmisions: The Contribution Of Natural Sources.

I sat there wishing I had access to the graphs and charts he kept referring to.  This was basically the same presentation of a paper he gave at an international climate conference which apparently has caused some stir which hasn't been well reported on.  What happens is Prof. Salby breaks down the constituent compositions of Carbon dioxide world wide, including two of its isotopes and arrives at Mankind's contribution to the assumed problem.  Salby estimates that contribution at approximately 5 out of about 160 gigatons of CO2 emissions world wide annually.

See where this is heading?  As if this weren't enough he further mentions that the chief global areas of CO2 emissions are undeveloped areas, including...drum roll...Africa, as I mentioned in another post.  So mankind contributes very little of the emissions and net increase of CO2 in the atmosphere world wide, but it doesn't stop there.  The professor further tells us that his analysis shows that the relationship of atmosphere in the atmosphere to temperature is the opposite of what the "settled science" alleges.  Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are driven by temperature, not the other way around.

This presentation is worth the effort to listen to it.

Berkley Study

Today an announcement was made of a new study from Berkley:

Global Warming Confirmed By Independent Study.

Before going on to the study itself I have an issue with the BBC's header.  One of the myths promoted by Global Warming activists is that skeptics are global warming deniers that we deny any warming has occurred.  That is patently untrue on its face.  Oh, I don't doubt there are a few folks who do, but most of us in the "denier" community accept that there has been warming over the long term.   Where we beg to differ is as to the extent and cause.  Those two issues go to the heart of the matter and are why a number of prominent scientists are jumping ship.  We contend that the research is sloppily or even fraudulently done and does not form a reliable foundation upon which to base policy.

First, let me point out that the study is being prematurely reported on since it hasn't been peer-reviewed and published yet, the claimed gold standard for acceptance by the establishment.  The it is being so widely trumpeted tells me that the fix is in on that score and they just can't wait to publicize what they think will be a refutation of us skeptics.  That the ending of the articles calls for an "apology" on our part to Dr. Jones and his climate change colleagues is telling as to the whole purpose of the exercise in the first place, all denials on that score not withstanding.

Since it's not been published up to this point all we really have to go on are the purported conclusions of the study, that we skeptics are now rebutted.  there is nothing on the exact methodology used to gather data and arrive at their conclusions.  Where did they get their data?  Was it Hadley CRU's data?  Did they go out and collect the raw data from the stations themselves?  We are not told in the article how the data was collected.  Since the Hadley CRU has admitted the raw data has been destroyed and only their "adjusted" data is available, use of that data on the part of the Berkley team would indicate a lack of seriousness in addressing the issue since they would only replicate CRU's conclusions by default.. Unfortunately we have to wait for the publication of the research to get our answer to that question.

CRU Data Loss Not An Accident.

For those who are new to the study of global warming CRU and NASA collect temperature data from thousands of weather stations around the world.  In theory they take that data and compute a global mean or average temperature for days, months and the year.  But that is not what happens in practice.  Instead the data is changed, or "adjusted" to conform to what the scientists think it should be.  Various justifications are used for the "adjustments," change in weather station locations, recalibration of equipment and installation of new equipment. This is done in the name of consistency of data.  Steve McIntyre has noted that more often than not the raw temperature data is revised upwards in the case of recent data.he has also noted a history of multiple revisions of temperatures before 1960 downwards.

The effect of such revision of the raw data can be noted by looking at the graph given as evidence in the BBC article.  for sake of reference an anomalous cold year in the late nineteenth century, 1880, is set as the standard for a "normal" global temperature.  That year's average is the standard against which warming and the rate of warming are judged.  When we look at the graph what sticks out is that the year 1960 appears to be the "normal" since it is the only one which firmly sits on the zero temperature deviation line.  1880 is about .3 of one degree below normal.  With 1880 being the definition of a "normal" global average temperature it should be on the zero line.  That would give us a very different picture than what global warming advocates want us to have as to the global temperatures and rate of increase.  I won't state the obvious here.

we are also informed that the new study refutes the contention of skeptics that the urban heat island effect is a significant factor in the apparent rise of temperatures in the data.  For those new to this the heat island effect is the contention on the part of those who question the data that the change in urban environments and building materials through the years has skewed the actual temperatures upwards over time.  Materials, such as asphalt absorb heat and then radiate it into the surrounding local atmosphere.  Anyone who's ever been in the middle of an asphalt parking lot on a hot day can testify anecdotally to the truth of that effect.  Global Warming activists have contended for years that such a phenomenon is minimal and irrelevant.  We'll have to wait until formal publication to see how they arrive at that conclusion in this study.  I do find it ironic, however, that the BBC places a picture in the story which proves one of us skeptics' contentions, that weather stations are often now placed in environments which artificially drive up the temperature readings.  There is no way that temperature station sitting right in an airport and within proximity of jet exhaust is recording anything other than temperatures skewed upwards.  Sadly, that weather station isn't unusual; it is far more common than it should be.

So in conclusion, what we have here is a sensationally reported on study which hasn't even been peer-reviewed and published yet.  It is more than likely based on seriously flawed data to begin with, though we are going to have to wait for publication to find out.  It is reported to come to conclusion which may not be justified by the data and methodology of the research.  Again, we are going to have to wait on its publication to find out.  Yet, it is being trumpeted by the climate science community and the media as a definitive refutation of skeptics.  Since I can't afford the expensive subscription prices for the journals it is likely to be published in, I'm going to have to wait for Steven McIntyre or Anthony Watts to review the published piece when it comes out to find out whether I'm spot on or not. 

The problem with Mann.

As I mentioned earlier, I have a bit of a problem with politically motivated science.

We saw it first manifested in the twentieth century under the banner of Eugenics, a pseudoscience which is repudiated in part because of where it ultimately led.  However, such abuse of science to serve a political agenda hasn't disappeared by any means.  My first encounter with what amounts to questionable science came as a college senior, when I first encountered the body of "science" published in medical journals in pursuit of a scientific justification for gun control.  Even many colleagues of those publishing their pseudo-studies objected to their work, publishing scathing critiques of their work.  Yet those periodicals ignored the objections and continue to publish such garbage to this day; and their "studies" get cited as authoritative by the media and the legal profession.

I first became aware of the "science" of man-made global warming around 2000 as a result of some of the sensational claims being made at the time about the dire consequences for our planet if we didn't gut our economy and take ourselves back to a nineteenth century lifestyle.  I began my own researches into the issue and came to the conclusion that the claims were overblown, to say the least, and predicated on flawed research, much of it in the mold of the same sort of "science" I encountered five years earlier.  Don't get me wrong, The evidence for our planet warming since the mid to late nineteenth century is indisputable.  The problem I have is with the claims as to the cause.  I think the warming is part of a natural process repeated throughout history and beyond, not man made as many claim.

To make the case that modern global warming was both artificial and unprecedented, history had to be rewritten.  Now I don't have a problem with rewriting history if it can be shown the current paradigm is inaccurate.  That is simply part of refining the story of man's history.  However, to revise history without a proper basis for doing so in pursuit of an agenda is fraudulent, and to do it in the name of science undermines scientific credibility, that''s why I get so bent out of shape with the bogus gun studies.  I was reminded of this today by the following article:

University Turns Over Some of Climate Scientist's documents.

This story reports that some of the documents surrounding the research of Michael Mann and his "hockey stick" graph were turned over in response to an FOI request by a "conservative" think tank, the American Tradition Institute.  That the university drug its feet and it took intervention by a judge to gain a partial release of the material is itself significant.  For those who don't know what this is all about let me give a little background.

Back in the last part of the 1990s the IPCC was preparing what was billed to be a major release in its report on man made global warming, aka Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW).  The IPCC wanted to make the case that modern warming was not only caused by man, but historically unprecedented.  There was, however,  several little problems called the (WMP), a warm period from the tenth through the thirteenth centuries which anecdotal evidence from the time suggests was even warmer than today, and the Maunder Minimum, a cold period period from the 17th through the 19th centuries associated with a period of minimal sunspot activity from 1645 to 1715 by the same name.  The last is commonly called "The Mini Ice Age.  For the IPCCs case to be made it somehow had to be shown that global climate was relatively stable until modern times.  A little known scientist, Michael Mann, stepped up to the plate and provided what is now famously called the "hockey Stick" Graph purportedly based on tee-ring proxies, showing the very sort of stable climate the IPCC demanded through more than a thousand years of history with an exponential rise in temperatures right at the end.

Problems began after the report was released when a retired mathmetician smelled a rat and decided to examine the data for himself.  The mathematician noticed some irregularities, such as certain values normally reported in such works not being included in the paper cited by the IPCC report.  When Dr. Mann refused to give him access to the data, something normally done when a colleague examining another's research requests it, the stench got worse.  The mathematician, Stephen McIntyre would co-publish a paper with Dr. Ross McKitrich pointing out the flaws Mr. McIntyre could determine in Man's research in 2004.  I won't point out most of the flaws in the methodology since I plan to highlight one particular decision on Mann's part which came to light later, as a result of Climate gate.

We've all heard the "hide the decline" comment which came as a result of the hacked e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at the University East Anglia which is the headquarters of the climate science community.  However, there is some confusion as to what went on.  It seems that Michael Mann had a little problem with his data.  Dr. Mann had based his proxy record on tree rings, a highly interpretive methodology fraught with flaws when it comes to determining annual temperatures since temperature is only one of many influences on annual tree growth.  Dr' Mann's problem was that his reconstruction of annual temperatures didn't watch with observed annual temperature, especially after the 1960s.  The reconstructed temperature went into decline instead of rising as they should.  Consider this for a moment, his interpretation of the tree rings for the historical period didn't match the known temperatures for the period, calling his entire reconstruction of historical global temperatures into question.

Dr. Mann's solution for publication is now immortalized by his e-mail comment that he would have to "hide the decline."  Instead of starting over, or admitting he was wrong, Dr. Mann decided to throw the unmatching data out and substitute it with the recorded temperatures.  Thus the report and its graph would give a misleading impression as to the authority of Mann's historical reconstruction.  Now I don't know about anybody else, but when I went through college and did my research classes I was told such conduct was higly unethical.  Apparently I was misinformed.  As the article I came across today states:

The release of the e-mail follows the release Monday of a report by the Inspector General of the National Science Foundation (NSF). It says Mann did not violate any codes of ethical research conduct in connection with the so-called Climategate e-mails, which unknown hackers copied from a server at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom in November 2009. The NSF investigation was the latest in a series of inquiries to find no evidence for allegations by critics, ATI among them, that Mann had falsified data or skewed calculations to exaggerate recent increases in global temperatures or humanity's role in causing them.

 Excuse me, when did it become ethical to eliminate data which contradicts ones conclusions and substitute other data in which doesn't?  By doing so didn't Dr. Mann in fact skew the data?  I guess those who taught me how to conduct research were sadly misinformed if this is the current state of affairs in research science!  What really gets to me is that this sort of attitude on the part of the "scientific establishment" undermines sciences credibility with the populace as folks aren't as stupid as the folks covering Dr.Mann's ass think they are.

Even worse, this sad state of affairs extends beyond the climate science community and academia in general.  I've already mentioned the skewed gun control research given the impremise of prestigious medical journals.  Michael Chrichton, who sounded the clarion call on the problems with climate science in his seminal book State Of Fear noted before that a similar attitude among historians when he wrote The 13th Warrior:

I mention this because the tendency to blend the boundaries of fact and fiction has become widespread in modern society.  Fiction is now inserted seamlessly in everything from scholarly histories to television news.  Of course, television is understood to be venal, its transgressions shrugged off by most of us.  But the attitude of “post-modern” scholars represents a more fundamental challenge.  Some in academic life now argue seriously there is no difference between fact and fiction, that all ways of reading text are arbitrary and personal, and that therefore pure fiction is as valid as hard research.  At best, this attitude evades traditional scholarship; at worst, it is nasty and dangerous.  But such academic views were not prevalent twenty years ago, when I sat down to write this novel in the guise of a scholarly monograph, and academic fashion may change again—particularly if scholars find themselves chasing down imaginary footnotes, as I have done.  (Final word in 1992 edition)

Michael Chricton's words almost twenty years ago serve to warn us to the depths to which both science and academia have fallen.  That is the crux of the problem, science is now, like history, being corrupted to serve a political agenda.  Because of that we, as consumers of information, can't be sure we aren't being fed inaccurate information.  This highlights the need for each and everyone of us to learn how to evaluate information for ourselves, we can no longer trust the "experts."

Introduction

Just by way of an introduction:

I’m new at this and looking forward to seeing where this takes me.  I’ve always been curious about the world around me and had many and varied interests.  Mother and father got tired of answering my questions and saved up for an encyclopedia so that they could tell me “go read about it.”  That was before I could even read.   My three biggest interests, the ones with the most passion, are the languages of the Bible and some of its earliest translations, writing, and the guitar.  The first is something I’ve pursued all my life as the resources became available to me; the other two are older passions and desires I’ve only begun to explore now, in my sixth decade of life.

The first is, of course, largely a part of my life as a committed Christian, now for some thirty-seven years.  I definitely cannot be called mainstream as far as being a Christian goes.  However, I follow the evidence where it leads me, with the Bible as the ultimate authority.  That should explain my interest in biblical related languages, I made the vow that one day no translator with his bias, no matter how honestly held, would stand between me and God’s word.  I’m amazed at the resources which God has now made available through the net, resources I could only dream of as little as ten years ago.  So I feel a bit like a kid in a candy store now as opportunities abound.  Naturally my faith informs my views in other areas, such as politics, however, do be careful trying to put me in a box there.  As I wrote, I’m not mainstream by just about any definition of the word.

I'm not too sure how much space here will be devoted to the other two.  Maybe just enough to keep friends updated as to going's on in my life where they are concerned.

Among my interests listed in my profile I mentioned one soapbox issue which will probably be written on time and again, the misuse of science in pursuit of an agenda.  I do hold a science degree in the social sciences.  So I do have a basis for examining the issue.  While in college I noticed a body of research which was being published in medical journals which had no basis for the lofty status it was being given.  The research I refer to was the research into guns and gun control published by such men as Dr. Arthur Kellerman.  That work was done using inappropriate methodologies and amounted to junk science.  More than one of the esteemed doctor’s papers have been debunked, even by other M.D.s within his own scholarly community and I find it amazing that this agenda driven work still gets cited as authoritative.

When I became aware of "Global Warming” science and checked it out, I found it to be on no better a foundation than the gun research.  So the misuse of science for political ends has become something of a soapbox issue for me. 

Before he died, Michael Crichton wrote the following in his notes on The Thirteenth Warrior:

“I mention this because the tendency to blend the boundaries of fact and fiction has become widespread in modern society.  Fiction is now inserted seamlessly in everything from scholarly histories to television news.  Of course, television is understood to be venal, its transgressions shrugged off by most of us.  But the attitude of “post-modern” scholars represents a more fundamental challenge.  Some in academic life now argue seriously there is no difference between fact and fiction, that all ways of reading text are arbitrary and personal, and that therefore pure fiction is as valid as hard research.  At best, this attitude evades traditional scholarship; at worst, it is nasty and dangerous.  But such academic views were not prevalent twenty years ago, when I sat down to write this novel in the guise of a scholarly monograph, and academic fashion may change again—particularly if scholars find themselves chasing down imaginary footnotes, as I have done.”

Unfortunately, things didn’t improve, not in the history discipline, and for sure not in the sciences, where we’ve seen the sad spectacle of scientists being outed for flagrant violations of scientific ethics.  That more than one panel found those violations to be consistent with current scientific practice is a sad commentary on the state of things in our time.

Well, that’s all for now.  I look forward to seeing folks around.

Stanley Loper