Scientists convicted of manslaughter for not predicting natural catastrophe

If the judicial system of a major Western European nation can convict and imprison seismological scientists for not accurately predicting the severity and timing of an unpredictable earthquake (this really happened this week in Italy), is it any wonder that climate scientists have felt the need to constantly predict imminent climate catastrophe as a means of self preservation against the inevitable happening of natural catastrophes, which are certain to occur at some unpredictable time in the future.

But it does somewhat undermine our confidence in the impartiality of the scientific reporting process if they have such a substantial and real incentive to overestimate catastrophe.

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Michael Jackson, martyr ?

. Someone has to die for their beliefs to be a martyr . Drudge pointed to headlines last Friday saying that Jackson's was a " Death by Showbusines s". So in the sense that Jackson seems to have died for his belief in celebrity, yes, he might be called a martyr. I never got Michael Jackson. Thriller didn't thrill me at all ( Now Noel Coward, that's another story ). But I did get a bit of a kick from seeing others get him. He was boppy and catchy and slick, as well as monumentally fluffy and hugely impaired. What I struggle with is the apparently massive consequentiality of fluffiness and impairment like Jackson's. What is the fuss about the passing of a semi-talented song and dance weirdo from decades past? Boris Johnson, the London Mayor, has had a stab at explaining it to we mystified souls who struggle to get with the programme. He reckons it's just like Princess Di. And I agree, to the extent that I was almost as unprepared for and dumbfounded by th...

Will Ray Finkelstein's statutory "News Media Council" enable a totalitarian state?

" The fight for freedom begins with free speech " Aung San Suu Kyi, The Observer, Sunday 11 March 2012 Aung San Suu Kyi was not saying this specifically in response to the report published 11 days earlier by the Honourable Ray Finkelstein QC on 28 February 2012 of his "Independent Inquiry into the Media and Media Regulation", but she could have been. Mr Finkelstein says in his report to the Australian Federal Labor government, who commissioned it, the following: 11.44 To rectify existing and emerging weaknesses in the current regulatory structures it is recommended that there be established an independent statutory body which may be called the "News Media Council", to oversee the enforcement of standards of the news media. ... 11.55 The News Media Council requires clearly defined functions. It is not recommended that one of them be the promotion of free speech. There are other ample bodies and persons in the community who do that more than adequ...

Professor Lindzen's seminar on Global Warming at Westminister in February 2012

Professor Richard S. Lindzen of the Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, gave a seminar to the House of Commons Committee Rooms in Westminster, London on 22 February 2012. Here is the link to the PDF of the slides he used at that seminar. There are many interesting quotes from these slides. This is one which took my fancy: “Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.” Of the many new things I learnt from this, one is a better understanding of the importance of the scale of the attributed amplification effect of "forcings" from alleged positive feedbacks on the am...

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