Today (19 Jan 2014 in the morning), when I came to subway I saw strange effect around The Sun and decided to record that optical phenomenon on my videocamera. Temperature in the street is -20 degrees Celsius.
SUN DOG (WIKI): A sun dog (or sundog), mock sun or phantom sun, scientific name parhelion (plural parhelia), is an atmospheric phenomenon that creates bright spots of light in the sky, often on a luminous ring or halo on either side of the sun.
Sundogs may appear as a colored patch of light to the left or right of the sun, 22° distant and at the same distance above the horizon as the sun, and in ice halos. They can be seen anywhere in the world during any season, but they are not always obvious or bright. Sundogs are best seen and are most conspicuous when the sun is low….
The above video is with thanks to Vlad!There is more on this “black widow” at The Telegraph:
Russian security forces are searching Sochi for a suspected terrorist who is feared to be planning to target the Olympic Games, according to a notice distributed throughout the city.
A description distributed to hotels in the area says that the FSB, Russia’s internal security service, has received information that Ruzanna Ibragimova, the widow of an insurgent “neutralised” by security forces, may have travelled from Dagestan to the Sochi area on January 11 or 12.
“According to our information Ms Ibragimova may be used by the ring leaders of illegal armed groups for the organisation of terrorist acts in the zone of the 2014 Olympics,” the notice says.
While the notice does not mention the term, the widows of fighters killed in the on-going conflict between Islamist separatists and Russian forces in the North Caucasus have been used in the past as suicide bombers.
Russia has deployed 40,000 police and security personnel in a “ring of steel” around Sochi to deter attacks by Islamist militants from the nearby North Caucasus republics.
As the scandal grows involving Texas State Sen. Wendy Davis’ false statements, a new angle is receiving increasing attention. The Democratic candidate for Texas governor made several false statements under oath in federal court. Do they actually rise to the level of perjury, which is a federal felony? Will the Obama-Holder Justice Department investigate this darling of abortion-rights supporters and the Democratic Party base?
In the past 24 hours, Breitbart News has reported that in an interview with Davis, the Dallas Morning News–which seems sympathetic and even supportive of Davis–noted that several of her statements have proven to be untrue. Our follow-up report showed at least one of these was actually given in sworn testimony in federal court.
The court transcript records that “I got divorced by the time I was 19 years old,” (p. 6) and also that “I had a full scholarship that was in part need based,” (p. 9). The second statement is at least half-false, and the first statement is undeniably false. Both statements were given under oath, raising the question whether Davis committed perjury in federal court, which is a felony.
No doubt we will hear how the current heatwaves in Australia are “unprecedented” and evidence of dangerous man-made global warming.
They are neither “global” nor “unprecedented”.
In the great heatwave of 1896, with nearly 200 deaths, the temperature at Bourke did not fall below 45.6 degC (114.08 fahrenheit) for six weeks, and the maximum was 53.3 degC (127.94 degF). Bushfires raged throughout NSW and 66 people perished in the heat.
In 1897, Perth had an 18 day heatwave with a record of 43.3 degC (109.94 degF). Other heatwaves were reported at Winton, 1891, Melbourne 1892, Boulia 1901, Sydney 1903, Perth 1906 and so on.
Why don’t we hear of these severe heatwaves from the past? Simple – the government Bureau of Meteorology conveniently ignores all temperature records before 1910.
Frontpage Magazine explains the above graphic found in a leftist/progressive/liberal Slate article:
Salon was a major presence on the liberal web before Atlantic, Slate and the Daily Beast began gobbling up all its traffic. Now it’s become a student newspaper tackling hot button issues involving transgender cafeterias and microcelebrity twitter outrages.
Considering how badly Salon is failing, it makes sense why it would look forward to the nationalization of the media, but it’s also just as stupid as you expect it to be. Case in point, this…
Imagine a world without the New York Times, Fox News, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, and countless other tools used by the 1 percent to rule and fool. In a socialist society run by and for the working people it represents, the mega-monopolies like Walmart, Halliburton, Exxon-Mobil, and the corporations that run the tightly controlled “mainstream media” will be a thing of the past.
Socialist countries do have independent media outlets. Salon and Fred Jerome apparently mean Marxist-Leninist. They just don’t say so because even their readers might question what there was to admire about Pravda.
A democratic, accessible-to-all media will move to center stage in a socialist USA. In some ways this democratization of the media is already happening on the Internet. But the government’s ability to spy on and even turn off the Internet belies any real democracy. In a socialist democracy, working people will control the political process, the way in which they make a living, and collectively and individually, they will influence mass culture.
If you’re following this megaton level of stupid, Salon envisions an all-powerful Socialist state where the government will not be able to spy on people or control the internet.
The crazy-ass American Left just can’t get over that they were not alive during the Russian Bolshevik Revolution. If only they could have been there then things would have been done right.
Now the screwballs at Salon.com put their Marxist wet-dreams on the Internet as proof of what they really want for America.
✚ ‘Bye, Rush! If corporate media disappeared the people could have their voices heard.’ ✚ Imagine a world without the New York Times, Fox News, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, and countless other tools used by the 1 percent to rule and fool. ✚ In a socialist society run by and for the working people it represents, the mega-monopolies like Walmart, Halliburton, Exxon-Mobil, and the corporations that run the tightly controlled “mainstream media” will be a thing of the past. ✚ Besides accumulating their own profits, the media are daily trumpets for the rest of the corporate world’s advertising. ✚ The (newspaper) ads are laid out before anything else except the lead stories; the other news and feature stories are then fit between ads. . . . Media owners’ profits do not come primarily from the money we spend to buy their publications, but from the ads inside them.
Oh the horror! Imagine a business actually planning out advertising so they could collect money and pay the wages of their employees!
Because they are losing the PR battle, they want to cook the books by destroying leftist media as well in order to STOP Fox News and Talk radio acolytes from having a platform (because they SMOKE similar programs in ratings).
A federal appeals court on Friday upheld a ruling that said the state must provide a taxpayer-funded sex change for a convicted Massachusetts murderer as part of the individual’s constitutional rights.
I have been told, many times, after posting or sharing the above video, that this won’t happen in the States. Well, here you go… Michelle Kosilek, a convicted murderer is fighting for his “Constitutional rights” to have tax-payers foot the bill to be made a woman. (I am sure I will be adding a Prager audio to this later today)
In a 2-1 ruling, the court noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled courts “must not shrink from their obligation to enforce the constitutional rights of all persons, including prisoners,” according to the Boston Globe.
“And receiving medically necessary treatment is one of those rights,even if that treatment strikes some as odd or unorthodox,” the court reportedly said.
Outrageous display of judicial tyranny as convicted killer will have his sex change operation paid for by Mass. citizens
GLADD and the rest of the ‘pink mafia’ are besides themselves in joy after a federal appeals court ruled that Massachusetts taxpayers must cover convicted murderer Robert/Michelle Kosilek’s sex change operation. Remember, this was a federal ruling, meaning this sort of judicial tyranny could be – and likely will be – enforced upon any state in the union. Surely, we must be in the last days of the Roman Empire now, this is beyond sickening.
The Daily Caller got the scoop. The DC Italian restaurant Filomena was once rated as a “personal favorite of President Bill Clinton.”
He dined there on numerous occasions with visiting heads of state.
Now, a post by the restaurant on its website reads:
“Because of the potentially large new expense of offering healthcare coverage to 90 employees, we had to look for areas of operations that were either marginal or losing money to trim expenses or losses and find new areas to increase business so that we could keep all our employees and continue to grow our business.”
“Because restaurants such as ours, 86 employees, are so labor intense the potential expense of offering coverage to so many could threaten independently owned restaurants like ours,” it added. “Our goal is to tackle the problem head on and find ways to pay for it without losing our employees…
PS 106 was allotted $3.3 million in 2013-14, including more than $160,000 in federal Title I funds to serve kids from poor homes. Yet the “School of No” had a library in shambles, a nurse with no office, no Common Core math or reading books, first-grade special-ed students without a qualified teacher and no payroll secretary to keep the books. (NYP)
The New York Postreports the following, on the “Principle of the Year”
“Get rid of her before it’s too late,” a 2007 letter urged District 27 Superintendent Michelle Lloyd-Bey, who oversees Queens principals…
…Sills, 48, was a graduate of the DOE’s “Leadership Academy,” which trains principals, and had little teaching experience. Insiders said she lacked literacy skills, noting her invitation to a Nov. 23, 2005, holiday buffet “in honor of my gradutitude” to employees, including “security personel” and “custodially staff members.”
Sills ruled by threats and intimidation, ex-staffers complained. She “yells at a volume that resounds throughout the building, slams doors and uses foul language,” a 2006 letter to Condon claims.
That letter also accuses Sills of racism: “She has hired only black teachers and has targeted white teachers and a secretary.” Many left or were forced out.
One former teacher charged that Sills fabricated several observations, rated her “unsatisfactory” and then forged her signature on the documents…
Marcella Sills is the principal at Queens Rockaway’s PS 106, a Title 1 School, 98% of the children are eligible for the free lunch program. The Free Lunch does not include learning. The New York Post has been busy skewering Sills. Parents say the school is rat-infested and children watch movies a good part of the day, quote “The kids have seen more movies than Siskel and Egert.” Substitutes are not called when a teacher doesn’t show. The school has not received Common Core math or reading books, and apparently have decided not to use whatever textbooks they’ve had in past years. Sills seldom occupies her school office, but she throws a heck of a party for the kids who can afford to rent the required clothing for a “wedding themed” event — bored children, learning nothing while risking rat-bite fever, leptospirosis, and maybe the bubonic plague.
Could you imagine having her as the principle… teachers? Via Nicholas Stix:
….A Department of Education spokesman said Sills was required to report her absences and tardiness to District 27 Superintendent Michelle Lloyd-Bey but would not say whether Sills did so last week.
Lloyd-Bey did not return a call. Sills hung up on a reporter.
When she is out, an assistant principal is left in charge. Yet Sills, who gets a $128,207 salary, also pockets overtime pay — $2,900 for 83 hours in 2011, the latest available records show.
“This school is a complete s- -thole, but nobody in a position of power comes to investigate. No one cares,” a community member said.
PS 106 families hope their cries for attention bring newly installed Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña to the rescue, saying they can’t recall any prior DOE leader visiting the remote school.
She would find it sinking, they say.
The isolated building sits a block and a half from the beach, surrounded by vacant, weed-choked lots, the road behind it strewn with trash bags and broken TVs.
The floods of Hurricane Sandy in October 2012 wrecked a hangar-like annex, called the Early Childhood Academy, which housed pre-K, kindergarten and first and second grades. It has not been repaired.
Two kindergarten classes moved into “temporary classroom units” in the yard. The other children moved into the main building, forcing some classes to squeeze into small offices and storage rooms. The pre-K class sits in the auditorium, but has to move to the cafeteria during the movies.
Kids in several grades said that last week they watched “Fat Albert,” “Alvin and the Chipmunks” and “Monsters, Inc.,” but did not relish the downtime.
“I like gym. I like to draw,” said Charm Russell, 10, who added her peers are too restless and bored to watch the screen. “They’re always making noise, and there’s nothing entertaining going on. No art, no gym, no music class.”
More alarming, the teachers have gotten no curricula since Sandy. Last February, the DOE announced several new options, including “Go Math” for grades K-5, and “ReadyGen” or the state Education Department’s “Core Knowledge” for English language arts. The books cover the Common Core standards, skills that kids should master at each level.
But five months into the school year, PS 106 classes still don’t have the books or teacher’s guides.
“They have no reading program, no math program,” a source said, adding Sills blames outside administrators for not sending materials.
Teachers muddle through by printing out worksheets they find online, buying their own copy paper.
Breitbart adds to the idea of the “Cooked” Cook paper with a real survey:
Nearly six in ten climate scientists don’t adhere to the so-called “consensus” on man-made climate change, a new study by the Dutch government has found. The results contradict the oft-cited claim that there is a 97 percent consensus amongst climate scientists that humans are responsible for global warming.
The study, by the PBL Netherlands Environment Assessment Agency, a government body, invited 6550 scientists working in climate related fields, including climate physics, climate impact, and mitigation, to take part in a survey on their views of climate science.
Of the 1868 who responded, just 43 percent agreed with the IPCC that “It is extremely likely {95%+ certainty} that more than half of [global warming] from 1951 to 2010 was caused by [human activity]”. Even with the “don’t knows” removed that figure increases only to 47 percent, still leaving a majority of climate scientists who do not subscribe to the IPCC’s statement.
The findings directly contradict the claim that 97 percent of climate scientists endorse the view that humans are responsible for global warming, as first made by Cook et al in a paper published in Environment Research Letters.
Cook’s paper has since been extremely widely debunked, yet so ingrained has the 97 percent consensus claim become that The Guardian has an entire section named after it, and President Obama has cited it on Twitter.
Commenting on the new study, Australian climate blogger Joanne Nova said: “Finally there is a decent survey on the topic, and it shows that less than half of what we would call “climate scientists” who research the topic and for the most part, publish in the peer reviewed literature, would agree with the IPCC’s main conclusions. Only 43% of climate scientists agree with the IPCC “97%” certainty.”…
I have to post this because someone on Facebook posted this link to a revised chart (the original is here). The new chart, even has MORE of a devastating “consensus.”
I didn’t know where to find something on this brand-new chart. So I cautioned the guys on Facebook that I have a feeling that this “consensus” was derived wrongly and will end up in the waste bin with this popular one pictured below:
A Previous “Consensus” Busted
(Click Graph To See Previously Hidden Data)
We’ve all been subjected to the incessant “97% of scientists agree …global warming…blah blah” meme, which is nothing more than another statistical fabrication by John Cook and his collection of “anything for the cause” zealots. As has been previously pointed out on WUWT, when you look at the methodology used to reach that number, the veracity of the result falls apart, badly. You see, it turns out that Cook simply employed his band of “Skeptical Science” (SkS) eco-zealots to rate papers, rather than letting all authors of the papers rate their own work (Note: many authors weren’t even contacted and their papers wrongly rated, see here). The result was that the “97% consensus” was a survey of the SkS raters beliefs and interpretations, rather than a survey of the authors opinions of their own science abstracts. Essentially it was pal-review by an activist group with a strong bias towards a particular outcome as demonstrated by the name “the consensus project”.
Look at the views in column 1, then look at the % in the rightmost column: 52% state the the warming since 1850 is mostly anthropogenic. One common categorization would categorize the other 48% as ‘deniers’.
So, the inconvenient truth here is that about half of the world’s largest organization of meteorological and climate professionals don’t think humans are “mostly” the cause of Anthropogenic Global Warming the rest will probably get smeared as “deniers”
I wish to note, that, the truth was not a 97% consensus, but that about half disagreed with man causing it. Which is about the same percentage Dr. Happer says on CNBC:
So I verbalized my thoughts on this new information, multiple times, even posting the 97% graph a couple times as well as the below cations that this new “consensus” was probably going to fall by the wayside. Here is what I said:
…Of course, polls of scientists are not evidence about our climate. But it is evidence that one of the main forms of argument “97% of climate scientists say man-made warming is real” is not just meaningless, but misleading. It’s PR, not science….
…I posted a graphic [like the one above — 97% vs. what it really is ~ 52%] that includes the full range that activists involved in getting $$$$ like to say, “CONSENSUS” (like your [~ Michael B.] original 2,259 vs. 1). I will end up responding specifically to your OP, but my original graphic is similar, in that, many said 97% of specialist agree global warming is happening. The study did not really say that, it inferred it by keeping information hidden.
“Wow, the list is pretty impressive …It’s Oreskes done right.”
– Luboš Motl, Ph.D. Theoretical Physics
“I really appreciate your important effort in compiling the list.”
– Willie Soon, Ph.D. Astrophysicist and Geoscientist
“A tour de force list of scientific papers…”
– Robert M. Carter, Ph.D. Palaeontology
“…it’s a very useful resource. Thanks to the pop tech team.”
– Joanne Nova, Author of The Skeptics Handbook
“I do confess a degree of fascination with Poptech’s list…”
– John Cook, Skeptical Science
† The list has been cited by Scientists (1, 2) and Professors (3)
My skeptical opponents continued with the mantra:
Jason H.said this:
…Overwhelming consensus is overwhelming. Fail harder…
…If this is not scientific consensus, what in the world would a consensus look like?…
Michael B.said this (by the way, he posted the original article):
…The topic of this debate is whether there is scientific consensus….
So, because I was at a loss, I tweeted a couple of people I know via being a fan, and I got a response via Hockey Schtick, Who shot me over to Popular Technology.net …
…so you know ~ as I am writing this ~ the new rebuttal went up! Here is the new rebuttal to the actual Facebook link and subsequent debate:
(Mouse over to see original)
James Powell continues to demonstrate his computer illiteracy by doing worthless database searches in an intellectually dishonest propaganda campaign. He updated his previous meaningless analysis in continued blissful ignorance that the ‘Web of Science’ database does not have a “peer-reviewed” only filter and the existence of a search phrase in a returned result does not determine it’s context. Thus, all that can be claimed is there were 2,258 meaningless search resultsnot “peer-reviewed climate articles” for a query of the ‘Web of Science’ database – with 1 chosen by strawman argument.
1. The context of how the “search phrases” were used in all the results was never determined.
2. The results are padded by not using the search qualifier “anthropogenic”.
3. The 2,258 results cannot be claimed to be peer-reviewed as the Web of Science does not have a peer-reviewed only filter.
4. It is a strawman argument that most skeptics deny or reject that man can have an influence on the climate, but rather if there is any cause for alarm.
1. Context Matters
The existence of a search phrase in a returned result does not determine its context. So making any arguments for or against an implied position relating to the use of a phrase by simply looking at numerical result totals is impossible. Powell never determined the context of how the search phrases were used in all the results.
2. Padding the Results
Powell padded his search results total by using the phrases; “global warming” and/or “global climate change” instead of “anthropogenic global warming” [man-made global warming] or “anthropogenic global climate change” [man-made global climate change], which would have significantly reduced the number of returned results. Without the qualifier “anthropogenic”, results are included where no claim of explicit endorsement or rejection of ACC/AGW can be made.
Others alarmists have been challenged to search for the phrase, “anthropogenic climate change” using Oreskes (2004) methods and they only got 108 returned results.
“I did the search [in Web of Science] for “anthropogenic climate change” the other day and got something like 108 papers.” – Barry Bickmore, Professor at Brigham Young University
These low number of results are not useful to sell the type of propaganda alarmists like Powell are looking for.
3. Peer-Reviewed?
In his methods, Powell filtered his results by the ‘articles’ document type which includes content that may not be peer-reviewed depending on the specific journal,
“Article: Reports of research on original works. Includes research papers, features, brief communications, case reports, technical notes, chronology, and full papers that were presented at a symposium or conference.
Categories like these have been the subject of debate and confusion in relation to their peer-review status:
“…three categories of articles have been published: review articles up to 10 000 words, original articles of 2500–5000 words and brief communications of 1000–2000 words. Only the first two categories were subject to peer review and brief communications were being published without this quality check.” – Health Information and Libraries Journal
“Because of trends in submissions, Nature’s Brief Communications will bow out at the end of the year. […] False rumours that the section was not peer reviewed have occasionally circulated.” – Nature
4. Strawman argument
Actual skeptic arguments include that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is exaggerated or inconsequential, such as those made by Richard S. Lindzen, Ph.D. Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT and John R. Christy, Ph.D. Professor of Atmospheric Science at UHA. Skeptics unanimously reject that there is any cause for alarm.
End Result!?
(2013) In a true sense of irony Powell uses his meaningless analysis as a defense of Oreskes (2004) which is considered useless by world renowned climate experts,
“Analyses like these by people who don’t know the field are useless. A good example is Naomi Oreskes work.” – Tom Wigley, Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
He then attempts to smear skeptics as “global warming deniers”. This is a dishonest ad hominem as skeptics believe there has been a global temperature increase of a fraction of a degree since the end of the little ice age.
Powell’s pie chart is simply propaganda for those who are intellectual dishonest and want to be intentionally misleading about actual skeptic arguments or the over 1100 peer-reviewed papers that support them….
Instead he hopes his propaganda will be picked up by the media and used by those who are intellectual dishonest and want to be intentionally misleading….
Because Sen. Inhofe quotes Obama as saying this, noted at Junk Science:
“But the flipside is we also know that the climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated five or 10 years ago, and that the future…in part, is going to depend on our willingness to deal with something that we may not be able to see or smell the way you could when the Chicago River was on fire, or at least could have caught on fire, but is in some ways more serious, more fundamental,” Obama said.
Because of that seriousness, Obama said he’s willing to hear out “a different approach” to dealing with the issue. What he won’t consider though, he said, are ideas from climate change deniers.
Warming has stopped longer than that! About 17-years. So, Sen. Inhofe asked the EPA for any stats to back up this claim… the predictable outcome is seen below:
…”The ruling in this case ignores that time-tested and rational definition of marriage…and replaces it with the recently conceived notion that marriage is little more than special government recognition for close relationships,” said Byron Babione, a lawyer for Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented the Tulsa County clerk in the case.
Oklahoma is one of the most conservative states. In 2004, nearly 76% of voters in the state approved the constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. The Republican presidential candidate won every Oklahoma county in the 2004, 2008 and 2012 elections. In 2012, GOP nominee Mitt Romney won 67% of the vote, to President Barack Obama‘s 33%.
