Author: Payam

Chemist, philosopher, vagrant.
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Shining Light on Dubious Theories

Temperature rises ‘not caused by sun’ | Climate change | Guardian Unlimited Environment

Anyone who has viewed and/or forwarded links to this controversial “documentary”, The Great Global Warming Swindle, must read the above Guardian article and forward it to all the people to whom they forwarded the original misleading documentary. Yet again, another argument against global warming force-fed to the public by biased sources has been proven wrong by raw data–not models, not hypotheses, and not theories. By raw data, which is to say, by reality.

The latest line of sophistry from the oil industry that was disseminated by the fraudulent British documentary went as follows: global warming is not caused by human activity, but by changes in solar activity. The sun is putting out more rays, the shysters claim, and that is why the earth is getting warmer. The shysters theorized this claim with the awareness that the general public lacks the technical wisdom and resourcefulness to know that this appealing theory can be tested with real data. The scientific community is not as naive.

Mike Lockwood, a physicist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK and Claus Frohlich of the World Radiation Centre in Davos, Switzerland, compared temperature and solar data for the past 100 years. Lockwood concluded

It is absolutely clear that the sun is nothing to do with the recent warming.This doesn’t rely on models, it uses real data and it shows that all the solar trends have been going in the opposite direction [toward less radiation and, hence, global cooling] for the last 20 years. 

The two scientists conclude their upcoming communication (to be published by the Royal Society)

Our results show that the observed rapid rise in global mean temperatures seen after 1985 cannot be ascribed to solar variability, whichever mechanism is invoked. 

Carl Wunsch, a professor at MIT, was duped into giving an interview to the makers of  Swindle, and he later called the movie propaganda. The film’s claims have been meticulously documented as false by many sites, including this one and this one. UK Channel 4, which aired the documentary, decided to distance itself from the production after discovering that the primary graph used by the program was fabricated by the right-wing agencies that funded the production. And now, we even know that the phenomenon proposed by the program never happened in reality. In fact, we now know that reality is diametrically opposed to the claims of the program. Will this be enough to kill this piece of propaganda?

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Ford, General Motors, Chrysler Crumbling

BBC NEWS | Business | Ford and GM see US sales decline

When the competition is out-designing, out-marketing and out-hustling you, outcomes like Ford and GM’s are entirely predictable. That the executives at these companies failed to see what consumers and analysts were seeing decades ago is reprehensible. That they managed to award themselves untold millions in bonuses is unconscionable. That they do not react to it is, frankly, criminal.

My old 1.6 L, 16-valve base model Nissan Sentra is running great after 13 years and 120,000 miles. The fact that GM, Chrysler and Ford cannot build a small car with this much endurance explains a lot. And, the fact that these monsters of American industry still do not offer any fuel efficient cars explains the rest:

Ford’s sales of traditional cars fell 24.6% last month.

By contrast, sales of its light trucks, which includes its sports utility vehicles, added 2.9%.

GM’s passenger car sales lost 22.3%, while its light trucks lost 25.6%.

It’s almost as if some very powerful people have a very high stakes bet about which company is going to go bankrupt first, and they are pulling every string they can to win the bet.

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A Good Day in Paris

BBC NEWS | Business | Blackstone buys Hilton for $26bn

Paris Hilton might donate $50 of her profits from this sale to relieve the misery she encountered in prison.

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Brooklyn Cheese

I have no inkling as to why Brooklyn cheese is in any form a desirable variety of cheese, but this pizza delivery outfit that services Beverly Hills felt it was necessary to boast about its use of “Brooklyn Cheese” on it’s New York style thin pizzas.

It is a sign, indeed, that one is living in the primordial soup. WhereFlyer from local Pizza delivery restaurant in Beverly Hills else would those who have boasted about the California style brick oven pizza express any desire for a style of pizza that is outdated and, in this instance, clearly artificial. As expected, the people in a state where the dairy industry has spent billions advertising California cheese are craving more and more cheese from places that are known for cheese: Spain, France, the Netherlands. Yet, there are so many who crave a cheese with no pedigree, no reputation and no real existence. And, they descend upon Los Angeles–the primordial soup that accommodates them–in droves.

Stay tuned for kosher pork.

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Neoconservative Political Correctness Recognized by Court

Chemical & Engineering News, June 18, 2007

The final piece in the above linked pdf file is yet another instance of the Bush Administration’s failure to reclassify certain activities ostensibly in order to embellish or to hide its failure or to appease its supporters.

In this instance, the EPA had reclassified waste incinerators as less polluting devices. Thus, it had exempted them from stricter emission standards and, presumably, saved the companies that operate such incinerators considerable time and money. Fortunately, a panel of Federal judges overturned this reclassification.

The agency had argued that it could set less stringent controls for these incinerators by treating them as though they were “boilers” or “process heaters” that burn only fossil fuels. The court rejected that argument, stating that facilities that burn waste are incinerators and must meet the Clean Air Act’s strictest emissions standard. The panel denied petitions by EPA and industry groups for a rehearing, and sent the incinerator rule back for “wholesale revision.”

It is difficult to frame such a reclassification in anything other than politics. After all, the reason something that boils water is called a boiler and something that burns non-flammable organic materials at absurdly high temperatures is called an incinerator is that these are fundamentally different processes. If burning oil was the same as burning trash, then engineers would certainly not have gone through the trouble of re-engineering a new operation and Christening it with a different name.

Furthermore, the chemical signatures of these two devices are radically different because the boiler only uses hydrocarbons as fuel but the incinerator uses, well, anything. This is why they come under different emission rules.

This reclassification is as absurd as the reclassification of fast food jobs (such as assembling a burger at McDonald’s) as manufacturing jobs by the Economic Report of the President in 2004. It’s enough to make one want to shout “go reclassify yourself, pal”.

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Paper Cups, Tinsel Reputation

Starbucks reputation on line in court case | | Guardian Unlimited Business

I can’t say that I am particularly passionate about the unionization of Starbuck’s employees. It would be nice, perhaps, because it might bring greater consistency to the Starbuck’s experience. The Starbucks union organizing web site claims that they wish to have:

  • Increased pay and raises
  • Guaranteed hours with the option of full-time status
  • An end to understaffing
  • A healthier and safer workplace

Those all sound like reasonable demands. On those rare occasions when I have entered a Starbucks, I have wished that the cafe were in a slightly greater state of order and cleanliness. It seems as if the staff are always struggling to balance their time between cleaning and fulfilling orders, but they just don’t seem to have enough time to clean because customers are perennially queued to order. Of course, some locations are better than others, and some times of the day are better than others. Nevertheless, it does make sense that a large corporation should have sufficient resources to make every moment that they are open to business fairly consistent.

Despite all this, the reason I hate going to Starbucks is that they do not serve their drinks in real porcelain cups. I am told that certain locations will do so if I request it, but why the hell would I need to request a real cup of coffee?

And, no, playing Paul McCartney for 24 hours non-stop is no incentive for me.

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Don’t Ask, Do Tell

Defence ministry apologises for gay discrimination | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

In the US, “don’t ask don’t tell” has merely turned explicit institutional discrimination into soft, implicit institutional discrimination. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom has progressed from the complete decriminalization of homosexuality in their military in 2000 to a sincere apology today.

At the present rate, the only apology the Pentagon is likely to issue is “We’re sorry we asked”.

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Beware Your Peers

ScienceDaily: New Study Shows How Often Juries Get It Wrong

Bruce Spencer is not the first guy to argue that jury trials have an excessively high error rate, but he may be the first scholar to put a number to this error rate. His calculations arrive at a minimum error rate of 13%, or one out of eight. This finding implies not that American justice is blind or deaf, but, perhaps, dead.

Skeptics of statistics (or statistical skeptics) are welcome to read the original manuscript on the Northwestern University web site (pdf file). They are also forewarned that this article delves into esoteric subjects like definitions of “error rate”, statistical methods, and analysis.

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Not “If” to Snip, but “When”

BBC NEWS | Africa | Mass circumcision to fight Aids

It’s apparently true. Circumcision reduces the risk of acquiring HIV (and, hence, AIDS) through heterosexual sex. Consequently, some are pondering mass circumcisions in South Africa as public health policy.”It’s good to be Jewish”, or, far more likely, “it’s good to be Muslim” is what many Africans must be thinking these days. I’m smiling, of course, and the Jews and Muslims in Africa must be breathing a sigh of relief.

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Do Nuns Count, Anyway?

My sex in the convent – by Nobel poet | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

Do macho men need to brag about bagging nuns? Is this a point of pride in the framework of machismo?

The bigger question is, perhaps, why on earth would the members of this convent raise a raucus about the obviously flattering musings of a Nobel Laureate, Juan Ramon Jimenez. After the pedophilia debacle that the Catholic Church has endured over the past decade, why would any order of the Church care about a capable poet’s fond recollections of forbidden love? By now the entire world knows that the Church meticulously documented all incidents of pedophilia committed by its priests, avidly hid the crimes from the public and overtly lied and denied access to its archives when the time of reckoning arrived. What harm could possibly come from the revelation that the women who worked in a Madrid convent at the turn of the century erred as human beings?

The Catholic Church promotes an extremely select few to the level of saint. Thus, it freely admits that its followers are human. So, why would it take offense at a revelation that it freely admits through its actions?