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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

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New climate model works better, but doesn’t!

New climate model
Image from Junk Science. I indicated the pause

The uncertainty of science: Scientists have developed a new computer climate model that does a better job of predicting the actual climate, until you get to the pause in warming during the past 18 years. The graph on the right, from the paper, shows the model’s prediction compared to the raw data. The two line up perfectly, until around 1998, when the pause or hiatus in global warming began. From that point, the model fails.

I especially like this quote from the press release, made by one of the paper’s two authors:

“Most of the difference between the raw data and new estimates is found during the recent 18 years since 1998,” said Xie. “Because of the hiatus, the raw data underestimate the greenhouse warming.” [emphasis mine]

Note how he reverses things. For him, the raw data is wrong, as it underestimates their perfect model of human-caused greenhouse warming. In reality, it is their model that has failed, as it fails to predict the pause in warming, showing that it must be missing important factors that are influencing the climate. Or as physicist Richard Feynmann so cogently put it,

“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.”

Note also that this research paper, released today, recognizes the pause, which shows again that the claims by some scientists that the pause did not exist have not been convincing to other climate scientists. This in turn once again illustrates the overall uncertainty of this field of science.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

7 comments

  • Wayne

    Well stated Mr. Z!

    “Feynman on Scientific Method” (10 minutes)
    [Cornell Messenger Lectures]
    https://youtu.be/EYPapE-3FRw

  • Phill O

    The “pause” coincides nicely with the solar powered globalclimate model.

  • Phill O

    Drat: hit the send before my eye saw the typo.

    global climate

  • Edward

    Perhaps Kosaka’s and Xie’s new model failed to take into account the US’s lowered CO2 output. Despite not joining the Kyoto Agreement, we are one of the few countries that managed to reduce CO2 output to 1992 levels.

    Once again, another researcher fails to recognize that the so-called pause is actually a stabilization of Earth’s temperature. We are saved from the effects of global warming, but no one is willing to admit it, at least no one who receives funding from organizations or nations that want to prove that global warming is a problem. Instead, as Robert noted, they tell us that nature is wrong, as she fails to follow the predictions of our best global warming model.

    These scientists continue to refuse to acknowledge the possibility that we may be entering another mini ice-age, as we know occur on occasion due to historic writings, ice cores, and other methods that these same scientists use to estimate pre-recorded temperatures.

    Excellent comment, wayne. “If it disagrees with experiment [nature or measurement], it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make a difference how beautiful your guess is; it doesn’t make a difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is; if it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.”

    This is the basic concept of science. It is fundamental to the scientific method. To disobey this is to deny science. If it were any other way, then reality [nature] would not matter, and we could make any conclusion that we wish, such as the conclusion that “the raw data underestimate the greenhouse warming.”

    In the meantime, all those who favor global warming work overtime to make the theory vague. Less snow means global warming, but so does more snow. Warmer temperatures mean global warming, but so do cooler temperatures. If reality diverges from the models, that means global warming. And cetera. Thus, as Feynman said, it cannot be proved wrong. Therefore it is a bad theory. Or in Feynman’s words, “you can’t claim to know anything about it.”

    But Kosaka and Xie claim to know more about it than nature does, when they say, “the raw data underestimate the greenhouse warming,” and they are not embarrassed as scientists to say so.

  • m d mill

    They were able to predict the past, mostly (and create a simulation with enough variable “knobs”to correspond)…genius!
    Predicting the future seems to be the sticking point..go figure.

  • Rene Borbon

    Thanks for the latest version of the religion. Keep up the good work Bob!

  • Greg the Geologist

    Today’s news release from NASA / JPL:

    http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6576&utm_source=iContact&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NASAJPL&utm_content=daily20160721-2

    They openly admit to changing the data to fit the theory. Claims that this comparison is more ‘fair’. Fair to whom? Doesn’t even mention the possibility that the data are the baseline and the theory (models) may be flawed. Astounding. Another vote for “Never Hillary”.

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