Category: Points of Information

Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.

The predictions of seventy-three climate models are compared to real data and not one comes even close to reality.

4:21 pm

The predictions of seventy-three climate models are compared to real data and not one comes even close to reality.

Remember: computer modeling is not science research. It does not tell us anything about the actual climate. It is instead theoretical work useful for trying to understand what the data actual is telling us.

Computer modeling, however, is totally useless if it doesn’t successfully mimic that actual data. Since all of these climate models fail to do this, they very clearly show that they do not understand the climate itself, and are not valid theories to explain its processes. If the scientists who created them were honest about these results, they would immediately go back to the drawing board and rewrite these models.

I unfortunately have serious doubts they will do this.

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The first annual College Stupidity Awards.

9:11 am

The first annual College Stupidity Awards.

I especially like this one:

A Hispanic student group at Northwestern University instructed members of the campus community to forgo eating tacos and drinking tequila on Cinco de Mayo, so as not to offend Mexican culture. But Mexican students, who indeed wanted to spend their holiday eating tacos and drinking tequila, took offense at the assumed offense. The Hispanic student group ended up with huevo on its face.

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The EPA has acknowledged that it illegally released personal information of farmers to several leftwing environmental organizations.

8:53 am

The EPA has acknowledged that it illegally released personal information of farmers to several leftwing environmental organizations.

Mistakes do happen, but like the IRS scandal, this mistake was all one way, helpful to the left and harmful to their opponents. And like the IRS scandal, this one way harm suggests this was not a mistake, but quite intentional.

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A message to moderate Muslims.

8:45 pm

A message to moderate Muslims.

What we need is a Muslim backlash, and we need it now. You may be a moderate, peaceful Muslim, but there’s nothing moderate or peaceful about your religion, and you know it.

The bigots who preach in your mosques, who take sustenance from your religion, are hiding behind you. And your silence is helping them to do it. If your mosque is letting anyone preach hatred and violence on its premises, you have a duty to call the police. And the police have a duty to take off their politically correct-tinted glasses to go into that mosque, without removing their shoes, and arrest that person. Anything less than this, and you’re on the wrong side.

As always, Pat Condell puts it bluntly but honestly. If Islam is being hijacked by radicals, as so many politically correct people claim, than the religion can easily be saved if the reasonable people within stand up to them. If they don’t, however, they tell us that the religion isn’t being hijacked. It is radical, and violent, and should be shunned and opposed by all reasonable people worldwide.

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A new report from Social Security has raised its predicted unfunded liabilities over the next 75 years by one trillion dollars.

2:23 pm

The day of reckoning looms: A new report from Social Security has raised its predicted unfunded liabilities over the next 75 years by one trillion dollars, for a total of $9.6 trillion.

According to the report, “Through the end of 2087, the combined funds [OASI and DI] have a present-value unfunded obligation of $9.6 trillion.” That is “$1.0 trillion more than the measured level of $8.6 trillion a year ago,” states the report, in reference to the data available for 2011. That $9.6 trillion shortfall equals approximately $83,894 per household based on the Census Bureau’s latest estimate that there are 114,430,000 households in the country.

The report also looks farther into the future and saw the shortfall rise to $23 trillion.

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Stratolaunch officially announced today that Orbital Sciences will build the system’s second stage rocket.

1:04 pm

The competition heats up: Stratolaunch officially announced today that Orbital Sciences will build the system’s second stage rocket.

The rocket that Orbital will build for Stratolaunch will launch from the air, the first stage being a giant airplane which will carry that rocket aloft, much like Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnightTwo and Orbital’s Pegasus rocket. Clark Lindsey at the same website also notes that the efforts of SpaceX (and to my mind Stratolaunch) to make the first stage reusable will likely revolutionize the rocket industry.

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“I can say with a very strong sense of certainty that there are people very close to this president that not only knew what the IRS were doing but authorized it.”

9:01 am

“I can say with a very strong sense of certainty that there are people very close to this president that not only knew what the IRS were doing but authorized it.”

Said by an ABC news reporter today.

In related news, it appears that the IRS not only targeted conservative organizations which applied for tax exempt status, the tax agency also targeted the donors to those organizations.

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Russia’s Proton rocket successfully launched a commercial satellite today.

8:34 am

The competition heats up: Russia’s Proton rocket today successfully launched another commercial communications satellite.

The troublesome Briz-M upper stage still has to get the satellite to its proper orbit, so stay tuned. Nonetheless, this launch, only a few weeks after their last commercial Proton launch, suggests they were serious about launching nine more commercial launches this year.

Meanwhile, we wait for SpaceX’s first commercial launch by the Falcon 9 rocket. Their launch manifest still claims there will be three such launches before the next Falcon 9/Dragon mission to ISS later this year, but two of those launches were supposed to have occurred already. The non-occurrence of the March MDA/Cassiope launch out of Vandenberg is especially puzzling, as there are few scheduling conflicts at that rarely used spaceport.

The Falcon 9 delays at this point are beginning to be worrisome, and suggest the skepticism of some about SpaceX’s ability to compete might have merit. SpaceX has got to launch a commercial satellite soon in order to quell those doubts.

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In celebration of its tenth year in orbit, scientists running the Mars Express mission have released global mineral maps of Mars.

8:15 am

In celebration of its tenth year in orbit, scientists running the Mars Express mission have released global mineral maps of Mars. With video.

The unique atlas comprises a series of maps showing the distribution of minerals formed in water, by volcanic activity, and by weathering to create the dust that makes Mars red. They create a global context for the dominant geological processes that sculpted the planet we see today.

Take a look at the video. It is fascinating to see where these minerals concentrate.

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Transcript excerpts of House testimony by two IRS employees show that the policy to harass conservatives was ordered by supervisors in Washington.

11:25 am

Transcript excerpts of House testimony by two IRS employees show that the policy to harass conservatives was ordered by supervisors in Washington.

When these employees testify publicly, it will not be pretty for the Obama administration. The next question will of course be: Who were those supervisors, and who gave them their orders?

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When Lois Lerner worked for the FEC she offered to drop a case against a conservative if he promised never to run for office again.

11:34 pm

Working for the Democratic Party: When IRS thug Lois Lerner worked for the FEC she offered to drop a case against a conservative running for the Senate if he promised never to run for office again.

The conservative refused, and the case went to court, where all charges were dismissed. Nonetheless, the conservative subsequently decided that the harassment from the government, which also included a visit from the FBI, was not worth it, and has not run for office since.

In other words, Lerner’s harassment worked, to the benefit of the Democratic Party.

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The IRS has told a House investigation that almost 90 IRS agents were involved in harassment scandal.

3:53 pm

The IRS has told a House investigation that almost 90 IRS agents were involved in harassment scandal.

If I was Obama and had anything at all to do with this policy, I would be very very nervous. With this many IRS agents involved it will be impossible to control this scandal. Someone is going to spill the beans and tell us who established this harassment policy, and it certainly wasn’t some “low level rogue agents”, as Lois Lerner first claimed.

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Scientists think they have developed a chestnut tree resistant to the blight that can be re-introduced into American forests.

3:39 pm

Scientists think they may have developed a chestnut tree resistant to the blight so that three can be re-introduced into American forests.

In the early 2000s, they were first able to genetically engineer a chestnut embryo; the related paper was published in 2006 — the same year the first transgenic chestnut was planeted outside of the lab. Following that they developed a line of chestnuts called Darling 4, which seems to be a bit less resistant to the blight than Chinese chestnuts, but still much better than a regular American chestnut. Last summer, they planted one of those trees at the New York Botanical Garden, not far from where the blight was first discovered.

But they wanted even higher levels of resistance yet, and now they think they might have done it: a transgenic line of chestnuts, more resistant to the blight than even the Chinese trees. The team, lead by then-graduate student Amelia Bo Zhang, published their results in Trangenic Research in March. Earlier this month, they planted these trees at the Lafayette Road Experiment Station — the first American chestnuts on this Earth that are highly resistant to the blight.

Humans using science to do what humans do best.

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