Category: Points of Information

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

University of Virginia resists releasing climate documents

1:13 pm

Another whitewash? The University of Virginia is resisting releasing a variety of climate documents being requested under the state’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Key quote:

In response to a previous FOIA request, U.Va. denied these records existed. However, during Cuccinelli’s pre-investigation under the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act (“FATA”), a 2007 law passed unanimously by Virginia’s legislature, which clearly covers the work of taxpayer-funded academics, U.Va. stunningly dropped this stance.

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Root cause of tank cracks possibly found

10:10 am

NASA engineers think they might have found the root cause of the cracks that have been appearing on the shuttle external tank. The cracks appear on structural units called stringers. Key quote:

“Some material used for the stringers was found to be ‘mottled,’ with a different surface appearance than the standard material. Testing revealed this mottled material had lower fracture toughness than the nominal material and exhibited unstable crack growth. All of the cracks found during tanking as well as cracks fixed during manufacturing were located on stringers made with this mottled material.”

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Engineers considering repairs to shuttle tank

10:22 am

NASA engineers are considering giving Discovery’s external tank the equivalent of a girdle in order to keep it from developing more cracks during launch. Key quote:

If that decision is made, it is unlikely NASA could complete the work, repair the tank’s foam insulation and get Discovery back out to the launch pad in time to support a launch attempt during the next available window, which opens Feb. 3 and closes Feb. 10. Work to beef up all 108 stringers at the top of the intertank almost certainly would delay Discovery’s launch on a space station resupply mission to the next available window, which opens Feb. 27 and closes in early March.

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Why Most Published Research Findings are False

4:50 pm

Why most published research findings are false. And written by a published but skeptical climate scientist. Key quote:

In global warming research, there is a popular misconception that oil industry-funded climate research actually exists, and has skewed the science. I can’t think of a single scientific study that has been funded by an oil or coal company.

But what DOES exist is a large organization that has a virtual monopoly on global warming research in the U.S., and that has a vested interest in [anthropogenic global warming] theory being true: the U.S. Government. The idea that government-funded climate research is unbiased is laughable. The push for ever increasing levels of government regulation and legislation, the desire of government managers to grow their programs, the dependence of congressional funding of a problem on the existence of a “problem” to begin with, and the U.N.’s desire to find reasons to move toward global governance, all lead to inherent bias in climate research.

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