Got a theory that breaks a consensus? Expect aggressive silence. Snickering. Wait decades

For a long time it was thought the first people arrived in the Americas around 13,000 years ago. Jacques Cinq-Marc  found a set of caves in the Yukon called the Bluefish Caves laden with bones marked with cuts from human butchering. They were radiocarbon dated as 24,000 years old. Cinq-Marcs published a series of papers between 1979-2001.

This is a topic that doesn’t have a $1.5 Trillion dollar industry riding on it. No political careers are made or broken if humans arrived in the Americas millenia earlier. Yet still, the smug scoffing of the consensus slowed progress in science for decades.

What Happens When an Archaeologist Challenges Mainstream Scientific Thinking?

Heather Pringer, Smithsonian.com

Cinq-Mars… work at Bluefish Caves suggested that Asian hunters roamed northern Yukon at least 11,000 years before the arrival of the Clovis people. And other research projects lent some support to the idea. At a small scattering of sites, from Meadowcroft in Pennsylvania to Monte Verde in Chile, archaeologists had unearthed hearths, stone tools and butchered animal remains that pointed to an earlier migration to the Americas. But rather than launching a major new search for more early evidence, the finds stirred fierce opposition and a bitter debate, “one of the most acrimonious—and unfruitful—in all of science,” noted the journal Nature.

But relatively few of Cinq-Mars’s peers shared his confidence. And as I began regularly attending archaeological conferences in the years following that trip to Bluefish Caves, I saw what Cinq-Mars was up against. Sitting in halls with Canadian and American researchers, I witnessed what happened when archaeologists presented data that contradicted the Clovis first model. Often a polite bemusement spread through the room, as if the audience was dealing with some crackpot uncle, or the atmosphere grew testy and tense as someone began grilling the presenter. But once or twice, the mask of professional respect slipped completely; I heard laughter and snickering in the room. Tom Dillehay remembers such conferences well. “Some Clovis first people had a suffocating air of defiance and superiority at times,” he says.

Stung as he was by the criticism, Cinq-Mars refused to back down. None of the explanations for splintered bones, he noted, could account for the complex chain of steps that produced the mammoth-bone flake tool his team found. But by then, serious doubts about the Bluefish Caves evidence had been sown, taking firm root in the archaeological community: Hardly anyone was listening. Cinq-Mars couldn’t believe it. At one presentation he gave, “they laughed at me,” he says angrily today. “They found me cute.” Embittered by the response, he stopped attending conferences, and gave up defending the site publicly. What was the point? To Cinq-Mars, the Clovis first supporters seemed almost brainwashed.

For Mackie and others, the protracted battle over the Clovis first model now stands as a cautionary tale for archaeologists. Notes Mackie, “Clovis first will, I believe, go down as a classic example of a paradigm shift, in which the evidence for the collapse of an old model is present for many years before it actually collapses, producing a sort of zombie model that won’t die.”

–There is a lot more at the Smithsonian link above from Hakai Magazine

Lauriane Bourgeon studied 36,000 bone fragments to confirm Cinq-Mars work. That was published in Jan 2017.

REFERENCE

Lauriane Bourgeon, Ariane Burke, Thomas Higham. Earliest Human Presence in North America Dated to the Last Glacial Maximum: New Radiocarbon Dates from Bluefish Caves, CanadaPLOS ONE, 2017; 12 (1): e0169486 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0169486

h/t MArk M in Unthreaded, and David B.

9.1 out of 10 based on 119 ratings

313 comments to Got a theory that breaks a consensus? Expect aggressive silence. Snickering. Wait decades

  • #
    crakar24

    The Clovis first supporters have stymied the advancement of our understanding of human evolution and migration, thankfully you would not find this sort of behaviour in any other branch of science.

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    • #
      Phoenix44

      Are you joking? Science is absolutely full of this stuff, across every discipline. Look at fats and heart disease, a theory that was based on pretty much fraud and which even now refuses to die. Or H.pylori causing ulcers, or the struggles some doctors are having showing that at least a small percentage of mental illnesses are auto-immune. And that’s just recent stuff.

      Far too many climate sceptics have a rose-tinted view of science outside the climate nonsense, where fearless and virtuous fighters for truth populate every lab and university. Aside from the outright fraud – which may account for 10% or more of all papers – the rest are largely wedded to their view and hardly ever shift.

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      • #
        Graeme No.3

        The good news is that Cinq-Mars has lived to see his vindication. He can now laugh at the Clovis people.

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        EDITOR IN CHIEF OF WORLD’S BEST KNOWN MEDICAL JOURNAL: HALF OF ALL THE LITERATURE IS FALSE

        If it is that high for medicine, just guess how high it must be for lesser-studied fields.

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        • #
          theRealUniverse

          Very high. Most published papers are eventually disproved or near to it.

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        • #
          Anton

          Twas ever so. Trouble is, nobody knows which half.

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          • #
            Retired Now

            Too trite. Anyone with half a brain can tell quite a range of them if they are honest with themselves.

            I once wanted to check the validity of one medical convention that a particular drug worked for a paticular range of symptoms. It took months to finally track down (in between my other required work) the original paper. For decades, and still, they reference experts who reference other experts who reference papers which reference papers which finally reference the orginal study of… wait for it… SIX (6) subjects. So the whole justification for a common drug is a study of blood results on 6 people with no reference as to whether symptoms actually improved. And the docs still justify its use – Medicare guidelines written by the drug companies mandate such treatment. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me and I realised that my discipline was corrupt.

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      • #
        Crakar24

        Do you really need to ask the question? OK to enhance your understanding of my comment, yes I was.

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      • #
        john karajas

        Academic researchers can be truly nasty if you are perceived to be different. Thank goodness I went out into the the brutal world of mineral exploration: the career path there could be really precarious at times, but there was a lot of fun and camaraderie as well. Private enterprise rules, man!

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        • #
          Geoff Sherrington

          John K,
          My boss for many years of very successful mineral exploration was John Elliston,AO, FAusIMM.
          This year, John has released his Magnum Opus, a new book “The Origin of Rocks and Mineral Deposits” Principia Scientific International.
          John fought against prevailing geological opinion for many years, just to find a publisher. One of his mentors wasb Prof S Warren Carey from Tasmania, who in turn had devoted considerable personal effort towards the acceptance of plate tectonics. In 1958 and other times Carey turned down a nomination for Fellow of the Aust Academy of Science because of the intellectual opposition to new ideas re continental drift.
          So here are two Australian examples of resistance by the establishment towards new ideas in geology. Exploration is not so far from this social problem.
          All geologist types reading here will enjoy John’s new book. It notes several serious challenges to conventional orogenesis, for which I have seen no convincing response as yet.
          Geoff

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          • #
            Michael Kottek

            Carey was also an expanding earther, on which I have an open mind.
            And in Z-force during WWII.

            Quite a life I think.

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      • #
        Yonniestone

        No mate he was cereal, super cereal…….sheesh.

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    • #
      sophocles

      It took 41 years—from 1912 until 1953—to lay Piltdown Mann (oops: Man not Mann) Heh) to rest. It was the advent of radio-carbon dating which finally succeeded in hammering the stake through its heart and nailing its coffin cloaed.

      At least it didn’t have little Menn popping up, claiming those against were “Missing Link Deniers.” and publishing propaganda books such as “”Piltdown Man and the Anthropology Wars; Despatches From the Front Lines.”

      So far, we have only spent a little less than eighteen years trying to get rid of the “HokeySchtick.”
      Patience, people. It’s only a little longer. Nature’s the biggest sceptic of all.

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      • #
        Graeme No.3

        Michael the Piltdown Mann. It has a certain ring about it. A low brutish creature the result of fraud, what connection is there?

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      • #
        Craig Thomas

        Every single temperature reconstruction has confirmed the “Hockey Stick” was absolutely correct.

        It seems *you* are the one hanging on to fringe theories and unwilling to admit you’ve been conned.

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        • #
          Graeme No.3

          So the global temperature (whatever that is supposed to be) has gone up considerably since 1998?

          If anyone is hanging on to fringe theories and unwilling to admit to being conned it is you.

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          • #
            Craig Thomas

            Perhaps you can share your rationale behind choosing the strongest El Nino year in recorded history as your yardstick for measuring average temperature trends…?

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            • #
              Graeme No.3

              Simple: I took the warmest year of the 1990’s and compared it with the warmest year “ever”. No change despite the Hockey Stick.

              And while on your Climate Models can we compare the predictions of 1988 with what happened subsequently, rather than looking back with hindsight? Then he was talking about a likely warming of 3 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit ( 1.7 to 5℃ ) from the year 2025 to 2050.
              And according to his projections from the CO2 rise we should have seen about 1.5°C warming by 2017/8.

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          • #
            Harry Twinotter

            “So the global temperature (whatever that is supposed to be) has gone up considerably since 1998?”

            Yes, it has. Go look at the charts.

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        • #
          crakar24

          CT,

          You do realise MBH was a study of NTH Hemisphere temps only dont you? Ergo even if it was confirmed it is not a global study and therefore useless as a tool to predict/project/pronounce temp trends on a global scale

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          • #
            Harry Twinotter

            crakar24.

            Yes, MBH98 only covered the Northern Hemisphere. And later confirming studies have been more extensive, and all show the same Hockey Stick shaped curve.

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        • #
          Peter C

          Every single temperature reconstruction has confirmed the “Hockey Stick” was absolutely correct.

          No they haven’t. That is complete rubbish.

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        • #

          What !!!!
          What about the missing warm periods – every major research paper ever published has a Medieval and Roman warm period .
          The climategate emails showed the fraudulent nature of Mann’s work
          and
          the book ” A disgrace to the profession ” had major climate science professors all calling his Hockey Stick a disgrace – even warmists .
          His methodolgy was crap and his statistical work was childish
          He is a nasty f[snip] and a bully and one day will get what’s coming to him

          [sorry to have to snip]ED

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        • #
          Roland

          Yes, but still no hockey stick, as you are admitting.

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        • #
          Glen Michel

          Down the Rabbit hole we go.Again!

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        • #
          sophocles

          Craig Thomas asserted:

          Every single temperature reconstruction has confirmed the “Hockey Stick” was absolutely correct.

          It’s obvious Craig, that your knowledge of both statistics and tree-ring-analysis is badly limited. Your assertion is badly wrong (see McIntyre and MacKitrik’s analysis) Any graph constructed by changing data sources part way through is risible and unacceptable. Changing horses in the middle of a race is never acceptable at the race track = Instant Disqualification plus expensive penalties. Similarly it is never acceptable to switch data sources part-way through a statistical analysis, either. The result is just not credible. It is Junk. This was detailed in one of Mann’s emails in the Climategate set, and became known as “‘Mike’s Trick’ to hide the Decline” –so named by the then head of the CRU.

          Bristlecone pine tree-ring analyis is pointless for tracking temperature, but is great for measuring precipitation. Steve McIntyre made the effort to track down the trees used by the core set Mann supposedly used. He took fresh cores from the same trees, which covered the years since the ones Mann used were taken. There was a statistically significant decline in the fresh data. Whether of temperature or precipitation, you can choose.

          Any algorithm which can produce a hokeySchtick from pink noise is badly wrong. The processed data presented as a hockey stick. That should have been the trend in the data. The production of a hockey stick from pink noise proves a selection error (bias) in the method. Which turns your favourite graph into unproven rubbish. This little bagatelle was pointed out over 17 years ago by Tom Wigley,(now at University of Adelaide.)

          So: a poor choice of proxy.
          an incorrect and careless application of the least squares method
          which produced a selective algorithn
          curtailing the data at the start of a significant deline
          changing horese in the middle of a race by switching to instrumental data

          Three of the above are more than sufficient to render the result of no significance at all, and
          apparently the work of a charlaton. A Hokeyschtick.

          Your assertion, Mister Thomas is a Fail.

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          • #
            Craig Thomas

            All I see there is a bunch of handwaving.
            The use of bristlecone pine growth as proxy for temperature is well-documented in the scientific literature, and it is a well-known fact the scientific community that they provide a good proxy for some periods and not for others.
            If McIntyre was off gathering data about these pines (which I doubt, he probably downloaded Malcolm Hughes’ dataset from the comfort of his armchair) in order to prove the already-known fact that these pines cease being a proxy for temperature at some point during the 20th century, then he pretty much wasted his time telling us something we already knew.

            In any case, nobody obsesses about pine tree rings as a proxy any more, seeing as another half-dozen proxies are all available, and all produce results that confirm Mann’s “hockey stick” was correct.

            I’m surprised you bring up the “random noise” issue, seeing as this issue was exposed when it was discovered that 100 “random hockey sticks” were carefully cherry-picked from 100,000 model runs……If Mark Steyn had opted for telling *that* story like it is, he certainly wouldn’t have been bothered with any libel suit as a result…..

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            • #
              sophocles

              All I see there is a bunch of handwaving.

              Then put your hands in your pockets and hold them still. They’re blocking what little vision you have with all that flapping around. [FAIL]

              The use of bristlecone pine growth as proxy for temperature is well-documented in the scientific literature, and it is a well-known fact the scientific community that they provide a good proxy for some periods and not for others.

              So how are you to know when they are a good proxy for temperature and when they are not? Please cite the appropriate literature giving your references

              If they are such a temperamental temperature proxy, having “periods” where they can be good proxies, and “periods” where they aren’t good proxies, then it is most likely they are not proxying what they are thought to be at all, but something else. They are either a proxy for the whole period under review or they are a useless proxy. UNRELIABLE is the word, because they are not responding to the signal they were thought to be responding to but to somethng else. [FAIL] On your own admission.

              he probably downloaded Malcolm Hughes’ dataset from the comfort of his armchair) i

              Of course, Craig. You were looking over his shoulder all the time. Weren’t you?
              Wishful thinking. It’s all documented on Climate Audit. I guess you don’t read Climate Audit. He wasn’t alone, having put together a team (think: witnesses, Craig, Witnesses) to cut fresh cores from the same trees. Steve McIntyre is a methodical and impeccable worker, Craig. If you do try reading Climate Audit, you might learn something. McIntyre is not a climate sceptic. Instead, he audits the facts, data, and statistics of published papers and points out the manifold errors of the more sloppy papers.

              Now, Steve is a nice guy, not another Mickey Mann, so he’s unlikely to challenge you over that egregious claim.

              I told you to put your hands in your pockets above so they weren’t waving around all over the place. (You’re getting desperate, Craig.)[FAIL] (Ad Hom and gross ignorance.)

              In any case, nobody obsesses about pine tree rings as a proxy any more, seeing as another half-dozen proxies are all available, and all produce results that confirm Mann’s “hockey stick” was correct.

              Admirable Red Herring Craig. So Mickey Mann used the wrong proxy. Nice to know. Thank you. But: we aren’t talking about half a dozen other available proxies . We are talking about the specific data sources for the HokeySchtick graph.

              And NO, those other proxies do not replicate Mann’s results at all. They show the Medieval Warming Period. The HokeySchtick doesn’t. They
              also show the Little Ice Age (which is too well documented for even an expert hand waver to handwave away. The HokeySchtick doesn’t. The HokeySchtick graph shows neither of those two historical periods at all. Those other proxies confirm the HokeySchtick Graph is wrong.

              If Mickey Mann knew his history, those two missing results should—should—should— have alerted him to something rather rotten in his reconstruction. But it didn’t. He seems he may have had an acute attack of cretinous coprocephila.
              Bad luck Craig, it’s another [FAIL].

              I’m surprised you bring up the “random noise” issue, seeing as this issue was exposed when it was discovered that 100 “random hockey sticks” were carefully cherry-picked from 100,000 model runs

              It was Dr Tom Wigley who brought it up. He might have been the head of the CRU at the time, before Phil Jones took over. His comment was in an email to the CRU email list. See the Climategate emails. He was corresponding with the CRU members and Mickey Mann was also a member of the list at the time. He will be either highly annoyed or highly amused with what you’ve just claimed. Hmm. He might even consider Lawyers At Twenty Paces. (I can hope.)

              He’s at the University of Adelaide. Why don’t you drop him an email? Or search the Climategate emails, they’re all in the public domain. That’s where I read his comment.

              So? “The models” had problems like Mickey Mann’s statistical calculations did they? They must be bigger crocks than I think they are.

              For your information, MM wasn’t using a model and doing runs. No, he was doing statistical arithmetic slowly and possibly by hand or maybe, using a calculator, or, even, using a Spreadsheet. (Know what they are, Craig?) If he made a simple and persistent incorrect and careless application of the least squares method, yes, simple arithmetical mistakes, then he couldn’t have been using a climate model.
              Cherrypicking? Put your hands back in your pockets, Craig, before they fall off your wrists. Or are you standing in the draught from a TC Debbie?

              The errors in the statistical calculations created an algorithm which preferentially produces a hokeyschtick no matter what data is fed to it. That is a bias that renders the reconstruction void.
              [FAIL]

              Hmm. Not bad. That’s a FAIL on every point you raised, ranging from HandWaving, Red Herringitis, Ad hominen, Arguing from Ignorance and …
              nah, that’s enough.

              “Hand waving,” and “Cherry picking” are just lousy fall-back excuses. You do the “hand waving” parts so well, must be well practiced.

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        • #
          KinkyKeith

          We should all unnerstand that the term “conne” is an Irish term.

          He really is a true believer in the truth of science and is just having you on.

          My great grandparents were from County Fermanagh so I unnerstand all about Craig and his suit.

          KK

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          • #
            sophocles

            But Thomas is a welsh name.

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          • #
            KinkyKeith

            No. Craig doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going.

            My great grandparents were Johnstons from County Fermanagh.

            My Welsh great grandparents were originally from England but moved to Wales; Abersychan trevithan before coming to Australia back in 1863.

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        • #
          nightspore

          Maybe you mean every temperature reconstruction that used the same dubious methods. In fact, there have been a number of reconstructions that contradict it, e.g. Loehle, Soon and Balinus, and L* (whose name I forget).

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        • #
          nightspore

          Craig,

          If you really believe what you’re saying, I have a tree in Yamal, that I’m willing to sell you … It’s quite cheap.

          00

    • #
      Leonard Lane

      A humorous example of experts not accepting facts is the duck-billed platypus which was called a hoax by English experts when the first carcass of one was shipped to England.
      So resistance of established scientists (who fear loss of esteem,etc.), can be strong and durable. But as with the Clovis Model, truth will eventually win out. The sad thing is that some discovers are not appreciated in their lifetime and in medicine, new discoveries are argued while people suffer and die.

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      • #
        Annie

        Let’s be honest. The duck-billed platypus looks like a hoax, or God using up the leftover bits of creation! 😉

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        • #
          sophocles

          Fortunately for the duck-billed platypus, it has objective reality. It is and computer models are neither necessary nor able to convince the rest of the world that is reality or fantasy.

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      • #

        Like the Antipodes platypus,
        the black swan sighting.

        Black swan, ebony gleaming,
        Gliding artlessly on
        A mirrored lake, unaware
        That you’re an oddity exposed
        By northern ornithologists.
        Glossy bird, you’d be surprised
        To learn you are compared
        To Hume’s thanksgiving turkey,
        Symbol of the out-liar event,
        The single observation that exposes
        How fragile is our human knowledge.

        Black swan, you have become
        A symbol too – so much
        Less and more than
        Mere blackbird – you.

        bts.

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        • #
          Yonniestone

          Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
          Had I from old and young!
          Instead of the cross, the Albatross
          About my neck was hung.

          A dead swan around Gore’s neck would sate my desire for satirical justice, beclowning the clown of false memes.

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    • #
      Peter C

      Ah Crakar24, you should know better than to make such a comment without attaching a /sarc modifier. The entirety of the MSM and organisations of authority (politicians, government, NGOs, Universities, etc) constantly present similar patently ridiculous claims as God-given truth, to such an extent that any thinking person can be forgiven for automatically taking such a comment as yet another example.

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      • #
        Annie

        I had no problem in immediately realising there was a built-in sarc/ even if it wasn’t written there. Odd that it wasn’t obvious to anyone else.

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        • #
          William

          I read it, saw the first few comments and then did a search on sarc thinking, oops, perhaps no-one picked up the sarcasm! Glad you both picked it up!

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      • #

        Yup, sarc, caricature, satire, etc., are all impossible now, because there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that is too absurd for the political climate alarmists. If you do any of them, you have to say. How do we know you aren’t one of the loons?

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      • #
        Raven

        People who use /sarc tags should be banned for life I reckon.
        It only encourages the mongs who campaign for warning labels on bullets . . .

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    • #
      Russ Wood

      I need only mention ‘cold fusion’. It is only recently being investigated again, after half a century of ‘no way’ – only now it is called a respectable ‘Low Energy Nuclear Reactions’ (LENR). Under a new name, the weird effects can now be safely investigated without name-calling.

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  • #
    Greebo

    Hmmmm. I wonder if they still believe in Piltdown man. Or a flat earth.

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  • #
    a happy little debunker

    But, we have Brian Cox to tell us the best way to tackle people who reject the (consensus) science might be to not engage them at all.

    “In general, it’s not a good idea to engage in people who are obstinate in that way,”
    “So really it comes down to an impressionistic game. Who do the viewers trust, who appears more plausible?”

    Brian Cox suggests Science has become a PR exercise – FFS.

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    • #
      el gordo

      Its a PR exercise, now that Cox is front man for the propaganda wing of the green blob. The ladies in my milieu simply love him and his astronomical ramblings should be a ratings success for Aunty.

      He has the audacity to say people shouldn’t argue with heretics because it might change their minds on how the atmospheric system works. He knows nothing of the role that our star and Jupiter play in determining what happens here on earth.

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      • #
        Peter C

        He has the audacity to say people shouldn’t argue with heretics because it might change their minds on how the atmospheric system works. He knows nothing of the role that our star and Jupiter play in determining what happens here on earth.

        But but but. Astrophysics is his special subject! Does that mean that Cox knows nothing at all?

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        • #
          el gordo

          ‘Does that mean that Cox knows nothing at all?’

          He knows nothing about real climate change on earth, but being a professor he obviously knows a lot about astrophysics. Trouble with a lot of academics is that they respect the authorities in other disciplines and accept the current scientific paradigm, he’ll look very silly in a few years.

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          • #
            Gerry, England

            He doesn’t know a lot about astrophysics either as he is a particle physicist. Nothing in that sphere gives him any knowledge about ‘climate change’ which he demonstrates quite clearly in his TV appearances. No wonder he does so much on the BBC.

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            • #
              Klem

              I saw him on one TV debate where he showed a “graph”.

              Actually, it was the same graph that commonly floats around the internet. Very impressive indeed. Lol!

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        • #
          Ted O'Brien.

          Who trained him?

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        • #

          Cox knows nothing substantial, he is poor at maths, does not grasp what is meant by infinite. certainly has no clue about heat transfer or chemistry. He may have studied astrophysics but much of what seems to have gone went straight out. He is not in the class of Willie Soon (see some of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Soon which also contains a lot of BS written by alarmist greens)

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      • #
        Annie

        I don’t watch these programmes…I detest the way they make the presenter the main focus. I say ‘get out of the way and off the screen and let us see what you are supposed to be talking about’. The presenters themselves give me the absolute pip.

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    • #

      Brian Cox: the smirk that devoured its human host.

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      • #
        toorightmate

        Brian Cox washes himself too quickly in the shower.

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        • #
          sophocles

          Shower? You reckon? Wouldn’t it damage that hair do? Send it all awry? Shrink his brain? And he would have to redo all the makeup … the hours and hours of it. 🙂

          More like a miniature bath—one minute he’s in, next minute he’s out.

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    • #
      Allen Ford

      Poster Boy and Sex Symbol Brian’s days may be numbered, thankfully! Cop this:

      Professor Cox, anointed by David Attenborough as his broadcasting successor, believes the humility required in good science could teach our politicians a few lessons.

      It could also teach the odd scientist or two, the same much needed lesson.

      Is DA poor Brian’s kiss of death?

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    • #
      Raven

      Brian Cox was on their ABC tonight doing some star gazing program.
      Apparently you could pose questions on Facebook and have them answered in real time.

      It was on ABC24 an hour later . . . so I’m not sure just how “live” that one was.
      I couldn’t bring myself to watch it but I guess it was a missed opportunity to ask some amusing/difficult questions.

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  • #
    Phoenix44

    When new evidence disproves his theory, let’s see how he reacts!

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    StephenP

    I lost faith in Brian Cox after watching a BBC programme where for most of the programme he was eminently reasonable in describing the use of the scientific method, but in the last two minutes of the programme he swept it all aside in declaring the consensus as the justification for the acceptance of the theory of MMGW in spite of the contradictions such as the absence of the tropical hot spot.
    I also seem to understand that much of the warming is in minimum temperatures in the Arctic rather than maximum temperatures in the Tropics.

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    • #
      Forrest Gardener

      Ditto but we are in the minority.

      My daughter lectures in the Physics department at Oxford. She knows Cox’s wife better than him, but she cannot for the life of her understand why I rate him so low.

      On her last visit she couldn’t understand why people would invest in Cairns. Her reasoning was that the barrier reef was dead or soon would be.

      Only really smart people can convince themselves of really stupid ideas.

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      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        Being seen as an intelligent person, is highly fashionable right now.

        Having access to knowledge, that is not in general circulation, or being able to explain difficult concepts in simple terms that people can relate to, tends to put intelligent people at the top of the invite list, as a celebrity, for the next social barbecue or dinner party.

        But in the sending and receiving of such an invite, a contract is assumed, whereby the invitee will enter discourse with the other guests using the simplest of language, and avoiding any potential ambiguities, so that the other guests are informed, titillated, and entertained. If speaker looks cute, as well, then that is all the better, and an added bonus.

        Absolute accuracy can become a casualty in such a process, because people want to hear what they already believe they know, and they expect their esteemed guest to go along with that, even if the truth itself becomes a little battered.

        I dare say that Brian Cox is probably a capable scientist in his field, who sticks to the rigours of his discipline. But in a social setting, or in an entertainment setting, he can probably put the professional part of his ego to one side, and bend the rules a bit, to indulge the entertainment side of his ego.

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        • #
          OriginalSteve

          What a perfectly appalling idea….the problem is peopke hold knowledgible people in some form of esteem, so to sprout CAGW nonsense betrays science….

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          • #
            Richard Ilfeld

            Perfectly appalling is that some hold celebrity in some form of esteem, thus allow themselves to be guided by the deep thoughts
            emanating from Hollywood. Others hold the ability to be elected by the celebrity-blinded…..and then are guided by deep “thoughts’
            from the capital.

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        • #
          Greg Cavanagh

          I’m afraid that I for one have a different take on things. And I’m probably a rare beast at that.

          Anyone who knowingly lies about any subject, can not be trusted with anything they say, period.

          Expert or not, knowledgeable or not; a liar is a liar and you can never be sure what they say is the truth or a lie. So I don’t trust anything they say, at all, about anything. That’s my comfort zone, everyone lies.

          I suppose it’s very much like the Null Hypothesis for trusting what people say… ie. they are lying until proven otherwise.

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            Raven

            Well the motto of the Royal Society is “trust but verify.

            That seems reasonable to me . . but the Royal Society are first class passengers on the AGW gravy train, so they obviously don’t even take their own advice.

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        • #
          ROM

          Rereke @ # 5.1.1

          Being seen as an intelligent person, is highly fashionable right now.

          Having access to knowledge, that is not in general circulation, or being able to explain difficult concepts in simple terms that people can relate to, tends to put intelligent people at the top of the invite list, as a celebrity, for the next social barbecue or dinner party.

          But in the sending and receiving of such an invite, a contract is assumed, whereby the invitee will enter discourse with the other guests using the simplest of language, and avoiding any potential ambiguities, so that the other guests are informed, titillated, and entertained. If speaker looks cute, as well, then that is all the better, and an added bonus.

          Absolute accuracy can become a casualty in such a process, because people want to hear what they already believe they know, and they expect their esteemed guest to go along with that, even if the truth itself becomes a little battered.

          Your comment, I think, is a very deep insight indeed into much of what passes for educated intelligent discourse today amongst both the decision making elite and much of the masses than most here have previously realised or grasped.

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        • #
          Ted O'Brien.

          Rereke. It has been my observation that intelligence can be a burden to carry through life. People who can’t understand what they are seeing seem happier.

          20

      • #
        PeterPetrum

        Yes FG – talking about highly intelligent daughters, as I have said before on this site, my elder daughter in the Professor of Astrophysics at a major US university. If I try to engage her in a discussion on “global warming” she just rolls her eyes, sighs and says “CO2 is a GREENHOUSE gas, Dad!” So, ipso facto, her dad, who was a scientist before she was thought of, understands nothing.

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    • #
      Alan McIntire

      Richard Feynman’s statement could have been thrown at him, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”

      20

      • #
        Raven

        I like this one too:

        “I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.”
        ― Richard Feynman

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  • #
    Wayne Job

    Thankyou Jo this is a very different thread, the stuff one can get his teeth into. So many OOPART,s in the entire geological record of mankind that it is not easy to pick our start date.

    Things that have been found suggest a world wide civilisation a long time ago that got clobbered big time. These people before the Clovis would have been survivors. I would like a crystal ball that worked, much truth could be ascertained. Science per sec is a long way from settled but history can be proved, we have a long way to go.

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    • #
      jorgekafkazar

      The Antikythera mechanism remains mysterious, since it doesn’t match any other artifact of that era yet retrieved. Is it a 200 BC reproduction of a much more ancient device? Alas, the technology for crystal balls that actually work has also been lost in the mists of time.

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      • #
        Glen Michel

        Yes, the technologies of antediluvian origin. I recall aBison skull from Siberia that was found to have a hole in its skull purpoted to have been made by a high speed projectile.Date of skull 8,000 BP.

        10

      • #
        sophocles

        Alas, the technology for crystal balls that actually work has also been lost in the mists of time.

        Perhaps that would be because too many “witches were not suffered to live.” Could the Witch Hunts have been too successful?

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    • #
      Mark D.

      Things that have been found suggest a world wide civilisation a long time ago that got clobbered big time.

      yeh they probably had some left leaning types invent a carbon tax. Clobbered big time indeed.

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    • #
      John F. Hultquist

      (August 11, 3114 BCE)

      10

  • #
    Jack

    From Max Planck (Leipzig 1948)

    “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

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  • #
    iceman cometh

    Way back in the 1970s, I demonstrated that long-term, arid land vegetation responded to ungulate physical grazing pressure, not a response to what the critters might prefer to eat or for that matter what species they were. Oh, did I get slaughtered by CSIRO, then engaged in whole programs of diet-related animal studies. Still, some of that has now crept into acceptability.

    And, I’m aware of a slightly later cytogeneticist who demonstrated that the genus Eucalyptus was a hotbed of genetic plasticity and that the umpteen species actually weren’t. So devastated was she by attacks on her work that she gave up science entirely, and went into bar and hotel management in the Whitsundays. Surprise, surprise, a lot of what she’d demonstrated then is now conventional wisdom.

    THe fate of unconventional scientists is always to be burnt by the current priesthood.

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    • #
      Ted O'Brien.

      Conventional Wisdom. Too often it isn’t.

      30

    • #
      Garry

      Spare a thought also for Peter Andrews and the Natural Sequence Farming model. That inspiration cost him big time.

      40

      • #
        Dave

        But the thing is it worked!

        I had friend with weeping willows on a property & council told to eradicate them!
        I advised him to leave them until other species dominated.

        Council refused & he obeyed the order, lost 10,000 tonnes of soil through a small creek

        Devastated the whole area around!

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  • #
    thingadonta

    Also note that it is known that Vikings reached North America and had small settlements around Newfoundland and Nova Scotia off the east coast around the 9th to 10th century, well before Columbus, although the evidence for these are scant and took a long while to be accepted and to prove. It may mirror the same thing with much earlier migrations, the earliest migrations don’t necessarily arrive in large numbers or leave much behind in the archaeological record.

    I also remember reading somewhere that early skulls found in Brazil have a resemblance to Africa, not Asia, although I’ve never heard of any follow up to this. The point is, the Americas are quite large and there was a long period of time where early migrations could have occurred on multiple routes without leaving much evidence.

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  • #
    Peter C

    This is an insightful but depressing comment on the State of Science. Not just the way it is now, but the way it always has been since Science became an entity in the late 17th century. Science never has been a noble search for the truth. Newton proved that by slamming down Liebnitz over who invented the calculus.

    So many ideas that are wrong have been taken up and melded into a noble cause over the past 300 years that it would be interesting to count them all. In almost every case the originator of a new idea has been castigated by the supporters of the existing Truth.

    In terms of our current debate, the Green House Gas Effect Theory comes to mind. Still no objective evidence but more than half the readers of this blog will defend it vigorously.

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    • #
      Forrest Gardener

      Agreed Peter. As I said above only really intelligent people can convince themselves of really stupid things. And then there is the effect of the alarmist gravy train.

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      Leo G

      In terms of our current debate, the Green House Gas Effect Theory comes to mind.

      The so-called Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Theory is more a panoply of models used out of their theoretical contexts. Zombie Apocalyptic Global Warming does seem to me a more honest title.

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      • #
        Peter C

        John Christie in the Senate Hearing shown here;
        http://joannenova.com.au/2017/03/curry-christy-pielke-and-mann-testify/
        at 25:30-29:30,

        shows;
        1. The tropical troposphere hot spot, which is a prediction of the Greenhouse Gas Theory cannot be demonstrated in the observations,
        2. The consensus of an ensemble of models which incorporate the Greenhouse theory over predict the observed warming by a large margin,
        and 3. he states that the same models recast without the supposed green house gases actually do quite a good job of predicting the observed temperatures.

        That is three strikes against the Greenhouse theory!

        There is a lot more. But not one confirmed demonstration of the theory making a correct prediction or observation.

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  • #
    TdeF

    Amazing that this was 1994. As a fan of archeology and the contribution of genetic mapping to modern archeology, I understood that there were three major waves of Asian migration in to South America across the Aleutian land bridge. Even National Geographic published the latest mapping combined with the archeology. To think that this was all radical thinking in 1994 is a shock as it is now so much part of the mainsteam and presented as such.

    No such luck with Global Warming. I guess because there was no $1,500Billion industry tied to it, just the egos of a few experts who were completely wrong. Similarly with the famous Piltdown man hoax which for decades was believed and hundreds of papers written until the obvious fraud was discovered, despite the fact that many had pointed out it was an ape jaw matched with a human skull and simply stained by the man who discovered it. Ironically they now think the very chemicals he used were carcinogenic and led to his early death.

    Michael Mann will not give up his ridiculous Hockey Stick so easily. The Green Industrial machine and friends however are moving on, gearing up to explain the reverse hockey stick and to keep the Carbon Dioxide story going even with dropping temperatures.

    See Pat’s Comment #53 from the post on Curry, Christy, Pielke and Mann.

    “31 Mar: ClimateDepot: Marc Morano: Study: ‘Weaker Sun Could Reduce Global Temperatures By Half A Degree’
    For the first time, model calculations show a plausible way that fluctuations in solar activity could have a tangible impact on the climate. Studies funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation expect human-induced global warming to tail off slightly over the next few decades. A weaker sun could reduce temperatures by half a degree. —Swiss National Science Foundation, 27 March 2017 (LINK)”

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    • #
      TdeF

      No idea why my comment is in moderation. I dare not say rats. Again. Not after gerbils and hamsters.

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      • #
        TdeF

        Second half

        Michael Mann will not give up his ridiculous Hockey Stick so easily. The Green Industrial machine and friends however are moving on, gearing up to explain the reverse hockey stick and to keep the Carbon Dioxide story going even with dropping temperatures.

        See Pat’s Comment #53 from the post on Curry, Christy, Pielke and Mann.

        “31 Mar: ClimateDepot: Marc Morano: Study: ‘Weaker Sun Could Reduce Global Temperatures By Half A Degree’
        For the first time, model calculations show a plausible way that fluctuations in solar activity could have a tangible impact on the climate. Studies funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation expect human-induced global warming to tail off slightly over the next few decades. A weaker sun could reduce temperatures by half a degree. —Swiss National Science Foundation, 27 March 2017 (LINK)”

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        • #
          Craig Thomas

          Mann’s “Hockey Stick” has been replicated by dozens of independent researchers, some using the same data, but others using entirely different proxies.

          Not a single one of these temperature reconstructions has done anything but confirm that the “Hockey Stick” was correct.

          And yes, a weaker Sun causes lower temperatures. We currently have a weaker Sun. A certain fringe has been repeatedly making predictions of global cooling, all of which have failed miserably, for example:
          http://joannenova.com.au/2014/06/big-news-viii-new-solar-model-predicts-imminent-global-cooling/
          …and of course the risible John McLean who posted “It is likely that 2011 will be the coolest year since 1956,” along with a pile of gibberish he was trying to represent as “research” of some kind…

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          • #
            PeterS

            Dozens? List them. What a load of nonsense. The “Hockey Stick” has been completely debunked.

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            el gordo

            The cooling should theoretically begin this year, but it depends a lot on what the oscillations are doing at any given time.

            It should become increasingly obvious that the warming of late last century was caused by an overactive sun and it takes time for Gaia to cool down.

            Michael Mann says cooling starts in a regional sort of way, so I’m focussed on Europe in the 13th century. What goes around comes around.

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            • #
              David Maddison

              Significant cooling will happen very soon (years) and it will lead to diminished agricultural output and people will starve.

              We need to prepare for this cooling immediately.

              It’s too bad that all the effort that should be being used to prepare for and research global cooling is going into fr*udulent global warming.

              Incidentally, the earth is generally much cooler than it is now. We have rare episodes of around 12,000 years such as the current soon-to-end warm period. Just think, all of man’s progress toward civilisation has been made in the last 12,000 years, having started with a human population of between one and ten million people 12,000 years ago.

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              • #
                David Maddison

                That was meant to be a reply to el gordo #65.

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              • #
                Craig Thomas

                Yeah, my replies are missing the target too.

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              • #
                toorightmate

                They always have.

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              • #
                el gordo

                ‘We need to prepare for this cooling immediately.’

                There is no need for alarm, humanity will adapt very quickly to a slight dip in temperatures like the 1950s and 1960s. If it goes the way of the late 13th century then we may have to reopen the Central American Seaway.

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            • #
              Craig Thomas

              Actually, *currently*, it depends hardly at all “on what the oscillations are doing at any given time”.
              Here is the last 30 years of irradiance, showing a falling trend:
              http://www.pmodwrc.ch/tsi/composite/pics/comp_neu_42_65_1702.png

              And the temperature trend:
              http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1984/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1984/trend

              As we know this solar irradiance is responsible for 99.9% of the planet’s energy budget, we therefore also know that the lack of correlation between irradiance and temperature indicates that non-solar forcings are completely drowning out the signal coming from solar variance.

              …and this is why we know that these predictions of imminent cooling are something to be enormously sceptical of…

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              • #
                el gordo

                ‘… it depends hardly at all “on what the oscillations are doing …’

                The oscillations are primary to the discussion and the hockey stick is dodgy.

                https://climatechange1.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/enso-globa.png?w=500&h=226

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              • #
                Will Janoschka

                As we know this solar irradiance is responsible for 99.9% of the planet’s energy budget, we therefore also know that the lack of correlation between irradiance and temperature indicates that non-solar forcings are completely drowning out the signal coming from solar variance.”

                Are you pregnant or have mice in your pockets? Who is this we that ‘knows’ anything at all? All of the major bodies in this Solar system transfer both gravitational power and angular momentum with every other major body. All of this transfer is repetitive but with non harmonic cycle times, to prevent damaging resonance! No earthling has a clue as to how this may possibly work! OTOH the magnificent Craig Thomas claims such accounts for less that 0.1% Earth’s “sensible heat”, thereby playing no part in the obvious occurrences of ice ages! All thank God for the wisdom of Craig!

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              • #
                el gordo

                ‘All of this transfer is repetitive but with non harmonic cycle times, to prevent damaging resonance! ‘

                Its the glorious uncertainty that makes life on this planet so worthwhile.

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              • #
                Will Janoschka

                el gordo April 5, 2017 at 4:20 pm

                (‘All of this transfer is repetitive but with non harmonic cycle times, to prevent damaging resonance! ‘)

                “Its the glorious uncertainty that makes life on this planet so worthwhile.”

                Indeed! You never know what ‘she’ might do next! OTOH science demonstrates that The Boss will\shall become angry when ‘your aircraft’ falls from the sky!!

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          • #
            Raven

            . . replicated by dozens of independent researchers, some using the same data . .

            Using the same data, it isn’t replication. At best it’s quality control.

            It’s no different from taking a spreadsheet from your computer and running it on mine.

            But anyone can generate their own Hockey Stick using Excel and the instructions have been available to anyone with an internet connection.
            Have fun making your own *cough* replication . .

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          • #
            sophocles

            Wrong.
            Mann refused to release his data for a long time. I suggest you go to Climate Audit, Steve McIntyre’s blog. On the frontpage, at the top left, is a contents box titled “Pages.” In there you will find a lot of links. The important links:
            1. Hockeystick Studies
            2. Proxy Data

            You really need to read this material. History did NOT happen the way you want it to have happened. Nor will it.

            The later reconstructions did NOT prove Mann correct, they proved Mann’s Hockeystick was wrong.
            o. They showed the Medieval Warming period, Mann’s graph did not. FAIL 1.
            o. They showed the Little Ice Age from the Wolf Solar Minumum through the Sporer Solar Minimum, the Maunder Solar Minimum and the Dalton Solar Minimum, all of which contributed to the LIA. Mann’s graph did not. FAIL-2
            o. Mann changed horses in mid analysis, switching from tree rings to instrumental because the tree-ring data a showed a downturn. Both of those reasons immediately renders the analysis null and void. FAIL-3.
            o. Mann created an algorithm through incorrect arithmetic (failure to renormalise his least-squares calculations) which creates hokeystick curves from any input data including pink noise. In other words, it’s biased. FAIL-4
            o. Mann chose tree ring data which had been taken from bristle-cone pines, which you claimed were an UNRELIABLE proxy in an earlier comment to this post. FAIL-5

            And yes, a weaker Sun causes lower temperatures. We currently have a weaker Sun. A certain fringe has been repeatedly making predictions of global cooling, all of which have failed miserably, for example:
            http://joannenova.com.au/2014/06/big-news-viii-new-solar-model-predicts-imminent-global-cooling/

            Gee. You’re impatient, aren’t you? Wait until 2040. Nobody, but nobody, has claimed these changes would take place between 2011 and 2015. So, because they haven’t taken place yet, you claim they’ve failed. Stupid Boy (to quote Captain Mainwaring of Dad’s Army). They haven’t failed. We have only just entered the group of years those predictions encompass. My advice, Craig, is to stock up on winter clothing of good quality and durability now, while it still remains warm and the clothing is still cheap.

            In 1971, Professor Willi Dansgaard, who first worked out how to analyse ice cores, made a forecast. His analysis produced two solar-powered cycles, one of circa 78 years and the second c. 184 years. Paraphrasing it, he said:

            1. It will continue to cool into the 1980s
            2. Then it will warm, until 2015.
            3. The next 50 years will be chilly.

            So far, 1 and 2 have occurred as specified. The next 50 years is going to be interesting.

            You should also watch this Fourier Analysis of the recent (last couple of hundred years) temperature record.
            If you know the maths, you should do the same analysis yourself. (I’m in the process of checking it against the CET set.) Then you can project it forward and see for yourself what is going to happen.

            The interesting thing, is that CO2 doesn’t feature at all.

            Steve McIntyre has his website well organised so even the most rabid “Consensus” believers can find the correct material. So if you want to stop shooting your feet off, 🙂 go read it and read it carefully.

            Science does not work on a consensus. Only politics and religion require that.

            I have found: You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.
            You can lead a student/Global Warmist/Pseudoscience proponent to knowledge but you can’t make them think.

            See or read Richard Feynman’s definition of “Cargo Cult Science.”

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            • #
              Harry Twinotter

              sophocles.

              And why would you assume what someone with an agenda has written in a blog?

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              • #
                Harry Twinotter

                And why would you assume what someone with an agenda has written in a blog is true?

                12

              • #
                Mark D.

                And why would you assume what someone with an agenda has written in a blog is true?

                Why would I assume that a comment made here by someone with an agenda has even an essence of truth?

                Harry, spend more time reflecting upon what wisdom you lack. Open your mouth less to avoid leaving a trail of evidence.

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              • #
                Harry Twinotter

                Mark D.

                I was asking Sophocles a question not you.

                So you answering my question with a question followed up by a childish insult make you look pretty silly.

                02

              • #
                Mark D.

                I could care less that the question was for someone else! This whole blog is for someones else, yet we suffer your presence and childish taunts still.

                And I was giving you free advice. I see you have yet to take advantage of it.

                01

      • #
        TdeF

        First quarter

        Amazing that this was 1994. As a fan of archeology and the contribution of genetic mapping to modern archeology, I understood that there were three major waves of Asian migration in to South America across the Aleutian land bridge. Even National Geographic published the latest mapping combined with the archeology. To think that this was all radical thinking in 1994 is a shock as it is now so much part of the mainsteam and presented as such.

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      • #
        TdeF

        So by elimination, binary search

        No such luck with Global Warming. I guess because there was no $1,500Billion industry tied to it, just the egos of a few experts who were completely wrong. Similarly with the famous Piltdown man h*ax which for decades was believed and hundreds of papers written until the obvious fr*ud was discovered, despite the fact that many had pointed out it was an ape jaw matched with a human skull and simply stained by the man who discovered it. Ironically they now think the very chemicals he used were carcinogenic and led to his early death.

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        • #
          TdeF

          Wikipedia: “The Piltdown hoax is prominent for two reasons: the attention it generated around the subject of human evolution,
          and the length of time, 45 years, that elapsed from its alleged initial discovery to its definitive exposure as a composite forgery.”

          “The examination and debate over Piltdown Man caused a vast expenditure of time and effort on the fossil, with an estimated 250+ papers written on the topic” So Peer review failed for nearly half a century.

          The same 45 years from 1988 would mean 2023 before Pachauri Climate Change is finally discredited. About right.

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          Craig Thomas

          I don’t know what this trillion-dollar industry this is that you imagine is behind a conspiracy to fake global warming, but we know for sure that the multi-trillion-dollar industry that is behind the burning of fossil fuels is most definitely spending vast sums of money funding non-science, non-research, and non-truths in its pursuit of FUD over the very clear science that lies behind the reality that is global warming.

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          • #
            Geoffrey Williams

            Craig, I have to say that I cannot agree; of course the fossil fuel industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. It presently provides the power to the vast majority of our current civilisation (whom I believe are getting value for their money) indeed that is where the money comes from and without fossil energy we would not exist. But one should not confuse this industry with the climate scare campaigns. The sums of money currently given to Co2 warming ‘research’ far exceeds that dedicated to the skeptic campaign.
            GeoffW

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      • #

        No idea either. Sorry! (And sorry about the slow moderation tonight I am distracted!).

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        • #
          TdeF

          Thanks. Understood. The words h*ax and fr*ud even though for once they were utterly relevant and on topic with respect to Piltdown man which held back the science for half a century. Of course I would not use such words with regards to Michael Mann.

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  • #
    OriginalSteve

    https://www.technocracy.news/index.php/2017/02/23/cientific-authority-becomes-scientific-authoritarianism

    Related i think….

    “The great problem with science as it is understood today is that authority more and more replaces evidence. The scientists themselves love that, of course, because it means you can’t question them. But the fact is that we should be questioning them everywhere they go because the whole notion of science is that it should be open to the idea of questioning the claims that you make.”

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    OriginalSteve

    https://www.technocracy.news/index.php/2016/04/22/flashback-technocracy-smart-grid-green-economy/

    Note: technocracy = slavery

    A couple of important points….(1) trilateral commission is the unoffical real US govt.(2) it advocates a Smart Grid to control every house and every business ( fascism).(3) Brezinski is a NWO heavyweight.

    “However, when Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era in 1968, it was essentially a Neo-Technocratic treatise calling for a fourth and final stage of world history, or the Technetronic Era.

    When David Rockefeller picked Brzezinski to co-found the Trilateral Commission in 1973, it was with the specific goal to create a “New International Economic Order.” Without some knowledge of historic Technocracy, exactly what the Trilateral Commission ultimately had in mind with such a goal could not possibly have been understood.”

    Niw you can understand the direction the grid is headed in,( hazellwood is breaking the back of enerygy indeoendebce creatibf what the bonkers NWO control freaks liove….deoendency) the idea us to create a tightly controlled straight jacket control system that controls every house and every business…a trojan horse for complete society lickdown….

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    • #
      OriginalSteve

      Dang it…i have fat fingers and no patience…i hate smart phones…..

      “Lockdown….”

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      • #
        Sceptical Sam

        Lickdown works for me.

        But then, I’m part of the public teat.

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      • #
        Mark D.

        You use a smart phone?

        At least one of you are smart…..

        10

        • #
          OriginalSteve

          Smartphones are a scourge….they create the illusion that connectivity to google = inteligence.

          I’d love to shut down the phone network for a week, and then you would find out who really is useful and who isnt…

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          • #
            sophocles

            What a fantastic idea. Just make sure all hospitals have an adequate supply of empty beds before doing it. Too many people just wouldn’t know what to do, while so many others would go into advanced forms of shock.

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          • #
            Greebo

            There’d be an epidemic of thumb sucking. Whole generations would become suicidal as no one liked them anymore.

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          • #
            Wayne Job

            The world would still function if all smart phones died, people would soon learn that a phone that plugs into the wall works as well as ever.
            Those that have withdrawal symptoms ,need to get a life and to start using their brain for the purpose it was intended for.

            10

      • #
        Yonniestone

        So you’re not a doctor with big nostrils?

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  • #

    For years people in the UK have been taught that the ancient Britons were “Celts”. A while back I was researching early church history and that meant the so called “Celtic Church” and so I first tried to work out what was meant by “Celtic church” and then because that seemed to have no real meaning I tried to work out who was and wasn’t “Celt”.

    After a great deal of research, I found that not a single ancient writer ever referred to the Celts as living in Britain, in fact we knew precisely who they were (a group within Gaul) and that the whole myth had been created around 1707 by a Welsh nationalist.

    The other great hoax I found when asked to do a class essay – having spent a great deal of time on the previous one and not liking any of the topics, I chose “the Highland Clearances” on the basis there were lots of books and all I need do is regurgitate what they said.

    That worked well until I thought “I know there are population statistics from this period – I could back up the decline with a nice graph showing how the Highland population fell” … but it was quite the reverse: during the so called period of the “Highland Clearances” the population of the Highlands grew, and it was only before (1690s) and after (1970s) that there had been a dramatic drop in population.

    So I went to look for all the accounts of deaths from this “genocide” – I found one – it went to court and the jury found the person involved innocent.

    The idea of a genocide of the Highlands cannot be reconciled with the facts and it is clearly fake history.

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    • #
      John Smith

      As an alleged descendant of one of those allegedly ‘cleared’ and shipped to the Carolinas,
      I think you might be right.
      I’ve also read your paper.
      I have not been inclined to wear my kilt since. 🙂
      Humans can only understand things in relation to something else.
      Up and down for example.
      Gravity is a relationship.
      History is a construct of the past based on now.
      We have clues but so much is missing.
      Same with historical climate. Which century is normal?
      Normal is usually the most familiar.
      The past and the future are eternally speculative.

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      • #
        el gordo

        Sometimes the truth stares us in the face, but because of our acceptance of a particular viewpoint we are blind to reality.

        ‘Interestingly, every 11.07 years, the Sun and the planets Venus, Earth, and Jupiter are aligned,” lead author Dr Frank Stefani said in a statement. “We asked ourselves: Is it a coincidence that the solar cycle corresponds with the cycle of the conjunction or the opposition of the three planets?”

        IFL Science

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      • #
        Mark D.

        The past and the future are eternally speculative.

        That is brilliant and as I age I realize that the past I’m able to remember, is getting more speculative. Sad in a way but this observation doesn’t compete at all with what you are saying.

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      • #
        John F. Hultquist

        John Smith says:
        “Normal is usually the most familiar.”

        This statement explains why the word “normal” is associated with climate numbers (temperature) and why the just prior 30 years was selected to represent said “normal.”
        [Before computers they did not do updates every year.]

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    • #
      Craig Thomas

      Mike Haseler (Scottish Sceptic):

      For years people in the UK have been taught that the ancient Britons were “Celts”….
      After a great deal of research, I found that not a single ancient writer ever referred to the Celts as living in Britain, in fact we knew precisely who they were (a group within Gaul)

      What utter, massively-confused nonsense.
      The ancient Britons were clearly not Celts, and the Celts were clearly not Gauls – it’s the other way around, the Gauls were Celts. The Celts originated from central and eastern europe. And there are virtually no celts in Scotland, the Scottish love-affair with made-up celtic culture was invented in the 18th Century by people ashamed of their scandinavian origins when they should really have concentrated on their appalling scandinavian accent.

      36

      • #
        Graeme No.3

        Craig Thomas agrees with a sceptic! Declare a national holiday.

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      • #
        Mark D.

        Hooray Craig! Now for extra credit; how many were Druid?

        61

      • #
        sophocles

        Steady on Craig: you’re agreeing with him. The genetic contribution of “Celts”in Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) is minimal. You both said that, so nobody could possibly be “confused.”

        I don’t remember enough about the Highland Clearances and all the Enclosures to comment with any accuracy, so I won’t.

        Dr Brian Sykes, Emeritus Professor of Human Genetics at Oxford University, lays out the genetic history of England, Wales, Ireland and the northern islands (New Hebrides, Orkneys, etc) in his book:

        SYKES, Brian: “Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland.” 2008, W. W. Norton & Company, ISBN-10: 0393330753 ISBN-13: 978-0393330755;

        the gospel according to our ancestry. (This book’s content may be the same under the title of “Blood of the Isles” but I’m not sure.)

        Dr. Sykes first book: “The Seven Daughters of Eve” is a European overview including Gaul, with looks into Asia and elsewhere, such as Micronesia and Polynesia. I found it a fascinating read. YMMV.

        Wrt Britain and Ireland, It would seem, from what I have read, that the major “Celtic” influences are languages, technology and culture rather than genetic make up.
        Yes, flint knapping is technology as is swordsmithing. One minor surprise is that there were no Picts.

        10

  • #
    Ruairi

    Expect no award and no thanks,
    For breaking from consensus ranks,
    As those in defiance,
    Of establishment science,
    Are scorned as troublesome cranks.

    270

    • #

      ‘We have 25 years or so invested in the work.
      Why should I make the data available to you, when your
      aim is to try and find something wrong with it.’

      Phil Jones to Warwick Hughes.

      70

      • #
        Greebo

        Nice when you get to choose your peers. I wonder if the jury selection would be so friendly.

        20

  • #
    turnedoutnice

    Empirically just 3% of atmospheric scientists are prepared to tell the truth…..pass it on!

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    Lawrie

    I read this article and I believe I have come across a similar consensus that also cannot be challenged. What it tells me is that generally scientists are not to be trusted and in particular those who support a government backed consensus can never be trusted.

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    • #
      OriginalSteve

      I find the Left have done a demolition job on scientific integrity

      The Left are seagulls….squark squark poop poop…..all they leave behind are empty shells of what orinally was there and lots if guano….

      71

    • #
      Raven

      I don’t mind the idea of consensus.
      The problem is that a real consensus is ‘arrived at’. No one goes out and counts up all the papers written over the last ten years like it was some sort of cricket match statistical exercise.

      The warmists like to compare AGW theory to gravity.
      So who ever went out and surveyed scientists as to whether gravity is ‘real’?
      That’s right . . no one.

      30

  • #

    The brightest bloke I ever knew was a science brain at school, so smart he didn’t need to study much. Good bloke, but he used to put on his coat before removing the coat-hanger. Explained why, but I never got it.

    I expect scientists to be very good at some mental tasks, but ordinary or below-average at others. It’s just the way the world works. They tried to found a city consisting of mostly brights sparks and ended up with…Adelaide!

    The current tendency to worship science and use the word “science” as a club to enforce obedience is a negation of science. What you can show, you show. What you dunno, you dunno. And there’s a lot of dunno, like the bulk of the hot, plasticky ball we’re trotting around on, and that deep hydrosphere we sail over.

    Uttering the word “science” in every sentence won’t change that.

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    • #
      StephenP

      PhDs often know a lot about their limited area of expertise, but seem to be short on common sense.
      The brightest sparks at Cambridge were the lab assistants and junior lecturers who had to make things actually work.

      262

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    pat

    this was floating around a couple of days ago:

    1 Apr: Science Alert: Mike McRae: New Simulations Suggest Dark Energy Might Not Exist
    68 percent of the Universe might not exist.
    Physicists from Loránd University in Hungary and the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii are now questioning if approximations in Einstein’s equations introduced “serious side effects” that gave the illusion of a vast, unknown force pushing space apart…READ ON
    This research was published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
    http://www.sciencealert.com/bubbles-of-expanding-space-could-be-the-end-of-dark-energy

    and now this comes along!

    3 Apr: Wired: Abigail Beall: This is the most detailed ‘map’ of dark matter ever seen
    The search for the dark matter particle has consistently drawn up blanks, but now physicists are edging closer
    Dark matter, the elusive substance thought to account for 84 per cent of the mass in the Universe, is one of the largest mysteries in astrophysics…
    Priyamvada Natarajan, a professor of astrophysics at Yale University, has dedicated her career to exploring this elusive phenomenon…
    Earlier this year, Natarajan and her team brought the search for dark matter a step forward by creating the most detailed map of dark matter in the Universe ever created…READ ON
    http://www.wired.co.uk/article/hunt-dark-matter

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    • #
      Wayne Job

      Dark matter does not exist, never did, just a useful tool to try and explain how the universe is as it is. What is cycling through everything in the universe is energy this is their missing bit.
      Tesla woke up and was playing with it, free power,greedy buggers shut him down, but we owe our synchronous AC system to his genius. 84% of the universe is energy untapped,power to do
      all the dreams of mankind. power to take us to the stars,power to grow food in the coldest places, power to make water in the driest places. Enough said.

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  • #

    Ha. It is much worse if you find a whole new field of science, that will require the rethinking of all the other fields. I am the next paradigm.

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    • #
      The Badger

      Ah Ha ! Nice to see you here Harry, been reading a bit of your stuff recently and as a result tormenting a few so called experts (on line) with some insightful questions relating to atmospheric lapse rates, -g/c, etc. So far the silence is deafening. I draw my own (obvious) conclusions. Keep up the good work – you are on my (relatively short) list of TRUE scientists.

      00

  • #
    cedarhill

    A fascinating book that covers the Clovis debate along with the migrations into the Americas is 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (Amazon link below by Charles C, Mann (no relation, I believe, to Michael E. Mann of discredited hockey stick fame).

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    el gordo

    ‘So quickly did Clovis proliferate that researchers imagined it must be the first truly American culture, the people who took fire and spear across landscapes empty of humankind. But others kept offering data that the Americas were inhabited before Clovis. The vituperative debate ended only when strong evidence for a pre-Clovis settlement turned up in Chile in the late 1990s. Other pre-Clovis sites followed, notably a cave in Oregon with fossilized human excrement identified by DNA analysis and dated by accelerator mass spectrometry. Little is understood about these early peoples. Clovis may no longer be the oldest American culture, but it remains the oldest American culture we know much about.’

    Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-clovis-point-and-the-discovery-of-americas-first-culture-3825828/#DzrQcVh52hDl0E5G.99

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  • #
    Owen Morgan

    I know a few archaeologists and, while archaeology is kept reasonably free of politics in Great Britain (possibly less so in Northern Ireland), there are plenty of countries where archaeological “discovery” is profoundly subject to political requirements. Russian and Chinese excavations are notoriously subordinated to political propaganda. If anything, in the last decade, Turkey has become even worse, with the dictatorial regime mandating archaeological conclusions that defy reason. Turkey’s archaeology goes back many thousands of years, but the presence of Turks in Turkey dates back only about one thousand. It’s a matter of historical fact, but the regime demands that archaeologists find Turkish things in impossible contexts.

    I suppose the American problem is the opposite of the Turkish one. Before the recent interference, archaeologists in Turkey were able to build up a good picture of very early cultures there, without giving anyone the opportunity to claim to be the “first people”. In North America, being able to claim the status of “first people” seems to have rather a lot riding on it, as the Dakota pipeline proved recently. Sadly, as in so many other areas, American academia is far more ready to concede ddefeat to political correctness than to acknowledge demonstrable fact.

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    • #
      Mark D.

      I would very much like to see some original “first peoples” step forward and take back some sanity (if there is any left).

      On a side note; what ever happened to: You were defeated! Get over it!!!

      40

    • #
      ROM

      Own Morgan @# 23

      Try the “Aboriginal industry” in Australia.
      There was a lot of archeological information floating around in the 1970’s and earlier, some of it based on the legends of the various tribes as told in their mother tongues by the old people amongst the aboriginal peoples to a small group of archeologists and paleo researchers.

      However by the end of the 1980’s a uniformity of aboriginal origins and cultural development and most notably the “period” as against “periods” of aboriginal arrivals on the Australian continent was made to conform to a carefully tailored common arrival time with the concept of a series of arrivals over some possibly 80,000 years was confined to the dustbins of archeological science under the funding of aboriginal arrival and cultural characteristics controlled by the now large educated , citified and bureaucratically domiciled aboriginal and multi hued pseudo aboriginal bureaucracy.

      I wonder how many here have heard of or know of the well documented now extinct aboriginal pygmy tribe of the cairns region?

      The extinction of the Australian pygmies

      So WHO were the FIRST Peoples, those aboriginal Australians that are to be honored in the constitution?

      It certainly seems from now disappeared and out of sight aboriginal research, sure some of it speculative but whats changed , of half a century or more ago that it WAS NOT and IS NOT the current mob of claimants.

      30

  • #
    Bill Burrows

    None of you may think the information contained in the following link (also inserted in a Comment made a few posts back) – See: https://www.dropbox.com/home?preview=NET+%27CARBON%27+EMISSIONS+IN+AUSTRALIA.pdf- is germane to the present discussion, but I invite you to consider the developing argument contained therein, along with the article’s supporting links (Yes it requires bedtime reading to catch up). The nub of my conclusion is that there is sufficient data now available to reasonably back the contention that the Australian land mass is a net CO2 sink and always has been, since Europeans and their livestock supplanted the continent’s previous indigenous management. I make this claim based on the papers and additional info cited in the link, along with my own research experience, including > 40 years monitoring vegetation and carbon fluxes in the Australian ‘bush’.

    It goes without saying that if we are indeed a net CO2 sink the pressure to close down our traditional power generators and replace them with ‘renewables’ would be far less than it is today. Instead of our Kyoto Protocol fiddles and late 1990’s gnashing of teeth that ‘Australia is the largest per capita GHG emitter in the world’ we could be forcefully telling the international community to get their own house in order before targeting our negative (sic) emissions. Indeed what motivation would the world have to target us?

    Yet of course we are letting ourselves be driven by false guilt. The political, business and environmental establishment have all let themselves be part of the one unquestioning agenda – the urge to save Australia and humanity from our disgusting emissions. But then who is counting – accurately and with acceptable error of measurement? Never forget that previous ‘establishments’ have told the people of the world that Black swans and a heliocentric, orbiting and circular earth do not exist. Not to mention the real cause of stomach ulcers and that Australia had insufficient iron ore for domestic consumption, let alone export.

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    • #
      Greebo

      Yet of course we are letting ourselves be driven by false guilt.

      One of the statements of the day. False guilt is THE growth industry of the last three decades.

      30

  • #
    Ljh

    Other instances of where the “scientific” establishment has hindered exploring useful ideas:
    Wegener’s observations on continental drift ultimately explained by plate tectonics, but ridiculed for decades.
    Helicobacter causing stomach ulcers rather than stress or stomach acid(an awful lot of money being generated for the pharmaceutical industry by proton pump inhibitors like cimetidine in the meantime) treatable by cheap antibiotics.
    Nutrition research funded by Coke and other food producers absolving sugar and processed carbohydrates from causing the type 2 diabetes epidemic. Their business model depends on unhealthy snacking ! Funding for researching low carb diets is scarce.

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    • #
      Greebo

      Their business model depends on unhealthy snacking !

      One can draw some parallels with Coke, MacDonalds et al with the tobacco industry, IMO. Except their advertising is even more insidious, targeting as it does our children.

      00

  • #
    pat

    can’t resist posting this before signing off:

    3 Apr: BBC: California’s drought is over. Now what?
    By Taylor Kate Brown
    Now that California has had significant rain, can the state ever go back to “normal”?…
    Some areas have had record rain, and snowpack across the Sierra Nevada is close to 200% of normal…
    But several years of widespread, deeply dry conditions have extracted a toll on the state that will take more than one wet season to fix. In some cases, the landscape may be forever altered…

    Climate change has a part to play, but less so with the amount of precipitation and more an increase in average temperatures earlier in the year, says Paul Ullrich, a climate scientist and professor at University of California, Davis.
    “That means over the summers, more water is evaporating from the ground,” Ullrich says. Rising temperatures also limit the amount of snowpack in the high mountains over the winter, and melts it even earlier.
    “No matter how much it snows during the rainy season, rising temperatures will continue to remove water from the state,” says Ullrich…
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39459592

    Ullrich is an Asst Prof in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources, who specializes in regional climate change modelling; the BBC writer’s twitter page tells its own tale, & she follows Sarah Peach, Yale Climate Connections, & Ceres (with all its CAGW propaganda & anti-Trump nonsense).

    3 Apr: KBOI: AP: Snow, rain delays planting in Treasure Valley
    An unusually harsh winter, followed by a string of rainstorms, has left farm fields soggy and delayed planting at least two weeks in many parts of the Treasure Valley area of southwestern Idaho and Eastern Oregon.
    Many areas of the valley received ***record or near-record amounts of snowfall this winter, which left soils saturated when it melted, according to The Capital Press…
    For fall planted crops, the heavy snowfall was a blessing, area farmers said, because it insulated those crops from temperatures in December and January that averaged about ***10 degrees colder than normal…READ ALL
    http://kboi2.com/news/local/snow-rain-delays-planting-in-treasure-valley

    2 Apr: CTV: Blizzard to bury Newfoundland in thick layer of snow: meteorologist
    A meteorologist (Dale Foote) with Environment Canada says a blizzard will cover Newfoundland in a thick layer of snow over the next few days…
    “It’s been a long winter, and it’s just turning now into a hard winter,” he says. “We’ve had snow since December, and for a good chunk of the province, we haven’t had much of a warm up.”
    Foote says like many residents in Newfoundland, he spent much of Saturday digging out his driveway from last week’s storm, which put a cap on the ***record-breaking snowfalls some areas saw in March….
    “This snow pack’s not going away anytime soon,” says Foote. “We’re going to have snow on the ground here until May for sure.”…

    2017 WILL BE THE HOTTEST YEAR EVER, NO DOUBT.

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  • #
    KinkyKeith

    Real science only began in 1989 when Man Made Global Warming was discovered.

    The 50,000 years of glaciation which saw New York central park under an ice field 1500 metres DEEP is not real science.

    Brian Cox knows that so we should accept it too.

    Despite this, somehow paleontologists knew that no man could set foot on the lower American continent during that deep freeze because of that ice, but didn’t want to acknowledge that man could have come down through New York during the previous inter-glacial.

    This was about 100,000 years ago. The harder we look, the older we get.

    I suspect that much of our collective history is now under 125 metres of melt water now part of the oceans.

    Let’s go look for it.

    KK

    http://joannenova.com.au/2017/04/weekend-unthreaded-158/#comment-1903851

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  • #
    Sabastain

    “Science progresses one funeral at a time.” — Max Planck

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    • #
      Mark D.

      Sure Max.
      I wonder how science progresses when you have mass graves?

      40

      • #
        Greg Cavanagh

        I guess it has to skip a generation, or until “dear leader” also passes away.

        30

      • #
        tom0mason

        And as each generation takes up the reins of cultural advancement (in all fields), their trajectory of endeavor is built on the past generations foundations but will be heavily moderated by the natural chaos of the world they encounter.

        30

    • #
      bullocky

      “Science progresses one funeral at a time.”

      The Peer Reviewed Literature notwithstanding.

      10

  • #
    graphicconception

    Contrary to the expectations of many, science is full of such instances.

    Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar had an idea about black holes in about 1930. He made his views known to Arthur Eddington who initially feigned interest but then fought Chandra all the way.

    Chandra eventually got his Nobel prize but not until 1983!

    Something similar happened to Alfred Wegener. He had the idea for continental drift prior to 1912. Everyone rubbished him. In 1926 the American Association of Petroleum Geologists even went so far as to arrange a symposium to trash Wegener’s ideas.

    Technology became available during WW2 that allowed measurements to be made that facilitated confirmation of continental drift and by the 1960’s every paper embraced his the view. Sadly, Wegener had been dead for thirty years at that time.

    When people quote “The Scientific Method” at me I usually quote back one of these as examples of how rose-tinted their view of science really is. Now I have one more to add to my list!

    My examples come from this book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0057N4AY2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1#reader_B0057N4AY2

    Did you know that Eddington fiddled his results to confirm Einstein or that Mendel adjusted his pea growing results to confirm his views on inheritance. Even in the good old days egos triumphed over logic and sound science. Why has the word “Mann” sprung into my mind, I wonder?

    80

    • #
      Another Ian

      A lecture on sheep genetics in the late 1960’s was held in one of those lecture rooms with sliding multileaf blackboards.

      Which were all in the up position.

      When the lecturer pulled the first down to commence writing it revealed the message

      “Mendel cooked the book”

      50

    • #
      tom0mason

      graphicconception,

      We may climb up to stand on the shoulders of giants only to find we are all facing the wrong way. That is what science is about reassessing past endeavors with new tools to ensure that no matter how high anyone gets, or how far they can see, they where/are looking in the right direction — wherever that may be.

      40

  • #
    Gary

    This behavior seems common to systems. Chemists call it activation energy, for example. There is a necessary amount of energy needed to kick a reaction over a threshold. Anything less than that will not make it go. The acceptance of ideas follows the pattern. Interestingly, catalysts are a shortcut in some cases because they lower the activation threshold. When you are advancing a new idea in an established paradigm some thought about an appropriate catalyst might help. I wonder if Cinq-Mars neglected that.

    “To train a dog, one must be smarter than the dog.”

    40

  • #
    Oliver K. Manuel

    Thanks to Climategate and a few brave souls like JoNova, . . .

    Consensus science shattered on the Centennial Birthday of the late Professor Paul Kazuo Kuroda

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/HIGHER-POWERY.pdf

    Climate, economic and social cycles (human destiny) dance in harmonous rhythm to the “music of the Sun” directed by the tiny but massive pulsar at its core

    70

  • #
    oldbrew

    Max Planck had a point:
    A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

    Paraphrased variants:

    Truth never triumphs — its opponents just die out.
    Science advances one funeral at a time.

    http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck#Quotes

    30

  • #

    It appears that the caves are on the “west” side of the Rocky Mountains and thus somewhat accessible over the Bering Strait land bridge from Siberia/Beringia 24,000 yag.

    This was, of course, during an intermission of the glaciers which returned and peaked about 18,000YAG.

    Given the low volume of items, it is clear the occupants were not there for very long, likely during a couple “bad weather” periods.
    (Remember: these are people just like you, but without iPhones)

    This would imply that, over the 1000’s of years and hundreds of generations, at some point, bodacious young males, looking for mates, would have wondered into this area during the summer.

    The opposition during the second half of the 20th century would appear to be typical male belly bucking (“winning is the only thing”) and guarding of $$$$.

    30

    • #
      KinkyKeith

      Mocha Express.
      Many here have previously commented on the “unreliability” of splicing data sets together that have been put together by totally different means of assessment with totally different “errors”.

      Interesting blog 🙂

      KK

      20

  • #
    nc

    Here is an interesting read that follows the line of this article and the restricted debate on “climate “.

    ht tps://www.steynonline.com/7740/the-big-shut-up

    30

    • #
      el gordo

      ‘They don’t want to participate in the debate, and win it. It’s easier to shut it down and save themselves the trouble.’

      Yep, professor Brian Cox is definitely a case in point.

      21

  • #
    Stephen Richards

    Dr Marshall (an Aussie)and his work on bacterium induced ulcers was ridiculed for more than 10 years until he poisoned himself to prove his theory once and for all.

    Science only moves forward through in fighting and bitter debate. Einstein and quantum physic called quantum mechanics so as not to offend the Einstein gang.

    50

  • #
    Erik N

    Group think is every where. Most of the things people think are true, are probably not true. It is amazing how one can still function quite well in a world where there is no one who actually understands everything about anything. 🙂

    I have had similar problems trying to get the printing industry to understand some very simple things about the offset printing process that would be critical to consistent and predictable output. One would think it would be easy but after 20 years of effort, the minds stay closed. Just human nature.

    20

  • #
    DonB

    “For years an obscure doctor hailing from Australia’s hardscrabble west coast watched in horror as ulcer patients fell so ill that many had their stomach removed or bled until they died. That physician, an internist named Barry Marshall, was tormented because he knew there was a simple treatment for ulcers, which at that time afflicted 10 percent of all adults.

    “In 1981 Marshall began working with Robin Warren, the Royal Perth Hospital pathologist who, two years earlier, discovered the gut could be overrun by hardy, corkscrew-shaped bacteria called Helicobacter pylori. Biopsying ulcer patients and culturing the organisms in the lab, Marshall traced not just ulcers but also stomach cancer to this gut infection. The cure, he realized, was readily available: anti­biotics. But mainstream gastroenterologists were dismissive, holding on to the old idea that ulcers were caused by stress.”

    http://discovermagazine.com/2010/mar/07-dr-drank-broth-gave-ulcer-solved-medical-mystery

    For a couple of decades my father was tormented by ulcers, and given milk which exacerbated the disease, while temporarily making him feel better. When his doctor read about the cure, antibiotics healed him in two weeks.

    60

  • #
    tom0mason

    And the consensus views in the medical sphere took ages to come to terms with what really happens with Peptic Ulcers

    After all the drug companies were making lots of money selling chalk as the treatment.

    41

    • #
      tom0mason

      A little more on how hubris killed people with peptic ulcers —

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_peptic_ulcer_disease_and_Helicobacter_pylori
      Note that in 1958 John Lykoudis, a Greek pharmacist, successfully treats his own gastroenteritis with antibiotics.
      It all turn so bad for him when he tried so hard to get his study published. It ran across the grain of the established medical knowledge so they taught him a lesson.

      If the study proves them correct, they will be vindicated and I will become a laughing stock…It is dramatically urgent to clarify this issue…Too much, endless talking, which leads nowhere, while it is simple to resolve this in a practical way. Only facts constitute the truth.

      Yet again he was refused. Lykoudis also tried, unsuccessfully, to interest several drug companies in his regimen. The final insults were these:

      …he was referred for disciplinary action to the Athens Medical Association, of which he was a member, ‘because (a) he prepared and distributed an unapproved medicinal preparation…and (b) he made his method publicly known to attract patients’…On 6 November 1968…the Disciplinary Committee, presided over by a neurology professor, fined him 4000 drachmas…

      A more serious problem for Lykoudis was his indictment in the Greek Courts…

      In the latter instance numerous former patients came to his support; one of them testified that Lykoudis “treated also many poor ulcer patients free of charge.” We are not told the outcome of the indictment.

      Lykoudis died in 1980 without knowing that he would soon be vindicated. His story is disturbing because it is an almost perfect hybrid of two entirely different possibilities: on the one hand, a legitimate innovator who is unfairly rejected and persecuted, in spite of heroic efforts over more than 2 decades to prove his theory; on the other, a classical example of unwitting foolishness, bordering upon quackery or sociopathy.

      From —
      https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/h-pylori-plausibility-and-greek-tragedy-the-case-of-dr-john-lykoudis/

      I must admit here that my father died (in 1974) from complications brought on from ulcers that exacerbated a heart condition that killed him.

      41

    • #
      Craig Thomas

      Just like you are taking ages coming to terms with the consensus view on global warming I guess.

      310

      • #
        OriginalSteve

        Craig – poor form old chum, considering the comment was about the death of tom0masons father….

        Tsk.

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  • #

    At the risk of you all coming down on me as though I represent the mainstream stultifying scientists…

    It is true that ignoring this evidence was a bad thing but this is not yet a paradigm shift as independent evidence is lacking. This is one site that is now independently dated but it is still just one site. What is well known in dating science and archaeology is that all sorts of things can cause dating problems and indeed cut marks on bones besides humans.

    So for now the dates will be taken seriously as accurate but there will still be doubt that-

    a. the dates are an artifact (whole books written about how dating can get confused).
    b. The bone marks are not of human origin.

    The remedy is to find more sites with more datable material. The paradigm shift is probably there but it needs to be patient.

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    • #
      el gordo

      Its not hard to imagine humans in the Americas 24,000 years ago, coming across the land bridge at the Last Glacial Maximum, the Australians already had the march on them.

      So I think its entirely plausible that these earlier peoples passed on their knowledge to the Clovis who went on to follow in their footsteps. Rapidly travelling over great distances, camping at the same locations as the earlier migrants, it might be hard to find conclusive proof of these earlier humans.

      The extinction of the Clovis people is intriguing and the evidence is mounting in favour of the impact theory.

      21

      • #

        It is plausible it just needs more evidence not just a string of logic

        11

        • #
          el gordo

          Doing further reading …

          ‘…most mtDNA variation (along the double-continent) stems from the first wave from Beringia, which followed the Pacific coastal route. This was accompanied or followed by a second inland migratory event, marked by haplogroups X2a and C4c, which affected all Amerindian groups of Northern North America. Much later, the ancestral A2a carriers spread from Alaska, undertaking both a westward migration to Asia and an eastward expansion into the circumpolar regions of Canada.’

          Alessandro Achilli et al

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          • #

            yes following from Torroni 1992. Genomics is finding similar but the dating is sloppy enough, and some of the unknowns tangible enough, for the 12,000 years date to represent the earlier migration.

            10

            • #
              el gordo

              Tangible unknown, did the Younger Dryas (c. 12,900 to c. 11,700 BP) bring an end to the Clovis?

              10

            • #
              el gordo

              I’ll answer my own question, the Younger Dryas forced the Clovis to adapt and they invented the Folsom tool kit. The rest is history.

              10

    • #
      Mark D.

      c. the cut marks are from a much more recent period. i.e.: I have some cheese and wine, a moonlit night and the significant other of my dreams……where is that cutting board?

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        fair enough… I also went a bit ott with use of “paradigm shift”. New evidence of earlier peopling of America is not a new paradigm.

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          ROM

          My grandfather who was born in the late 1870’s use to tell tales of horses stolen in Victoria by gangs of professional horse thieves in the latter half of the 19th century then being run up through western NSW into what is now southern Queensland for sale there.
          Now this was soon after the inland of NSW had only been explored in the crudest sense and was only still unknown bush country.

          Which often makes me think that a lot of human expanding into new territory by very small bands was often the outcome of some young buck or a gang of young bucks making off with another’s woman or a few willing and not so willing females or having knocked a rival or a senior clansman a bit hard on the head when pinching his best spear.
          So the best and most reliable way of not getting caught and getting their just deserts was to get to hell out of there and get way out into some new country that the clan or tribe had not yet ventured or hunted there as yet.

          No doubt there were some other equally guilty villains from other clans and tribal groups were as likely to appear within a relatively short period of time with the same object of making themselves scarce so as to not get their just deserts from the established clans or tribes view point.

          Particularly so when rumours of unknown but recognisable smoke from human fires were seen in the far distance with the obvious conclusion that another bunch of people were way out there and in some damn good hunting country where the animals did not yet know what Man was and didn’t fear this small, hairless puny creature without claws or jaws or natural weapons of any kind.

          And so to survive they co-operated and kids were born and a new tribe was created way out on the fringes of the known tribal and clan territories.

          And they in their term became respectable citizens until their young bucks and girls kicked over a few traces in the following generations .

          And so another out of many scenarios of the ways and means of human expansion across the planet was created.

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            And so another out of many scenarios of the ways and means of human expansion across the planet was created.

            except it is not. Your story is about white people moving into an area into which humans had already expanded and thrived in for a long time

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    pat

    can’t recall anyone posting this:

    27 Mar: Judicial Watch: Climategate Update: Judicial Watch Sues for Records between Key Obama Administration Scientists Involved In Global Warming Controversies
    (Washington, DC) — Judicial Watch today announced it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia asking the court to compel the U.S. Department of Commerce to turn over all records of communications between a pair of federal scientists who heavily influenced the Obama administration’s climate change policy and its backing of the Paris Agreement (Judicial Watch v. Department of Commerce (No. 1:17-cv-00541)).

    The suit was filed after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (“NOAA”), a component of the Department of Commerce, failed to respond to a February 6 FOIA request seeking

    •All records of communications between NOAA scientist Thomas Karl and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy John Holdren.
    •The FOIA request covers the timeframe of January 20, 2009 to January 20, 2017.

    Karl, who until last year was director of the NOAA section that produces climate data, the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), was the lead author of a landmark paper that was reported to have heavily influenced the Paris Agreement.

    Holdren, a former director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, director of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and long-time proponent of strong measures to curb emissions…

    “This new lawsuit could result in the release of emails that will help Americans understand how Obama administration officials may have mishandled scientific data to advance the political agenda of global warming alarmism,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

    Separately, Judicial Watch is suing for records of communications from NOAA officials regarding methodology for collecting and interpreting data used in climate models to justify the controversial findings in the “Pausebuster” study. The data documents had also been withheld from Congress. (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Commerce (No 1:15-cv-02088))…
    http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/climategate-update-judicial-watch-sues-records-key-obama-administration-scientists-involved-global-warming-controversies/

    despite Judicial Watch’s past successes with FOIA lawsuits, only Daily Caller and CNS News have covered this, as far as I can tell.

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    pat

    hilarious…best to read it all:

    31 Mar: Buzzfeed: Bill Nye And The Science March’s White-Dude Drama
    One month and four diversity statements after its launch, the March for Science is announcing three new figureheads: Bill Nye, Lydia Villa-Komaroff, and Mona Hanna-Attisha.
    by Azeen Ghorayshi
    On Thursday, after at least a week of contentious deliberations, the popular March for Science movement will announce three people to lead its April 22 protest in Washington, DC…
    The March for Science, which hopes to replicate the success of the Women’s March on Washington, now has nearly 2 million supporters across social media platforms, more than 100 scientific groups signed on as partners, 428 satellite marches planned for cities across the globe, and 100,000 volunteers.
    But much like its sister protest, the science march has also spent most of its short lifetime steeped in tense debates about what — and who — it is taking a stand for…

    As recently as last week, Nye was slated to be the march’s first honorary co-chair. But after a fresh round of complaints that the group was not taking diversity issues seriously enough, Hanna-Attisha and Villa-Komaroff, both women of color who have long fought for science to serve communities it has traditionally left behind, were added to the lineup.
    Since the march’s inception at the end of January, critics have repeatedly slammed the organizers for saying that the march should be about championing science, not mixing it up with politics…

    The March for Science’s origin story starts, as tales of nerdom often do, on Reddit.
    (DEBUNKED AS FAKE NEWS) On the day President Trump was sworn into office, it appeared that all references to climate change had been scrubbed from the White House’s website. Scientists, already stressed about the prospect of budget cuts to research and the rise of climate denialism, were incensed…
    Many scientists felt alienated by the march’s apolitical stance…

    But not everyone was pleased with the march’s attempts to broaden its vision. In response to the diversity statement, famous Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker tweeted: “Scientists’ March on Washington plan compromises its goals with anti-science PC/identity politics/hard-left rhetoric.”…
    The organizers never publicly responded to Pinker, but deleted the original tweet and took out some of the language that had been added to the diversity statement…

    “Finding ways together to get past biases is the whole point of the scientific method,” Janet Stemwedel, a philosopher of science at San Jose State University, told BuzzFeed News. “So if we’re seeing a little bit of that in how the march planning is coming together, maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe we should recognize what that’s worth.”
    https://www.buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi/march-for-science-diversity

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    pat

    4 Apr: TheReview/UniversityOfDelaware: “Bill Nye The Science Guy” rocks the Carpenter Center with science and politics
    BY ELLIE HALFACRE
    A chant rung out in the Bob Carpenter Center on March 21, mimicking the opening sequence of the Emmy Award-winning PBS show, “Bill Nye the Science Guy.” Students and community members called in a united cheer: “Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill!”…
    Joining him was McKay Jenkins, the moderator for the night’s discussion. Jenkins is a professor of English, journalism and environmental humanities at the university…

    Nye set out his intentions at the beginning of the event.
    “I don’t want everyone to be a scientist, and everyone to be an engineer,” he said. “The fashion catastrophes alone would be a setback to society.”
    Instead, he said he wanted citizens, regardless of field of study or profession, to be scientifically literate. The discussion on the importance of STEM education has now expanded to include the arts, he noted, as well as design.
    “They call it STEAM, and then STEAMD,” he said. “Pretty soon we’re gonna call it ‘school!’” …

    Neither presenters shied away from more serious, political questions. As a pair, “one person representing science, one person representing journalism,” Jenkins said that he and Nye represented two groups “which are under attack at the moment.”
    “We live in a culture that is often reputed to be disinterested in science, or if you live in the White House, against science,” Jenkins said.
    At one point, Nye mocked President Donald Trump’s mannerisms, and later he told the audience that he didn’t know who the president would be in two years’ time.
    “His business with people who are adversaries of the United States, this is a serious business,” Nye said of Trump. “Built into the U.S. system is change, so whatever is going on right now, it’s going to change — and let’s hope that it changes for the better.”…

    Cassidy Nalbone, a junior marketing major and the vice president of variety for SCPAB, said that the group was scared that the event would be too political. The initial proposal for the event was a slideshow presentation on climate change.
    “I thought the whole thing didn’t overstep any boundaries,” Nalbone said…

    He recommended that students get outside, reduce their carbon footprint, go to the March for Science in Washington, D.C. and celebrate Earth Day on April 22.
    He also asked them to tune in to his new show, “Bill Nye Saves the World,” premiering on Netflix on April 21, and “binge away” on its content as they work toward creating a more sustainable, scientifically literate world.
    “We can do this people, let’s go!” Nye said. “Get ’er done!”
    http://udreview.com/18801-2/

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    pat

    3 Apr: CNN: Harvard students launch course on resisting ‘the Trump agenda’
    By Masuma Ahuja
    On Wednesday, students at Harvard start the first day of Resistance School — a 4-week course in anti-Trump activism created by progressive students at the university’s Kennedy School of Government. The course is open to people across the country and the world.
    Through four in-person and live-streamed sessions, followed by interactive homework assignments, organizers of the program say they hope to train activists “to strengthen the skills they need to take collective action and effectively resist the Trump agenda.”

    This program comes in the wake of protests like the Women’s March and the ***March for Science, which were organized by progressives across the country in the months following President Donald Trump’s inauguration…
    “Resistance School started with a couple of students chatting with a couple of professors, having a sense of outrage and despair and beginning to feel overwhelmed and exhausted with the question of ‘What are we going to do after the election?'” explained Shanoor Seervai, a student at Harvard’s Kennedy School and one of the cofounders of Resistance School…

    So far, organizers say they have about 3,000 groups “representing over 10,000 people” registered for their first class.
    They encourage people to enroll in groups as opposed to individually. “Some are coming with groups of 700 people, some are smaller groups, potlucks, gathering in people’s kitchens,” says Seervai.

    The program’s speakers include professors, the current DNC vice chair and an ***Obama For America alum, but they say they don’t have any formal partnerships with other progressive or Democratic institutions yet…
    http://edition.cnn.com/2017/04/03/us/harvard-resistance-school/

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    pat

    3 Apr: ClimateChangeNews: Megan Darby: Brazil halves environment budget amid rising Amazon deforestation
    In a bid to contain a growing budget deficit, the government has slashed the funding to enforce forest protection laws
    The Brazilian government is cutting its environment ministry budget by 51% as part of a bid to limit the country’s spiralling deficit…
    It is an even steeper drop in spending than the 31% Donald Trump’s administration is proposing for the US Environmental Protection Agency…
    http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/04/03/brazil-halves-environment-budget-amid-rising-amazon-deforestation/

    3 Apr: Nature: Claudio Angelo: Brazilian scientists reeling as federal funds slashed by nearly half
    Brazilian scientists have been left horrified by a 44% slash to the federal science budget, announced by the country’s government on 30 March.
    The cut is part of a general trimming of 42 billion reais from the federal budget, which amounts to 28% over all government departments — so the cut to science is particularly severe. President Michel Temer says the measure was a tough but necessary response to Brazil’s escalating fiscal deficit. The country faces the worst recession in its history, and recovery has been much slower than expected…

    The new budget is “an atomic bomb strike on Brazilian science”, says physicist Luiz Davidovich, president of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. He warns that the cuts will cripple research and development for decades to come. “Were we at war, one could think this was a strategy by a foreign power to destroy our country. But instead it’s us doing this to ourselves.”…

    Ribeiro (head of the Brain Institute at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte) says the drastic cutbacks may have one silver lining: they may fuel the 22 April ***March for Science in Brazil. The SBPC formally joined this month’s march, inspired by the Trump-resistance movement in the United States, and has been calling on scientists all around Brazil to join. “We need to paint for war and occupy public spaces,” says Ribeiro. “Respectfully, but consistently.”
    http://www.nature.com/news/brazilian-scientists-reeling-as-federal-funds-slashed-by-nearly-half-1.21766

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  • #
    pat

    unbelievable:

    4 Apr: SMH: Marus Strom: Professor Brian Cox on elections: don’t vote for politicians who say they have all the answers
    For physicist Brian Cox, working out how to vote is a simple question of applying a scientific method.
    “Look across the political landscape of any country, identify the people with blustering certitude and don’t vote for them,” he said.
    Professor Cox, anointed by David Attenborough as his broadcasting successor, believes the ***humility required in good science could teach our politicians a few lessons.
    “Science is not a collection of absolute truths,” he said. “Scientists are delighted when we are wrong because it means we have learnt something.”…

    “There is a school of thought that says science should remain above politics. I don’t agree with that,” Professor Cox said.
    “I think that the scientific way of thinking is the road to better politics. ***The value of science is in embracing doubt.”…
    ***”Politicians need to embrace doubt as much as scientists do.”…

    This month, supporters of science will take to the streets across the world on Earth Day.
    Partly in reaction to US President Donald Trump’s approach to the Environmental Protection Agency, the March for Science will be focused in Washington DC but also take place in Australian cities on April 22…

    Professor Cox said that “public demonstrations for reason is a good thing to do”, but he warned that displays of hubris would be wrong and counter to a scientific approach.
    “To do good science you need honesty and humility – and those aspects of good science should be applied in political life,” he said…
    “If you see politicians doing stupid things, which they are likely to do, you have an obligation to speak out.”…

    “Science is a sensible ways to proceed. But it can mean delivering tools to politicians that’s a bit like handing a revolver to a toddler,” he said…
    “The actual question is: why are we giving power to people who essentially behave like children, why are we letting those people run the place?”…

    A rational society can’t just take on faith what scientists say, he said. There needs to be a culture of understanding how scientists present evidence…
    http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/professor-brian-cox-on-elections-dont-vote-for-politicians-who-say-they-have-all-the-answers-20170403-gvc6hu.html

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    Dennis

    I have experienced in bred prejudice against Australian Aborigines and their tens of thousands of years of living in what we now call Australia. Many closed minds that I believe reflect the general community attitude since early settlement times based on propaganda spread by the British colonisers and ignoring what the early settlers had observed, painted, sketched and written in their diaries.

    Is it a fear of the past or feelings of guilt?

    For me learning facts based on human history is fascinating.

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      Dennis

      Just read about Chinese people in Australia in Outback Magazine, around 160 years ago there were wealthy Chinese contributing enormously to the development and prosperity in this country as well as many other hard working but not well off Chinese living here. One example is market gardens, apparently early settlers had very little access to green vegetables until Chinese business people offered them for sale.

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    Dennis

    By the way, I drove to the south of Goulburn wind farm today and most of the wind turbines were not rotating again, as I observed yesterday from the highway.

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      toorightmate

      The lack of wind is due to global warming.
      Global warming did not start until Europeans inhabited Australia.
      Both of these things are pure, unadulterated facts. Because I have read them.

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    See: http://joannenova.com.au/2017/03/curry-christy-pielke-and-mann-testify/#comment-1904505

    I don’t have decades! Can we please have the Clowns clearly identify some demonstration to verify their fanciful claims, else STFU already.

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      Craig Thomas

      Does the fact that Hansen’s model made in 1988 correctly models the temperature response to CO2 concentration 30 years later count?

      Does the data showing rising CO2, rising temperatures, and accelerating rising sea levels provide the kind of “demonstration” you require?

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        Graeme No.3

        And how does Hansen’s model go replicating the last 200 years, or the next 30 years?

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        I require only a demonstration that anyone ever has observed thermal EMR flux from the atmosphere to the surface, or that such a fantasy can possibly increase the sensible heat (temperature) of the surface.

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          Craig Thomas

          Well, you can require away as much as you like, but nobody is going to engage with that kind of nonsense. I seem to recall that your host here has told you there is no question about the atmospheric greenhouse effect being a verified fact.

          You just need to get up to speed on real science and give up the half-baked fringe stories.

          The first thing you might want to consider is that “the atmosphere” touches “the surface” at a distance of about 1×10^-9m, so the transfers you are looking for just might be occurring on a scale you haven’t considered…..so what you should probably do is start here:
          https://www.ucar.edu/learn/1_3_1.htm

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            KinkyKeith

            Spaken like a true Irishmann.

            KK

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            Will Janoschka

            Craig Thomas April 5, 2017 at 12:52 pm

            “Well, you can require away as much as you like, but nobody is going to engage with that kind of nonsense. I seem to recall that your host here has told you there is no question about the atmospheric greenhouse effect being a verified fact.”

            You Craig Sillyboy have engaged with that kind of nonsense twice now!! Joanne OTOH has never suggested to “me” that the terms ‘greenhouse effect’, or ‘greenhouse gas’, has any physical meaning whatsoever. You lie!
            Still you cannot demonstration that anyone ever has observed thermal EMR flux from the atmosphere to the surface, or that such a fantasy can possibly increase the sensible heat (temperature) of the surface.

            “You just need to get up to speed on real science and give up the half-baked fringe stories.”

            Like you are up to speed on what Climate Clowns Claim? You clearly would not recognize ‘science’ or ‘scientific method’ if such bit you on your buttocks!

            “The first thing you might want to consider is that “the atmosphere” touches “the surface” at a distance of about 1×10^-9m, so the transfers you are looking for just might be occurring on a scale you haven’t considered…..

            Thank you for instruction on what to consider first! The wavelength of CO2 EMR absorption is 15,000 the length of your one nanometer. Even visible light is 500 times larger. Do you get your non-science from some NCAR comic book?

            “so what you should probably do is start here:
            https://www.ucar.edu/learn/1_3_1.htm

            The UCAR\NCAR overeducated kidlets have been misinterpreting my careful measurements for 22 years now. Before that was the Jimmy Hanson NASA Goddard!!

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              Peter C

              ” You clearly would not recognize ‘science’ or ‘scientific method’ if such bit you on your buttocks!”

              LOL

              Craig,

              If you know of any experiment or test that demonstrates the Greenhouse Gas Effect Theory please state it here now!

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            sophocles

            It’s another Craig Thomas FAIL. Doing well, aren’t you, Craig?

            Hmm, we’re going to have to award a TradeMark: CTF(tm) is too bland, maybe

            YACCTF(tm) as in Yet Another Catastrophic Craig Thomas Fail.

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          Harry Twinotter

          Will Janoschka.

          “I require only a demonstration that anyone ever has observed thermal EMR flux from the atmosphere to the surface”

          Several studies have.

          But either way, it is irrelevant. What you personally think does not count – look up “Argument from Personal Incredulity”.

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            sophocles

            Harry Twotter says:

            Several studies have.

            Then cite them. An assertion without support carries little weight and in science, no weight at all.

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              Harry Twinotter

              sophocles.

              “Then cite them. An assertion without support carries little weight and in science, no weight at all.”

              What is the point? Science deniers will just dismiss them anyway.

              The fact that Will made the comment shows he has not attempted to find the studies, if he had he would have found them. He has already judged them a “fantasy” without even checking – not very scientific.

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    Mark D.

    20 or so years ago I had the privileged of meeting and speaking for hours with a Canadian gentleman named Stuart Seaman (spelling may not be exact). He was a wonderful clarinet player, superbly intelligent amateur historian. His living was made as a millwright.

    Now to get on topic, this man was probably the catalyst and inspiration for my skepticism and he had much to say about the failings of academia, the regular ignoring of archaeologic evidence, the wealth of knowledge tucked away in old libraries and still waiting to see daylight.

    Stewart wrote a small book that outlined his research into many anomalies in the current “understanding” of human history. I was given 3 copies of this self published book and sadly I’ve managed to loan them all away over the years so I have no reference and only my memory left.

    There are tantalizing interesting bits that are a little more modern than the topic at hand and many that are still debated:

    http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/jhm/arch/decalog.html

    http://www.geotimes.org/jan05/NN_MNrunestone.html

    http://barnesreview.org/pdf/TBR2010-no1-5-12.pdf

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_Creek_inscription

    Finally, Stuart is possibly still living (though probably in his 80’s or 90’s). If anyone knows how to reach him I’d really like to know.

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    Chrism

    ever so slightly near the topic…
    I was in Hong Kong working at the children’s hospital in the early 90’s and every Saturday toured the bookshops hoping for an English language novel…in vain, plenty of books on economics, business, law, maths and engineering, and English magazines but nary an english language novel… then one day I came across some bargain basement books and there was Kuhn’s structure of scientific revolutions : at that time I would have read the telephone book : and devoured it — a bit slow is an understatement, but he nailed how it happens : first they laugh, then they don’t have space for you to talk, present, publish : then they heavy the journals not to publish, the wall finally crumbles & then they say we knew it was right all along !!
    there was also a single novelish sort of historical account “Anyone here been raped and speaks english” about partition in India by E Behr

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    Geoffrey Williams

    On an aside note, it is still amazing to think that the Americas have human populations going back only 20,000 years or so. It’s kind of eirie to think of those vast continents unoccupied (by humans)for so long.
    GeoffW

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      el gordo

      The ice barrier and rugged terrain would have put them off, but eventually they set off down the west coast.

      https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/0d/d8/11/0dd81102c23df11a9d0399c6720ddff0.jpg

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        Geoffrey Williams

        Thanks el gordo for the link, just imagine the experiences of the people who made those vast journeys; it’s no wonder that they have such fascinating mythology.I sometimes wonder what we may have missed out on in this modern age of mass civilisation.
        GeoffW

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      Craig Thomas

      You find 30,000 potential years of unoccupation by humans “eerie”?

      What about the other 4,543,000,000 years all the continents were unoccupied by humans?

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        Geoffrey Williams

        I agree; all those past times were fascinating in their own way. The period I referred to was just special I would say. Perhaps eerie was not the best word to descibe it.
        GeoffW

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          Craig Thomas

          I think the most interesting part of it is that the rest of the world has a plethora of human sub-species and pre-human species spread all over it, many of them temporally overlapping, and yet the americas remained entirely higher primate-free until modern humans employed their considerable intellectual talents to survive the challenges presented by an ice-bound existence in order to reach the americas.

          Sadly, there remain deluded people who refuse to accept that there ever was any such thing is pre-human ancestor species, including some who refuse to accept the known age of our planet.

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            PeterS

            Such diversionary talk proves you lost the argument many times over. Give it up – you keep digging a deeper and deeper hole. As was proven already the “hockey stick” has been proven to be a hoax, and several have posted the links to show it.

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            el gordo

            It was a close run thing, but humanity somehow survived against the odds.

            ‘Climatological and geological evidence suggests evidence for a genetic bottleneck. The explosion of Lake Toba created a 1,000 year cold period, as a result of the largest volcanic eruption of the Quaternary, potentially reducing human populations to a few tropical refugia. It has been estimated that as few as 15,000 humans survived. In such circumstances genetic drift and founder effects may have been maximised. The greater diversity amongst African genomes may be in part due to the greater prevalence of African refugia during the Toba incident’

            wiki

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    Yonniestone

    Thank you Joanne Nova for reminding us there really isn’t anything new under the sun.

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    Pauly

    My personal favourite lies in our own back yard: the people who created the Bradshaw paintings.

    As the Wikipedia entry shows, there are 1.5 million examples of this style of rock art in the Kimberley region, located at over 1500 different sites:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradshaw_rock_paintings

    The trouble is that the art style, the people that the paintings represent, and everything about their culture does not align with the concept of the current Aboriginal culture being the first residents of Australia. Nor does the oral history of the Aboriginal people in the region have any explanation for these paintings and the people they represent.

    The Bradshaw Foundation web site (www.bradshawfoundation.com) also has a very interesting animation titled the Journey of Mankind, which points to an earlier crossing of the sea gap between Asia and Australia, than the one that brought the Aboriginal people to this country.

    The contentious debate has centred around the dating of these Bradshaw paintings. The “consensus” is that these paintings cannot be older than the migration of the Aboriginal people to Australia. And despite more capable scientific dating methods, and significant similarities to other rock paintings from Africa, the Australian Archaeological Association rejects that any “archaeological evidence exists which suggests that the early colonisation of Australia was by anyone other than the ancestors of contemporary Aboriginal people”.

    I suspect we will have to wait for the oceans to go down about 140m with the next ice age before we discover artefacts associated with the coastal locations settled by the artists who gave us these rock paintings. Perhaps by then, there will be sufficient irrefutable scientific evidence.

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    Craig Thomas

    Being a sceptical kind of person, I decided to check whether this story by Heather Pringer in the Smithsonian magazine wasn’t perhaps a bit of a dramatization.
    Sadly for this narrative, I discovered that many previous archaeologists have presented research over the past 25 years demonstrating that “Clovis First” is wrong.

    The “consensus busting” that forms the basis for this story is therefore fake news: the consensus moved on over a decade ago as a result of a large number of people presenting the relevant evidence, and Heather’s “hero”, Jacques Cinq-Marc, is only following in the footsteps of many previous challengers of the now debunked “Clovis First” idea.

    Guidon, Niède y G. Delibrias (1986). “Carbon-14 dates point to man in the Americas 32 000 years ago”.

    Adovasio, J.M.; Donahue, J.; Stuckenrath, R. (April 1990). “The Meadowcroft Rochshelter Radiocarbon Chronology”. American Antiquity

    illehay, Tom D.; Calderon, Gerardo Ardila; Politis, Gustavo (1992). “Earliest hunters and gatherers of South America”. Journal of World Prehistory

    Mandryk, C. A. S.; Josenhans, H.; Fedje, D. W.; Mathewes, R. W. (2001). “Late Quaternary paleoenvironments of Northwestern North America: Implications for inland versus coastal migration routes”. Quaternary Science Reviews

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/11/041118104010.htm
    “New Evidence Puts Man In North America 50,000 Years Ago”
    November 18, 2004

    Goodyear, Albert C. (1 January 2005). “Evidence of Pre-Clovis Sites in the Eastern United States”. Scholar Commons. University of South Carolina

    Fagundes, Nelson J.R. et al. (2008) “Mitochondrial Population Genomics Supports a Single Pre-Clovis Origin with a Coastal Route for the Peopling of the Americas,” The American Journal of Human Genetics 82(March)

    Gilbert, M. Thomas P., Dennis L. Jenkins, et al. DNA from Pre-Clovis Human Coprolites in Oregon, North America, Science Express. 2008-04-03.

    Dillehay TD1, Ramírez C, Pino M, Collins MB, Rossen J, Pino-Navarro JD. “Monte Verde: seaweed, food, medicine, and the peopling of South America.” Science. 2008 May 9;

    Pringle, Heather. “Texas Site Confirms Pre-Clovis Settlement of the Americas.” Science. 25 March 2011

    Oppenheimer, Stephen (2011). “Clovis First: Shaking the Orthodoxy”

    http://www.archaeology.org/issues/145-1409/features/2367-peopling-the-americas-paradigms
    “recent excavations at Gault are part of a growing list of digs contributing new evidence that not only asserts that there were other peoples in the Americas at the same time as those who made Clovis points, but that humans had reached these lands earlier, and possibly by different routes. At the conference, when it was Collins’ turn to speak, he said just that. “By the beginning of the Younger Dryas [a 1,300-year cold snap that began about 12,800 years ago], this was already a fairly crowded archaeological landscape.”

    Over the past 15 years, as the consensus in the field has gradually moved beyond the idea that “Clovis came first,” archaeologists have arrived at what Collins calls “an enormous and propitious moment in the study of the peopling of the Americas.” The door has been thrown open to discussions of multiple founding populations, alternate routes, varying toolkits, and even drastically different timeframes for when people might have shown up. “Clovis is still important,” says Mike Waters, director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A&M University, “but we have to realize that there were people here before. Now we have to determine how long before Clovis people were here, who they were, what kind of technology they carried, and how they migrated through the continent and settled the empty landscapes.””

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      el gordo

      Good effort Craig.

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        Craig Thomas

        Incidentally, the 2008 paper I refer to above reminds me – the local University where I lived in 2003 was having a “bring in your fossils for identification” day. The area was rich in fossils, most people’s driveway gravel was full of belemnites and people who put in a bit of effort could find whole trilobite casts. (My best find was what I think is a plesiosaur knuckle).
        Anyway, I took the kids along and gave them each a fossil to show to the Uni guy so he could give them a story. When my eldest got to the table, she handed over her fossil and the guy took it, turned it around a few times and said, “Ah, a very nice coprolite. Do you know where coprolites come from?…”
        So my daughter thus learned to be sceptical even of her own dad………

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          el gordo

          “Do you know where coprolites come from?…”

          Where the sun never shines.

          ——–

          The point of this post is how long will it take to turn the accepted wisdom of climate change on its head?

          Because of the communications revolution and the political involvement in the debate, five years is all you have left.

          The scientific shift will move towards space weather (the planets and sun are major players) and away from the hubris of human induced global warming. Its not too late to join us comrade.

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            Graeme No.3

            el gordo:
            I admire your restraint. I would have said, but didn’t, even then you were handing out old shit.

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            Craig Thomas

            You have that exactly back-to-front.

            As with Galileo, the science is unassailable – the only problem is politics and the refusal by some to accept the scientific facts.

            Same thing happened with the theory of plate tectonics – even 50 years after it was well explained there were still a few cranks refusing to accept it as true.

            I don’t know how long it will take for people to cease their climate-science-refusal, but it’s been well-explained for over 150 years now, and the results are starting to become impossible to ignore. The Antarctic peninsula has lost a vast amount of ice, as has the Arctic, so one more major episode of ice-shedding at either pole should bring us up to about where we were in 1970 with plate tectonics – that is to say, the refusers starting getting very much ignored.

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            Craig Thomas

            You have that exactly back-to-front.

            As with Galileo, the science is unassailable – the only problem is politics and the refusal by some to accept the scientific facts.

            Same thing happened with the theory of plate tectonics – even 50 years after it was well explained there were still a few cranks refusing to accept it as true.

            I don’t know how long it will take for people to cease their climate-science-refusal, but it’s been well-explained for over 150 years now, and the results are starting to become impossible to ignore. The Antarctic peninsula has lost a vast amount of ice, as has the Arctic, so one more major episode of ice-shedding at either pole should bring us up to about where we were in 1970 with plate tectonics – that is to say, the refusers starting getting very much ignored.

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              el gordo

              ‘I don’t know how long it will take for people to cease their climate-science-refusal…’

              About five years, the science should be settled by then.

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        Mark D.

        Good effort?

        Not bad maybe. but far from answering the question that IS the story: How the scientist was treated by peers!

        After you answer that Craig, then answer; how has Mann treated his peers?

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          Craig Thomas

          Mann is currently suing somebody for libel as a result of that person’s reaction to their personal inability to accept the science.

          As far as his actual professional peers go, none of them deny the reality of the atmospheric greenhouse effect, nor the reality of the increasing CO2, increasing temperatures and rising sea levels, so on that score he’s not in the same boat that the opponents of the “Clovis First” theory were.

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            toorightmate

            Craig,
            I believe the Mann libel case is due for hearing when the hockey stick turns up. At present, it remains very, very straight, despite every year now being the “hottest year evvaaaahhhh”.
            Stick to fossils old mate. You will encounter less problems and more truth.

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              Harry Twinotter

              toorightmate.

              Hockey Stick denial gets boring after a while. I counted around 5 Hockey Stick graphs in the IPCC AR5 reports – there may have been more.

              I am glad you agree that the last several years have been the hottest years on record. And the ratio of warm records broken vs cold records broken is high too.

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      Graeme No.3

      You missed that Cinq-Marc started publishing in 1979.

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    Robert Rosicka

    OT , coincidence or not , since they started shutting down Hazelwood we have been losing power every other night , last night 2 hrs , any one else lose power last night .

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    Harry Twinotter

    “Got a theory that breaks a consensus? Expect aggressive silence. Snickering.”

    Yah gotta love an anti-science article that tries to build a straw man.

    The difference between Jacques Cinq-Marc and climate change deniers is Jacques Cinq-Marc had credible scientific evidence.

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    David Maddison

    Jo – there is something going wrong with the index numbers of comments and replies.

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    Dave

    Yup!
    I agree with you this time:

    Craig Thomas
    April 5, 2017 at 12:20 pm · Reply
    Yeah, my replies are missing the target too.

    They have been for years Craig mate!

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    Joe Puce

    Any news on Nikki Haley?

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    tty

    To return to the original subject. Just one little thing. Has nobody noticed that the age of the first humasn presence at Bluefish caves has absolutely no bearing on the “Clovis first” controversy?

    Bluefish caves are in Yukon north of the Laurentid ice. Clovis is exclusively south of the Laurentid ice.

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    “Paradigm shift” (Kuhn) sounds a bit like a polite euphemism. People defend wrong theories. Other people explain falsify them, using concrete data. First group of people continue to defend their theories. Eventually, they are forced to abandon them. Why call this a “paradigm shift”. How about “corruption”? After all, we pay these people. If they don’t understand the scientific method, they’ve got not business being in science.

    Einstein’s theory of relativity was quickly accepted in physics. There was no need for a paradigm shift. It was clear that Newton’s simple mechanics was wrong, and Einstein’s weird, counter-intuitive alternative explained the data better.

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    Joz Jonlin

    Ms. Nova,

    I’m a long time reader, but this is my first time posting. I don’t typically post much as I simply prefer, usually, reading and learning as opposed to adding my own drivel to any given conversation. I’ve been compiling stories like this for some time where scientific consensus and momentum actually hampers progress, like Wegener and plate tectonics and various other areas already mentioned by others. This old video of Richard Feynman is apropos to this very discussion. In my opinion, any time you can add Feynman to a conversation in a positive manner, it classes up the joint. I’m not positive you will see or read this with the amount of comments you receive, but thanks for your blog and all you do.

    Feynman: Knowing versus Understanding

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM-zWTU7X-k

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      Thank you Joz. Feynman definitely classes things up. Thank you :- )

      I’d like to see your list of examples of where consensus slows science.
      Thanks,
      Jo

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