Maybe the denialists are right?

I’ve always dismissed the findings of the Bolt/Blair School of Global Warming Denialism believing that climate scientists themselves would be the best people to consult on such issues. I always assumed they didn’t have a strong grasp of the details of climate science and that they couldn’t make the distinction between weather and climate, or that they would cherry-pick from the available data to make their case. But I’ve been doing some analysis of the data myself and I’m reluctant to report that based on the evidence, they’re right. Observe:

I’ve mapped the temperature data for Sydney over the last six days (Source: Australian Bureau of Meteorology.)

Note the distinctive downward trend for the maximum temperature over the given time period. Global Warming Prophets of Doom say that AGW will lead to higher temperatures, yet the data shows precicesly the opposite.

But that’s not all.

Below is a graph of Sydney’s temperature record for the 12th of May, 2008. The graph maps the recorded temperature from around lunch time until 11:30PM. (Source: Australian Bureau of Meteorology.)

Again, notice the distinctive downward trend. It appears we are not undergoing a period of global warming, but global cooling.

I wonder, how will the IPCC spin these latest “inconvenient truths”?

On the Archbishop of Westminster

Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Conner was the well deserving winner of The Bill Muehlenberg Trophy at Five Public Opinions the other day for his contempt for a balanced debate over Christianity occurring on the BBC. While boo-hooing over secularists and their supposed desire to “close off every voice and contribution other than their own”, he also suggested that the BBC abandon impartiality when covering religion and instead adopt an active bias in favour of Christian dogma:

“Sometimes the adversarial aspect — if you’ve got one view you’ve got to have the opposite view — supplants what we need.”

Hmmm.

In a lecture presented at Westminster Cathedral the other night, he whinged further about supposed attempts to “eliminate the Christian voice” from the public forum. No examples of these attempts are cited of course, and if he were pressed to provide one how likely would it be that this supposed stifling of the Christian perspective would in fact be criticism. I suspect the cardinal, like many conservative Christians, is unable to see the difference between persecution and criticism. They feel that they should be able to cast their opinion into the public domain and without scrutinisation because they are their deeply held personal beliefs.

In the same lecture he had this to say:

There are social currents today that want to isolate religion from other forms of knowledge and experience in order to marginalise it. One of the things which I challenge is the desire to separate Christianity from rational inquiry. Many of our ‘new atheists’ seem unable to cope with the notion of an intelligent, reflective Christian faith. But the Catholic Christian tradition is characterised by a close relationship between reasoned understanding and religious faith. Faith for us is the flowering of reason, not its betrayal.

Only to follow shortly after with this:

Our faith is not founded on the conclusions of reason, but it is grounded in the Logos, the expressive Word that comes from God, and it is compatible with reasoned thought.

So in one moment faith is “the flowering of reason”, and in the next it’s “not founded on the conclusions of reason”. Confused? You should be.

How is one to know precisely what the good cardinal thinks about reason and faith? If we listen to his interview on the BBC Today program we learn that reason without faith is dangerous and that the societies of Hitler and Stalin were “ruled by reason”. Yes, that’s right - the cardinal believes that the holocaust and the gulags were a direct result of reason untempered by faith. Ben “Science kills people” Stein has met his match.

The never-ending embarrassment that is Ben Stein

No doubt you will have already heard this gem from ID’s front man:

When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers, talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you.…Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

Yes Mr Stein, an opinion. An opinion steeped in an unbelievable amount of ignorance.

But Ben’s not done yet. He just keeps belching out the stupid in this interview at Christianity Today. Just look:

How familiar were you with the subject of Intelligent Design prior to this?

Stein: Not at all. I’m still not that familiar with it.

***

Did you do a lot of reading to prep for the role?

Stein: Some. I read one book cover to cover, From Darwin to Hitler, and that was a very interesting book—one of these rare books I wish had been even longer. It’s about how Darwin’s theory—supposedly concocted by this mild-mannered saintly man, with a flowing white beard like Santa Claus—led to the murder of millions of innocent people.

***

And it doesn’t scare me at all when scientists say, ”Oh, but that can’t be proved,” because neither can any of the Darwinian hypotheses about how life began be proved. Anyway, I couldn’t give a [profanity] whether a person calls himself a scientist. It doesn’t earn any extra respect from me, because it’s not as if science has covered itself with glory, morally, in my time. Scientists were the people in Germany telling Hitler that it was a good idea to kill all the Jews. Scientists were telling Stalin it was a good idea to wipe out the middle-class peasants. Scientists were telling Mao Tse-Tung it was fine to kill 50 million people in order to further the revolution.

You can almost taste the stupid.  Shouldn’t the ID movement be trying to put as much distance between Stein and itself as possible?

A word of advice…

If you are an intelligent design creationist and Chuck Norris gives a positive review of your propaganda film, it’s not something to be proud of.

CultureWatch: The gift that keeps on giving

I’ve been expecting this. A documentary exposing TEH EVIL DARWINIST CONSPIRACY would have to receive nothing other than lavish praise from CultureWatch author Bill Muehlenberg. Let’s see what he thinks…

It is very risky business indeed to seek to cross the atheist/materialist/Darwinist camp. If anyone dares to question the conventional wisdom here, the inquisition immediately snaps into place, the storm troopers are unleashed, and the heresy trials begin.

LOL! Talk about hyperbole. We’re only into the first paragraph and we have comparisons to inquisitors and Nazi storm troopers. Anyone seeking for a remotely coherent and reasoned discussion about evolution will have navigated away from Bill’s blog by now but, out of nothing more than morbid curiosity, let’s push on.

Will they ever give up?

At the American Spectator we find an article by Richard Weikart titled thusly:

Darwin and the Nazis

Uh - oh. It’s almost as if Weikart is about to try and blame Hitler and the Holocaust on Darwin and evolutionary biology. This type of rhetoric is currently the centrepiece of the Intelligent Design Creationist (IDC) modus operandi. As I’ve remarked on numerous occasions, continued failure to provide real evidence for their religiously motivated theories has forced IDC’s to resort to this mud throwing tactic. They can’t win on the science, so they try to get attention by mentioning Darwin and Hitler in the same sentence as frequently as possible. But wait, maybe I’m jumping the gun here. Perhaps Weikart has some new and convincing arguments which make a water-tight case for the connection between evolutionary biology and the Final Solution. Let’s see what he has offer…

Fred Phelps: Atheist in disguise?

We’ve been caught out.

Funeral pickets are a shameful parody of faith

Our view: The nuts of Westboro Baptist Church should stay in Kansas.

They can’t be real Christians. They must be part of an atheist cabal.

Their goal? To undermine churches. To give religion a black eye. To plant in the minds of the young a twisted and evil view of Christianity.

How else to explain the perverse tactics of the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church, whose members travel the country to picket soldiers’ funerals with a message of hate?

Well my atheist brethren, that’s the last time we assign Fred Phelps to covert operations.

Via Pharyngula.

Bolt: At least he’s consistent.

Kevin Rudd on Chinese and Tibetan relations:

Some have called for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics because of recent problems in Tibet. As I said in London on Sunday, I do not agree. I believe the Olympics are important for China’s continuing engagement with the world.

 

Australia, like most other countries, recognises China sovereignty over Tibet but we also believe it is necessary to recognise there are significant human rights problems in Tibet. The current situation in Tibet is of concern to Australians. We recognise the need for all parties to avoid silence and find a solution through dialogue.

Andrew Bolt on Kevin Rudd:

Recent “problems” in Tibet? Pray define.

Good on you Andrew.  You tirelessly offered the most scathing criticism of the Howard government for its mincing of words regarding human rights in China and it looks like you’re not going to stop now just because we have a Labor PM.  Your outrage at Alexander Downer’s actions to prevent Falun Gong protesters from “impairing the dignity of diplomatic missions and staff” at the Chinese consulate was second to none.  You berated the Howard government for receiving Hu Jintao in the Australian parliament and slammed them even more for seeing to it that the regimes opponents and the Greens were excluded for his address.  You heaped scorn upon the Howard government for a lack of transparency regarding discussion with China on human rights, in that such discussions were to take place behind closed doors.  You expressed your bitter disappointment with Alexander Downer’s dismissal of Bob Brown’s suggestion that trade talks with China only proceed after addressing human rights issues as “unacceptable”.  Your disdain for Howard and his government in its obsequious approach to the Chinese Government was unending.

Don’t back down now just because we have a Labor government.  That would be inconsistent.

 

 

 

And they just keep on digging…

Martin Cothran of Evolution News & Views weighs in on the ‘PZ Myers Expelled from Expelled’ Fiasco:

These days I get most of my news via my Google Reader, and about half of it over the last week seems to be about an attempt by biologist P. Z. Myers to sneak into a private viewing of the new movie “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” Ben Stein’s expose of Darwinist thought control in our institutions of higher learning. Myer’s attempt to get into the private screening (which was invitation only) was foiled when he was recognized and told that the private screening was, well, private.

This accusation of “sneaking in” has been dealt with at length in numerous places, yet it is still parroted by the Expelled fans ad nauseum. Myers found a website where you could register to attend a screening with some guests, so he registered. He registered with his real name. Upon arriving at the theatre he was identified and asked to leave immediately, and he did. How is this an attempt to “sneak in”.

From the indignation with which this incident has been received by the anti-ID crowd, one would think that he was beaten with truncheons by big men in steel-toed boots and physically dragged away from the theater.

There has been no indignation whatsoever. The reaction from the anti-ID crowd has been one of amusement. We think it’s hilarious. The irony in this whole affair is just too delicious. To quote PZ directly:

Tell me, are you laughing as hard as I am?

Does that strike one as indignant? Hardly.

Funnies

I while ago I posted some examples of Rap Lyrics in Graphical Format. I’ve recently received some more in the same vein: