Category Archives: Science

Has wind power REALLY saved the UK £104 billion?

In a word, no.

Article by Kit Knightly.

Excerpts:

I’m sure it seems the height of egotism to quote myself perpetually, but I’m going to do it anyway:

“The Science” is a self-sustaining industry of academics who need jobs and owe favours.

An ongoing quid pro quo relationship between the researchers – who want honors and knighthoods and tenure and book deals and research grants and to be the popular talking head explaining complex ideas to the multitudes on television – and the corporationsgovernments and “charitable foundations” who have all of those things in their gift.

This system doesn’t produce research intended to be read, it creates headlines for celebrities to tweet, links for “journalists” to embed, sources for other researchers to cite.

An illusion of solid substantiation that comes apart the moment you actually read the words, examine the methodology or analyse the data.

Self-reporting surveys, manipulated data, “modelling studies” that spit-out pre-ordained results. Affiliated-authors paid by the state or corporate interests to provide “evidence” that supports highly profitable or politically convenient assumptions.

…Interlacing layers of nothing designed to create the impression of something.

This pro-mask “study” is why you should NEVER “Trust the Science”

So, is the claim true? It doesn’t matter. That is entirely beside the point. The paper has already done its job by generating headlines like this, [. . .]

This study is just a single tile in mosaic of bullshit. It helps create an image and sell a story.

In this case, the hope is that enough dodgy studies in conflict with observable reality will override people’s awareness that their energy bills are getting bigger and their bank balances smaller.

Good luck with that.

Research Continues to Undermine Unusual, Catastrophic Nature of Present Climate Change

Article by H. Sterling Burnett.

Excerpts:

It is on the third testable claim or tenet of the theory of human-caused climate change, that the climate changes we are presently experiencing or soon will be experiencing are catastrophic or represent an existential threat to humanity, where the theory is weakest and the consensus completely breaks down. Most of the claims of disaster are based on inadequate, not fit for purpose, computer models. Their projections are regularly provably false, yet the so-called consensus community clings to them with undying faith, in a fashion not like science but a religion.

What the research does prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, however, is that there is still much unknown about the causes and consequences of the present iteration of climate change, the debate is still open. In addition, what the papers that I write about strongly indicate is that there is no firm evidence that present climate change has been harmful to humans, human societies, or the environment, and may have even produced net beneficial effects. What they also suggest is that the present climate change is not historically unusual, meaning it’s hard to identify a human fingerprint against the background changes nature has made throughout history.

The “Climate Change” Danger

Review of the book “Fossil Future: Why Global Human Florishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas – Not Less”, by Lew Rockwell.

Quote:

Epstein thinks that the danger from global warming has been exaggerated, but though he presents extensive evidence in support of this, his main contribution lies elsewhere. He argues that modern civilization depends on fossil fuels and that far from curtailing their use, we need to spread them to the impoverished parts of the world. So great are the benefits from using the fuels that only a true “end of the world” nightmare caused by CO2 emission could require that we shift to other energy sources, and despite the alarmists’ caterwauling, this nightmare is most unlikely to occur. Moreover, Epstein holds that the benefits of fossil fuels are so obvious that only a defect in thinking could have induced people to ignore them. He is a philosopher as well as an energy economist, and he expertly identifies the false thought pattern that has led to our current confusions.

Epstein says, “Whenever we hear about what the ‘experts’ think, we need to keep in mind that most of us have no direct access to what most expert researchers in the field think. We are being told what experts think through a system of institutions and people…. Understanding how this system, which I call our ‘knowledge system,’ works and how it can go wrong is the key to being able to spot when what we’re told the ‘experts’ think is very wrong—about fossil fuels or anything else.”

Make Birth Control Illegal Again

Article by Mary Proffit Kimmel.

Excerpt:

One hundred years ago, no one thought birth control was okay. In 1920, the Anglican Communion declared,

We utter an emphatic warning against the use of unnatural means for the avoidance of conception, together with the grave dangers—physical, moral and religious—thereby incurred, and against the evils with which the extension of such use threatens the race. (Lambeth Conference 1920, Resolution 68)

By 1930, they had changed their tune to: “The Conference believes that the conditions of modern life call for a fresh statement from the Christian Church on the subject of sex” (Lambeth Conference 1930, Resolution 9). Ominous words. The conference proceeded to follow this logic on to alarming conclusions:

[I]n those cases where there is such a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, and where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence, the Conference agrees that other methods may be used, provided that this is done in the light of the same Christian principles. The Conference records its strong condemnation of the use of any methods of conception control from motives of selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience. (Resolution 15)

This landmark declaration rendered the Anglicans the first major Protestant denomination to approve of artificial contraception. Since then, most others have followed suit.

Despite the Anglican Church’s outcry against “selfishness, luxury, [and] mere convenience,” these vices have come to dominate the sphere of sexual ethics and even legislation.