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intelligent design is a dumb idea, promoted by uncle rupert to retard the science of global warming...

uncle god

If intelligent design ever was a smidgin of godly tempering on the universe, it would soon have been like the inside of a frozen circus-tent on its space time co-ordinates, with energetic jumping dumb clowns stopped in mid-air. 


 


But the pedlars of the concept still push for the silly idea of intelligent design by mixing a variety of contrarily hypocritical arguments as if A + shit = B... It does not work. 
Unfortunately, it's an easy simplistic concept to sell: you marry pseudo-sciences with religious devotion and you capture the imagination of the idiots out there, the large proportion of human beings — all of us in search of a better image of ourselves than what we see in the mirror daily. We're ducks waiting to be plucked, as science is "too complicated". 

Imagine god wants to make you swallow you a reason for your miserable existence, tells you that it has all been planned according to the bible in six days and that — as an intelligent designer — He (god is a male) has goofed a few times with trial and error in order to achieve perfection until today — when you, lucky bum, are the chosen ones to do your glorious bit to help Him achieve perfection against that devilish Satan. Fantastically ridiculous, but you buy the vacuum cleaner. You will get your ticket to paradise as long as you pay the pedlars of "intelligent design" (priests, imams, rabbis, other religious idiots), to go on proselytising the message of Him. We're easy to mug. We HAVE BEEN RAISED TO BE MUGGED, even by the concept of Santa Claus — all for cash and control. 

The guys batting for the intelligent design are smartly devious and skilfully deceitful narrow-minded sociopaths, but of course not intelligent (a few in the toon mentioned at top). Their arguments always end up in a dogmatic view of their pseudo-sciences, or drag you in the "new discovery" that sciences can be doubtful about itself — while the real science has never been dogmatic and is always questioning its own relative position. 

These masters of deceit managed to get fraudulent degrees in honourable institutions, the honour of which becomes debased by awarding these degrees — BAs BSs, Drs in "scientific disciplines" to these lunatics who are intelligent design proponents. Probably, their godly inclination does not appear in their exam papers but I can smell a big protection racket, from the other side of the pacific.  

Remember Newton and his celestial mechanics which did not make sense unless he added the "hand of god" in his equation to avoid celestial collapse? Well, Mr Laplace soon sorted this out and recalculated the whole thing without the "hand of god" and it's this latter celestial mechanics understanding that is still in use today, including black holes. Laplace was an atheist. The "intelligent designers" hate atheists.

The modern front troops of this assault on the decency of secular scientific reality stem from the old creationist camps whose zealoted rabid extreme views of the 1970s were beyond the pale and easy to unpick. In the mid 1980s, some of these charlatans realised they could not sustain the fight between science and creationism efficiently, without looking completely dorky like Mr Ham and his rebuilding of Noah's ark according to god's cubits.

So some clever nut revived the old idea of the watchmaker... 

The watchmaker analogy or watchmaker argument is a teleological argument, which by way of an analogy, states that design of creation (like a watch) implies a designer. The analogy has played a prominent role in natural theology and the "argument from design," where it was used to support arguments for the existence of God and for the intelligent design of the universe. The most famous statement of the teleological argument using the watchmaker analogy was given by William Paley in his 1802 book Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity.[1]


The 1859 publication of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection put forward an explanation for complexity and adaptation, which reflects scientific consensus on the origins of biological diversity,[2] and provides a counter-argument to the watchmaker analogy: for example, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins referred to the analogy in his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker giving his explanation of evolution. In the 19th century, deists, who championed the watchmaker analogy, held that Darwin's theory fit with "the principle of uniformitarianism—the idea that all processes in the world occur now as they have in the past" and that deistic evolution "provided an explanatory framework for understanding species variation in a mechanical universe."[3]

In the United States, starting in the 1960s, creationists revived versions of the argument to dispute the concepts of evolution and natural selection, and there was renewed interest in the watchmaker argument.

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

 

In order to make their newly revived poor arguments stick, the "intelligent design" proponents have to always fault the positions taken by Darwin, the evolutionists, real science and of course atheists like Richard Dawkins. They do it under various guises, with various fraudulent techniques and often will show that a proposition by Darwin "could be wrong" or unexplainable, unless one uses the "intelligent design" component. Ipso facto, ergo sum, Bob's your uncle, here comes Uncle Rupe...

 

I introduce Uncle Rupe here, yet again, on this website, early in this piece because we owe a lot of major troubles to this mischievous deceitful man — a gambler who knows how to keep the odds in his favour. 

 

Rupert Murdoch wants to retard as much as possible the concept of anthropogenic global warming. Rupert Murdoch wants the world to be ruled by the Empire and impose its free business practice of unregulated sanctioned robbery. Rupert murdoch wants to make megabucks and help his mates of the one per cent also make oodles of cash, while you still look at yourself in the mirror and see a poor cow of a peasant on the way to the daily slaughter — despite being liberal with the after-shave, the perfume and the high heels — products promoted by advertising, paying for Uncle Rupe services. 

 

Rupert Murdoch wants the religious morality to keep you in his neo-conservative grasp. 

 

Rupert Murdoch helped the war on Iraq come to light by supporting and fostering all the con-artists of this crummy illegal war — on several front: It was an ideological neoconservative affair, it was deceitful, even by the CIA standards, and it helped many of the neocon characters to enrich themselves at the expense of others including the Iraqi people. As well, as an aside, wars sells news and stuff, like hot cakes. More cash.

 

The man Rupert is a menace. For example, Eric Metaxas has been published in the Wall Street Journal (owned by Rupert). WHY? 

 

Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God

The odds of life existing on another planet grow ever longer. Intelligent design, anyone?
By ERIC METAXAS
Dec. 25, 2014 4:56 p.m. ET

In 1966 Time magazine ran a cover story asking: Is God Dead? Many have accepted the cultural narrative that he’s obsolete—that as science progresses, there is less need for a “God” to explain the universe. Yet it turns out that the rumors of God’s death is premature.

Blah blah blah...

 

Hello yellow? Eric Metaxas has nothing to do with business, except his "intelligent design" views will favour Uncle Rupe's anti-global warming science and his pro-business models of inequality. I don't think uncle rupe believes in "intelligent design" per se. He's not that cluey or anal about philosophical stuff. He is more of a clever street fighter boof-head in the ring of snake-oil merchandiser where you will be the steak-knives winner, once you pay cash for his Whirlyster of news-digestor. You did not see the trick, did you?

 

Rupert know how to place his foot in your door and sell you the stuff you don't need nor want. He is a natural. Well, he learnt the ropes from his gambling grand dad, Rupert Green, at horse races.  

 

Come'on! You the investigative journalists out there! Join the dots!... 

 

Rupert starts a new magazine called The Weekly Standard in 1995, a magazine for neo-cons to reinforce their own values and destroy anything that was not in their scope, with a fellow called William Kristol. Kristol is an American neoconservative political analyst and commentator, who in 1997 also co-founded the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) with Robert Kagan. Hello? More yellow? Now what do you think? Would Uncle Rupe stay on the sideline from all this excitment? 

 

I bet my underpants against a ton of your rotten gold that Uncle Rupe was the discreet ideological underwriter for what followed. He had his audience with Bush the dumb President, weekly — not just to talk about the weather. He got miffed when his Romney did not get the gig against Obama, but in his own way, Rupert managed to contain Obama, nonetheless. 

 

Trump does believe in his own worth and hubris, but trust me, should Uncle Rupe decide to sink Trump, Donald would not last five minutes more. This is why Trump is starting to put the lid on his diatrabic excesses...

 

Remember, silly Romney spilled the beans when he made an off-the-cuff remark about the 47 per cent people who "did not pay taxes" or such. Of course in this figure, one would have to include at least one (or more) per cent of the rich geezers who send their loot offshore, but that was not what he meant. 

 

Anyway the big beast on Uncle Rupe's present radar is global warming. He will have his hands, directly and derivatively, on all the outlets that will attack the scientific evidence. For him, running with "intelligent design" is one of the way to damage the scientific debate. Sow as much doubt as you can is the tactic — a bit like throwing tacks on the road of intelligent sciences. The scientists will have to spend time fixing tires while the intelligent designers will run full steam ahead in their crappy little souped-up god-invented bomb, but who cares, Rupert would have retarded scientific advancement on this platform. Rupert will play the "scientific" game on the other side of the fence as well, knowing how to make a buck with it, like having his stable make Avatar the movie — a pseudo attack on the way the neo-cons badly run the universe, in a fairy tale style, cum Puss in Boots. That is cash and redeeming points. Smile. You have to admit it, Uncle Rupe is clever.

 

So here we have the front troops of the Discovery Institute and guests. They will try to sow doubt in the theory of evolution at every street corner. They will use sophisticated presentation to illustrate their ideological deceit. 

 

Let's take the Cambrian for example. Here we get that loony Stephen C Meyer:

Meyer''s second book, Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design (HarperOne 2013), appeared on the New York Times best seller list, July 7, 2013.[1] In Darwin's Doubt, Meyers discusses challenges in the Cambrian explosion, and argues for intelligent design as a potential explanation for the abrupt appearance of animals in the fossil record.

 

Now for the record, HarperOne is the religious branch of HarperCollins publishing house... Okay. I let you guess, who owns HarperCollins? Come on... I've given you a few clues... Give up? Okay it's News Corp... Who runs News Corp? Well, Uncle Rupe of course... See, it was not so difficult. 

 

Second, the Cambrian "explosion" was not "abrupt" despite the comment on the book. Even an "intelligent designer" would have to work out the next in this CONtext. 

 

But science can successfully explain this high evolutionary activity of the period. EVEN TODAY, It does not take long for subspecies to develop into new species, in adaptation to changes in the environmental factors. The changes during the Cambrian were gradual enough to encourage this gamut of evolutionary diversity. In opposition, there were times where the changes in the environment factors were too severe, including global warming interfaced with cooling event, leading to MASS extinction of species. What? the intelligent designer decided to make extinct his creation, say like the the extinction event 65 million years ago, like the dinosaurs? BULLSHIT! Designed BULLSHIT.

 

The Cambrian argument of the "intelligent designers" does not hold upright for five minutes despite their long winded crawling deceit.

 

But they will push on and on and on, retarding the progress of true scientific understanding. The "intelligent designers" are simpletonians and are philosophically corrupt.

 

 

a piece of bad design...

 

Discovery Institute (D.I.)

 Background

The Discovery Institute (D.I.) was founded in 1990 by Bruce Chapman, a former Reagan administration official, and by George Gilder as a branch of the Hudson Institute. The Institute was named after the H.M.S. Discovery, which explored Puget Sound in 1792. In its early days, the Institute was heavily funded by religious organizations and foundations including the MacLellan Foundation, which supported “organizations 'committed to furthering the Kingdom of Christ'.”  [1] 

The Discovery Institute opened the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture in 1996, with the purpose of providing “an institutional home for researchers and scientists challenging Neo-Darwinism and working on the theory of intelligent design.” [2]

The Discovery Institute describes itself as “inter-disciplinary community of scholars and policy advocates dedicated to the reinvigoration of traditional Western principles and institutions and the worldview from which they issued. Discovery Institute has a special concern for the role that science and technology play in our culture and how they can advance free markets, illuminate public policy and support the theistic foundations of the West.” It is based in Seattle, Washington, and has scholars and fellows across the country and internationally. D.I. spreads its work through books, papers, reports, conferences, lectures, seminars, and though various media. [3]

The Discovery Institute's philosophy is that “Mind, not matter, is the source and crown of creation, the wellspring of human achievement.” It promotes the “Judea-Christian culture” as having been the primary force behind science, technology, and development, and contrasts the “contemporary materialistic worldview” as weakening science. [4]

Discovery breaks its operations into different arms:

Science and Culture — Promotes Intelligent design and which includes “Teach The Controversy” and the “Academic Freedom Bills.”

Technology and Democracy — Studies technology as an engine of growth, and calls for  the elimination of government regulation.

Cascadia — Voice for creative solutions to metropolitan, state, regional, and national transportation problems.

“Human Exceptionalism” (Bioethics) — Studies issues relating to assisted suicide, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, human genetic manipulation, human cloning, and the animal rights movement.

The Real Russia Project — Commentary on the future of democracy in Russia.

Center on Wealth, Poverty & Morality

The Discovery Institute has argued that American schools should “teach the controversy” and present the “strengths and weaknesses of evolution,” reports the Huffington Post. [5]

Stance on Climate Change

In October 2013, Michael Medved, Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute, went on a live broadcast to talk about this book “Darwin’s Doubt,” which argues for intelligent design and debates the existence of climate change.  

 

According to Medved, who cites Matt Ridley as a source: “You have this period of time where you've had no appreciable global warming, but the world economy has roughly doubled in that 17 year period. And so there is an increase of human-produced carbon dioxide, and yet here's been no appreciable warming which is contrary to all of the models that are predicting the huge increase in warming over the next century. And so, if the models don't explain the effects we already have well, how can we count on them to accurately predict the future?” [6]

In a 2009 article, Michael Egnor at the Discovery Institute's Evolution News and Views, describes global warming as a “fraud.” He quotes Australian journalist Andrew Bolt to support this view:

“[T]here will be an accounting for this [global warming] fraud. People are very very angry, and while the skeptics whose darkest doubts have been vindicated don’t pull the levers of organized science (the frauds do that), there are some financial and political resources available to the skeptics who have been demanding integrity in science, and they understand now that this is war.

“A cabal of leading scientists, politicians, and media concubines have conspired to lie about global warming. The reasons are obvious: power and money. […]” [7]

In 2006, Discovery Institute Senior Fellow David Klinhoffer wrote in The Forward:

“As a new report by the House Energy and Commerce Committee makes clear, statisticians doubt the work of those climate researchers who seek to show that the climate for the past 1,000 years was stable until recent times when it suddenly rose sharply. On the contrary, the climate has always varied, up and down over centuries and millennia.” [8]

 Funding

According to data the Conservative Transparency Project compiled from publicly-available tax records, the Discovery Institute has received funding from the following sources (1993 - 2013). Note that not all funding entries have been verified by DeSmogBlog for accuracy. View the attached .xls spreadsheet on the Discovery Institute's funding sources for more information. 

Note that DonorsTrust is the Discovery Institute's single largest donor. DonorsTrust and its sister organization Donors Capital Fund have been described as the “dark money ATM of the conservative movement,” allowing for the anonymous distribution of funds through “donor-advised funds.” [9]

DonorContributionDonorsTrust$3,069,500National Christian Foundation$597,250The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation$195,000Searle Freedom Trust$80,000William H. Donner Foundation$50,000The Carthage Foundation$40,000John Templeton Foundation$28,750Barney Family Foundation$25,000Castle Rock Foundation$25,000Aequus Institute$2,000Gilder Foundation$1,000Grand Total$4,113,500

According to a 2005 New York Times Article, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation once provided D.I. $1 million a year, including $50,000 of Mr. Chapman's $141,000 annual salary.  [1]

Key People

Board of Directors

As of November, 2015: [10]
  • Howard Ahmanson
  • Dave Barber
  • Charles K Barbo
  • Bruce Chapman
  • Kathy Connors
  • Skip Gilliland
  • Slade Gorton
  • Richard R. Greiling
  • Bob Kelly
  • Bryan Mistele
  • Byron Nutley
  • Mariana Parks
  • James Spady
  • Raymond J Waldmann

Senior Fellows

As of November, 2015: [11]

  • George Gilder
  • Frank Gregorsky
  • Hance Haney
  • David Klinghoffer
  • Michael Medved
  • Stephen C Meyer
  • John R Miller
  • Donald P Nielsen
  • Scott S Powell
  • Jay W Richards
  • Wesley J Smith
  • Bill Walton
  • John G West
  • John Wohlstetter

 Fellows

As of November, 2015: [11]

  • Bruce Agnew
  • Erik J Larson

Center for Science and Culture

As of November, 2015: [11]

  • Stephen C Meyer —  Program Director 
  • John G. West — Associate Director
  • Phillip E Johnson — Program Advisor
Senior Fellows
  • Michael J Behe
  • David Berlinski
  • Paul Chien
  • William A Dembski
  • Michael Denton
  • David DeWolf
  • Guillermo Gonzalez
  • Bruce L Gordon
  • Michael Newton Keas
  • David Klinghoffer
  • Jay W Richards
  • Richard Sternberg
  • Richard Weikart
  • Jonathan Wells
  • John G West
  • Benjamin Wiker
  • Jonathan Witt
Fellows
  • John Bloom
  • Raymond Bohlin
  • Walter Bradley
  • J. Budziszewski
  • Robert Lowry Clinton
  • Jack Collins
  • William Lane Craig
  • Michael Flannery
  • Brian Frederick
  • Mark Hartwig
  • Cornelius G Hunter
  • Robert Kaita
  • Dean Kenyon
  • Forrest M Mims
  • Scott Minnich
  • J.P. Moreland
  • Paul Nelson
  • Nancy Pearcey
  • Pattle Pak-Toe Pun
  • John Mark Reynolds
  • Henry F Schaefer III
  • Geoffrey Simmons
  • Wolfgang Smith
  • Charles Thaxton

 Actions

November 4, 2015

Jay Richads, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, went on the Heartland Institute's Daily Podcast to discuss “the misanthropic nature of modern environmentalism.” According to the event description, H. Sterling Burnett and Richards “discuss how the policies to fight climate change are both unnecessary and likely to hurt the poor and how we should come to understand the truth about climate change.” [12]

February 24, 2015

The Discovery Institute (D.I.) hosted a free “lunch talk” by a (leading evangelical) climate change skeptic E. Calvin Beisner titled “Climate Change and the Poor.” 

According to the event description, “In this lunch talk and discussion, environmental policy expert E. Calvin Beisner will explore the consequences for the poor of some commonly proposed climate change policies and investigate whether those consequences are consistent with an ethical society.” [13]

October 17, 2007

George Gilder, Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute introduced a panel on “The Global Warming Myth,” (PDF) presented at Telecosm 2007. [14]

See a video of the presentation on the Discovery Institute website. [15]

December 5, 2006

The Discovery Institute hosted a talk by Dennis T. Avery of the Hudson Institute and S. Fred Singer, titled “Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years.”

In the event, they would “compile peer-reviewed data from scientists all over the world to dispel the widespread notion that global warming is caused by, and can be controlled by, human beings.” [16]

December, 2006

The Discovery Institute “claimed to have a list of 600+ 'scientists' who objected to evolution.” [17] 

The statement, published at DissentForDarwin.org, one of DI's numerous registered domain names, read:

“We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.” [18]

Related Organizations

  • Hudson Institute

Discovery Institute websites include:

  • Center for Science and Culture
  • Discovery News
  • Russia Blog
  • Disco-Tech
  • Cascadia Prospectus
  • Secondhand Smoke
  • Intelligent Design - The Future
  • Evolution News and Views
  • Letter From the Capitol
  • The Enterprise Blog

The Discovery Institute has registered over three hundred website domain names, many registered by D.I. Fellows and associates. SourceWatch lists the following as examples: [20],[19]

  • IntelligentDesign.org
  • EvolutionNews.org
  • IDTheFuture.com
  • DissentFromDarwin.org
  • DarwinAndDesign.com
  • DarwinismAndID.com
  • IconsofEvolution.com
  • FromDarwinToHitler.com
  • PriviledgedPlanet.com
  • DarwinDayInAmerica.com
  • JudgingPBS.com
  • ReviewEvolution.com

 

is our malcolm in rupert's pocket with CONfidence?...

When Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull rose to address the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris late last year, he told the world Australia would meet the challenges of global warming "with confidence and optimism".

You don't turn off R&D spending when there's a revolution under way 

Andrew Blakers, Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems, ANU

Australia's carbon emissions target - slicing 2000 levels by about 19 per cent by 2030 - would halve pollution on a per capita basis, "one of the biggest reductions" of any G20 nation, Turnbull said. 

The government would also double "clean energy innovation" investment over the next five years, and carve out $1 billion from the existing aid budget to help threatened Pacific neighbours build "climate resilience" and cut emissions.

One cause for optimism was that Australian universities were leading the charge in "energy and climate science innovation".

The University of NSW had held the world record for solar cell efficiency – now at 25.6 per cent – for 30 of the past 32 years.  And by 2018, more than 60 per cent of all new solar cells would use technology developed in Australia, Turnbull noted.

And on Friday, New York time, Environment Minister Greg Hunt will take the next step to lock in the climate pledges when Australia joins more than 150 nations at a UN ceremony to ink the Paris accord.

The pact, which the government plans to ratify later this year if re-elected, aims to limit global temperature increases to between 1.5 and 2 degrees of pre-industrial levels - even if current national offers fall far short of the greenhouse gas reductions needed.

Bad news on the climate front

But in the four months since Turnbull's speech, climate news from abroad and at home has been anything but positive.

Global temperature records were so decisively smashed in the first three months of 2016 that Gavin Schmidt, the head of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, declared this year is already virtually certain to be the hottest on record – for a third year in a row:

Too soon? I estimate >99% chance of an annual record in 2016 in @NASAGISS temperature data, based on Jan-Mar alone pic.twitter.com/mEDvHxfmjj

— Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) April 15, 2016
​Hunt's send off wasn't cheery either. Before boarding the plane, he joined a last-minute teleconference arranged by Queensland counterpart Steven Miles to address the worst case of coral bleaching to hit the Great Barrier Reef.

During the "occasionally heated" call, Miles says he called for an urgent meeting in Cairns so officials "could witness at first-hand the devastating effects of climate change". Hunt refused the invite but agreed to a weekly ministerial phone call to discuss the unfolding disaster.

But for policy areas directly under Turnbull's control, it's been a dismal few months for climate action, not least CSIRO's assault on climate science launched on February 4 that will see dozens of leading researchers sacked among as many as 450 jobs to go.

Despite pleas of budget penury, the government somehow managed to find $15.4 million a couple of weeks later for a new Oil, Gas and Energy Resources Growth Centre to, among other things, "foster community support" for non-renewables, including coal and nuclear energy.

It is also forked out $3.3 million to two researchers to examine the effects of wind farms on health. Just four researchers made submissions for the cash, a remarkably small number, according to Sydney University public health expert, Simon Chapman. 

Taken for granted

And a fresh concern surfaced this week with 61 leading scientists writing to Turnbull decrying the government's decision last month to end grants from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).

Set up by the Rudd-Gillard government, the agency still had $1.3 billion in funding to disperse by 2022.

Instead, it will now work with the Clean Energy Finance Corp to offer $100 million in loans annually for 10 years to foster "clean and renewable energy".

The end of ARENA's grant funding removes "an essential component of technology innovation", the mostly solar researchers said in the letter obtained by Fairfax Media.

Forty years of such grants over had allowed Australia to contribute "very far above its weight" in renewable energy. By contrast, reliance on equity returns "have rarely been effective" in advancing early-stage research, the scientists said.

Richard Corkish, chief operating officer of UNSW-based Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics, said his facility faced "an existential threat" if the $4 million in annual ARENA funds ended. The school continues to spawn world-leading technology, including new types of solar cells using abundant, non-toxic materials.

"ARENA is our major funding source," Corkish says.

Andrew Blakers, who led development of the solar PV technology being adopted by the world's largest producers, said all new electricity investment in Australia over the past five years had been in solar or wind energy.

"This is incredible", says Blakers, who heads the Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems at the Australian National University. "You don't turn off R&D spending when there's a revolution under way."

A record $US286 billion ($366 billion) was invested in renewable energy research and deployment last year, the UN Environment Programme said on Thursday. About $US130 billion was spent on new coal and gas-fired power plants.

The PM's office declined to comment on the letter, while Fairfax Media also sought comment from Hunt.

Still a 'black sheep'

Hunt does have a positive story to tell in New York about Australia's ambitions in that per capita emissions will drop more than most nations, says Malte Meinshausen, director of the Australian-German Climate & Energy College at Melbourne University.

"But Australia is still going to be the highest in the developed world" at about 15.7 tonnes of CO2 emitted per person by then, Meinshausen says. 

However, even those goals - which will leave Australia "a black sheep" vying with Canada as the worst emitter among rich nations - may be out of reach.

"We are still walking in the other direction," Mainshausen says."The big gap is there are no policies on the horizon" to hit the target.

Paying polluters to cut emissions and other existing measures won't get Australia anywhere close. "It has to be an economy-wide price on carbon in one form or another," he says.

Labor still to outline plans

Mark Butler, opposition environment spokesman, says Labor will release its policies in coming weeks.

He notes, though, that while Australia is likely to meet its 2020 target to cut 2000-level emissions by 5 per cent, it would do so largely because of surplus credits under the existing Kyoto treaty: "By the government's own figures, by 2020 emissions will be 6 per cent above 2000 levels and will keep on rising."


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/walking-in-the-wrong-direction-malcolm-turnbulls-broad-retreat-on-climate-20160420-goat2p.html#ixzz46WO78U5w 
Follow us: @smh on Twitter | sydneymorningherald on Facebook

stirred possum...

In a Washington Post article, George F Will exposes what could be seen as "leftist" outrageous legislation on muzzling the denialists of global warming. And he is right. Though for many people, including our con artist Attorney General, George Brandis, the science is "settled", the debate cannot be muzzled by this recognition. For Brandis for example, since the science is settled, there is no need to spend cash on more investigations. Of course this is the new trick of the right, caving on one point of the argument, but doing nothing about the solution needed and carrying on with the business of burning fossil fuels as usual or going into airy fairy land of "innovations" designed to fork out cash to their mates. 

Science is never settled. There is no dogma in science. There are only questions with temporary solid answers that are very specific within statistical brackets and can be verified by repeat of experimentation. At present the science of global warming despite being "settled' cannot make prediction on how much the sea levels are going to really rise or what will be the temperature of the planet on July 17th 2102. 

This is what I exposed in my early blogs on this site: increases of whatever could be 5.8 or 6.3 degrees Celsius on average but we will say 6 for argument sake. The point is your arse will be hot.

But here, in the process objected to by Will I see a way taken by the lawmakers to highlight the outrageous nature of global warming denialism, by making "outrageous" threats of legislation. It is designed to stir the possum and suss out all the bad will and hypocrisy coming of the denialism camp.

 

Rather than going with the "global warming is crap" mantra, the denialists will have to present proper arguments to defend their case — placing them on the back-foot.

 

 

Meanwhile George F Will is seen in decline by some other journos:

 

 

Can Will truly believe that female college students are behaving the way he claims they are — faking sexual assaults because it confers benefits on them? If he does, what does that imply about his broader capacity to think, analyze, and opine? If he doesn't, what does that imply about his willingness to prostitute his intellect for the sake of rallying the right-wing rabble in the bleachers?

To be perfectly honest, I don't know what to think. Between those two unpleasant possibilities — intellectual breakdown or intellectual self-betrayal — I suppose I have to go with the first option. It was just five years ago, after all, that Will railed against the American people for wearing blue jeans. I find it hard to believe that a man so proudly and unapologetically elitist would deliberately slum it to prove his populist bona fides.

But that means that something just as troubling has happened: a once thoughtful conservative has undergone a marked intellectual collapse right before our eyes.

Maybe everyone would be better off if he just stuck with baseball.

read more: http://theweek.com/articles/446227/sad-sorry-decline-george-f

 

murdoch will use any lies...

 

It appears that the South Australian conservative opposition may have been the original source for the dodgy numbers that formed the basis of an erroneous front page story on The Australian this week about wind generation in the state.

RenewEconomy understands from several sources that the South Australia opposition Liberal Party, a big opponent of wind energy, obtained data from the Australian Energy Market Operator and then “stuffed the numbers up” quite spectacularly, and passed its mistaken conclusions on to The Australian.

 

...

RenewEconomy noted in its article that the errors were so bad that they might have been funny, were it not for the fact that so many in the conservative side of politics, and mainstream media too, accept them at face value.

It’s somewhat ironic, then, that the numbers could be sourced from the Coalition. In the frenzied attack on renewable energy, the Coalition and the Murdoch media across Australia appear to feed off each others myths and mistakes.

But it is a major concern. It is not just in South Australia where the Coalition is launching a major attack on renewables. In the Northern Territory, Country Liberal Party chief minister Adam Giles is making renewable energy a major part of his re-election campaign, despite quoting numbers about solar cost that we have noted are absurd.

In Victoria and in Queensland, the Coalition is lambasting the Labor governments for having set 50 per cent renewable energy targets. In NSW, the Coalition government has created the “worst investment” climate for renewable energy in the country.

Surely, this seeps through and influences the federal Coalition, which has already canned the carbon price, cut the renewable energy target and overseen a slide down the country’s rankings in climate policy and energy efficiency.

Indeed, the Energy Supply Council, which represent AGL Energy and Origin Energy and other fossil fuel generators, wants state targets abandoned. They want the less ambitious federal target to be observed in all states.

And the misinformation in the media continues apace. Another bunch of articles in the Murdoch media on Friday continue to make the same mistakes and ignore the role of gas-fired generation.

 

Read more: http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/coalition-fed-dodgy-numbers-on-wind-energy-to-murdoch-media-20279

 

Read from top.,.,.

 

a box of jellyfish...

The "combined astronomical, biological and evolutionary chances for life to form and evolve to intelligence" are infinitesimally small. Throw in the enormity of the cosmos — for instance, the Milky Way galaxy is said to be 100,000 light years across — and, as Smith says, "we probably have no one to talk to."

So, it turns out that we are far from ordinary, much less "chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet" as Stephen Hawking so depressingly put it.


Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/astrophysicist-challenges-view-that-we...

 

Here we read a less intelligent comment by Metaxas that could be expressed better at a meeting of jellyfish in a box. Metaxas tries to bring science into religion and fails miserably. Sure we have "no one to talk to" but this does not exclude the possibility of life on other planets in the entire universe which is made of about 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars (and counting) with planetary systems, not counting the nebulaes nor the 25 per cent of dark matter we cannot see. Even someone like Laplace, a brilliant mind in the early 19th century, solved the annoying "hand of god" that Newton had included in his mathematics to avoid universal collapse. Laplace was an atheist.

Just because one astrophysicist said that "humanity and our home planet, Earth, are rare and cosmically precious," and he urges us to "act accordingly" does not mean that he believes in god, nor that there is a god. Rare does not mean there are nil other planet like earth in the cosmos. It means that we have to look after this one because the distances are not life-friendly, not for god's sake but for our own survival in evolution. Yes, there is something called EVOLUTION. It could happen somewher else in this universe. And what he means by "caring", would possibly be understanding the mechanics of global warming which is accelerating at the moment.

read from top...

on the misuse of nature by the religious right...

It has been more than three years now since Stephen Pickard penned his letter to the religious believers among our federal parliamentarians, arguing the case for action on climate change.

The Reverend Professor Pickard, an Anglican bishop in Canberra and executive director of the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture at Charles Sturt University, saw that conservative Christians in Parliament were unconvinced by scientific fact, so he took another tack. He argued theology.

Specifically, he took issue with the interpretation many in the religious right place on the lines from Genesis, in which God gives humankind, starting with Adam and Eve, dominion over all on Earth.

“The question of human beings having this dominion is often used as a rationale for the present way we deal with the Earth’s resources,” he tells The Saturday Paper. “It becomes a subliminal rationale for continued misuse of nature.”

 

...

On climate change policy, the Liberal Party under the moderate leadership of Andrew Peacock was significantly more progressive than Labor under Bob Hawke, and under the leadership of John Hewson it was way ahead of Paul Keating.

But that was long ago and, says Puplick, the Coalition parties have been in “full retreat” on the issue ever since, as they have come increasingly under the sway of the political and religious right.

“Over the course of the last 20-odd years, the Liberal Party has become anti-intellectual,” Puplick says.

“It has moved away from issues of evidence and has become increasingly anti-scientific. So much so that Tony Abbott became the first prime minister in 30 odd years not to appoint a minister for science.”

The issue of climate change provides the clearest example of the shift, he says, but it is evident more broadly.

“It’s an attitude of ‘never mind the evidence’. If you don’t like what’s happening in society, vote no. If you don’t like what’s happening in the broader social environment, vote no.”

This week, the “vote no” brigade in our government is focused on same-sex marriage. A couple of weeks from now, the focus will shift back to climate change, and the response to the review of energy policy by Australia’s chief scientist, Alan Finkel.

And that, in the view of Tony Abbott’s former chief of staff, Peta Credlin, will be the biggest test of Malcolm Turnbull and his government.

May God help him, because the Christian right won’t.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on Aug 26, 2017 as "How the religious right stall climate action". Subscribe here.

Read more:

https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2017/08/26/how-the-religious-right-stall-climate-action/15036696005126

 

Read from top: the religious right is used by Uncle Rupe to spread fake news about global wrming, possibly to help his industrial polluting mates and his shares in mining...

creationists versus carbon dating...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APEpwkXatbY

 

Please read from top...

creationism isn't science...

Section 5: Science Education and Intelligent Design

Good science education is the key to the innovation and creativity needed for the U.S. to maintain its world leadership in science and technology. At a time when we are placing so much attention on improving math and science skills, it is particularly disturbing that science education is under attack.

The success of the intelligent design movement in convincing the public and policy makers that it is has a legitimate place in the science classroom is causing increasing alarm. Many teaching, scientific, and religious associations have circulated statements opposing the teaching of intelligent design as science. Good web resources for teachers and others opposing creationism and intelligent design in the classroom are growing rapidly.

Recent legal challenges 1 to attempts to mandate intelligent design in the science curriculum have been fairly successful. Rulings such as those in Dover County, Pennsylvania and in Kansas concluded that intelligent design is based on religion and not science and should not be taught as an alternative to evolution. But new anti-evolution efforts are gaining ground across the country at an alarming rate.

There are a number of excellent websites with resources for teachers, scientists, policy makers, and concerned citizens. We have included a few in the Suggested Resources section below.

Suggested Resources

Statements by Scientific and Education Societies

  • National Center for Science Education - “Voices for Evolution,” a project of NCSE, provides an extensive list of statements from education, scientific, religious, and civil liberties groups supporting the teaching of evolution in public schools.

Resources for Teachers

Legal Aspects of Intelligent Design in Science Education

read more:https://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/what_you_can_do/science-education-and.html#.WmLE2K2B2B4

the end of evolution?...

Before reading this self-promotion by the stupid inventor of "intelligent design", read from top...

 

Now: Darwin's devolution:

 

While Stephen Colbert has called Michael J. Behe the “Father of Intelligent Design,” Behe’s arguments have been called, “close to heretical” by the New York Times Book Review, and Richard Dawkins has publicly taken him to task for his “maverick” views. Wherever he goes, Behe makes waves, but has remained singularly focused on doing rigorous scientific analysis that points to controversial but incredible results that other scientists won’t touch.

Twenty years after publishing his seminal work, Darwin’s Black Box, Behe shows that new scientific discoveries point to a stunning fact: Darwin’s mechanism works by a process of devolution, not evolution. On the surface, evolution can help make something look and act different, but it doesn’t have the ability to build or create anything at the genetic level.

 

Don't bother reading more: https://darwindevolves.com

 

From Science magazine:

... Darwin devolves fails to challenge modern evolutionary science because, once again, Behe does not full engage with it. He misrepresents theory and avoids evidence that challenge him. 

 

This is a very polite conclusion after a full page of points rebuttal that should drive this biochemist into the ground where he could study the evolution of worms and maggots. I would be more direct: Behe's work is full of convoluted shit, dressed with incoherence beyond belief, though based in the belief of an "intelligent designer". Read from top again... 

 

The end of evolution will not come by devolution but by non-adaptation due to the rapid changes in the environment factors, presently those induced by human activities. Inability to adapt is the main driver of extinction, not devolution (though devolution exist, it is not the driver of "evolution"). Life depends on duplication. Evolution depends on changes in this duplication in which the parents develop a certain adaptation to changes... Duplication of cells is also very complex and without going into too much details, the Science magazine explains this complexity in most issues including "Asymmetric organization of core enzymes in replisomes".

Read from top.