Click on the chart above to see it in full size. The smallest scale is the one at the bottom (labeled (1)). Each scale above that one represents 10x the range of the scale below it.

When you hear news reports about “detectable radiation that is above normally accepted limits” around the heavily damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex in Japan, note that the “limits” all pretty much occur on scales 1 and 2. You have to get up to scale 4 (1000x the levels on scale 1) before you start seeing health problems.

This has been a public service messages.  ..bruce w..

…Dr. Phil Jones of the CRU made a series of (for warmists) startling admissions over the weekend. And, of course, Hitler has to weigh in. Hat tip to Gerard Van der Leun over at American Digest (one of the best blogs on the web). I know the Hitler clip is a bit overused, but this is very, very well done. Heh.

UPDATE 1830 MDT

FX is showing “The Day After Tomorrow” right now; I don’t know if that’s pure coincidence or some clever programming on someone’s part.  In either case, the movie’s wretched and nonsensical scientific gaffes, as well as the political heavy-handedness (e.g., the Dick Cheney clone), are even more painful in the light of the wholesale collapse of AGW during the past several months.  ..bfw..

Words to ponder (emphasis mine):

“There is one feature I notice that is generally missing in “cargo cult science.” . . . It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty—a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid—not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked . . . Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. . . . If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it.” — Richard Feynman (Physics Nobel Laureate, 1974)

Now, with those words in mind, go read these Climategate e-mails, and you’ll see why the Climategate scandal isn’t just “boys behaving badly”; it’s antithetical to science itself.

Hat tip to someone, if I can just retrace my browsing steps. ..bruce w..

I'm shocked, shocked! to discover that this has been going on.

I’ve avoided doing a lot of blogging on Climategate because so many other sites and bloggers are doing such a great job, while the Left gets increasingly shrill (“Pay no attention to the scientists behind the curtain!”).

But a new critical point has been reached: the Warmist scientific elite are starting to turn on one another:

One of the scientists to whom the emails were addressed, Professor Michael Mann, the Director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University has moved to distance himself from some of the comments in the emails that suggest scientists did not want the IPCC, the UN body charged with monitoring climate change, to consider studies that challenged the view global warming was genuine and man-made.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight, Prof Mann said: “I can’t put myself in the mind of the person who wrote that email and sent it. I in no way endorse what was in that email.”

Prof Mann also said he could not “justify” a request from Prof Jones that he should delete some of his own emails to prevent them from being seen by outsiders.

“I can’t justify the action, I can only speculate that he was feeling so under attack that he made some poor decisions frankly and I think that’s clear.”

Prof Mann then argued however that there was “absolutely no evidence” that he too had manipulated data, while he also said “I don’t believe that any of my colleagues have done that”.

To quote Glenn Reynolds: heh.  By the way, Mann himself is under investigation by Penn State, which may help explain the hasty denials. Don’t these scientists ever watch “Law & Order”? The first to cut a deal gets off easier.

UPDATE

Oh, and Al Gore has just canceled his pay-per-view ‘global warming’ lecture at Copenhagen. Wonder how many of his slides in his “new multimedia show” were based on Climategate-tainted research?  Hat tip to Climate Depot. (P.S. The photo above is the one that accompanied the original Danish news article.)

YET ANOTHER UPDATE

Courtesy of the Anchoress comes this Ghostbusters clip that let the secret slip years ago:

I worked for 18 months at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, which back then was right next door to NASA/JSC, and while it was possibly the best job I ever had, it forever disabused me of the notion of science as untainted by ambition, greed, money, politics and personality conflicts. ..bruce w..

Heh. Hat tip to American Digest. ..bruce..

I haven’t written much about ‘Climategate’ because so many others are doing such a great job (for example, see here, here, and here). But this video (hat tip to Ace of Spades) pretty much sums things up (and with a catchy tune, too!).  ..bruce w..

The sad thing is, it’s true.  An electric car is, in effect, a NIMBY-mobile. Unless you’ve got your own clean energy source (e.g., a large solar panel farm on your property — and here’s a shout-out to Jim Hamerly), you’re likely still impacting the environment — just at a distance.  ..bruce w..

From Minnesotans for Global Warming via American Thinker, we have the following quote (Discover Magazine, 1989) from Warmist Stephen Schneider:

On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary  scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.

Yep.  That about sums it up.

Some years ago, I ran across a statement by Sen. Tim Leahy made at hearings on some environmental issue back  in the 1980s.  I wish I had logged the source and exact quote at the time, because it was along the same lines. As I recall, someone raised the question as to whether this issue would actually materialize; Leahy’s response was that it really didn’t matter, because whether the threat was real or not, this way things would get done.  (If someone knows that quote and has a source, please let me know.)  ..bruce w..

Got up a bit earlier than usual this morning with hopes of dragging out my telescope and seeing the LCROSS lunar impact first-hand. I was encouraged because when I went to bed last night, the sky had mostly cleared after raining and then snowing all day (final accumulation about 1/2″ of snow on the ground). Alas, ’twas not to be — there’s fog outside, a relatively rare phenomenon here. I can see the moon glowing through the fog, almost directly overhead. So I turned NASA TV on instead and built up the fire in the wood-burning stove; two of the dogs are out here with me. Now to see what happens . . .

[UPDATED 0548 MDT]

Well, that was…underwhelming. As far as I can tell, the flash of the first impact overwhelmed the video signal from the trailing L-CROSS craft. I keep waiting for NASA TV to bring up some telescope views of the impact, but we’re treated instead to very low-key talking heads. Many, many years ago, Jerry Pournelle described someone’s lame marketing effort as if KFC were trying to market “hot, dead chicken”. That’s pretty much my impression every time I turn on NASA TV. I mean, I’m grateful they’re not doing the UFO/Bigfoot stuff that seems to have invaded the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, etc., but man, they’re telecasting is dull.

In other news, Pres. Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize. Seriously. I mean, shouldn’t they have waited until he actually accomplished something? Or was in office for more than 9 months? The Nobel Peace Prize committee has just wiped out whatever lingering value or meaning the prize may have had.  ..bruce w..

No, I’m not talking about “climate change”, though President Obama’s speech to the UN on the subject had some glaring and easily verifiable falsehoods. Instead, I’m talking about “shaken baby syndrome” (SBS), a well-known and well-established form of child death that results in about 200 murder/manslaughter convictions each year here in the United States. I certainly have had no reason to question its reality until now.

Except that it now appears that you can’t actually kill a baby just by shaking it (hat tip to Instapundit):

The research implies that human beings simply cannot shake a baby to death without an accompanying impact to the head. SBS cases, however, frequently show no external injuries. This suggests that other causes are at work. Additional research has shown babies to be lucid up to 72 hours before classic SBS symptoms set in, casting doubt on the long-held theory that the child’s caretaker at the time of death (or loss of consciousness) was the likely killer.

Last year, Discover magazine published a provocative article laying out much of this new research. Notably, the magazine found several specialists who have since changed their minds after testifying for the prosecution in multiple SBS cases. (At a post-conviction hearing for Edmunds, all of her defense experts said that when the case was tried in 1995, they would have testified for the prosecution.) One of those specialists is Ronald Uscinski, a student of Ayub Ommaya, the scientist whose research on monkeys in the late 1960s is thought to be the origin of the SBS diagnosis. When Uscinski went back and reexamined the study, he found no support for the way Ommaya’s research is currently being being used in the courtroom.

“When I put all of this together, I said, my God, this is a sham,” Uscinski told Discover. “Somebody made a mistake right at the very beginning, and look at what’s come out of it.”

Here’s the most telling passage of all:

This whole controversy speaks to a fundamental tension between science and law. Science moves along a slow trajectory from inquiry toward certainty. While the courts have been eager to embrace new science—particularly forensic science—at the trial level, they’re reluctant to revisit those cases when the science changes. One example is the now-discredited specialty of identifying bite mark evidence. But while science is mostly interested in testing, revising, and improving existing theories, once the jury has delivered its verdict, our criminal justice system puts a premium on finality. It takes a major upheaval in the scientific community (like DNA technology) to get courts to consider reopening old cases

I might note that there is a parallel tension between science and politics, with a similar lag in government reacting to  valid scientific issues and questions.  In other words, having committed itself to a given position, government works hard to reinforce that position and suppress dissenting research rather than to question it in the light of new information.

Such as with, well, you know.  ..bruce w..