sunsettommy Posted March 19, 2007 Report Posted March 19, 2007 Civilization Watch First appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Orson Scott Card March 4, 2007 All in a Good Cause Here's a story you haven't heard, and you should have. An intelligence source, working for a government agency. He's not a spy, he's an analyst. He uses computers to crunch numbers and at the end of his work, out pops the truth that was hiding in the original data. Let's call him "Mann." The trouble with Mann is, he has an ideology. He knows what he wants his results to be. And the original numbers aren't giving him that data. So the agency he works for won't be able to persuade people to fight the war he wants to fight. Well, that's not acceptable. Cooking the Figures He starts with his software. There are certain procedures that are normal and accepted in his line of work. But if he makes just one little mistake, his program does a weird little recursion and if there's any data at all that shows the pattern he wants it to show, it will be magnified 139 times, so it far overshadows all the other data. He can run it on random numbers and it gives him the shape he wants. Unfortunately, the real-world numbers aren't random -- they have a very different shape. All the numbers. Even his jimmied program won't give the results he wants. All he needs is any data shaped the right way. And so he looks a little farther, and ... here it is. It looks, on the surface, like all the other data that he's been working with. Other researchers working in his field, just glancing at it, will assume it is, too. But it isn't. Because the source that gathered this batch of data had some other key information that takes it all away. The numbers don't mean what they normally mean. In fact, this number set is absolutely false. If you use these numbers along with all the other data, however, the clever little program will pick them up, magnify them radically, and voilá! The final report shows exactly the shape he needs the numbers to have. The trouble is, these numbers are supposed to be doublechecked. Anybody who looks closely at his numbers and at his program will see what he's done. It's not hard to find, if you have the original data sets and can examine the program. He will be exposed as a fraud. It will do his cause more harm than good, if it's made public. But he's not afraid. He knows how this works. He doesn't show the program or the lists of his data sources to anybody. http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2007-03-04-1.html A lot more to read in the link. Quote Visit GLOBAL WARMING SKEPTICS
jbg Posted March 20, 2007 Report Posted March 20, 2007 A parody of the IPCC report? Quote Free speech: "You can say what you want, but I don't have to lend you my megaphone." Always remember that when you are in the right you can afford to keep your temper, and when you are in the wrong you cannot afford to lose it. - J.J. Reynolds. Will the steps anyone is proposing to fight "climate change" reduce a single temperature, by a single degree, at a single location? The mantra of "world opinion" or the views of the "international community" betrays flabby and weak reasoning (link).
leonardcohen Posted March 20, 2007 Report Posted March 20, 2007 This is a very good read, but the global warming apologists are very good at ignoring any kind of data that doesn't support their conclusions,so this report will probably just be added to the pile of wood Gorsuki will use to burn their detractors at the stake. The way that dissent is not allowed reminds me of the salem witch trails, all you had to do to deflect criticism was to yell Witch, and the mobs' attention would be turned away.This is science? Time will turn the tide ,eventually,but not before billions of dollars are wasted and governments will be made to look like fools for believing this claptrap. Quote Whatever Thy Hand Finds To Do- Do With All Thy Might!
sunsettommy Posted May 18, 2007 Author Report Posted May 18, 2007 Well it is now 2 months later.They sure have ignored this thread. LOL Quote Visit GLOBAL WARMING SKEPTICS
jbg Posted June 10, 2007 Report Posted June 10, 2007 Well it is now 2 months later.They sure have ignored this thread.LOL Still ignored, three weeks later. Quote Free speech: "You can say what you want, but I don't have to lend you my megaphone." Always remember that when you are in the right you can afford to keep your temper, and when you are in the wrong you cannot afford to lose it. - J.J. Reynolds. Will the steps anyone is proposing to fight "climate change" reduce a single temperature, by a single degree, at a single location? The mantra of "world opinion" or the views of the "international community" betrays flabby and weak reasoning (link).
speaker Posted June 11, 2007 Report Posted June 11, 2007 I've read several of Orson Scott Cards sci-fi books. If he can combine work done for Patrick J.Michaels, with his own not inconsiderable imaginative powers and make a buck selling it as a column, more power to him. I can only suggest that he broaden his reading to include some of the other evidence including charts for the last hundred and fifty years that show the degree of change occurring. I haven't seen any press quoting a climate scientist as calling the deniers cranks, and I have seen more press attempts to put down the IPCC reports than I have for the other side. I haven't seen any evidence that fighting climate change would destroy the economy, though I have seen plenty of innuendo. I haven't seen any proof that the very people who have conducted the research into global warming "know" that efforts to minimize the negative impacts are pointless, quite the contrary. The evidence that Card does present concerning natural variability in the earths climate is probably very good research and will probably be useful in determining the impact of anthropgenic global warming as the scientists who are making that effort work out specifics of where, and when, and how agw will play out over the next couple of hundred years. However the material neither proves agw is faulty or even has anything to do with the current debate. I'm a little surprised that Orsen Scott Card can't see that. Quote
ScottSA Posted June 11, 2007 Report Posted June 11, 2007 I haven't read this, but I imagine it's talking about the Mann report and his hockey stick; one of the most embarrassing setbacks of the GW crowd. Given that the IPPC hung it's entire thesis on the hockey stick for its first few reports, I'd say it speaks to the credibility of the IPPC. Not that they are dishonest or anything...just not quite sure which way is up. Quote
Figleaf Posted June 11, 2007 Report Posted June 11, 2007 Civilization Watch ...The trouble with Mann is, he has an ideology. ...the original numbers aren't giving him that data. So the agency he works for won't be able to persuade people to fight the war he wants to fight. ...There are certain procedures that are normal and accepted in his line of work. But if he makes just one little mistake, his program does a weird little recursion and if there's any data at all that shows the pattern he wants it to show, it will be magnified 139 times, so it far overshadows all the other data. ...Unfortunately, ... Even his jimmied program won't give the results he wants. ... In fact, this number set is absolutely false. .... He doesn't show the program or the lists of his data sources to anybody. So this is all about George Tenet's CIA and the lead up to the Iraq war, right? Quote
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