Clipmarks | n2sooners's 'science' clips

Whale fart captured on film.

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:49:39 GMT

clipped by: n2sooners

Okay, we’re doing everything we can to not be crass about this phenomena that was recently photographed by the captain of a U.S. research ship.

According Australian Antarctic Division principal research scientist Dr Nick Gales: “The white bits in the photo are pieces of ice-floe, the stream of pinky color behind the whale is a fecal plume — a.k.a. ‘poo’ — the large circle in the water is indeed the physical eruption of the whale’s flatulence.”

Old school techniques demanded that the whales be killed to see what they’re ingesting … but these days, scientists can actually determine what the animals have munched on by analyzing their feces. The prey’s DNA can be identified in the poop.

Stop giggling. This is awesome science stuff.

As for the fart-on-film, scientists say it’s likely that flatulence is just as common in whales as it in humans.

We’re doing everything we can not to make a “pull my flipper” joke. Really.

Mined by: J.C. Hutchins

Tags: gas, science, whales

Jupiter

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 20:59:20 GMT

clipped by: n2sooners

Clip Source: www.boston.com

Jupiter is in the news again, this time because its "Baby Red Spot" - a storm less than a year old - appears to have been swallowed up by the massive storm known as the Great Red Spot. This is good occasion to share some of the best photographs of Jupiter and its larger system of rings and moons, as seen by various probes and telescopes over the past 30 years. (16 photos total)

Tags: jupiter, science, space, solar system, planet, photography

Black hole now a racist term?

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 03:39:58 GMT

clipped by: n2sooners

Clip Source: cityhallblog.dallasnews.com

A special meeting about Dallas County traffic tickets turned tense and bizarre this afternoon.

County commissioners were discussing problems with the central collections office that is used to process traffic ticket payments and handle other paperwork normally done by the JP Courts.

Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, who is white, said it seemed that central collections "has become a black hole" because paperwork reportedly has become lost in the office.

Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud "Excuse me!" He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a "white hole."

That prompted Judge Thomas Jones, who is black, to demand an apology from Mayfield for his racially insensitive analogy.

Mayfield shot back that it was a figure of speech and a science term. A black hole, according to Webster's, is perhaps "the invisible remains of a collapsed star, with an intense gravitational field from which neither light nor matter can escape."

Tags: racism, politics, science, humor, ignorance

Plastic bags evil?

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 22:24:40 GMT

clipped by: n2sooners

Clip Source: www.foxnews.com

Scientists and environmentalists have attacked a global campaign to ban plastic bags that they say is based on flawed science and exaggerated claims.

The widely stated accusation that the bags kill 100,000 animals and a million seabirds every year are false

this figure is based on a misinterpretation of a 1987 Canadian study in Newfoundland, which found that, between 1981 and 1984, more than 100,000 marine mammals, including birds, were killed by discarded nets. The Canadian study did not mention plastic bags.

Fifteen years later in 2002, when the Australian government commissioned a report into the effects of plastic bags, its authors misquoted the Newfoundland study, mistakenly attributing the deaths to “plastic bags."

Regardless, the erroneous claim has become the keystone of a widening campaign to demonise plastic bags.

David Santillo, a marine biologist at Greenpeace

“It’s very unlikely that many animals are killed by plastic bags,”

On a global basis plastic bags aren’t an issue

Tags: environment, science, plastic bags, fraud

NewLiesForOld=The Fight Continues

Mon, 24 Dec 2007 05:50:30 GMT

clipped by: davboz
clipper's remarks: Communism defeated now grows within West.

Clip Source: www.apologeticspress.org

Michael Brooks recounted a recent meeting of “some of the leading practitioners of modern science” in La Jolla, California (2006, 192[2578]:8). They had gathered to discuss, among other questions, “Should science do away with religion?” Their answers are alarming.

summarized the overall attitude at the La Jolla, California symposium in the following words: “science can take on religion and win”

The irony of this militant attitude toward religion is that evolutionists sometimes downplay such aggressive tactics in an attempt to lull the religious populace into thinking that no battle is taking place.

Daniel Dennett wrote a book titled Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.

Leading evolutionists such as Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Philip Kitcher, and Edward O. Wilson highly recommended the book, calling it “surpassingly brilliant” and “essential,” as it persuades readers that “evolution by natural selection is vital to the future of philosophy.”

M J Fox says continue embryo destruction

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 21:59:38 GMT

clipped by: n2sooners

Clip Source: newsbusters.org

The following is the full segment as it aired on the December 3, edition of "Today"

MARIA MENOUNOS: Scientists have now found a way to reprogram ordinary cells-

MICHAEL J. FOX: Right

MENOUNOS: -to mimic the same actions of, of an embryonic stem cell.

FOX: Embryonic stem cell, yeah.

MENOUNOS: Tell me what that does to Parkinson's and how exciting that was for you?

FOX: Well any of these breakthroughs are fantastic. And it's just thrilling. And at the same time too we don't want to discontinue the embryonic stem cell research that's being done because one begat the other and, and it all becomes part of a broad canvas that we want to continue to work on.

MENOUNOS: Do you think that this will end the whole hot button issue of stem cell research?

FOX: Well I want to make sure that we, that, that doesn't happen. But I think that the bottom line is whatever happens in the next election, the chances are very good that there's gonna be a new attitude towards science.

Tags: michael j fox, embryo, stem cells, science, medicine, life, politics

Greatest scam in history

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 23:49:30 GMT

clipped by: n2sooners
clipper's remarks: John Coleman is a meteorologist and founder of The Weather Channel.

Clip Source: icecap.us

It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM.

Environmental extremists, notable politicians among them, then teamed up with movie, media and other liberal, environmentalist journalists to create this wild “scientific” scenario of the civilization threatening environmental consequences from Global Warming unless we adhere to their radical agenda. Now their ridiculous manipulated science has been accepted as fact and become a cornerstone issue

Climate Change, is not about environmentalism or politics. It is not a religion. It is not something you “believe in.” It is science; the science of meteorology. This is my field of life-long expertise. And I am telling you Global Warming is a non-event, a manufactured crisis and a total scam. I say this knowing you probably won’t believe a me, a mere TV weatherman, challenging a Nobel Prize, Academy Award and Emmy Award winning former Vice President of United States. So be it.

Tags: climate change, global warming, environment, politics, religion, science, scam

Gore brainwashing our children

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 00:44:55 GMT

clipped by: n2sooners

Clip Source: www.smh.com.au

Dr William Gray, a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasts, told a packed lecture hall at the University of North Carolina that humans were not responsible for the warming of the earth.

"We're brainwashing our children," said Dr Gray, 78, a long-time professor at Colorado State University. "They're going to the Gore movie [An Inconvenient Truth] and being fed all this. It's ridiculous."

"We'll look back on all of this in 10 or 15 years and realise how foolish it was," Dr Gray said.

"The human impact on the atmosphere is simply too small to have a major effect on global temperatures," Dr Gray said.

He said his beliefs had made him an outsider in popular science.

"It bothers me that my fellow scientists are not speaking out against something they know is wrong," he said. "But they also know that they'd never get any grants if they spoke out. I don't care about grants."

Tags: science, global warming, climate change, religion, al gore, politics

Biofuels a scam?

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 07:09:44 GMT

clipped by: n2sooners

Clip Source: www.timesonline.co.uk

THE government’s policy of promoting biofuels for transport will come under harsh attack this week from one of its senior science advisers.

Roland Clift will tell a seminar of the Royal Academy of Engineering that the plan to promote bioethanol and biodiesel produced from plants is a “scam”.

Clift, professor of environmental technology at Surrey University, sits on the scientific advisory council of Defra, David Miliband’s environment department.

Clift said: “Biodiesel is a complete scam because in the tropics the growing demand is causing forests to be burnt to make way for palm oil and similar crops.

“We calculate that the land will need to grow biodiesel crops for 70-300 years to compensate for the CO2 emitted in forest destruction.”

“We would need to plant a land area twice the size of Britain to get enough biofuel crops to halve our emissions,” said Kemp, professor of engineering at Lancaster University. “The numbers simply do not add up.”

Tags: global warming, climate change, science, co2, biofuels, scam

Death penalty deters crime

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 06:26:13 GMT

clipped by: n2sooners

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

What gets little notice, however, is a series of academic studies over the last half-dozen years that claim to settle a once hotly debated argument — whether the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder. The analyses say yes. They count between three and 18 lives that would be saved by the execution of each convicted killer.

"Science does really draw a conclusion. It did. There is no question about it," said Naci Mocan

"The conclusion is there is a deterrent effect."

"The results are robust, they don't really go away," he said. "I oppose the death penalty. But my results show that the death penalty (deters) — what am I going to do, hide them?"

Each execution deters an average of 18 murders, according to a 2003 nationwide study by professors at Emory University. (Other studies have estimated the deterred murders per execution at three, five and 14).

The Illinois moratorium on executions in 2000 led to 150 additional homicides

Speeding up executions would strengthen the deterrent effect.

Tags: death, death penalty, crime, murder, science

Creating embryonic stem cells

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 19:48:39 GMT

clipped by: n2sooners

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers have taken ordinary skin cells from a mouse and reprogrammed them to look and act like embryonic stem cells in a long-promised experiment that provides an alternative way to get the valued and controversial cells.

Three studies published on Wednesday show various ways to turn the clock back and make an ordinary cell act like an embryonic stem cell -- the ultimate master cells of the body.

A fourth showed a way to use discarded, abnormal embryos from fertility clinics to make embryonic stem cells.

Tags: stem cells, science, medicine

Global warming consensus

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 01:15:00 GMT

clipped by: n2sooners

Clip Source: www.canada.com

More than six months ago, I began writing this series, The Deniers. When I began, I accepted the prevailing view that scientists overwhelmingly believe that climate change threatens the planet. I doubted only claims that the dissenters were either kooks on the margins of science or sell-outs in the pockets of the oil companies.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped believing that a scientific consensus exists on climate change. Certainly there is no consensus at the very top echelons of scientists -- the ranks from which I have been drawing my subjects

If anything, the majority view among these subsets of the scientific community may run in the opposite direction. Not only do most of my interviewees either discount or disparage the conventional wisdom as represented by the IPCC, many say their peers generally consider it to have little or no credibility. In one case, a top scientist told me that, to his knowledge, no respected scientist in his field accepts the IPCC position.

Tags: global warming, climate change, science, politics, consensus

The silencing of the skeptics

Thu, 17 May 2007 22:27:30 GMT

clipped by: n2sooners

Clip Source: www.heartland.org

University of Washington climate scientist Mark Albright was dismissed on March 12 from his position as associate state climatologist, just weeks after exposing false claims of shrinking glaciers in the Cascade Mountains.

Albright sent emails to his colleagues informing them of the factual data.

alarmists deliberately choose 1950 as the "baseline" for Cascade Mountains snow pack because 1950 was a year of abnormally heavy snowfall

the current snow pack is only marginally lower than the long-term average since 1943. Moreover, the Cascade Mountains snow pack has been growing since the late 1970s.

Albright's emails were particularly embarrassing to Philip Mote, the Washington state climatologist.

Review Supported Albright

Censored, Fired

Politics Triumphant

"The essence of science is reasoned skepticism and the courage to either be wrong or show that others are wrong--all in the bold pursuit of truth. The bold pursuit of truth should never be discouraged," Burnett noted.

Tags: global warming, climate change, science, snow, ice, washington, politics, censorship

Global warming on Neptune

Tue, 15 May 2007 17:31:21 GMT

clipped by: n2sooners

Clip Source: www.worldclimatereport.com

In the recent article, Hammel and Lockwood, from the Space Science Institute in Colorado and the Lowell Observatory, note that measurements of visible light from Neptune have been taken at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona since 1950. Obviously, light from Neptune can be related to seasons on the planet, small variations in Neptune’s orbit, the apparent tilt of the axis as viewed from the Earth, the varying distance from Neptune to Earth, and of course, changes in the atmosphere near the Lowell Observatory. Astronomers are clever, they are fully aware of these complications, and they adjust the measurements accordingly.

As seen in Figure 1, Neptune has been getting brighter since around 1980; furthermore, infrared measurements of the planet since 1980 show that the planet has been warming steadily from 1980 to 2004.

In summary, if Neptune’s atmosphere is indeed responding to some variation in solar activity in a manner similar to that of the Earth albeit with a temporal lag

Tags: global warming, climate change, science, neptune, sun, politics

Forced to watch 'An Inconvenient Truth'

Fri, 11 May 2007 18:21:00 GMT

clipped by: n2sooners

Clip Source: www.foxnews.com

One week before Earth Day, the professors of the RWU course, “Core 101: Science, Technology and Society,” required their students to watch “An Inconvenient Truth.” The students were not presented with any other viewpoint on global warming.

Controversy erupted when the president of RWU’s College Republicans club complained to assistant dean Jeffrey Hughes, “With the issue of global warming being such a highly politicized topic, with the scientific community unsure if global warming is man-induced or part of the natural cycle of the earth, do you think that it is intellectually honest to only show the alarmist viewpoint?”

the backlash against the required viewing of Gore’s movie prompted Dean Hughes to “explore alternatives” to teaching global warming.

It follows that schools, if they choose to teach the global warming controversy at all, ought to be teaching both sides of the controversy, not just Al Gore’s alarmism.

It’s time to learn that bias plus teaching does not equal education.

Tags: college, global warming, climate change, gore, science, bias