Saturday, September 30, 2017

PEER REVIEW DOUBTS

Is peer review really the Holy Grail of science?

For 300 years peer reviewed papers have served science and scholarly publishing without question, until recently. In the words of Wikipedia, peer review works like this:

Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people of similar competence to the producers of the work (peers). It constitutes a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards of quality, improve performance, and provide credibility in academia. Scholarly review is often used to determine an academic paper’s suitability for publication. Peer review can be categorized by the type of activity and by the field or profession in which the activity occurs.

In a nutshell, peer review helps validate research findings submitted to science journals for publication. The journal will invite other scientists and researchers to comment on the paper before deciding to publish it. The review may take one of several forms. The single blind review is one in which the name(s) of the reviewer(s) are hidden from the author. In a double-blind review the reviewer’s and author’s names are not disclosed. Finally, there is the open review in which the author and reviewer are known to each other. Each review type has its own advantages and disadvantages and there is no perfect system. Personal bias can, and often does, play a part, and the author, whether the name is revealed or not, can often be identified by the writing style or topic, and a reviewer may be influenced by the standing, or lack of standing, of the author.

Acceptance of established scientific principles can change over time and an author with a paper revealing new discoveries may often receive an adverse review from a reviewer who supports the status quo or simply goes with the consensus opinion. History is full of discoveries that were harshly criticized by the establishment but later became mainstream thinking.

In 2006, the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine published this:
Peer review is at the heart of the processes of not just medical journals but of all of science. It is the method by which grants are allocated, papers published, academics promoted, and Nobel prizes won. Yet it is hard to define. It has until recently been unstudied. And its defects are easier to identify than its attributes. Yet it shows no sign of going away. Famously, it is compared with democracy: a system full of problems but the least worst we have.
Perhaps the most damning comment come from The Guardian:
Peer review is the process that decides whether your work gets published in an academic journal. It doesn't work very well any more, mainly as a result of the enormous number of papers that are being published (an estimated 1.3 million papers in 23,750 journals in 2006). There simply aren't enough competent people to do the job. The overwhelming effect of the huge (and unpaid) effort that is put into reviewing papers is to maintain a status hierarchy of journals. Any paper, however bad, can now get published in a journal that claims to be peer-reviewed.
Journals themselves can be biased and actively seeking research findings that suit the publisher’s bias and seeking reviews from reviewers known to also be biased. This makes a mockery of peer reviewing. 

See also:
Media Bias and Fake News
Climate Cyber Bullies
Australia and Climate Change
Elections and Social Media
During the lifetime of this writer, many changes to CPR (cardio-pulmonary resuscitation) have taken place. But each change found bitter resistance because the current method was developed by ‘experts’ and peer reviewed to give it extra authority. My introduction to CPR in the 1950’s, then known as artificial resperation, was to learn the Holger Neilsen technique for use in reviving workmates who had been ‘killed’ by contact with electric power transmission lines. We practised on ‘victims’ hanging in safety harness 30 feet above the ground. The rescuer would climb a ladder, secure his own harness, and perform the revival from behind the victim by moving his arms back and forth to fill the lungs and restart breathing. I never knew of a case where it worked, but it was a universally accepted technique. Present day first aid people would scoff at such an idea, but in its day the Holger Nielsen technique was only questioned by fools, sceptics and agitators. While peer review can help introduce revolutionary new scientific discoveries, it can also block the acceptance of new scientific discoveries.
Economist Professor George J. Borjas
Economics is a field where opinion and data are often disputed, always has been disputed and probably always will be disputed. It is a controversial area of learning. Professor George J. Borjas wrote in his blog:

I have a few pet peeves. One of them is how “peer review” is perceived by far too many people as the gold standard certification of scientific authority. Any academic who’s been through the peer review process many times (as I have) knows that the process is full of potholes and is sometimes subverted by unethical behaviour on the part of editors and reviewers.
Unethical behaviour? Some authors have even been caught peer reviewing their own work.
In recent years the peer review system has become such a shambles that some of the leading journals now knock back everything that doesn’t conform to their own pre-conceived idea of the world and the way it should be. This is the exact opposite of what peer review was supposed to achieve.
Holger Louis Nielsen, Danish Olympian
and creator of Holger Nielsen
artificial respiration
Mention has already been made of economics and CPR and how change has been opposed. Man-made climate change, and its dire consequences for the planet, has found widespread public acceptance. But, interestingly, it has found less acceptance in the academic community, particularly among meteorologists, climate scientists, geologists and historians. But they are largely shouted down by those citing peer reviewed papers.
Peer review is frequently used, by those claiming scientific backgrounds, to silence people who lack a PhD in some scientific discipline. On social media these people, and those citing their work, frequently lambast their critics as ignorant, or challenge them to list their own peer reviewed papers. The idea that anyone without a PhD and a peer reviewed paper is of no consequence, or is an ignorant meaningless individual, is repugnant.
I wonder, if John D. Rockefeller were alive today, would the ivory tower crackpots want to peer review his business plan and tell him it wouldn’t work because he hadn’t been to university. Astronaut John Glenn, author Mark Twain, and industrialist Henry Ford would have failed the PhD/peer review test too. To that list can be added William Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, Richard Branson, Ted Turner, George Eastman and John Major. All dropped out of school before obtaining a degree. Are we to believe that government funded researchers are smarter than the successful men listed above? I don’t think so.
It is easy to write-off people who are uneducated. When I was growing up in rural Northland, New Zealand, I was fortunate to live next door to one of the wisest and most respected men I have ever known. He was in his seventies and was the most successful farmer in the district. He had taught himself to read and write, had a house full of books on every subject under the sun, and could talk with, or debate with, the best on any subject. After spending many hours, days and years in his shadow, I knew that a man or woman does not need to be educated to be a genius.
Peer reviews have become a joke. However, if someone genuinely desires a peer review on the future of the climate, my suggestion would be to take a wander down to your nearest seaside pier and ask a crusty old fisherman what he thinks about the future climate. He will tell it the way it is, the way it could be tomorrow, and beyond that summer will follow winter and winter will follow summer the way it always has, and always will.
One pier review will be worth a thousand peer reviews every time.




Friday, September 22, 2017

A CITY FOR TRUCKS

Bill Moon’s Iowa 80 Truckstop




Reposted from 2012
Description: About Iowa 80
When trucking was just a gleam in some of today’s drivers’ eyes and Interstate 80 was not yet completed, the Iowa 80 Truckstop was founded. In 1964, Standard Oil built and opened the truck stop, and in September 1965, Bill Moon took over management of the truckstop for Amoco. Like many of the truckstops in existence at the time, Iowa 80 was a small facility that only took up a fraction of what it does today, housing a small truckers store, one lube bay and a restaurant run by the Peel family.
The Iowa 80  Truck Jamboree
Under Mr. Moon’s keen management, the truckstop began to grow and in 1984 Bill Moon purchased the truckstop from Amoco, that like the industry itself, has been a flurry of activity and expansion ever since. Now that it was theirs, the Moon family was able to remodel, update and expand the restaurant and truckers store. The shop bays were closed to build state of the art private showers and a driver’s area, both of which were very rare in a truckstop at this time. In 1989, Iowa 80 added a new store probably most famous for, other than its chrome selection, the 1918 Oldsmobile hoisted above the cashier island.

Three years later, in 1992, Iowa 80 Truckstop expanded its fuel center and became a Truckstops of America franchisee. This move gave Iowa 80 the opportunity to associate with a nationally recognized name and at the same time maintain its independence. Truckstops of America would also serve as a connection to the trucking fleets that had grown over the years. And one year later, Iowa 80 opened its TA Service Center. Sadly, 1992 also marked the year that Mr. Bill Moon passed away, but his family is still operating the truckstop as he would have wanted — focusing on the customer and you are sure to find someone from the Moon family on the grounds any given day.
The late Bill Moon

Mr. Moon’s focus on the customer is what sparked the beginning of theWalcott Truckers Jamboree, now preparing to celebrate its 33rd year. This huge driver appreciation event has evolved over the years and serves as an example for other truckstops and towns that hold such events. The Jamboree began as the Moon family’s way of thanking their driver customers and continues to do so today as a celebration of the trucking industry with a pork chop cook-out, Super Truck Beauty Contest, Live Entertainment, exhibits and an antique truck display that is partially comprised of the Moon family collection. Many of the trucks are displayed year-round in the truckstop building and on the grounds. The place is a tribute to the trucking industry with antique trucks, pumps, toys and hundreds of photos displayed throughout

With the completion of its $4 million expansion project in 1994, Iowa 80 TA Truckstop widened the gap as the largest truckstop in the world. The truckstop now boasts the Iowa 80 Kitchen, it’s new 300-seat restaurant with a 50-ft. salad bar, one-of-a-kind Truckers Warehouse Store, 24 private showers, 60-seat Dolby Surround Sound® movie theater, Driver’s Den, two Game Rooms, Embroidery Center, Vinyl Graphics Shop, Barber, Dentist, TA Service Center, Truckomat truck wash, CAT Scale, state-of-the-art Fuel Center, Wendy’s and Dairy Queen in the Food Court and a Blimpie located in the Fuel Center and parking for 800 tractor-trailers, 250 cars and 20 buses.

In 1997, the Iowa 80 Catalog was born. Drivers can now order everything they want from Iowa 80 Truckstop even if their schedule or route doesn’t take them to Walcott. Drivers have the choice of ordering by phone from the catalog or ordering on-line, 24 hours a day, at www.iowa80.com.

The Iowa 80 Trucking Museum, a dream of Bill Moon, Iowa 80’s founder opened in July of 2008. The museum houses many of the Moon Family’s antique trucks and transportation memorabilia. Museum tours are available by appointment.
HIGHWAY AMERICA


Iowa 80 completed yet another expansion in 2006. Iowa 80’s New 30,000 sq. foot Super Truck Showroom features everything from chrome bumpers to lights to cleaning supplies. The new addition, boasts two full size tractors and a tractor-trailer inside the building. They have been incorporated into the design and are used to display new interior and exterior chrome and stainless products as well as lights so drivers can see how the merchandise actually looks installed on a truck.

The Super Truck Showroom includes a staff of truck accessories experts to assist drivers who are customizing their trucks. A wall of lights will be displayed so drivers can see what every single type of light sold will look like lit up. The Custom Shop features a vinyl graphics shop, custom t-shirt shop, laser engraving and an embroidery center rolled into one. Drivers can see their designs come to life. There is also a balcony from the second floor overlooking the Super Truck Showroom where drivers can just stand and soak in all of the chrome and lights.

Iowa 80 has also remodeled the rest of the main building. More bathrooms have been added and the Convenience Store and Food Court have been expanded, adding Taco Bell, Pizza Hut Express, Orange Julius and Caribou Coffee.

See also:

Over the years drivers have seen a lot of changes in truckstops and the amenities they offer. For drivers Iowa 80 TA Truckstop has been a home away from home and they’ve watched it transform from a small facility into the largest, most respected truckstop in the world. And each one of those drivers know that even though Iowa 80 has changed, their friendly service and commitment to truckers has remained the same. Iowa 80 is always focused on serving the professional driver better.

Friday, July 21, 2017

ALARMIST HOT AIR

100 Reasons why climate change is natural:
PUBLISHED: Nov 20, 2012 - The Express
1) There is “no real scientific proof” that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from man’s activity.
2) Man-made carbon dioxide emissions throughout human history constitute less than 0.00022 percent of the total naturally emitted from the mantle of the earth during geological history.
3) Warmer periods of the Earth’s history came around 800 years before rises in CO2 levels.
4) After World War II, there was a huge surge in recorded CO2 emissions but global temperatures fell for four decades after 1940.
After World War II, there was a huge surge in recorded CO2 emissions
5) Throughout the Earth’s history, temperatures have often been warmer than now and CO2 levels have often been higher – more than ten times as high.
6) Significant changes in climate have continually occurred throughout geologic time.
7) The 0.7C increase in the average global temperature over the last hundred years is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term, natural climate trends. 
8) The IPCC theory is driven by just 60 scientists and favourable reviewers not the 4,000 usually cited.
9) Leaked e-mails from British climate scientists – in a scandal known as “Climate-gate” - suggest that that has been manipulated to exaggerate global warming
10) A large body of scientific research suggests that the sun is responsible for the greater share of climate change during the past hundred years.
11) Politicians and activiists claim rising sea levels are a direct cause of global warming but sea levels rates have been increasing steadily since the last ice age 10,000 ago
12) Philip Stott, Emeritus Professor of Biogeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London says climate change is too complicated to be caused by just one factor, whether CO2 or clouds
13) Peter Lilley MP said last month that “fewer people in Britain than in any other country believe in the importance of global warming. That is despite the fact that our Government and our political class—predominantly—are more committed to it than their counterparts in any other country in the world”.
14) In pursuit of the global warming rhetoric, wind farms will do very little to nothing to reduce CO2 emissions
15) Professor Plimer, Professor of Geology and Earth Sciences at the University of Adelaide, stated that the idea of taking a single trace gas in the atmosphere, accusing it and finding it guilty of total responsibility for climate change, is an “absurdity”
16) A Harvard University astrophysicist and geophysicist, Willie Soon, said he is “embarrassed and puzzled” by the shallow science in papers that support the proposition that the earth faces a climate crisis caused by global warming.
Continued below . . . 

17) The science of what determines the earth’s temperature is in fact far from settled or understood.
18) Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas, unlike water vapour which is tied to climate concerns, and which we can’t even pretend to control
19) A petition by scientists trying to tell the world that the political and media portrayal of global warming is false was put forward in the Heidelberg Appeal in 1992. Today, more than 4,000 signatories, including 72 Nobel Prize winners, from 106 countries have signed it.
20) It is claimed the average global temperature increased at a dangerously fast rate in the 20th century but the recent rate of average global temperature rise has been between 1 and 2 degrees C per century - within natural rates
21) Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski, Chairman of the Scientific Council of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw, Poland says the earth’s temperature has more to do with cloud cover and water vapor than CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
22) There is strong evidence from solar studies which suggests that the Earth’s current temperature stasis will be followed by climatic cooling over the next few decades
23) It is myth that receding glaciers are proof of global warming as glaciers have been receding and growing cyclically for many centuries
24) It is a falsehood that the earth’s poles are warming because that is natural variation and while the western Arctic may be getting somewhat warmer we also see that the Eastern Arctic and Greenland are getting colder
25) The IPCC claims climate driven “impacts on biodiversity are significant and of key relevance” but those claims are simply not supported by scientific research
26) The IPCC threat of climate change to the world’s species does not make sense as wild species are at least one million years old, which means they have all been through hundreds of climate cycles
27) Research goes strongly against claims that CO2-induced global warming would cause catastrophic disintegration of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets.
28) Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, rising CO2 levels are our best hope of raising crop yields to feed an ever-growing population
29) The biggest climate change ever experienced on earth took place around 700 million years ago
30) The slight increase in temperature which has been observed since 1900 is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term natural climate cycles
31) Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, rising CO2 levels of some so-called “greenhouse gases” may be contributing to higher oxygen levels and global cooling, not warming
32) Accurate satellite, balloon and mountain top observations made over the last three decades have not shown any significant change in the long term rate of increase in global temperatures
33) Today’s CO2 concentration of around 385 ppm is very low compared to most of the earth’s history – we actually live in a carbon-deficient atmosphere
34) It is a myth that CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas because greenhouse gases form about 3% of the atmosphere by volume, and CO2 constitutes about 0.037% of the atmosphere
35) It is a myth that computer models verify that CO2 increases will cause significant global warming because computer models can be made to “verify” anything
36) There is no scientific or statistical evidence whatsoever that global warming will cause more storms and other weather extremes
37) One statement deleted from a UN report in 1996 stated that “none of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases”
38) The world “warmed” by 0.07 +/- 0.07 degrees C from 1999 to 2008, not the 0.20 degrees C expected by the IPCC
39) The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says “it is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become more intense” but there has been no increase in the intensity or frequency of tropical cyclones globally
40) Rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere can be shown not only to have a negligible effect on the Earth’s many ecosystems, but in some cases to be a positive help to many organisms
41) Researchers who compare and contrast climate change impact on civilizations found warm periods are beneficial to mankind and cold periods harmful
42) The Met Office asserts we are in the hottest decade since records began but this is precisely what the world should expect if the climate is cyclical
43) Rising CO2 levels increase plant growth and make plants more resistant to drought and pests
44) The historical increase in the air’s CO2 content has improved human nutrition by raising crop yields during the past 150 years
45) The increase of the air’s CO2 content has probably helped lengthen human lifespans since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution
46) The IPCC alleges that “climate change currently contributes to the global burden of disease and premature deaths” but the evidence shows that higher temperatures and rising CO2 levels has helped global populations
47) In May of 2004, the Russian Academy of Sciences published a report concluding that the Kyoto Protocol has no scientific grounding at all.
48) The “Climate-gate” scandal pointed to a expensive public campaign of disinformation and the denigration of scientists who opposed the belief that CO2 emissions were causing climate change
49) The head of Britain’s climate change watchdog has predicted households will need to spend up to £15,000 on a full energy efficiency makeover if the Government is to meet its ambitious targets for cutting carbon emissions.
50) Wind power is unlikely to be the answer to our energy needs. The wind power industry argues that there are “no direct subsidies” but it involves a total subsidy of as much as £60 per MWh which falls directly on electricity consumers. This burden will grow in line with attempts to achieve Wind power targets, according to a recent OFGEM report.
51) Wind farms are not an efficient way to produce energy. The British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) accepts a figure of 75 per cent back-up power is required.
52) Global temperatures are below the low end of IPCC predictions not at “at the top end of IPCC estimates”
53) Climate alarmists have raised the concern over acidification of the oceans but Tom Segalstad from Oslo University in Norway , and others, have noted that the composition of ocean water – including CO2, calcium, and water – can act as a buffering agent in the acidification of the oceans.
54) The UN’s IPCC computer models of human-caused global warming predict the emergence of a “hotspot” in the upper troposphere over the tropics.  Former researcher in the Australian Department of Climate Change, David Evans, said there is no evidence of such a hotspot
55) The argument that climate change is a of result of global warming caused by human activity is the argument of flat Earthers.  
56) The manner in which US President Barack Obama sidestepped Congress to order emission cuts shows how undemocratic and irrational the entire international decision-making process has become with regards to emission-target setting.
57) William Kininmonth, a former head of the National Climate Centre and a consultant to the World Meteorological Organisation, wrote “the likely extent of global temperature rise from a doubling of CO2 is less than 1C. Such warming is well within the envelope of variation experienced during the past 10,000 years and insignificant in the context of glacial cycles during the past million years, when Earth has been predominantly very cold and covered by extensive ice sheets.”
58) Canada has shown the world targets derived from the existing Kyoto commitments were always unrealistic and did not work for the country.
59) In the lead up to the Copenhagen summit, David Davis MP said of previous climate summits, at Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and Kyoto in 1997 that many had promised greater cuts, but “neither happened”, but we are continuing along the same lines.
60) The UK ’s environmental policy has a long-term price tag of about £55 billion, before taking into account the impact on its economic growth.  
61) The UN’s panel on climate change warned that Himalayan glaciers could melt to a fifth of current levels by 2035. J. Graham Cogley a professor at Ontario Trent University, claims this inaccurate stating the UN authors got the date from an earlier report wrong by more than 300 years.
62) Under existing Kyoto obligations the EU has attempted to claim success, while actually increasing emissions by 13 per cent, according to Lord Lawson. In addition the EU has pursued this scheme by purchasing “offsets” from countries such as China paying them billions of dollars to destroy atmospheric pollutants, such as CFC-23, which were manufactured purely in order to be destroyed. 
63) It is claimed that the average global temperature was relatively unchanging in pre-industrial times but sky-rocketed since 1900, and will increase by several degrees more over the next 100 years according to Penn State University researcher Michael Mann. There is no convincing empirical evidence that past climate was unchanging, nor that 20th century changes in average global temperature were unusual or unnatural.
64) Michael Mann of Penn State University has actually shown that the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age did in fact exist, which contrasts with his earlier work which produced the “hockey stick graph” which showed a constant temperature over the past thousand years or so followed by a recent dramatic upturn.
65) The globe’s current approach to climate change in which major industrialised countries agree to nonsensical targets for their CO2 emissions by a given date, as it has been under the Kyoto system, is very expensive.
66) The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had emailed one another about using a “trick” for the sake of concealing a “decline” in temperatures when looking at the history of the Earth’s temperature. 
67) Global temperatures have not risen in any statistically-significant sense for 15 years and have actually been falling for nine years. The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed a scientific team had expressed dismay at the fact global warming was contrary to their predictions and admitted their inability to explain it was “a travesty”. 
68) The IPCC predicts that a warmer planet will lead to more extreme weather, including drought, flooding, storms, snow, and wildfires. But over the last century, during which the IPCC claims the world experienced more rapid warming than any time in the past two millennia, the world did not experience significantly greater trends in any of these extreme weather events.
69) In explaining the average temperature standstill we are currently experiencing, the Met Office Hadley Centre ran a series of computer climate predictions and found in many of the computer runs there were decade-long standstills but none for 15 years – so it expects global warming to resume swiftly.
70) Richard Lindzen, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote: “The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the Earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope.  Such hysteria (over global warming) simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth.”
71) Despite the 1997 Kyoto Protocol’s status as the flagship of the fight against climate change it has been a failure.
72) The first phase of the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which ran from 2005 to 2007 was a failure. Huge over-allocation of permits to pollute led to a collapse in the price of carbon from €33 to just €0.20 per tonne meaning the system did not reduce emissions at all. 
73) The EU trading scheme, to manage carbon emissions has completely failed and actually allows European businesses to duck out of making their emissions reductions at home by offsetting, which means paying for cuts to be made overseas instead.
74) To date “cap and trade” carbon markets have done almost nothing to reduce emissions.
75) In the United States , the cap-and-trade is an approach designed to control carbon emissions and will impose huge costs upon American citizens via a carbon tax on all goods and services produced in the United States. The average family of four can expect to pay an additional $1700, or £1,043, more each year. It is predicted that the United States will lose more than 2 million jobs as the result of cap-and-trade schemes.  
76) Dr Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, has indicated that out of the 21 climate models tracked by the IPCC the differences in warming exhibited by those models is mostly the result of different strengths of positive cloud feedback – and that increasing CO2 is insufficient to explain global-average warming in the last 50 to 100 years.
77) Why should politicians devote our scarce resources in a globally competitive world to a false and ill-defined problem, while ignoring the real problems the entire planet faces, such as: poverty, hunger, disease or terrorism.
78) A proper analysis of ice core records from the past 650,000 years demonstrates that temperature increases have come before, and not resulted from, increases in CO2 by hundreds of years. 
79) Since the cause of global warming is mostly natural, then there is in actual fact very little we can do about it. (We are still not able to control the sun).
80) A substantial number of the panel of 2,500 climate scientists on the United Nation’s International Panel on Climate Change, which created a statement on scientific unanimity on climate change and man-made global warming, were found to have serious concerns.
81) The UK’s Met Office has been forced this year to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by revelations about the data.
82)  Politicians and activists push for renewable energy sources such as wind turbines under the rhetoric of climate change, but it is essentially about money – under the system of Renewable Obligations. Much of the money is paid for by consumers in electricity bills. It amounts to £1 billion a year. 
83) The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had tampered with their own data so as to conceal inconsistencies and errors.  
84) The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had campaigned for the removal of a learned journal’s editor, solely because he did not share their willingness to debase science for political purposes.
85) Ice-core data clearly show that temperatures change centuries before concentrations of atmospheric CO2 change. Thus, there appears to be little evidence for insisting that changes in concentrations of CO2 are the cause of past temperature and climate change. 
86) There are no experimentally verified processes explaining how CO2 concentrations can fall in a few centuries without falling temperatures – in fact it is changing temperatures which cause changes in CO2 concentrations, which is consistent with experiments that show CO2 is the atmospheric gas most readily absorbed by water.
87) The Government’s Renewable Energy Strategy contains a massive increase in electricity generation by wind power costing around £4 billion a year over the next twenty years. The benefits will be only £4 to £5 billion overall (not per annum). So costs will outnumber benefits by a range of between eleven and seventeen times.
88) Whilst CO2 levels have indeed changed for various reasons, human and otherwise, just as they have throughout history, the CO2 content of the atmosphere has increased since the beginning of the industrial revolution, and the growth rate has now been constant for the past 25 years.
89) It is a myth that CO2 is a pollutant, because nitrogen forms 80% of our atmosphere and human beings could not live in 100% nitrogen either: CO2 is no more a pollutant than nitrogen is and CO2 is essential to life.
90) Politicians and climate activists make claims to rising sea levels but certain members in the IPCC chose an area to measure in Hong Kong that is subsiding. They used the record reading of 2.3 mm per year rise of sea level.
91) The accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998.
92) If one factors in non-greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements show little, if any, global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 55 ppm (17 per cent).
93) US President Barack Obama pledged to cut emissions by 2050 to equal those of 1910 when there were 92 million Americans. In 2050, there will be 420 million Americans, so Obama’s promise means that emissions per head will be approximately what they were in 1875. It simply will not happen.
94) The European Union has already agreed to cut emissions by 20 percent to 2020, compared with 1990 levels, and is willing to increase the target to 30 percent. However, these are unachievable and the EU has already massively failed with its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), as EU emissions actually rose by 0.8 percent from 2005 to 2006 and are known to be well above the Kyoto goal.
95) Australia has stated it wants to slash greenhouse emissions by up to 25 percent below 2000 levels by 2020, but the pledges were so unpopular that the country’s Senate has voted against the carbon trading Bill, and the Opposition’s Party leader has now been ousted by a climate change sceptic.
96) Canada plans to reduce emissions by 20 percent compared with 2006 levels by 2020, representing approximately a 3 percent cut from 1990 levels but it simultaneously defends its Alberta tar sands emissions and its record as one of the world’s highest per-capita emissions setters.
97) India plans to reduce the ratio of emissions to production by 20-25 percent compared with 2005 levels by 2020, but all Government officials insist that since India has to grow for its development and poverty alleviation, it has to emit, because the economy is driven by carbon.
98) The Leipzig Declaration in 1996, was signed by 110 scientists who said: “We – along with many of our fellow citizens – are apprehensive about the climate treaty conference scheduled for Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997” and “based on all the evidence available to us, we cannot subscribe to the politically inspired world view that envisages climate catastrophes and calls for hasty actions.”
99) A US Oregon Petition Project stated “We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of CO2, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”
100) A report by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change concluded “We find no support for the IPCC’s claim that climate observations during the twentieth century are either unprecedented or provide evidence of an anthropogenic effect on climate.”


Wednesday, February 1, 2017

UBER TRUMP CONNECTION

Trump adviser is founder and CEO of outlaw taxi company Uber

Born in 1976, Travis Kalanick has an estimated net wealth of US$6 billion, but many people question how Kalanick, now an adviser to President Trump, acquired his wealth.

At the age of 22, Kalanick dropped out of UCLA to start his first business, Scour Inc, with a partner. It was an internet file sharing company. Scour was later sued for copyright infringement by three associations representing motion pictures, the recording industry and music publishers.

Trump adviser Travis Kalanick
Kalanick’s response was to bankrupt Scour and re-start the business as Red Swoosh using the same key team members. Within seven years (2007), Kalanick could sell the business for $18.7 million. In 2009, with Garrett Camp, he co-founded Uber in San Francisco and became the chairman and CEO of the outlaw taxi company and ride sharing organization.

Uber is now a worldwide operator in more than 500 cities, but its success is based on unlawfully invading the territory of legitimately licenced operators which, just like Scour and Swoosh, were based on imitating legitimate businesses. Kalanick is an expert at creating imaginary legal loopholes where no loopholes exist. He claims that he is only bringing driver and passenger together, but in effect he passes the buck to the driver, and, in monetary terms, often too few bucks as many former Uber drivers will testify.

In most countries, taxi drivers must be licenced and regulated for the benefit and protection of the travelling public. Typically, a taxi operator must hold a licence to operate a taxi business, and a licence to drive a taxi. Both operator and driver must undergo police character vetting and the driver must display an official photo ID card and hold a current medical certificate. The taxi operator must belong to an approved taxi organization and be bound by their rules and complaints and disciplinary procedures. The vehicle must meet Certificate of Fitness standards every six months, rather than the lower standard Warrant of Fitness at 12 monthly intervals. Getting into a legitimate taxi operation can take a considerable investment of capital, time and training.

Legitimate operators will always feel cheated by operators like Uber who tell their clients and drivers that they just need a presentable car to earn a fortune when the fact is that even legitimate drivers struggle to make a reasonable income. But Kalanick, now a member President Trump’s Strategy and Policy Forum, doesn’t worry about minor details.

Kalanick’s company tells drivers they don’t need to have an operator licence, a taxi driver licence, a Certificate of Fitness, a medical examination, police check or a driver logbook. They do tell them that they will need comprehensive car insurance, but that will be void if they have an accident while operating outside transport law. All over the world governments and cities are cracking down on illegal Uber drivers and putting them off the road, but Uber itself keeps on operating via the internet without being accountable and without paying local taxes. It’s a double rort. Meanwhile, Uber drivers could best utilize their time by looking for real employment.

But Kalanick’s great scheme, like most questionable operations, has a profound weakness. Uber has left itself open to be cloned by other dubious start-up operators, and that is happening at what must be an alarming rate for Kalanick. Already, he has been forced to cut his budget hire rates even further in a desperate attempt to boost revenue, and that is eating into the earnings of his drivers who were already grossly underpaid. Copying Uber is so widespread that the practice now has its own terminology – Uberization.

Even more alarming than Uber, and its ride-sharing off-shoot, is the Urberization (or Kalanickery) of the American Government with President Trump and Travis Kalanick sharing the same air.


BEYOND THE SEAS

This is my latest historical novel  Beyond the Seas When twelve-year-old orphan Nathaniel Asker is shipped from the back alleys of London to...