Unthreaded
tomo,
I do enjoy cosmology stuff, but as light entertainment. It helps to underline the deeper jokes in Red Dwarf. For the business of light/EMR being a wave in the aether, it starts getting a bit like Feynman's "Oomph" explanation for everything (that really explains nothing).
Thought this sounded a more plausible explanation for the violence in the Gaza relief supply lines. Perhaps just confirming my biases...
Hope Greta enjoyed the film presentation.
Robert Swan
What I enjoyed about the cosmology video was the circular thing where it seemed to me that in attempting to fix acknowledged issues with the mainstream explanation consequent from fresh observations an explanation was offered which - if logically applied and followed through seemed to blow up the settled explanation...
or something ... I think I've that about right?
Some people have difficulty saying "that's odd, I don't know"...
Another one that entertains is anomalous red shift in quasars that defies explanation and has generated lots of conjecture (mostly conjecture!)
tomo
Bonus picture. (King's Birthday long weekend here, so I'm going wild)
Robert Swan
Mailman, tomo,
There might be quite a lot in parallel between Starmer cosying up to the Muslims in the electoral base and General Motors cosying up to SAIC. Seemed so clever to begin with...
On the CO2 business: it's always seemed strange how often we're told CO2 is a well mixed gas. In what sense? On average it is, because that's what averaging *is*, but obviousy there's going to be more CO2 near a smoke stack or a volcano, and less under the canopy of a rainforest. The OCO2 plots bear it out very nicely, but I don't think the climatologists want to see those, lest they be asked to explain the climatic effects.
The alternative to the big bang video didn't really grab me. Yes, QED involves a lot of magical mumbo jumbo, but so is the notion of "aether". I felt the video was just offering alternative nomenclature for the existing theory — that instead of Feynman QED diagrams, you'd have very similar looking Feynman Aether diagrams, etc.
Perhaps if they offered a suitable test that QED should fail and Aether theory pass...
Economics is (reasonably enough) known as the dismal science. Cosmology strikes me as being in the same class. Sciency, but not science. More interesting than economics, but still not in touch with reality. Perhaps the psychedelic science.
Robert Swan
A hint of some unsettled science
https://youtu.be/cj-7vdYij6U
tomo
idau
ba-boom...tish! :-)
Robert
- It certainly ain't the be-all end-all but Erik Swenson's sterling work on OCO-2 data was something of an epiphany for me as I had trodden some of the same path albeit without the decoding skill/effort he put in....
He remarks:
Many people are interested in the data from OCO-2, but have not been able to access the information.is diplomatic enough to be - in hindsight - seen as dripping sarcasm - NASA plainly lied for months about the location of the data archives Mr. Swanson was careful not to tread on more toes than necessary - cancellation being a real thing ....
Islam has always been something of a moveable feast, a malleable mass religion with no central authority - some in the west seem to think it'd e a useful vehicle and seek to become control adjacent.... After 4 decades working in and around Moslem countries my scalp prickles at the scale of delusion in action there I have seen people of the left lauding the "dignity of Halal slaughter" on the shallowest, most ignorant level - unaware of the precepts that a large proportion of the faith's followers adhere to - which would have them treated in the same way as a sheep / goat ... I have not come across in any other area the visceral, murderous intent as that I've winessed between different sects of Islam - sure, for some - it's The Religion of Peace - and, actually - good on them. For many, many others it's absolutely anything but....playing strongly to unpleasant themes that litter the history of all religions....
I doubt Mark Carney and Starmer et al envisage mass hangings from cranes or burning alive of unbelievers in local supermarket car parks - these clowns know not of what they speak - they think they can manage Islam to their benefit....
tomo
From your islam is now protected link Robbo, "So what now for Britiain?".
Well...every day I am flabbergasted by just how morally corrupt this Labour Government is and every day is a new low for this scum! I'm at a loss as to who they view as the people they are governing? Are they in this for the greater good of the country or are they in this to only prop up a major block of votes to keep them sweet and Labour in power?
Maklman
Bonus for the weekend: how the tables are turning between GM and it's (once weaker) Chinese partner.
Robert Swan
tomo,
Another tactic is to demand you give us your model. They used this with Steve McIntyre, choosing not to understand his contention that tree rings weren't thermometers, so modelling temperature with tree rings is never going to work.
I have developed very strong reservations about temperature reconstructions from ice cores too. It's much the same as the tree rings. Sure, you can do a linear regression against temperature alone, but only by ignoring obvious confounding factors. Tree rings are probably influenced more strongly by rainfall than temperature. Ice core Oxygen-18 content is probably influenced more strongly by wind than temperature. But the researchers *really* want a temperature reconstruction, so just ignore everything else and regress away.
Similar process lets us blame it all on CO2. All very neat and suits the politicians and activists who, as you say, constantly recite the mantras.
Good point on phlogiston. Being more recent and more pertinent, it deserves a larger share of the spotlight than Galileo when trying to beat down the consensus mantra.
PJ Media article on the UK's new blasphemy laws by the back door judgement. Madness.
Robert Swan
The USA approval process for a hepatitis B vaccine in 2018 is, um, impressive.
Perhaps it's reassuring to know that the same problems were around a couple of millenia ago:
quis custodiet ipsos custodes (Juvenal)
sic omnia fatis in peius ruere (Virgil)
And Virgil's was a bit on the pessimistic side. Things occasionally improve before resuming the steady march downhill.