Did Amnesty just make up the story of the Indian sisters to be raped as punishment?

September 3, 2015

There are a number of bodies who I once admired but whose veracity can no longer be relied upon. I take anything from Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, the World Wildlife Fund and now Amnesty with a very large shovel of salt. Their exaggerations, alarmism and plain lies means that I have come to discount virtually everything they publicise to a large degree. They have made it all too plain that they believe their ends are so good that it justifies some lying and fraud and deception along the way.

Over the last few days Amnesty International and the World Press have made much of a story where two sisters were “sentenced” by village elders (panchayat) to be gang-raped as punishment because their brother had “eloped” with a woman of higher caste. There was much indignation and gnashing of teeth.

But now it would seem that the whole story was probably just made up by Amnesty. In the best interpretation Amnesty has been gullible to the point of stupidity. In the worst interpretation Amnesty exploited these sisters for their own agenda by making up the whole story and implementing a deliberate PR campaign. Mind you, the world’s press have then been pretty gullible as well and their fact-checking has been virtually absent.

Daily Mirror: The village council accused of ordering the rape of two Indian sisters because their brother ran off with a higher caste woman has denied it ever ordered the sickening punishment. 

The news that the women were to be assaulted because of their brother’s actions led to an international outcry and hundreds of thousands of people have demanded their safety.

Now, members of the village council in the Baghpat region of northern India have told Reuters they passed no such order.

Family members of the two sisters also said they are unsure if the ruling was made – while local police deny any such directive was given.

When the accusations first emerged last month, they spread like wildfire. An online petition by Amnesty International seeking justice and protection for the low-caste sisters gathered over 260,000 signatures, mostly in Britain.

But family members said it may have just been gossip.

“It is all hearsay, we don’t know if this actually happened,” said Dharam Pal Singh, 55, the women’s father and a retired soldier. “We heard it from other villagers.” He identified one of the villagers, a man who also said he had heard it from others.

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Posted in Alarmism, Behaviour, Ethics | Comments Off on Did Amnesty just make up the story of the Indian sisters to be raped as punishment?

12,000 years of agriculture has only reduced tree numbers by 46%

September 3, 2015

There is a new paper in Nature which tries to count the number of trees in the world.

Crowther, T. W. et al., Mapping tree density at a global scale, Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature14967 (2015)

They find that there are 3.04 trillion trees which is about 7 times larger than was previously thought. They further estimate that in spite of 12,000 years of agriculture, the number of trees in the world has only reduced by 46%.

But then I heard the lead author, Thomas Crowther, being interviewed on the BBC today. I was less than impressed by his apparent lack of common sense. “The scale of human impact is astonishing” he says.

Really?

There has been a less than 50% reduction of tree-numbers in 12,000 years of agriculture, with all the forest clearing that entails, to feed 7 billion people. A human impact of less than 0.0038% per year (or 3.8% per 1000 years) is claimed to be “astonishing”.

He also claims that their results do not impact “carbon science”. Again, Really?

Seven times as many trees as thought before is 7 times as much bio-mass existing as trees, which leads to 7 times as much carbon inventory locked-up in trees as thought before. It means 7 times more trees die every year than was previously thought. Which makes man-made carbon emissions an even smaller fraction (c. 4%) of natural carbon emissions.

Crowther sounded like a vacuum cleaner salesman talking up his product. He kept emphasising the importance of his paper while denying that it had any implications for “politically correct science”. The estimate of the number of trees is interesting and could be something to build on for carbon cycle calculations. It also suggests that alarmism about bio-diversity of trees is ill founded. But some of their conclusions are just stupid and geared to getting more funding by demonstrating “political correctness”.

Reasonably interesting science but with idiot conclusions.

Oh dear!

Abstract: The global extent and distribution of forest trees is central to our understanding of the terrestrial biosphere. We provide the first spatially continuous map of forest tree density at a global scale. This map reveals that the global number of trees is approximately 3.04 trillion, an order of magnitude higher than the previous estimate. Of these trees, approximately 1.39 trillion exist in tropical and subtropical forests, with 0.74 trillion in boreal regions and 0.61 trillion in temperate regions. Biome-level trends in tree density demonstrate the importance of climate and topography in controlling local tree densities at finer scales, as well as the overwhelming effect of humans across most of the world. Based on our projected tree densities, we estimate that over 15 billion trees are cut down each year, and the global number of trees has fallen by approximately 46% since the start of human civilization.

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Posted in Agriculture, Alarmism, Science | 1 Comment »

While the EU debates whether they are immigrants or refugees – a toddler dies

September 2, 2015
Reuters - 3 year old toddler among 12 syrian refugees drowned 2nd september 2015

A Turkish police officer stands next to the body of the young boy. Photograph: Reuters

EU values in action.

It is an existential question. Is the EU its proclaimed values or its actual behaviour?

Immigrants, after all, are, by definition, “bad”. Refugees from countries democratised by the EU (among others) don’t exist. To seek sanctuary in the EU, asylum seekers should be able to prove that they face execution from wherever they fled.

A Turkish police officer carries a young boy who drowned in a failed attempt to sail to the Greek island of Kos. Photograph: Reuters

A Turkish police officer carries a young boy who drowned in a failed attempt to sail to the Greek island of Kos. Photograph: Reuters

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The fundamentals of physics are just magic

September 1, 2015

Physicists would like to think that they deal in reality and are cold, rational, objective observers of the physical universe we live in. But deep, deep down, they just rely on magic. The Universe is nothing but a place of pervasive magic. Gravity is just a magical attraction. Spacetime is just an attractiferous aether. Physicists are thus practitioners of magic and may even be able to use the forces of magic, but they have no inkling as to why the magical forces exist.

Replace

  1. “gravity” or “gravitation” by “magical attraction”
  2. “spacetime” by “the attractiferous aether”
  3. “electromagnetic” by “electromagical”
  4. the “strong force” by the “strong magic force”
  5. the “weak force” by the “weak magic force”

and the Wikipedia entry for Gravity then reads as follows:

Magical attraction is a natural phenomenon by which all things are brought towards one another – irrespective of size, i.e. stars, planets, galaxies and even light and sub-atomic particles. Magical attraction has an infinite range, and it cannot be absorbed, transformed, or shielded against. Magical attraction is responsible for the formation of structures within the universe (namely by creating spheres of hydrogen, igniting them with enough pressure to form stars and then grouping them together into galaxies), as without magical attraction, the universe would be composed only of equally spaced particles. On Earth, magical attraction is commonly recognized in the form of weight where physical objects are harder to pick-up and carry the ‘heavier’ they are.

Magical attraction is most accurately described by the general theory of relativity (proposed by Albert Einstein in 1915) which describes the force of magical attraction, not as a force, but as a consequence of the curvature of the attractiferous aether caused by the uneven distribution of mass/energy; and resulting in time dilation, where time lapses more slowly under strong magical attraction. However, for most applications, magical attraction is well approximated by Newton’s law of Universal Magical Attraction, which postulates that magical attraction is a force where two bodies of mass are directly drawn to each other according to a mathematical relationship, where the attractive magical force is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. This is considered to occur over an infinite range, such that all bodies (with mass) in the universe are drawn to each other no matter how far they are apart.

Magical attraction is the weakest of the four fundamental magical interactions of nature. The force of magical attraction is approximately 10−38 times the strength of the strong magic force (i.e. gravity is 38 orders of magnitude weaker), 10−36 times the strength of the electromagical force, and 10−29 times the strength of the weak magic force. As a consequence, magical attraction has a negligible influence on the behavior of sub-atomic particles, and plays no role in determining the internal properties of everyday matter (but see quantum magical attraction). On the other hand, magical attraction is the dominant force at the macroscopic scale, that is the cause of the formation, shape, and trajectory (orbit) of astronomical bodies, including those of asteroids,comets, planets, stars, and galaxies. It is responsible for causing the Earth and the other planets to orbit the Sun; for causing the Moon to orbit the Earth; for the formation of tides; for natural convection, by which fluid flow occurs under the influence of a density gradient and magical attraction; for heating the interiors of forming stars and planets to very high temperatures; for solar system, galaxy, stellar formation and evolution; and for various other phenomena observed on Earth and throughout the universe.

In pursuit of a theory of everything magical, the merging of general relativity and quantum mechanics (or quantum field theory) into a more general theory of quantum magical attraction has become an area of research.

Of course it is still not clear if magic is a continuous thing or composed of discrete magical quanta. One theory has it that all things are connected by invisible, undetectable magical strings and it is the elastic nature of these strings which gives rise to the forces of magical attraction.

The reality is that the Universe came into being by magic and the fundamental forces which have governed, and still govern, are all magical. If there ever was a Big Bang it was a magical event. And every sunrise and sunset which occurs is just due to the magical forces of attraction which apply. We live in a world of magic. Magic is normal.

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Posted in Philosophy, Physics, Science | 3 Comments »

Dark energy and dark matter are just fudge factors for cosmic models that don’t work

September 1, 2015

A mathematical model of the physical world, which doesn’t work, can always be made to work by introducing a “fudge factor” which just compensates for the “error” displayed by the model results. The “error” is of course just the difference between real observations and the model results. The “fudge factors” thus introduced are then often used to project the model results into the future – but such forecasts are meaningless. The only valid conclusion is that the model is incorrect and needs to be changed,

These “fudge factors” can be given fancy names and imaginary properties such that they just remove all that cannot be explained. It does not make them real. And so it is with cosmic models and the invention of imaginary parameters with just those properties necessary to correct the error exhibited by the models.

In ancient times, new gods with new properties were invented to “explain” eclipses and earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Before oxygen was discovered, alchemists – on their way to becoming chemists – invented “phlogiston”. That was superseded by the “caloric theory” which soon became obsolete. “Aether” was invented as pervading space to provide a medium for the transmission of light and through which “action at a distance” could be explained (gravity, magnetism). “Space-time” is analogous to aether and was invented to match observations with the theory of relativity. In fact Einstein refers to “space-time” as a kind of aether.

The Steady State theory of cosmology considered an expanding universe but which was in a steady state, and had no beginning. That became obsolete when the Big Bang theory came along which put the Big Bang singularity 13.8 billion years ago and which provided the energy for the expanding universe. (Imagining 15 billion years ago is just as valid as imagining a time 13.8 billion years ago but the Big Bang theory is silent about what came before). But the expansion – since the energy all came at the time of the Big Bang – was expected to gradually slow down and come to a stop after which either a steady state would prevail or a compression (implosion) would occur. But recent observations indicate that the expansion of the universe is (apparently) accelerating. Clearly that is not possible if the energy is fixed. A new source of energy needed to be invented. It couldn’t be detected so better call it “dark energy”. The apparent mass of the Universe was much less than calculations indicated it should be. The solution was simple. Along came “dark matter”.

Wikipedia: …. dark energy is an unknown form of energy which is hypothesized to permeate all of space, tending to accelerate the expansion of the universe. ………. the best current measurements indicate that dark energy contributes 68.3% of the total energy in the observable universe; the mass-energy of dark matter and ordinary matter contribute 26.8% and 4.9%, respectively; and other components such as neutrinos and photons contribute a very small amount.

Dark matter is a hypothetical kind of matter that cannot be seen. ……. Dark matter neither emits nor absorbs light or any other electromagnetic radiation at any significant level.

Needless to say, “among cosmologists, dark matter is composed primarily of a not yet characterized type of subatomic particle”. Naturally.  The magnitude of the four fundamental forces of the universe (gravity, magnetism, weak force, strong force) are known but we still have no idea why or how they exist. We can just as well call them the four fundamental forces of Magic.

Dark energy and dark matter are not real. We might as well call them “magic energy” and “magic matter”. They are merely parameters invented and given just the right properties to fit the errors between observations and theory. Fudge factors. Nothing wrong with that of course. Theories, observed errors, fudge factors capable of removing errors and then the search to remove the necessity of the fudge factors is a powerful way of doing science. But making forecasts based on existing fudge factors without any idea of how the fudges need to change is invalid and – worse – is self-delusional.

(I observe that it is the “fudge factor” phenomenon which permeates what is called climate science. The real problem is that the “scientists” and their politicians believe the forecasts made with the “fudge factor” theories even though the error between model results and reality continues to increase.)

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Posted in Philosophy, Science | 2 Comments »

How Swedish beer turned Norwegian into Danish

August 31, 2015

Thirty years ago when I first learned Swedish we had a couple of Danish/Swedish projects ongoing. I observed that at meetings between Danes and Swedes each spoke their own language. I thought they were all being very considerate and polite when they switched to English whenever I joined a meeting. But then I realised that I was being invited to meetings where I had no part to play and had nothing to say. Just so that the Danes and Swedes could switch to English and have some little chance of understanding each other.

But I had not realised that Norwegian became Danish because of all that Swedish beer!!!!

( from a slightly biased Norsk perspective)

Norwegian + Swedish beer = Danish

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Indian GDP growth figures at 7.5% flatter somewhat – but are not wrong

August 31, 2015

India since the start of this year has been using a new method of calculating GDP and GDP growth. Basically 3 changes have been made.

  1. the base year has been changed from 2004-05 to now be 2011-12
  2. a “cost of production” based method has been changed to be a “market value” based method, and
  3. a database of just 5,000 corporate entities has been expanded to include over 500,000 entities

It is the use of “market value” rather than cost based data which is the biggest change and actually brings India more into line with the methods used by most other countries. Cost based (bottom up) analyses are always historical in nature, somewhat out-of-date by the time the data are used, and under-estimate real value. “Market value” based data should be more current but have a subjective element and can overestimate “value” especially in times of high inflation. The subjective element can work in both directions but brings in an element of “expectation” into what should be a look backwards. For example a calculation of GDP growth for a quarter consists of “value now” minus “value 3 months ago”. A “value now” estimation in times of high growth will overestimate and in hard times will underestimate. On the other hand a cost-based, bottom-up estimation of value will always lag and underestimate real value.

There is no “correct” method. The real question is what the “value now” is to be compared with. To compare with the growth in China or some other country it is better that the methodologies used be the same. Of course, differences of value (growth) will be different using the different methodologies. The “new” method at least uses a large enough database to be more representative of the constituent parts of the Indian economy as it actually is now.

Hindustan Times: All of this means the new method for computing GDP, which takes 2011-12 (when GDP grew 6.7%) as the base year, has bumped up India’s estimates of growth. In 2012-13, the new formula estimates growth at 5.1% (under the old one, it was 4.5%); in 2013-14, it is 6.9% (the old estimate was 4.7%); and, as we all know by the high-decibel crowing that came in its wake, in 2014-15, it was 7.3%.

There’s obviously no ‘old data’ for 2014-15 but estimates suggest that the old method may have pegged growth at 6.3-6.8%. All of this may mean something else too.

Last week, FM Arun Jaitley told US investors that India could attain double-digit growth soon. He wasn’t kidding. Because what’s 10% now could’ve been just 8% before!

For the April-June quarter Indian GDP growth is estimated to have been 7.4% compared to the 7.5% in the preceding quarter (calculated by the new method). With the old method the number would probably have been about 5.8 – 6.2 %. A growth of 7.5% is somewhat flattering of the real mood in Indian industry that I can discern.

I have a suspicion that at 7.5% the growth figures are a little too high and contain an overly optimistic “market value”. It could be that there is an in-built “optimism” of the politicians and bureaucrats, rather than of industry, which is skewing the “value now”. “Reality”, if such a thing exists, lies somewhere in-between the values calculated by the two methodologies.

 

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Posted in Economy, India | Comments Off on Indian GDP growth figures at 7.5% flatter somewhat – but are not wrong

A real correlation from a real causal relationship

August 31, 2015

A green fantasy rather than just a mirage. And I am afraid that the fantasy is intentionally malicious and not just the delusions of sanctimonious do-gooders. Just following the money reveals those who have gained the greatest benefit.

No doubt the Danes and the Germans have ensured a mild and benevolent climate for themselves?

Note that this is just the direct price paid by the consumer and does not include the cost of subsidies which are sourced from general taxation.

Chart by Euan Mearns.

The Y-axis shows residential electricity prices for the second half of 2014 from Eurostat. The X-axis is the installed wind + solar capacity for 2014 as reported in the 2015 BP statistical review normalised to W per capita using population data for 2014 as reported by the UN.

Renewable energy does have a niche where it makes very good sense – but it is not common sense which rules in Europe today.

 Eurostat

2015 BP statistical review 

UN population data.

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S & W gun sales have boomed since Obama became President

August 28, 2015

From Business Insider:

S&W says business boomed after Obama became president

guns

Obama blames Congress of course. But the reality is that he has not shown much initiative on any gun control policy which he could even try to carry through Congress.

And just gun control would not address behaviour.

 

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Posted in Behaviour, US | 1 Comment »

Over half of psychology papers are just “psychobabble”

August 28, 2015

A new research report has been published in Science and only confirms the perception that much of what passes for the science of psychology is still mainly the views and prejudices of the publishing psychologists. Their studies cannot be reproduced in over half of the 100 papers investigated. Even among those found to be reproducible, the significance of the results were exaggerated.

……. he researchers found that some of the attempted replications even produced the opposite effect to the one originally reported.

This discipline is surely a valid field of study but is still a long way from being a science.

Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science, Science 28 August 2015, Vol. 349 no. 6251 , DOI: 10.1126/science.aac4716

Abstract: Reproducibility is a defining feature of science, but the extent to which it characterizes current research is unknown. We conducted replications of 100 experimental and correlational studies published in three psychology journals using high-powered designs and original materials when available. Replication effects were half the magnitude of original effects, representing a substantial decline. Ninety-seven percent of original studies had statistically significant results. Thirty-six percent of replications had statistically significant results; 47% of original effect sizes were in the 95% confidence interval of the replication effect size; 39% of effects were subjectively rated to have replicated the original result; and if no bias in original results is assumed, combining original and replication results left 68% with statistically significant effects. Correlational tests suggest that replication success was better predicted by the strength of original evidence than by characteristics of the original and replication teams.

The Independent comments:

More than half of the findings from 100 different studies published in leading, peer-reviewed psychology journals cannot be reproduced by other researchers who followed the same methodological protocol.

A study by more than 270 researchers from around the world has found that just 39 per cent of the claims made in psychology papers published in three prominent journals could be reproduced unambiguously – and even then they were found to be less significant statistically than the original findings. ……. 

……… Professor Nosek said that there is often a contradiction between the incentives and motives of researchers – whether in psychology or other fields of science – and the need to ensure that their research findings can be reproduced by other scientists.

“Scientists aim to contribute reliable knowledge, but also need to produce results that help them keep their job as a researcher. To thrive in science, researchers need to earn publications, and some kind of results are easier to publish than others, particularly ones that are novel and show unexpected or exciting new directions,” he said.

However, the researchers found that some of the attempted replications even produced the opposite effect to the one originally reported. Many psychological associations and journals are not trying to improve reproducibility and openness, the researchers said.

“This very well done study shows that psychology has nothing to be proud of when it comes to replication,” Charles Gallistel, president of the Association for Psychological Science, told Science.

We have professional psychologists who get paid for their theories and we have professional, amateur psychologists (Agony Aunts in the newspapers, TV and Radio psychologists, talk show pundits and the like) who also get paid for providing entertainment. And then we have all the rest of us who each believe we have insights into the human mind and human behaviour, but don’t get paid for it.

We haven’t come so far from witch-doctors and Shamans.

 

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