Rachmaninov had big hands. Allegedly.
Thanks to Banksyboy for the fun.
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Hacking Christianity questions Rick Warren’s involvement with Uganda
In Uganda, the government is deliberating a bill that would criminalize homosexuality, call for the death penalty of gay persons with AIDS, restrict free speech, and harsh punishment for straight people who do not turn in gay acquaintances. There really is no other term to describe this bill other than genocide…the state-sanctioned kind. …
Why is this being posted here? Because Rick Warren is personally involved in this process. He contributed to the rise to power of Pastor Martin Ssempa …, one of the main proponents of this bill.
Rick Warren is actively involved in Uganda and made Martin Ssempa the super-pastor he is today (he was a frequent guest in his pulpit and is pictured to the right with Rick Warren’s spouse Kay)…and now refuses to critique his involvement or his former accomplice. While Warren states that he has separated from Ssempa as of 2007, he won’t comment or involve his organization or himself on this issue of genocide.
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Caught fiddling the data?
That’s the accusation arising from the CRU email hacking. But wait!
In an opinion piece in The Times last week Lord Lawson appeared to take particular glee in expressing his outrage. “Astonishingly, what appears, at least at first blush, to have emerged is that the scientists have been manipulating the raw temperature figures to show a relentlessly rising global warming trend,” he wrote. That is why, he said, the public needs his new thinktank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, to peer a little more closely at the predictions being made by scientists.
If you feel reassured that GWPF is taking the matter in hand, think again. Peering a little more closely at the GWPF’s website reveals cause for real concern.
Every page of the GWPF’s website features a graph which appears to show that there has been no warming this century. Unfortunately, it doesn’t represent any accepted data set. When challenged, an admission was made that a graphic designer had made a mistake in showing that 2003 was warmer than 2005, the opposite of the truth. But there’s more too it than that. The graph showed 2001 to 2008. Why not more? Because adding in 2000 and 2009 produces this very different looking curve
Manipulating the data?
Of course, it is true that such a short period does not establish a statistical trend. And it’s also true that the graphic on the site is more of a logo than a serious presentation of scientific data. even so, you have to ask why an organization that claims to be about producing clarity on global warming should produce something so obviously propagandist.
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No time for writing: just a few links.
Dave Walker: 9 lessons learned at the carol service. Too true.
RealClimate: The science isn’t settled
Bishop Alan: The church and new media
Fat Prophet: What’s your favourite Christmas carol?
Methodist Preacher: Advent misery for problem gamblers
Dave Warnock: on transport infrastructure
ReadWriteWeb: Blogging impoves kids’ literacy
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I see that Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, has stepped aside following the controversy over the hacking of the unit’s email
Professor Jones said: “What is most important is that CRU continues its world-leading research with as little interruption and diversion as possible.
“After a good deal of consideration I have decided that the best way to achieve this is by stepping aside from the director’s role during the course of the independent review.”
Professor Peter Liss will become acting director while the review is conducted, the university said.
At the time that the theft of the data was revealed climate sceptics picked up on the word “trick” in one e-mail from 1999 and talk of “hiding the decline”.
Professor Jones said the e-mail was genuine but taken “completely out of context”.
He released a copy of the actual e-email which reads: “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”
Professor Jones said: “The first thing to point out is that this refers to one diagram - not a scientific paper.
“The word ‘trick’ was used here colloquially as in a clever thing to do. It is ludicrous to suggest that it refers to anything untoward.”
It’s important to note that his temporary (I hope) resignation is not an admission of any guilt or impropriety in the unit’s work. He clearly stands by the data they have gathered and the methods which they have used to analyse that data. Robert Watson, UEA’s Professor of Environmental Sciences and a DEFRA Chief Scientific Advisor, has made a similar point on the radio the other day. The CRU data has been corroborated by other agencies around the world, notably NASA and NOAA, (the USA’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), and nothing in the leaked emails changes that.
The climate change ’skeptics’ have been keen to trumpet this as evidence as some sort of conspiracy within the scientific community. There are two things that puzzle me about this.
First, what would the purpose of such a conspiracy be? The pursuit of funding? That’s hardly credible, but more so than the alternative that’s sometimes presented — that the climate change scientists are working for (or part of) some massive worldwide cabal bent on seizing political power.
Second, is there any evidence from history that suggests that scientists would get away with such a conspiracy? Whenever scientific fraud has been discovered, it has been by scientists. To believe that the case for anthropogenic climate change is a conspiracy, you have to believe that a whole discipline has abandoned the scientific method in order to pursue some other agenda. An individual might go bad. A department, possibly. Even an institution. But a whole discipline? Please.
But if we’re looking for conspiracies, let’s pause and ask ourselves how and why these leaked emails have been released so close to the Copenhagen conference. Is it just a coincidence? Although climate scientists and ‘greens’ are often accused of science for political purposes, I can’t help noticing that it is the ’skeptics’ who most often use arguments based on politics. Do you ever wonder why that is?
Could it be, just possibly, that it’s because the scientific argument is essentially over? The leading ’skeptics’ have never been shy of being less than truthful (Remember Channel 4’s Global Warming Swindle programme?); now it looks as though they’ve stooped to stealing email as well.
Meanwhile, the world is getting warmer. No one with any credibility doubts it. The best explanation remains the rise in CO2 and other greenhouse gases as a result of human activity. The politicians gathering in Copenhagen should not be deflected from the urgency of this issue.
Related Posts:
CRU Hack (23/11/09)
The hacking of CRU (aka “Climategate”) (26/11/09)
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The leaders of the Baptist, Methodist and United Reformed churches have called on the government to put pressure on the world’s richest countries to reach a binding agreement at next week’s climate change conference in Copenhagen.
The churches argue that since developed countries such as the UK and US owe their wealth to activities producing high levels of carbon, they also have a moral responsibility to take the lead in setting measures to counter global warming.
The statement comes amid widespread acknowledge that agreement on a climate treaty at Copenhagen – needed for when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012 – is unlikely.
The Free Churches have been supporting developing countries in their fight for a deal that mitigates the effects of climate change on the poor and vulnerable, and allows poor nations to develop economically.
The Revd John Marsh, moderator of the General Assembly of the United Reformed Church, said:
“We share the anger and frustration of the world’s poorest countries with the intransigent positions adopted by negotiators of some of the richest countries ahead of the Copenhagen Summit which has rendered a binding agreement unlikely. The time for talking is over.
“The richest countries have a moral obligation to ensure that a series of clear decisions are now made in order to have a treaty committing them to a cut of greenhouse gas emissions of at least 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. We call on the government to do everything in their power to persuade their American counterparts to commit to this timeframe and target at Copenhagen.”
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I’m heading home from the Digimission event. Pretty tired, to put it mildly, but it has been a good day. Jonny Baker and Maggi Dawn were especially helpful, I thought. I appreciated the realism of the day. That was little of the gushing “IT is the answer — now what’s the question” that you sometimes find. Instead we had some serious attempts to think about what impact the digital revolution will have on the church and its mission.
Shane Hipps (by slightly stuttery* video link from Arizona) invited us to consider Marshall McLuhan’s best-remembered slogan that “the medium is the message” and how it impacts on our use of the internet. Those of us who booked early were given a copy of his book Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith
As always with these events, the best bit of the day was not the speakers (though they were good) but the meeting of new friends. Special shout-out to Johnny Laird with thanks for his company.
Props to the good folk at the Evangelical Alliance for organizing the day. The arrangements for the day were very slickly done, there was a good luncheon (always a bonus!) and the technology worked with very few hitches*. Beyond doubt, a good and useful day.
Gripes? There has to be something. The venue was very cold. I mean like, shiveringly so. I was glad to have an extra jumper with me. Oh, and those of us who took part in the digimission synchroblog had our blogposts distributed with the day’s agenda (fame at last, Olive!), but mine was the only one not credited with a url. Shouldn’t grumble — it was probably my fault for posting it late. 
* This is not a grumble. Getting a live video feed from Arizona still strikes me as pretty remarkable. We too easily take this exciting stuff for granted.
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Even Methodist Church House is jumping the gun…
Posted via email from Richard Hall’s perfectly pointless blog
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From Owen Wister’s The Virginian
Therefore Trampas spoke. “Your bet, you son-of-a–.”
The Virginian’s pistol came out, and his hand lay on the table, holding it unaimed. And with a voice as gentle as ever, the voice that sounded almost like a caress, but drawling a very little more than usual, so that there was almost a space between each word, he issued his orders to the man Trampas:”When you call me that, SMILE.” And he looked at Trampas across the table.
Yes, the voice was gentle. But in my ears it seemed as if somewhere the bell of death was ringing; and silence, like a stroke, fell on the large room. All men present, as if by some magnetic current, had become aware of this crisis. In my ignorance, and the total stoppage of my thoughts, I stood stock-still, and noticed various people crouching, or shifting their positions.
“Sit quiet,” said the dealer, scornfully to the man near me. “Can’t you see he don’t want to push trouble? He has handed Trampas the choice to back down or draw his steel.”
Then, with equal suddenness and ease, the room came out of its strangeness. Voices and cards, the click of chips, the puff of tobacco, glasses lifted to drink,–this level of smooth relaxation hinted no more plainly of what lay beneath than does the surface tell the depth of the sea.
For Trampas had made his choice. And that choice was not to “draw his steel.” If it was knowledge that he sought, he had found it, and no mistake! We heard no further reference to what he had been pleased to style “amatures.” In no company would the black-headed man who had visited Arizona be rated a novice at the cool art of self-preservation.
One doubt remained: what kind of a man was Trampas? A public back-down is an unfinished thing,–for some natures at least. I looked at his face, and thought it sullen, but tricky rather than courageous.
Something had been added to my knowledge also Once again I had heard applied to the Virginian that epithet which Steve so freely used. The same words, identical to the letter. But this time they had produced a pistol. “When you call me that, SMILE!” So I perceived a new example of the old truth, that the letter means nothing until the spirit gives it life.
It’s ages since I read this book, prompted by the tv series (with which it has almost nothing in common), but this one phrase has stayed with me ever since. “When you call me that, SMILE!”
Friends can trade insults with a smile on their faces. The deeper the friendship, the more offensive the abuse can be without offense being taken.
But that isn’t something you can take for granted. If you’re trying to establish a friendship or, worse still, re-establish a relationship that has been broken, then it’s a mistake to assume that ‘friendly insults’ are appropriate. The best that’s going to happen is that you’ll look like a graceless nerk.
I just thought I’d mention it.
Reblogged, for no particular reason
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Arrived in London for the digimission day. After a 4am start, hope I can get something from it. Coffee will help!
Posted via email from Richard Hall’s perfectly pointless blog
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It is with some sadness that I’ve learned of the death of Fr Francis McKenna, one of my former colleagues in Swansea. His funeral homily is on the Belmont Abbey website. It rings very true to my experience of him. He had a great sense of fun and, in the words of one of his students, an acerbic wit.
Go with God, Francis. It was a privilege to have known you.
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He will come like last leaf’s fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to the bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud’s folding.
He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens to mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.
He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.
He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like a child.
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Come, Thou long expected Jesus
Born to set thy people free;
From our fears and sins release us,
Let us find our rest in thee.
Israel’s strength and consolation,
Hope of all the earth thou art;
Dear desire of every nation,
Joy of every longing heart.
Born thy people to deliver,
Born a child and yet a King,
Born to reign in us forever,
Now thy gracious kingdom bring.
By thine own eternal Spirit
Rule in all our hearts alone;
By thine all-sufficient merit,
Raise us to thy glorious throne.
Charles Wesley
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…to all my US friends. Especially those exiled this side of the Atlantic. You know who you are!
Hope you’re able to get your traditional pumpkin and pecan-based fare.
Even if it is strange.
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OK. I know this vid is doing the rounds. But it gave me a smile.
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Irony alert.
Pajamas Media on ‘Climategate’
So what does this all mean? It does not mean that there is no warming trend or that mankind has not been responsible for at least some of the warming. To claim that as result of these documents is clearly a step too far. However, it is clear that at least one branch of climate science — paleoclimatology — has become hopelessly politicized to the point of engaging in unethical and possibly illegal behavior.
To the extent that paleoclimatology is an important part of the scientific case for action regarding global warming, urgent reassessments need to be made. In the meantime, all those responsible for political action on global warming should stop the process pending the results of inquiries, investigations, and any criminal proceedings. What cannot happen is the process carrying on as if nothing has happened.
‘Unethical and illegal behavior’? What — you mean, like, stealing a load of email? As for the politicization of climate science, the ’skeptics’ have relentlessly been pursuing an essentially political agenda in their approach to this issue ever since it first appeared. Pots and kettles, gentlemen, pots and kettles.
I was surprised by the reaction of George Monbiot to this story.
It is true that much of what has been revealed could be explained as the usual cut and thrust of the peer review process, exacerbated by the extraordinary pressure the scientists were facing from a denial industry determined to crush them. One of the most damaging emails was sent by the head of the climatic research unit, Phil Jones. He wrote “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
One of these papers which was published in the journal Climate Research turned out to be so badly flawed that the scandal resulted in the resignation of the editor-in-chief. Jones knew that any incorrect papers by sceptical scientists would be picked up and amplified by climate change deniers funded by the fossil fuel industry, who often – as I documented in my book Heat – use all sorts of dirty tricks to advance their cause.
Even so, his message looks awful. It gives the impression of confirming a potent meme circulated by those who campaign against taking action on climate change: that the IPCC process is biased. However good the detailed explanations may be, most people aren’t going to follow or understand them. Jones’s statement, on the other hand, is stark and easy to grasp.
So the head of a serious and respected research outfit should resign because of a PR coup by folk who, let’s not forget, illegally hacked in to a private email system? It’s time to get real about this.
When the dust settles on climategate, the science will still be there. Nothing in this scandal does anything to alter the IPCC assessment or the increasing evidence for the need for action on climate change.
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“What is wrong with capitalism, then, is not that it involves some people being richer than I am. I cannot see the slightest objection to other people being richer than I am; I have no urge to be as rich as everybody else, and no Christian (and indeed no grown-up person) could possibly devote his life to trying to be as rich or richer than others. There are indeed people, very large numbers of people, who are obscenely poor, starving, diseased, illiterate, and it is quite obviously unjust and unreasonable that they should be left in this state while other people or other nations live in luxury; but this has nothing specially to do with capitalism, even though we will never now be able to alter that situation until capitalism has been abolished. You find exactly the same conditions in, say, slave societies and, moreover, capitalism, during its prosperous boom phases, is quite capable of relieving distress at least in fully industrialised societies - this is what the ‘Welfare State’ is all about. What is wrong with capitalism is simply that it is based on human antagonism, and it is precisely here that it comes in conflict with Christianity. Capitalism is a state of war, but not just a state of war between equivalent forces; it involves a war between those who believe in and prosecute war as a way of life, as an economy, and those who do not. The permanent capitalist state of war erupts every now and then into a major killing war, but its so-called peacetime is just war carried on by other means.”
Herbert McCabe, “The Class Struggle and Christian Love”, in God Matters (London: Continuum, 1987, 2005), pp. 192-93.
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PamBG has a very helpful post: Capitalism as a Belief System
In many ways, I’m still a “foreigner” here in the US and one of the things that has struck me is how much capitalism appears to be for many people in the US a belief system as well as a way of running an economy. After twenty years working in the equity markets, my own opinion is that capitalism is, historically, the least worst way of running an economy that human history has devised.
It’s also my opinion however, that as a belief system, capitalism stinks. And I believe that capitalism is the number one belief system held by US society. Christians may say that they believe in the Lordship of Christ, but in actual fact we believe in the Lordship of Profits. We prove this every day by the way we live our lives.
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In advance of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, a group of 26 scientists have issued The Copenhagen Diagnosis: Climate Science Report, which aims to highlight the main issues for the negotiations.
The most significant recent climate change findings are:
Surging greenhouse gas emissions: Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels in 2008 were nearly 40% higher than those in 1990. Even if global emission rates are stabilized at present –day levels, just 20 more years of emissions would give a 25% probability that warming exceeds 2oC. Even with zero emissions after 2030. Every year of delayed action increase the chances of exceeding 2oC warming.
Recent global temperatures demonstrate human-based warming: Over the past 25 years temperatures have increased at a rate of 0.190C per decade, in every good agreement with predictions based on greenhouse gas increases. Even over the past ten years, despite a decrease in solar forcing, the trend continues to be one of warming. Natural, short- term fluctuations are occurring as usual but there have been no significant changes in the underlying warming trend.
Acceleration of melting of ice-sheets, glaciers and ice-caps: A wide array of satellite and ice measurements now demonstrate beyond doubt that both the Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets are losing mass at an increasing rate. Melting of glaciers and ice-caps in other parts of the world has also accelerated since 1990.
Rapid Arctic sea-ice decline: Summer-time melting of Arctic sea-ice has accelerated far beyond the expectations of climate models. This area of sea-ice melt during 2007-2009 was about 40% greater than the average prediction from IPCC AR4 climate models.
Current sea-level rise underestimates: Satellites show great global average sea-level rise (3.4 mm/yr over the past 15 years) to be 80% above past IPCC predictions. This acceleration in sea-level rise is consistent with a doubling in contribution from melting of glaciers, ice caps and the Greenland and West-Antarctic ice-sheets.
Sea-level prediction revised: By 2100, global sea-level is likely to rise at least twice as much as projected by Working Group 1 of the IPCC AR4, for unmitigated emissions it may well exceed 1 meter. The upper limit has been estimated as – 2 meters sea-level rise by 2100. Sea-level will continue to rise for centuries after global temperature have been stabilized and several meters of sea level rise must be expected over the next few centuries.
Delay in action risks irreversible damage: Several vulnerable elements in the climate system (e.g. continental ice-sheets. Amazon rainforest, West African monsoon and others) could be pushed towards abrupt or irreversible change if warming continues in a business-as-usual way throughout this century. The risk of transgressing critical thresholds (“tipping points”) increase strongly with ongoing climate change. Thus waiting for higher levels of scientific certainty could mean that some tipping points will be crossed before they are recognized.
The turning point must come soon: If global warming is to be limited to a maximum of 2oC above pre-industrial values, global emissions need to peak between 2015 and 2020 and then decline rapidly. To stabilize climate, a decarbonized global society – with near-zero emissions of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases – need to be reached well within this century. More specifically, the average annual per-capita emissions will have to shrink to well under 1 metric ton CO2 by 2050. This is 80-90% below the per-capita emissions in developed nations in 2000.
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