Jeff Alberts's blog

Well, The Denver Broncos under Tim Tebow were completely dismantled at the hands of the New England Patriots under Tom Brady.

I know, I know, Tebow never said "god" or whomever was directly influencing his games, simply that he has a "god-given" talent. Same thing, really.

Now, before you call me a hater, I don't hate Tebow, or any religious person (except for those who hate me, of course). I think his humanitarian efforts are outstanding, he brings light into the lives of children for whom life is very difficult through no fault of their own (though one could ask, why did "god" bless Tebow while cursing countless children the world over, throughout history?). I still don't understand why you need a belief in "god" to do good things for people.

Tebow is by no means unique, however. Countless sports figures praise Jesus for all of their victories. And many of them actually DO say things like "this victory is god's not mine." Hmm. I'm not sure Jesus would really want the credit for kicking an opponent in the head repeatedly, for personal fame and fortune.

And who gets the glory when two opponents are praising Jesus? If the guy with the Jesus tattoo gets knocked out, does that mean Jesus hates him?

I have a serious question.

Does Tim Tebow, or any other athlete who is devoutly faithful, really believe that God is directly helping them win games?

If the answer is yes, then how do they reconcile such a seemingly petty act by an all-powerful god who doesn't seem to care about children being raped by men of the cloth, or by anyone, for that matter? Does God care more about sports than the well-being of innocent children? Millionaire sports figures do NOT need direct assistance from God to help them win games.

If the answer is no, then what is the point of the worshipful gestures after every successful play?

I would really like to know the answer from someone who believes.

On the new episode of Mythbusters tonight, they compared automobiles and motorcycles to determine which was "better for the environment".

One of their benchmarks was the amount of CO2 emitted by each. They're calling CO2 a pollutant which "contributes to global warming". Busting one myth and promoting another? I just lost some respect for Jamie and Adam.

I'm trying to figure out the purpose of this show.

Just watched one regarding the "guide stones" in Georgia. They seem to happily spout apocalyptic nonsense about the Mayan calendar, solar flares, coronal mass ejections, Rosicrucians, etc. I don't see any real thought involved in the creation or execution of this program. When you seek the advice of "psychics" about what such things might mean, well, credibility obviously isn't important to you.

One of the things which irks me the most about the Global Warming, Climate Change, Global Climate Disruption (or whatever they're calling it today), is the concept of a "global average temperature".

I'm no mathematician, I barely graduated high school, but the idea of a GAT never sat right with me. It just didn't make any sense. I was never able to quantify why, until someone mentioned the concepts of Intensive and Extensive properties of a system. And because the Earth is not a blackbody, not a system in equilibrium, the temperature of one part has little or no relevance to the temperature of another part.

Essex et al explains the whole situation very nicely here.

Their abstract states:

Physical, mathematical and observational grounds are employed to show that there
is no physically meaningful global temperature for the Earth in the context of the issue
of global warming. While it is always possible to construct statistics for any given set of
local temperature data, an infinite range of such statistics is mathematically permissible
if physical principles provide no explicit basis for choosing among them. Distinct and
equally valid statistical rules can and do show opposite trends when applied to the
results of computations from physical models and real data in the atmosphere. A given
temperature field can be interpreted as both “warming” and “cooling” simultaneously,
making the concept of warming in the context of the issue of global warming physically
ill-posed.

And their conclusion states:

There is no global temperature. The reasons lie in the properties of the equation of state

So MSN has a bunch of crap on their home page, which they "categorize" fairly loosely.

Just below their main story rotator there are some tabs which are consistently labeled "Must See", "News", "Money & Quotes", and "Lifestyle". Since this is the default homepage at work, I sometimes browse around and check out the idiotic things happening in the world.

Under "Must See" I'm seeing a link to Top 10 faux bob hairstyles. Hmm. Exactly who "must see" this kind of useless crap? Ooh! Maybe I "must see" "10 speedy ways to get date-pretty"! Oooh!

I guess the content managers at MSN have a different idea of what the phrase "must see" means than I do. I'm not sure what's more disturbing; That such things are important to some people, or that they pay people to put total garbage out there. Wouldn't one expect to see something about Libya under "must see", or maybe the person with the world's longest fingernails, or Bobo the farting chimp. ANYTHING but "Top 10 faux bob hairstyles"!!!

Climate Audit: McKitrick and Nierenberg 2010 Rebuts Another Team Article

Steve McIntyre exposes yet another damning example of how key members of the "climate science" community are dishonest brokers, at best.

As we saw in the CRU Emails, peer review for "climate science" is broken, and continues to be. Those of you who said the emails were taken out of context (even though plenty of proper context was provided), here you go. Context, and an apparent biased journal editor for the International Journal of Climatology, Andrew Comrie.

Essentially, an outside reviewer, and primary author of the paper being rebutted, was allowed to provide comments to the journal, but the paper's authors (McKittrick and Nierenberg) were not given the opportunity to reply, and their paper was rejected. They were forced to publish in another (non-climate) journal over which the "Hockey Team" had no control. According to McKittrick, none of the criticisms of the paper showed technical flaws, but merely dismissed the paper.

And, get this, Gavin Schmidt, the adversarial outside reviewer, asked McKittrick for his data and code, and McKittrick gave it to him. Why doesn't this happen in the opposite direction? There are STILL climate papers out there, which are used by the IPCC, that have no been replicated by anyone outside "the Team", and are therefore suspect and should not be considered for major policy decisions.

Remember Phil Jones' response to Bishop Hill when asked for data:

“Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.”

Found this story on MSN about "Most memorable professional mistakes."

So I read through them, and didn't find them particularly memorable; wrong videotape in the VCR for a presentation, pron 800 number instead of the right customer number on promotional materials, stuff like that. I think Phil Jones and other members of the "Hockey Team" could add some zingers to the list.

While reading a Dilbert comic linked to by commenter Amino Acids in Meteorites on Wattsupwiththat.com, I noticed this comment at the top of the list under the comic.

Aug 23, 2010
Whether we as humans are causing global warming is moot at this point for two reason:

1) Whether we're causing it or not, it's wise and the right thing to do to take care of our environment. To hide behind beliefs that we as humans aren't causing global warming is, frankly, asinine. The reason it is asinine is because even if we're not causing global warming, I'm still seeing smog in L.A., trash on the roadways and urban sprawl way out of control. We're not helping the environment.

2) The point is moot because, hey, this is a freakin' comic! Enjoy the humor of it and let's move on! =D

Firstly, it's kind of arrogant for the commenter to preach to us about the right thing to do and then say it's just a comic, move on.

Here are a few choice quotes from Michael Mann from the ClimateGate emails.

August 26, 2005: email 1125067952: He has engaged in some very nasty, and in my opinion unprofessional email exchanges with some close colleagues of mine who have established some fundamental undisclosed errors in work he co-published with von Storch.

Of course, all of Mann's email exchanges and postings at RealClimate are professional...

August 26, 2005: email 1125067952: There are some similarly problematic issues with Cubasch, who, like von Storch, … has engaged in inflammatory and personal public commentary. There is no room for that on any side of the debate.

Except when it's Mann himself accusing everyone who disagrees with him of being in the pocket of "big oil".

April 26, 2006: email 1146062963 : [Mike Mann referring to data requests from Steve McIntyre] I’m saddened to hear that this bozo is bothering you too, in addition to the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and everyone else. Rest assured that I won’t ever respond to McIntyre should he ever contact me, but I will forward you any email he sends related to this. I assume Scott feels the same way…

Another totally professional comment by The Mann! Is "bozo" a climate science term?

May 12, 2006: email 1147435800: [Again, Mann referring to McIntyre] Personally, I don’t see why you should make any concessions for this moron.

Ditto...