Aliens may destroy humanity to protect other civilisations, say scientists

The referenced scientists are a meteorologist and a geographer from Penn State and another researcher from NASA?s Planetary Science Division. Their paper (.pdf link) is a ?scenario analysis? of what might happen should the Earth experience an encounter with an Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (ETI). Among their conclusions:

Guest commentary by Indur Goklany

Sometimes the true agenda is laid bare.

From http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/print/2011/08/19/1, a piece on Bill McKibben, in which E&E News? Paul Fialka discusses his agenda, are these passages.

[My comments are in brackets. I have highlighted some passages.]

Many of the climate theories in [McKibben?s] book [“The End of Nature.”]? and the future career path of McKibben ? were shaped by James Hansen, who was then and is now the head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. Starting in 1988, Hansen had begun to testify before Congress that greenhouse gas emissions had begun to change familiar weather patterns on the planet and, without action to limit them, the changes would become more obvious and dangerous in the 21st century.

As Hansen explained and as McKibben later found out, the people who were most vulnerable to the flooding, famine and drought and the spread of tropical diseases lived in developing countries. McKibben was interviewing people in the slums of Bangladesh in 2006 when he was hospitalized with dengue fever, which is still untreatable. As he watched others dying, he recalled in a later book: ?Something in me snapped. Nothing concrete had come from my work, or anyone else?s.?? (more…)

For those who have a wish to hear the grating sound of a man distempered and frustrated that the cause for which he has given at least a decade of his time, the “greatest moral challenge of our time,” is lost, I recommend listening to Al Gore as he was captured during an address at an Aspen global warming conference two weeks ago. It is a revelation.

Mr. Gore is not a happy Jeremiah. You hear him on the tape near rage, repeatedly shouting “bulls–t” over the arguments of his critics. (more…)

Read here. As noted before, the Southern Hemisphere has seemingly been in a cooling phase that is bringing awful winter weather to many countries. (click on image to enlarge)

The frigid winter temperatures also include the polar area of Antarctica. Temps there are well below normal.

Previous global-cooling postings.

Read here. The IPCC’s climate models and its “consensus” of 97% of climate scientists have proven to be robustly wrong again. The prediction that global warming will cause an increase of storms with greater frequency does not hold up to empirical-based scrutiny.

Alexander et al. published a peer-reviewed study that found storms in the southeast region of Australia showing a significant reduction since the late 19th century.

“…analyzed storminess across the whole of southeast (SE) Australia using extreme (standardized seasonal 95th and 99th percentiles) geostrophic winds deduced from eight widespread stations possessing sub-daily atmospheric pressure observations dating back to the late 19th century…The four researchers report that their results “show strong evidence for a significant reduction in intense wind events across SE Australia over the past century.” More specifically, they say that “in nearly all regions and seasons, linear trends estimated for both storm indices over the period analyzed show a decrease,” while “in terms of the regional average series,” they say that “all seasons show statistically significant declines in both storm indices, with the largest reductions in storminess in autumn and winter.” [Lisa V. Alexander, Xiaolan L. Wang, Hui Wan, Blair Trewin 2011: Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Journal]

The Wall Street Journal reports that retractions of scientific papers have surged in recent years, with the top 3 journals issuing retractions being PNAS, Science and Nature.  The graph above shows the increase in the rate of retracted papers.

Pharmalot provides a summary:

[T]here were just 22 retraction notices that appeared in journals 10 years ago, but 139 were published in 2006 and by last year, the number reached 339. Through July of this year, there were a total 210 retractions, according to Thomson Reuters Web of Science, which maintains an index of 11,600 peer-reviewed journals.

Meanwhile, retractions related to fraud rose more than sevenfold between 2004 and 2009, exceeding a twofold rise traced to mistakes, according to an analysis published in the Journal of Medical Ethics. After studying 742 papers that were withdrawn from 2000 to 2010, the analysis found that 73.5 percent were retracted simply for error, but 26.6 percent were retracted for fraud. Ominously, 31.8 percent of retracted papers were not noted as retracted (read the abstract).

The conclusion? Either there is more fraud or more policing? Ivan Oransky, the executive editor of Reuters Health and a co-founder of the Retraction Watch blog that began recently in response to the spate of retractions, writes us that the simple use of eyeballs and software that can detect plagiarism has made it possible to root out bad papers.

He also notes, however, that there are more journals, which explains why there are more papers, in general, being published. ?So the question is whether there have been more retractions per paper published,? Oransky writes, and then points to this chart to note that were, indeed, many more.

?That?s really no surprise, given the increasing numbers of eyeballs on studies, and the introduction of plagiarism detection software. It?s unclear whether the actual amount of misconduct and legitimate error has grown; it may just be that we?re picking up on more of it,? he continues. ?What makes it difficult to tell is a problem we often see at Retraction Watch: Opaque and unhelpful retraction notices saying only ?this study was withdrawn by the authors.? How does that make for transparent science? We think journals can do a lot better, by demanding that authors and institutions come clean about what went wrong.?

And why is there more fraud? As the Wall Street Journal notes, there is a lot to be gained – by both researchers and journal editors – to publish influential papers. ?The stakes are so high,? The Lancet editor Richard Horton tells the Journal. ?A single paper in Lancet and you get your chair and you get your money. It?s your passport to success.?

The Retraction Watch website has recently celebrated its one-year anniversary.  One thing you’ll notice is that most of the attention to retractions occurs in the medical sciences. Here is a leading question — is that because that area of research is more subject to error or fraud?