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You do know how easy it is to lie with statistics don't you? Oh right scientists can do no wrong in your world view and we should dispense with reproducibility of their claims

You are aware that right now six different independent groups are analyzing the temperature records, using ground, ocean, balloon, and satellite measurements, and getting very consistent results?

You are aware that an independent analysis, "BEST" (by U.C. Berkeley), was set up (and funded by, among other things, many skeptics) with the explicit purpose of doing an independent analysis without the purported "biases" that critical claim other temperature groups had.
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/10/climate-skeptics-perform-independent-analysis-finally-convinced-earth-is-getting-warmer.ars

Here's a quote from leading skeptic Anthony Watts about that BEST study (March 2011):

“I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong.the method isn’t the madness that we’ve seen from NOAA, NCDC, GISS, and CRU.That lack of strings attached to funding, plus the broad mix of people involved especially those who have previous experience in handling large data sets gives me greater confidence in the result being closer to a bona fide ground truth than anything we’ve seen yet. Dr. Fred Singer also gives a tentative endorsement of the methods.Climate related website owners, I give you carte blanche to repost this.

Guess what-- the results are still the same. The data showing the planet is warming is real.
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111020/full/news.2011.607.html

How much "reproducability of their claims" do you want?

Satellite measurements, ground station measurements,ocean measurements, balloon-sonde measurements, microwave measurements-- very different techniques, same answers.

Yep exactly. There are two problems here.
1. Celltex hasn't done any clinical trials of any sort. To prove a treatment works you need a double-blind trial at least - administer placebo to one group, and the cells to another and make sure the physician in charge doesn't know which one is being given to which patient. Then when you 'unblind' the trial and reveal which patient got what - that's when (if it's worked) you start charging. In the trial phase, a company should be providing the treatment free with placebo and working with the FDA. They shouldn't be charging for voodoo treatments/homeopathy.
2. Big conflict of interest for McGee from the start - it's difficult to claim you can independently assess papers on bioethics, when many of the papers are likely to be about stem cells and trials but you're being paid by a firm that is growing stem cells.

As the (accidentally unlinked when I submitted) Nature story says, McGee claimed he hoped by being inside the company, he could push them to do trials properly. When it became clear they were already treating patients and probably weren't too interested in testing the treatments, he quit. At least, that's one interpretation....

Don't know how significant this is: http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v27/n9/full/nbt0909-801b.html (it's paywalled and I don't feel like spending $32 to find out what their "clarifications" about the claims in the above article). I suspect that their numbers are misleading - I had always thought that GM crops *do* produce less, but a given crop may survive drought conditions or freezing conditions (extending the growing season)better. Different crops that have already been modified (as mentioned, corn and wheat) may have been modified do behave in different ways - it would just depend on what problem they're trying to solve in that area. Under those circumstances, tests performed under "ideal conditions" wouldn't show the benefits of using GM crops. Of course, how much of what I "know" is propaganda, I can't say. Generally speaking, I trust Penn & Teller, but I can't promise facts :p

Sorry, it appears the rate was revised the year I graduated, so I was using older information (1 per 600,000). I will admit that one error per three genes from replication alone did seem too high to me. In vivo error rates seem to be one per 10^9 base pairs. Given that it's a review article, I'd have to do a lot of reading to determine how DNA packing and such affect that rate (or how they measured in vivo rates rather that ideal in vitro).

That rate would only allow for 150 mutations per cell before hitting its telemerase limit (which most do not reach). Given the number of genes, number of cells, and sequence required for cancer to form, this number seems much too low. Thus, the environmental mutation rate must make-up the difference. For what I posted, it's not terribly relevant if the mutation was replication-induced or mutagen-induced, so I essentially conflated them for simplicity. Each organism will have very different rates, so deriving highly accurate numbers isn't necessary for explaining the general concept of the purpose of teleomeres.

And tons here: http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nnano.2012.20.html

And here is the structure they are imaging: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naphthalocyanine

You would think that any journalist who is writing an article about something being imaged would also include the picture:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17156036

Here's the link to the actual article with more pictures:

http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nnano.2012.20.html

Here's the article:
Imaging the charge distribution within a single molecule
Fabian Mohn, Leo Gross, Nikolaj Moll & Gerhard Meyer
Nature Nanotechnology (2012) doi:10.1038/nnano.2012.20

It's lazy journalists who couldn't do 2 minutes of Googling who are killing journalism, not the Internet or Online Publishing!

Here is the source: Full text and pictures here or as a PDF here.

And tons here: http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nnano.2012.20.html

....since the last post on this - check the comment stream on the last slashdot update. As I said there: "It's more than a rumour, as this later report from Nature makes clear. There is an OPERA statement circulating today that suggests two potential problems with the set-up. One is the one reported here - the cable issue - the second is a problem with "the experiment’s pioneering use of Global Positioning System (GPS) signals to synchronize atomic clocks at each end of its neutrino beam". But you're right - they haven't made a public statement yet nor been able to quantify yet the contribution of each to the potential error. It doesn't look good for them though." Here's the Nature story from three days ago. It explains there were two sources of error, and that "These two issues can modify the neutrino time of flight in opposite directions". The story posted by ScienceInsider seems in-fact to have been wide of the mark - it stated that the cable issue alone could account for the 60 nanosecond effect. OPERA have yet to confirm that - and as the new post above says - the other error could push things the other way. But it doesn't look good for those FTL neutrinos. So in short, I guess I should have slashdotted the Nature story instead of making a community contribution to a post that got the story er... wrong by being just plain too quick off the mark. Doh. Oh yeah and quit blaming 'the press'. I saw lots of accurate coverage - not just by Nature and Science but by the Guardian and the BBC. All stories stated the results were incredibly unlikely to hold and explained why. But you expect journalists not to report on a paper that was posted to arXiv - thus in the public domain - and suggested that Einstein's special theory of relativity might have been broken? Let's get real.

pesticides, GMOs and processed foods

Processed foods I'll give you. People really should move back to whole foods, preferably vegetables, in place of highly processed grains and sugars. Pesticides have their place. There's a lot to be said for moving more toward IPM strategies than we currently have, sure, but they are a necessary evil. Heck, even plants produce their own pesticides. They don't make those secondary metabolites for the fun of it. And it's funny that you mention GE crops as a problem in the same sentence as pesticides, considering the effects they've had on pesticide usage. There's plenty of criticisms to make about how people eat and how food is grown. Processed foods are one. Monoculture & lack of biodiversity, over-fertilization & run-off, water scarcity & depleting aquifers, ect. would be much better practices to gripe about, and issues like peak phosphorus, declining agricultural research, and agriculture in the face of climatic issues are also worth considering. Pesticides and especially biotechnology (in and of themselves anyway) are not...not that pesticide use shouldn't be reduced where possible.

I think this even appeared on slashdot a while back.Negative results need to be published.

http://www.arjournals.com/ojs/
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v470/n7332/full/470039a.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20110203

In fact, just google "publishing negative results" and you get piles of stuff that says it's good.

Here is a link to the article in Nature that is supposed to claim rotting Y chromosome theory.

Once again with the subject of genetics on Slashdot, we have a shocking level of confident ignorance on display (aided and abetted by the equally clueless moderators).

Please, evolution is not synonymous with natural selection. If all you know about genetics is what you learned in Biology 101, perhaps supplemented by a Dawkins book, you're missing out on most of the picture.

The degeneration of the Y chromosome was made possible by the lack of recombination along most of its length (Muller's ratchet/Hill-Robertson effect), which allowed the combined effects of mutation (including deletions) and genetic drift (which is much stronger on the Y due to there being 1/4 the number of Y chromosomes in a population than a given autosome) to very slowly truncate it. There's really no need to invent post-hoc selective stories to explain this; it's all pretty basic stuff.

Of course, you are correct that this doesn't mean that males would (or could) go extinct if the Y somehow did disappear. No competent scientist would ever claim this; most likely the sex-determining genes would move to other chromosomes.

Summary of this story in Nature

The origins of genome complexity

I think the article is an Amazonian plot. One designed to further degrade basic science education in the world. I mean, it gets some of the basic concepts wrong. I particularly enjoyed the part about the rhesus macaque being ancestral to both humans and chimps. It shows that the person writing the story doesn't have any clue at all about the subject.


Anyways, the source material is here:

http://www.nature.com/news/the-human-y-chromosome-is-here-to-stay-1.10082

Not like I love the Nature Publishing Group (NPG) very much, but let's link to the source to help give the original authors credit. (Which, as far as I can tell, the medical daily article doesn't even do!)

Here is a link to the original paper

For those who aren't molecular biologists or geneticists, here is a link to the Nature news article on the scientific paper

Not like I love the Nature Publishing Group (NPG) very much, but let's link to the source to help give the original authors credit. (Which, as far as I can tell, the medical daily article doesn't even do!)

Here is a link to the original paper

For those who aren't molecular biologists or geneticists, here is a link to the Nature news article on the scientific paper

a slightly better "article" from the nature blog giving the official and unofficial stories:

http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/02/faster-than-light-neutrino-measurement-has-two-possible-errors.html

And this time, the correct link. Doh.

They already have.

Earthquake prediction is hard. It's unsurprising that mistakes happen. Lynching scientists for this sort of thing is not going to make it any better in future. It will just lead all seismologists working in Italy to always predict disaster in the future.

I have no doubts of the difficulty of predicting earthquakes. I wouldn't fault the scientists for failing to predict an earthquake. This really has nothing to do with actually predicting earthquakes. It's about "the failure of government-appointed scientists serving on an advisory panel to adequately evaluate, and then communicate, the potential risk to the local population." (from this article)

They said "no danger" in area KNOWN for it's seismic reputation. This caused people to ignore basic safety procedures.

Never mind that they are scientists, they were in a position of trust, and they gave or allowed blatantly wrong advice to be given. Either their science was negligent, or their warnings were. Under no circumstances should "no danger" have been declared in this case.

Read, you mean like this quote from one of the accused scientists? "It is unlikely that an earthquake like the one in 1703 could occur in the short term, but the possibility cannot be totally excluded."

Ah, I see you are referencing an article I used in some of my other comments. Your quote was from the minutes of the meeting. Perhaps you neglected to read this tidbit:

The commission did not issue its usual formal statement, and the minutes of the meeting were not even prepared, says Boschi, until after the earthquake had occurred.

The minutes were not even prepared until AFTER the earthquake occurred. Really easy to add quotes to the minutes of a meeting AFTER the shit hits the fan.

This is a strange idea. Do you really thing people would have been sleeping in their cars if they'd been told that their houses were potentially unsafe? How long do you think they would do that for? A week? A year? That earthquake could have taken a decade to arrive, and unless someone is going to spend the billions of dollars required to re-inforce every weak building in the country, the problem isn't going anywhere. Also, sleeping in your car outside an unreinforced masonry building during an earthquake is just as much of a death-trap as sleeping inside.

Another Nature article on this subject:

From when he was a young boy growing up in a house on Via Antinori in the medieval heart of this earthquake-prone Italian city, Vincenzo Vittorini remembers the ritual whenever the family felt a seismic tremor overnight. "My father was afraid of earthquakes, so whenever the ground shook, even a little, he would gather us and take us out of the house," he says. "We would walk to a little piazza nearby, and the children — we were four brothers — and my mother would sleep in the car. My father would stand outside, smoking cigarettes with the other fathers, until morning." That, he says, represented the age-old, cautionary "culture" of living in an earthquake zone.

It may be a strange idea if you don't live in an area that is seismically active. However, this was their way of life. They would go out to a piazza and sleep in the car. Much less of a death-trap then the situation you are imagining.

People died because an earthquake occurred. The scientists were not responsible for the earthquake. And their "prediction" was probably just about as good as any available.

Read about their "prediction" from a "Nature" article:

In press interviews before and after the meeting that were broadcast on Italian television, immortalized on YouTube and form detailed parts of the prosecution case, De Bernardinis said that the seismic situation in L'Aquila was "certainly normal" and posed "no danger", adding that "the scientific community continues to assure me that, to the contrary, it's a favourable situation because of the continuous discharge of energy". When prompted by a journalist who said, "So we should have a nice glass of wine," De Bernardinis replied "Absolutely", and urged locals to have a glass of Montepulciano.

The suggestion that repeated tremors were favourable because they 'unload', or discharge, seismic stress and reduce the probability of a major quake seems to be scientifically incorrect.

It's one thing to fail to predict an earthquake. However, they didn't fail to predict an earthquake, to the contrary, they predicted that there was "no danger". Basically, no earthquake.

Now consider this: had the scientists told people that there is always a risk of earthquakes, what preparations would the victims have made that might have saved their lives? I'll tell you: precisely zero.

Wrong again. The same article points out the routine the residents in the area had of leaving the homes when a small tremor occurred, and sleeping outside. Those residents, pacified by the "no danger" statement of the panel, ignored the tremors and lost their life.

People died because an earthquake occurred. The scientists were not responsible for the earthquake. And their "prediction" was probably just about as good as any available.

Read about their "prediction" from a "Nature" article:

In press interviews before and after the meeting that were broadcast on Italian television, immortalized on YouTube and form detailed parts of the prosecution case, De Bernardinis said that the seismic situation in L'Aquila was "certainly normal" and posed "no danger", adding that "the scientific community continues to assure me that, to the contrary, it's a favourable situation because of the continuous discharge of energy". When prompted by a journalist who said, "So we should have a nice glass of wine," De Bernardinis replied "Absolutely", and urged locals to have a glass of Montepulciano.

The suggestion that repeated tremors were favourable because they 'unload', or discharge, seismic stress and reduce the probability of a major quake seems to be scientifically incorrect.

It's one thing to fail to predict an earthquake. However, they didn't fail to predict an earthquake, to the contrary, they predicted that there was "no danger". Basically, no earthquake.

Now consider this: had the scientists told people that there is always a risk of earthquakes, what preparations would the victims have made that might have saved their lives? I'll tell you: precisely zero.

Wrong again. The same article points out the routine the residents in the area had of leaving the homes when a small tremor occurred, and sleeping outside. Those residents, pacified by the "no danger" statement of the panel, ignored the tremors and lost their life.

Those people broke with their regular routine of sleeping outside in their car after multiple small tremors, based on the assurances of the seismologists on trial. Those seismologist called that open session to discredit a laboratory tech who was claiming the likelihood of a larger earthquake. The seismologists basically told the people that there was no danger, go drink some wine. If they hadn't called that meeting and gave that direction, those people wouldn't have broken routine, and many of them would have had a much better chance at survival.

This has been discussed on slashdot before, catch-up on some of the details.

What truly scientific mind would say that that it is safe to ignore the tremors that had been happening in the area? Why didn't they say "we have no conclusive evidence of a forthcoming earthquake, but here are some general safety tips". Most likely, they were more interested in discrediting and shaming the laboratory tech who had been warning of a big earthquake. When those who are entrusted with public safety choose ego over public safety, and it causes changes that lead to death, I agree that they should be held accountable.

Read the Nature article. Get the perspective from both sides.

as reported here and here? I thought people have been busy about it for quite some time.

State of the art wind, geothermal, hydro an solar thermal are as or more reliable than coal and nuclear, and are rapidly getting even better.

Wind and solar are inherently unreliable for the simple reason that weather is, and also have low energy density (which means they require lots of land). Hydro is reliable but limited by the unfortunate fact that you need a large river to build it, and has absolutely massive enviromental impact, as well as the risk of catastrophic failure (dam breaks). Geothermal might be reliable (depending on how fast heat is conducted through rock) work, but aside from few fortunate(?) volcanic regions in the world requires the kind of deep drilling techniques we don't have nor will have in the foreseeable future.

By contrast, coal and nuclear plants produce energy as long as you supply fuel.

Now, you could possibly convert Sahara into a giant solar power center that could power Europe. However, this has plenty of technical but even most importantly political problems, specifically that it would make Europe dependent on a region that is known for neither its political stability, military might nor love of Europe. In other words, it would re-create the whole situation with US and the Middle-East, with the difference that North Africa is within arm's reach from Europe if and when someone decides to do something stupid on either side. I don't see how that could possibly end well for anyone concerned.

Germany is one of the biggest industrial nations in Europe and is confident they can move from nuclear to renewable without crippling themselves.

Germany is building coal plants to replace the nuclear power. Renewables can take some of the burden, but not fully replace nuclear, much less non-nuclear (polluting) energy production.

Maybe you are right and in ten years they will have reverted to an agrarian society for be totally dependent on French nuclear plants, but if you had bothered to look at their plans you would see they are actually rather credible.

Most likely they'll quietly drop the plans when hysteria passes and people focus on other things, such as their rapidly rising electric bills.

Nuclear is still useful to us, but there is little reason to build more now.

Well no, running out of fossil fuels sooner or later, having climate change grow worse and worse by their use in the meantime, and newer plans being typically safer and more efficient than old ones, there's no reason whatsoever.

We have better alternatives, and while it may be possible to develop better nuclear designs like thorium reactors you have to ask what the point would be when the demand is for renewable.

Unfortunately none of those you listed are alternatives. Hydro can't be scaled up enough, geothermal is still strictly in the realm of science fiction, and wind and solar are only workable if people get used to the idea that whether they get electricity or not is up to luck.

Anyone looking to invest a few tens of billions over a decade or two in new tech isn't going to throw money at something they can't sell to most countries and which will be made redundant in the relatively near future.

You should perhaps wait until this latest financial crisis ends before trying to imply that the actions of businessmen have anything to do with common good.

Citations

On the food thing before anyone asks:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/oct/11/how-will-the-world-feed-itself

Peak Oil:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v481/n7382/full/481433a.html

Tar sands:
http://news.yahoo.com/nobel-winners-urge-eu-leaders-back-tar-sands-110130470.html

The Guardian article goes on to say:

---
“Our results and those of everyone else show we are losing a huge amount of water into the oceans every year,” said Prof John Wahr of the University of Colorado. “People should be just as worried about the melting of the world’s ice as they were before.”

His team’s study, published in the journal Nature, concludes that between 443-629bn tonnes of meltwater overall are added to the world’s oceans each year. This is raising sea level by about 1.5mm a year, the team reports, in addition to the 2mm a year caused by expansion of the warming ocean.
--

This same cherry-picked factoid has been doing the rounds of the "skeptic" blogs since the article's publication, and has made it's way here.

For reference, the paper this is all based on (subscription required): http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature10847.html

Dumb, in debt and split.
"Special Report Scientists become targets in Iraq" Nature (29 June 2006)
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v441/n7097/full/4411036a.html
Then you have the luck that is "Iraqi arms scientists killed before they talk" http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/aug/23/20040823-124014-3141r/?page=all
Someone has been clearing out many Iraqi scientists and intellectuals. Whats left seem to be getting "money went to American universities to do curriculum development".

Not to mention that marketing (in pharma) drives up profitability but drops long term value. Actually, that link is probably a must read for anyone who makes claims based on the marketing is double R&D claim. (Actually, reading that link will likely tone down the quote based off of a snippet summary of a news article about this paper).

Nahdude812 makes some excellent points about marketing. Marketing pays for itself, and then it pays for other things (such as more R&D). If marketing is a net negative the company is being run so poorly that it won't be around long enough to make the third batch after approval.

"Just no. That's totally wrong. Are you deliberately misunderstanding? A mutation found to allow binding of human tissue was developed, but not by infecting ferrets."

Except that YOU are wrong. Right here (the same link provided by someone else above), paragraph 5.

That very clearly says that they created a new H5N1 strain with the H5 HA protein, which increased transmissibility. And (as I cite references for in another post below), it was precisely "To determine whether H5N1 viruses could be transmitted between humans..." [paragraph 4 of that same link].

Further as this article, and others, point out, the virus was deliberately selected for transmissibility by infecting a sequence of ferrets.

So you are just wrong, man. Nice job of speculation, but you need to get your facts straight.

We can start with the words of his fellow scientists:

In the words of the great American journalist H.L. Mencken, “for every complex problem, there is a simple solution, and it is wrong.” de Grey's research programme, which he terms 'strategies for engineered negligible senescence' (SENS), involves a combination of preventative and therapeutic interventions (de Grey, 2003). To solve the problem of apoptosis in senescent cells, one simply uses “senescence marker-tagged toxins”. To cure cancer, one just calls on “total telomerase deletion plus cell therapy”. To prop up the failing immune system, one can turn on “IL-7 mediated thymopoiesis”. To reverse mitochondrial mutations, one need only use “allotopic [mitochondrial]-coded proteins” of the type favoured by algae. Cell replacement can be accomplished by “stem cell therapy and growth factors”, whereas retooling the endocrine system relies on “genetically engineered muscle”. Cleavage of glycosylation crosslinks will involve periodic exposure to phenacyldimethylthiazolium chloride, and so on. Yet, in his writings, de Grey fails to mention that none of these approaches has ever been shown to extend the lifespan of any organism, let alone humans.

The fact is, the SENS program is WILDLY optimistic and incredibly simplistic in its 'solutions,' which are more "vague speculation" than "actual solution." SENS solves the "problem of aging" in the same was as saying, "Well just stop the tumors from growing!" solves the problem of cancer: it is a theory with no practice to support it, and in fact, we have only begun to scratch the surface of the innate complexity happening in each and every one of your cells.

I find it richly ironic, having read the article, that people here are so keen to latch on to this "sure thing," which is exactly the sort of thing that the article talks about.

I am telling you that the research that was done on N5H1 is misreported

from http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/481443a.html :

viruses possessing a haemagglutinin (HA) protein from highly pathogenic avian H5N1 influenza viruses can become transmissible in ferrets

that is all, viruses with one of the proteins ( a type of largish organic molecule) that H5N1 is using to attack cells can also attack cells ...

this one has more details about how they got viruses with that particular protein http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature10884.html, with my emphasis added

To determine whether H5N1 viruses could be transmitted between humans, my team generated viruses that combined the H5 haemagglutinin (HA) gene with the remaining genes from a pandemic 2009 H1N1 influenza virus. Avian H5N1 and human pandemic 2009 viruses readily exchange genes in experimental settings, and those from a human virus may facilitate replication in mammals. Indeed, we identified a mutant H5 HA/2009 virus that spread between infected and uninfected ferrets (used as models to study the transmission of influenza in mammals) in separate cages via respiratory droplets in the air. Thus viruses possessing an H5 HA protein can transmit between mammals.

Our results also show that not all transmissible H5 HA-possessing viruses are lethal. In ferrets, our mutant H5 HA/2009 virus was no more pathogenic than the pandemic 2009 virus — it did not kill any of the infected animals. And, importantly, current vaccines and antiviral compounds are effective against it.

depressing ... ScyFy (and sci-fi too) should be forbidden and mandatory science + reading comprehension examinations be passed before getting the right to vote ... yeah, probably lethal viruses can be engineered (though I have not yet heard of any research that succeeded in doing it, probably my fault), but not using their methods

I am telling you that the research that was done on N5H1 is misreported

from http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/481443a.html :

viruses possessing a haemagglutinin (HA) protein from highly pathogenic avian H5N1 influenza viruses can become transmissible in ferrets

that is all, viruses with one of the proteins ( a type of largish organic molecule) that H5N1 is using to attack cells can also attack cells ...

this one has more details about how they got viruses with that particular protein http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature10884.html, with my emphasis added

To determine whether H5N1 viruses could be transmitted between humans, my team generated viruses that combined the H5 haemagglutinin (HA) gene with the remaining genes from a pandemic 2009 H1N1 influenza virus. Avian H5N1 and human pandemic 2009 viruses readily exchange genes in experimental settings, and those from a human virus may facilitate replication in mammals. Indeed, we identified a mutant H5 HA/2009 virus that spread between infected and uninfected ferrets (used as models to study the transmission of influenza in mammals) in separate cages via respiratory droplets in the air. Thus viruses possessing an H5 HA protein can transmit between mammals.

Our results also show that not all transmissible H5 HA-possessing viruses are lethal. In ferrets, our mutant H5 HA/2009 virus was no more pathogenic than the pandemic 2009 virus — it did not kill any of the infected animals. And, importantly, current vaccines and antiviral compounds are effective against it.

depressing ... ScyFy (and sci-fi too) should be forbidden and mandatory science + reading comprehension examinations be passed before getting the right to vote ... yeah, probably lethal viruses can be engineered (though I have not yet heard of any research that succeeded in doing it, probably my fault), but not using their methods

Where to start. First, go out at night - all those little dots in the sky ? They're called stars, and are all outside our solar system. (This has been known, depending on your point of view, for at least 400 years, and probably for 2 or more millennia.)

Second, it is pretty common for meteorites contain little inclusions of interstellar matter - organic matter, silica, and even (really tiny) diamonds. And, while we are at it, a certain fraction of the micro-meteors observed with radar (to get their orbits) turn out to be interstellar as well. (The fraction of interstellar micro-meteors suggests that there may be a few kg-sized interstellar meteorites waiting to be picked up out of the thousands in the Antarctic meteorite fields, which would be something.)

So, this is nice research, but it is only the first in its area, and it was silly of them to say "for the very first time."

It isn't a problem with theoretical physics. It isn't a problem at all. If having post hoc explanations is a problem for a theory then no theory in existence meets your insane standard. The problem is when people aren't aware that an explanation is essentially post hoc (like say certain cosmologists attitude towards dark matter). There are, admittedly somewhat theoretically ugly, approaches to unifying physics that treat GR as sacrosanct and modify quantum mechanics. So no, it isn't obvious at all that general relativity is in disagreement with experiment. It is obvious that either quantum mechanics, or general relativity or both have problems, but it is not clear where those problems lie.

Last time I looked there were plenty of predictions kicking about regarding local changes in temperatures over the next 100 years, so we can put that one to bed (heck you yourself suggest cyclone frequency is a prediction of global warming). Talking about global average temperature as though it is the only thing these models predict strongly suggests to me that you haven't actually read the literature. Weather only matter to plants or animals on a day to day basis. Climate is what matters over the course of a year or so. You tell me it will be a couple of degrees hotter in some region on average I can go calculate what impact that will have on crop yields. So no, climate science predictions are useful.

CO2 lagging temperature changes in the ice core record is a prediction of climate science, not a problem. The end of this paper does a decent enough job explaining why:
http://icebubbles.ucsd.edu/Publications/CaillonTermIII.pdf

Ocean heat content has been rising, for an explanation see
ftp://ftp.nodc.noaa.gov/pub/data.nodc/woa/PUBLICATIONS/grlheat08.pdf

Whether or not recent trends in global average temperature are wholly consistent with existing models is in dispute. Phil Jones certainly thinks that the existing anomaly is a problem, others disagree. I'm not in a position to comment since I'm not current on that. What I can point out is that suggesting that a dispute about small anomalies in the present data somehow invalidates the entirety of climate science is absurd.

Reductions in cyclone frequency, and increase in intensity, is a prediction not a refutation
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n3/full/ngeo779.html
Worth keeping in mind that to my knowledge these predictions are still considered a bit questionable, and variability in the cyclone record makes this kind of thing difficult, but I'm not exactly current on that so don't quote me.

The impact of the UHI effect is negligible
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/population/article2abstract.pdf

Finding these things papers took all of five minutes. If you had wanted to know what climatologists actually think you could have done the same. I grant you reading these papers took me a while (although I had read two before so it wasn't that big a deal), but why am I doing this for you? Stop parroting denialists websites, read the damn papers and develop an informed opinion. If you want to come back with objections then I will be all ears but repeating some bullshit a meteorologist, lawyer or an economist told as though it was an informed opinion just makes you look like a prat.

Since I began to observe this theory in the 80s, I've seen increasing evidence that it is true, including, like you said, a 2500 year study of tree rings. Thus, as I observed the increasing emotion over the theories that (a) global warning is primarily caused by people (anthropogenic) and (b) that it will have dire consequences that we can prevent, I've been looking for evidence that the science behind these theories contradicts the theories that our climate has its own cycles, including long-term cycles, that can account for the long-term trends.

Here is what I've observed the most:

1> Many people look at temperature trends and ASSUME they are caused by people, using these trends to "prove" that people are causing global warning. This discrediting position has become predominant, and can even be found in posts in this thread above. This has made it difficult to have and objective scientific discussion of climate change, and created an atmosphere of distrust towards the concept of "consensus". Yes, there are people, and there are scientists. But, I am amazed at how many people claimed to be scientists, yet still could demonstrated a belief in an obvious assumption.

2> There is a lot of emotion in the discussion by those who BELIEVE that global warming will lead to great disaster if to do not do something dramatic right away.

3> Many can in one sentence claim to be very scientific, then in another sentence bash anyone who questions whether or not (a) disaster is coming, (b) people are the cause of the coming disasters, and (c) people can, at great cost, prevent the disasters.

4> Most of the evidence that people are the cause of climate change is attributed to computational models we are supposed to blindly trust without understanding or viewing, despite the fact that these models disagree with each other, and most of the scientists working on these models admit that the unknown variables are still very large, including many things about physics, chemistry and climate we are only beginning to understand.

5> The vast majority of people who claim that the models are the reason to conclude that the climate theories are beyond skepticism know virtually nothing about the calculations and the data fed into them, or have taken the time to look for weaknesses in the models, such as needed improvements in understanding natural cycles, feedback loops and how the climate responds to change.

Looking that this evidence, I'm forced to conclude that:

1> while global warming could be the trend for the next century and there may be anthropogenic causes behind at least part of it, a religion has formed around global warming, creating a culture the demonizes those who hold skepticism, assuming they are just ignoring the facts, and cannot possibly understand "the science".

2> if I am to find solid evidence that falsifies the theory that our climate change is due to natural long-term cycles, I'm going to have to work really hard to sift through the noise created by #1-5 above.

To be sure, while the scientific evidence supporting theories of anthropogenic global warming does not falsify my theories about natural climate cycles, it does cause me to put it in balance with the possibity that people are impacting climate:

1> there are gases that have a greenhouse effect.

2> models have a partial consensus on climate trends.

Besides, I be curious to know what specific research has been falsified?

Here's a decent summary of the problem:
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100112/full/463142a.html

Its not as if the US fossil fuels industry hasn't been doing the same here with respect to climate science.

"Microsoft has put out some faulty software, so I'm gonna buy my next operating system from VaporWare Inc"

They keep growing their economy at between 8-10% per year

That's part of the problem:

A new study from Wuhan University, for instance, estimates that the market for dubious science-publishing activities, such as ghostwriting papers on nonexistent research, was of the order of 1 billion renminbi (US$150 million) in 2009 - five times the amount in 2007.

Here is the Nature Article mentioned in the summary - the link in the summary goes to a PLoS Biology article.

It was just published online today, I don't see any other copies available yet. However, the primary author of the paper is supported by an NIH grant, so the paper should be released in its entirety as a non-paywalled article fairly soon to comply with the NIH funding rules.

A database of negative results is actually already in beta: http://figshare.com/ Psychology professor Jonathan Schooler also called for a negative trials database in Nature in February last year. He says it's possible such results could explain the 'decline effect' that plagues science http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110223/full/470437a.html

Yes, but that's already been done. Injecting transgenes into blastocysts where transfection efficiency is less than 100% is a pretty different procedure than mixing together two or more blastocysts from unique individuals.

The article itself notes that earthquakes have occurred in that part of Ohio for nearly two centuries, and its size was well beyond the quite small theoretical maximum that could be induced by fracking. Extensive studies of fracking have shown no evidence of the contamination scare stories environmentalists have been pushing.

The people opposing fracking are the same people opposed to all uses of oil and as power sources.

We have consistently discovered that the IPCC's reports on GW are too conservative. Everything is happening faster than the "alarmists" have been predicting.

FYI:

In fact there are no predictions by IPCC at all. And there never have been. The IPCC instead proffers “what if” projections of future climate that correspond to certain emissions scenarios. There are a number of assumptions that go into these emissions scenarios.

None of the models used by IPCC are initialized to the observed state and none of the climate states in the models correspond even remotely to the current observed climate.

- Kevin Trenberth, IPCC lead author 2001 and 2007

http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/2007/06/predictions_of_climate.html

OK, We have consistently discovered that the IPCC's projections on GW are too conservative. My bad.

Well I certainly can't speak to the linguistics aspect, but I didn't recognize date and population size numbers to be totally made up; there is some research (peer reviewed at least -- this isn't my area) putting initial expansion ~65K to 100K years ago [1,2] and some supporting a tight population bottleneck down to a few thousand individuals (*effective population size) at that point as well [2, 3].

1. http://www.pnas.org/content/103/25/9381.full
2. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047248498902196
3. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v475/n7357/full/nature10231.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20110728

The IPCC directs no funding for research. The pay the expenses of scientists and others when they get together to discuss what to put in the reports.

The Amazon claims in the IPCC did have scientific research to back them up. To quote the author of the studies, Daniel Nepstad:

"In sum, the IPCC statement on the Amazon was correct. The report that is cited in support of the IPCC statement (Rowell and Moore 2000) omitted some citations in support of the 40% value statement."

Rowell and Moore 2000 was the non-peer reviewed paper that the IPCC cited for the Amazon claims.

Here are the citations of peer reviewed literature that should have been in there to back it up:

Nepstad 1994
Nepstad 1997
Nepstad 2004

And other studies since the IPCC report:

Nepstad 2007
Phillips 2009

So the IPCC's claims about the Amazon weren't wrong, just poorly referenced.

The IPCC directs no funding for research. The pay the expenses of scientists and others when they get together to discuss what to put in the reports.

The Amazon claims in the IPCC did have scientific research to back them up. To quote the author of the studies, Daniel Nepstad:

"In sum, the IPCC statement on the Amazon was correct. The report that is cited in support of the IPCC statement (Rowell and Moore 2000) omitted some citations in support of the 40% value statement."

Rowell and Moore 2000 was the non-peer reviewed paper that the IPCC cited for the Amazon claims.

Here are the citations of peer reviewed literature that should have been in there to back it up:

Nepstad 1994
Nepstad 1997
Nepstad 2004

And other studies since the IPCC report:

Nepstad 2007
Phillips 2009

So the IPCC's claims about the Amazon weren't wrong, just poorly referenced.

We have consistently discovered that the IPCC's reports on GW are too conservative. Everything is happening faster than the "alarmists" have been predicting.

FYI:

In fact there are no predictions by IPCC at all. And there never have been. The IPCC instead proffers “what if” projections of future climate that correspond to certain emissions scenarios. There are a number of assumptions that go into these emissions scenarios.

None of the models used by IPCC are initialized to the observed state and none of the climate states in the models correspond even remotely to the current observed climate.

- Kevin Trenberth, IPCC lead author 2001 and 2007

http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/2007/06/predictions_of_climate.html

No, but they have naturally built plant-made pesticides in their DNA ( here and here ) and naturally built plant-made carcinogens ( here and here ).

And no, I don't own Monsanto stock. Monsanto is financially evil, and this is the root of the problems with GM food, but don't let health get tarred with the same brush as economics.

If so, you might enjoy the Nature story rounding up that was published yesterday of the new results...

Damn. I'll try that again in English- If so, you might enjoy Nature story which rounds up yesterday's results...