Opit's LinkFest!: 26 July - Blogs I'm Following ( ? )

Blogger is being creative again. Here are the feed targets

And here's what is currently showing up

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Robert Ettinger 'Father of Cryonics' entombed at -321F after dying aged 92 - 26th July 2011
posted by Lynsey at The Coming Crisis - 4 minutes ago
A pioneer of the cryonics movement which advocates freezing the dead in the hope that medical technology will enable them to live again in the future has died at the age of 92. Robert Ettinger, from Clint...
Another Of Congress' Worst Blue Dogs, This Time Mike Ross (AR), Is Leaving
posted by DownWithTyranny at DownWithTyranny! - 9 minutes ago
This morning, after the President's speech to the nation last night, the *Washington Post* and ABC News released a poll showing that 77% of Americans think the Republicans aren't willing enough to compro...
Windows 8 - various versions, different file system? Free!?
posted by address-withheld@my.opera.com.invalid (Dr. John v. Kampen) at - 31 minutes ago
*Things went quiet lately about Windows 8*. But developments go on and we gradually start to see the outlines that Microsoft has set for its release somewhere in late 2012. There is a lot of 'commotion' a...
Volcanoes found on far side of the moon offer tantalising clues to its thermal history - 26th July 2011
posted by Lynsey at The Coming Crisis - 36 minutes ago
New images have revealed a curious 'hot spot' on the far side of the moon to be a small volcanic province created by the upwelling of silicic magma, according to scientists. The unusual location of the pr...
‘Holiday camp’ youth prison spends more than £16,000 on computer games to ‘reward’ inmates - 26th July 2011
posted by Lynsey at The Coming Crisis - 36 minutes ago
A prison for Britain's most dangerous young criminals, including teen murderers, is being turned into a 'holiday camp' with more than £16,000 being splashed out on video games. Inmates at the notorious Wa...
Marcus Garwood Pictured doing a mid-air stunt: The extreme kite-flyer who died after being caught by freak gust of wind - 26th July 2011
posted by Lynsey at The Coming Crisis - 36 minutes ago
A kite flyer who died after being swept 50ft into the air by his power kite and plunged to the ground has been named as Marcus Garwood. The 27-year-old died on Sunday after a freak gust of wind at Dunstabl...
Deadly Horse Virus Found in Dog
posted by null at Discovery News - Top Stories - 39 minutes ago
Authorities fear that the lethal Hendravvirus has jumped species.
The shocking moment a furious shopper knocks down warden who gave him a ticket for parking in mother-and-baby space - 26th July 2011
posted by Lynsey at The Coming Crisis - 51 minutes ago
This is the shocking moment a Jaguar driver, furious after being given a £60 fine, knocked down a parking warden. Martin Takle has been jailed for six months after his moment of road rage, which was captu...
Obama urges compromise to avoid "reckless" default
posted by Matthew at The Coming Crisis - 51 minutes ago
President Barack Obama on Monday called on divided congressional leaders to compromise and break a deadlock over raising the debt limit that he said risked a "reckless" national default. Obama made the ...
Government launch new attacks even as select committee condemns propaganda
posted by noreply@blogger.com (BenefitScroungingScum) at Broken of Britain - 54 minutes ago
SMART METERS: A triple threat
posted by Saladin at A Voice In The Wilderness - 1 hour ago
The PPJ Gazette Marti Oakley *“Along with the known health hazards, the unwarranted and unlawful surveillance and inflated energy rates after installation of a SMART METER, is the threat of compromised na...
Arizona Lulzsec files: Operation Gunrunner weapons of choice
posted by brendanorrell@gmail.com at CENSORED NEWS - 1 hour ago
Lulzsec*Hacktivists expose Operation Gunrunner's weapons of choice* By Brenda Norrell Censored News http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com PHOENIX -- When the ATF Operation Gunrunner's Fast and Furious allowed ...
Budget games: Debt ceiling plan counts on war savings -- Don't bet on it, buddy
posted by Matthew at The Coming Crisis - 1 hour ago
Senate Democrats want to cut an eye-popping $1 trillion in war spending over the next 10 years. The proposal is part of the plan Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Monday to raise the debt ceilin...
The Five Biggest Flip-Flops of the Debt Ceiling Debate
posted by Matthew at The Coming Crisis - 1 hour ago
They say in politics that you know you’ve become a statesman when you’ve been on almost every side of an issue at one time or another. When Washington politicians draw lines in the sand, those lines are al...
Japan probe of contaminated beef widens
posted by Matthew at The Coming Crisis - 1 hour ago
Japan announced Tuesday that all beef detected with radiation higher than government safety standards will be destroyed as the probe into beef contaminated from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant...
Libya's Zlitan increasingly in rebel, NATO sights
posted by Matthew at The Coming Crisis - 1 hour ago
Firefighters battled a blaze caused by NATO airstrikes at a food-storage complex Monday in Zlitan, increasingly a front-line city in the conflict between Libyan government troops and rebels fighting to ous...
South Africa could become 'new Egypt,' warns trade union leader
posted by Matthew at The Coming Crisis - 1 hour ago
South Africa risks witnessing mass uprisings if it doesn't act urgently to deal with rampant youth unemployment, the leader of the country's trade union movement has warned. As general secretary of the ...
Geithner: Never Thought Debt Talks Would Come 'This Close to The Edge'
posted by Matthew at The Coming Crisis - 1 hour ago
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said Sunday that he did not initially think lawmakers would bring the debt-ceiling negotiations "this close to the edge," appearing taken aback by the lingering distance bet...
Blasts rock Tripoli, NATO targets Gaddafi compound -- When will this senseless war end?
posted by Matthew at The Coming Crisis - 1 hour ago
Explosions rocked central Tripoli for the second night in a row and Britain said weeks of NATO bombardment had inflicted extensive damage on Muammar Gaddafi's heavily-fortified compound. Libya's leader is ...
Ancient bell found in Jerusalem Old City sewer: Just in time to ring the alarm for... the coming crisis? (Credit to Termie for this fantastic joke)
posted by Matthew at The Coming Crisis - 1 hour ago
A tiny golden bell pulled after 2,000 years from an ancient sewer beneath the Old City of Jerusalem was shown Sunday by Israeli archaeologists, who hailed it as a rare find. The orb half an inch (one cent...

And that is it.So I opened up Google Reader
Quote without comment
from The Ergosphere by Engineer-Poet
Bureaucracy is a tool to keep the world as it is, not to change it. So, in perfect Tainter-style, the system works hard to avoid innovation, not to promote it. It is almost impossible to be financed to study resource depletion; that would highlight problems that would require changes and that's a no-no. Instead, it is still possible to obtain research grants as long as there is no risk that

A personal endorsement
from The Ergosphere by Engineer-Poet
There are a lot of companies and websites who want space on your sidebar. I've received dozens of requests for link exchanges over the years. I've turned them all down, not even putting my blogroll there. I just didn't think anything was worth that much attention.

That just changed.

Flibe Energy is now featured there. This is not a commercial endorsement; I have no relationship to Flibe

Two Scenes from a Nation Without Sovereignty
from Raed in the Middle by Raed Jarrar
1- During a meeting with a high-ranking Iraqi official - inside the Council of Ministers' building - everytime he wants to say anything about Iran he whispers the word "Iran" instead of saying it! This is how he talks:
He reminded me how in the 90s Iraqis used to whisper Saddam's name because they felt scared to say it out loud.
2- The newly appointed US Secretary of Defense landed in Baghdad today without informing Iraqi officials of his visit. They were told he wants to meet with them after he arrived.

I think many of the weapons used in the assasinations are made in Iran. Because some portions of the Iraqi-Iranian borders are controlled by militias.
Government launch new attacks even as select committee condemns propaganda
FEMA Denies Assistance to Minot (ND) flooding residents - Please help!
from Reality Check by Reality Chick
This video was made by a friend of mine, her hometown of Minot ND has experienced horrific flooding. FEMA has turned residents down for assistance, please show your support by signing the petition demanding FEMA reconsider. The Red Cross is also accepting donations...please help if you can in any way. Video and information are below. Much thanks :)

New updates indicate that the water in Minot is no longer fit to drink without boiling as well. If you can please donate $10 (or whatever you can afford) to the Minot Red Cross: http://www.minotredcross.org OR you can text MINOT to 80888 to donate to the Red Cross. Mailing address for donations is:

Red Cross
P.O. Box 456
Minot, ND 58701-0456

ALSO! Please read, sign, and share the petition below.

www.thepetitionsite.com/1/demand-FEMA-reconsider-denial-of-Individual-Assistance-to-ND-residents

Further Reading:

FEMA announces disaster help for Burleigh, Ward flood victims

Congressional Delegation Stresses Need of Individual Assistance for ND's Flood Impacted Counties

FEMA rejection letter released

The Deadly Disease of Religious Fundamentalism, a Timely Warning
from The Disaffected Lib by The Mound of Sound
It's time we stopped treating religious fundamentalists - Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Hindu, whatever - as essentially benign and off limits under our democratic notions of freedom of religion.   Religious fundamentalism breeds violent extremism, terrorism.   It is imbued with characteristics and traits that both enable and encourage extremism.

Religious fundamentalism is not strictly religious, not at all.   It is also a social and political movement that seeks "imposative" reform. It exists to impose a narrow religious, social and political order. It is not interested in democracy.   It rejects tolerance and liberalism. There are powerful reasons it takes root and flourishes in the far right.

I have been doing a fair bit of reading on religious fundamentalism and so it came as no surprise to learn of the handiwork of Anders Behring Breivik, a Christian fundamentalist.    It came as no surprise to read that a Christian fundamentalist had calmly butchered scores of innocents for nothing more than their peaceful beliefs.

You can learn more about creeping fundamentalism in books such as Phillips' American Theocracy, Bacevich's The New American Militarism, Hedges' American Fascists, McDonald's The Armageddon Factor, and many others.   However I think the best scholarly treatment of the causal link between radical religion and violent extremism is a paper by Douglass Pratt, Terrorism and Religious Fundamentalism: Prospects for a Predictive Paradigm, 2006, published in the University of Marburg Journal of Religion which can be found, in PDF format, here.

At page 8, Pratt explores twelve key factors, common to all fundamentalist religions, that "...move a fundamentalist mindset from the quirky to the critical, from atavism to aggression, from benign eccentricity to socially endangering activity."

Terrorism and Religious Fundamentalism is a genuine eye-opener and a must-read for any progressive. It's only 15-pages in length and deserves to be read in its entirety. Do yourself a favour and follow the link above.

In case the link isn't working, try this: http://www.uni-marburg.de/fb03/ivk/mjr/pdfs/2006/articles/pratt2006.pdf

Boehner and the GOP Break a 'Contract' with the American People
from The Existentialist Cowboy by Len Hart
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Look up some basic contract law! Social Security is a contract between the government and the people! The GOP wants to BREAK that contract; the GOP wants to 'award' BIG BANKSTERS with your monies!

Boehner's actions --walking out of budget negotiations, debt-ceiling talks -- are a breach of a contract that exists between the American people and the government in Washington. The GOP whom Boehner represents had been on my list for quite some time now.

The GOP is not a poltical party; it is a crime syndiate, a kooky cult. Now it may not be a stretch to call them traitors to the nation and most obviously the the millions of Americans who have paid into Social Security in good fatih. Now --Boehner will force the government to break its contract with the people.

I do believe Thomas Jefferson wrote something about what happens when a government is in breach of contract:

"...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

--Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence
Media Conglomerates, Mergers, Concentration of Ownership, Global Issues, Updated: January 02, 2009

The Reign of Zionist-Globalist Terror
from The Excavator by Saman Mohammadi
It has been three days since the Oslo attacks and the official story that a right-wing Christian extremist planned the atrocity by himself is being ripped apart in the alternative media. More pieces of evidence keep rolling in that shows the official version to be false and manufactured by Mossad and Western intelligence agencies for their own political purposes.

Paul Joseph Watson has done a great expose of the shooter's Facebook profile and political background in his article, "Anders Behring Breivik: Manufacturing a Patsy?" Watson illustrates how Breivik's Facebook profile was tampered with after the attacks to make it appear to the press that he is a right-wing Christian extremist. Watson writes:
The effort to smear European conservatives as unhinged radicals who harbor simmering urges for bloodlust is now in full swing, and it’s a demonization campaign firmly founded on the carefully crafted public portrayal of Anders Behring Breivik.

However, it’s quickly becoming apparent that just as many eyewitnesses reported two gunmen on the island where the rampage unfolded, there are two different personas behind Breivik himself.

Indeed, there are two different Facebook profiles for Breivik, one from before the massacre and one from after. The latter profile appears to have been embellished and deliberately altered to emphasize the notion that the gunman was motivated by his “Christian conservative” beliefs.
What we can discern from this new piece of evidence is that there is a deliberate political and psychological campaign by the corporatist globalists who run the big private banks and almost all Western governments, including the American government, to bring down the Western white middle class as well as to demonize Christian opponents of a new world dictatorial government.

Once the middle class goes then so goes the nation. It is as simple as that. Free, independent and democratic nations are the enemies of the tyrannical globalists who have been constructing a new world authoritarian government out in the open for decades.

By framing resistance to the corporate-banking takeover of human society through a world government as "right-wing extremism," the cunning globalists are able to pull in the naive masses into the fold, and move on with their plans to prepare the mass slaughter of the middle class.

What will be left in the wreckage will be a two-tiered society of haves and have-nots, of plutocrats and plebs, of insiders and outsiders.

It is a mistake to say only Israel was behind this recent false flag attack in Oslo because the new world order cabal also benefits from a state of fear and crisis in Western society. These two political coalitions greatly benefited from the false flag 9/11 attacks a decade ago. But just because they are joined at the hip now it does not mean this will always be the case.

Sooner or later one side may come to resent the other and push them off the boat. I think the globalists will probably tell Israel to shove it (just read top globalist Zbigniew Brzezinski on Israel and you'll know what I mean).

Both the Zionists and the Globalists are the greatest enemies of free speech and free governments. Their reign of terror in the West is documentable and self-evident. We must do everything in our power to bring an end to their violence against democracy, freedom, and justice.

If you need further convincing that Mossad and other Western intelligence agencies connected to the Cold War-era NATO Gladio networks were behind the attacks in Oslo, then read this excellent article by journalist Wayne Madsen called, "After Oslo: Time to Crack Down On Mossad Terrorism." Madsen says that Norway's honourable government refused "help" from the Netanyahu-Barak gang that runs Israel:
After Israel offered assistance to Norway, including forensic and medical assistance, as well as the evacuation of the wounded from the 7/22 attack, Norway declined the offer. The rejection of assistance from Israel indicates that the Norwegian government was suspicious of the offer from Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
My respect and admiration for Norway is so high right now. While other Western governments, especially the governments in America, Canada and England, sheepishly bow down to the Zionist terrorists and listen to their false words, Norway's government is standing up for the interests of its people and for the cause of freedom.

I view the struggle against Nazism, Zionism, Islamism, Communism and Fascism as one historical struggle against racism, tyranny, and government terrorism. Nazism was defeated in World War II. Communism was defeated in 1989. It is our generation's responsibility today to defeat corporate fascism in North America and the Western world, along with Zionism.

Islamism will be defeated by the courageous young people in Iran, Egypt and other Middle Eastern nations. It is not our fight. Our fight in the West is against the twin evils of Corporate Fascism and Zionism.

Defeating Zionism means exposing false flag terrorism and acts of state terror by the state terrorists who control Israel's government. But it doesn't mean splitting apart Israel or demonizing all of Israel. The people of Israel deserve to live in an all Jewish country.

When I think of Israel I want to think of the home of the Jews, just as when I think of Egypt I think the home of the Arabs, and Iran as the home of the Persians.

When I think of Israel today I think of the home of the state terrorists and arrogant murderers of innocent people. And they are bringing their violence and their terror to the West, as we saw in New York on September 11, and now in Oslo.

This has to stop. We cannot be silent, not even for a day. We must end the occupation of our societies by Zionist and Globalist terrorists.

Publicly, Separately, Under Oath, Accountable For Lies
from The Excavator by Saman Mohammadi
Watch this awesome video about President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney testifying together in secret about the 9/11 attacks before the 9/11 Commission, and without a transcript.

The video is called "Publicly, Separately, Under Oath, Accountable For Lies," and it was posted by YouTube user Gold9472 on July 23, 2011.

Mossad, CIA and NATO Attack Democracy in Oslo, Norway
from The Excavator by Saman Mohammadi
As usual, new evidence and new information is emerging about the terror attacks in Oslo, Norway on Friday, July 22, that raises suspicions that the event was orchestrated by secret Mossad, CIA and NATO forces.

I call them the coalition of the killing.

Investigative journalist Wayne Madsen reported on Sunday, July 24, that Anders Behring Breivik, the so called lone gunman behind the attacks, has ties with freemasonry and espouses the Zionist agenda. Madsen writes:
Anders Behring Breivik is suspect in massacre of over 80 at Labour Party Youth camp on Norwegian island and downtown Oslo bombing. Breivik is being called a Christian fundamentalist even though he was a Freemason and supporter of such vile Zionist Islamophobes as Pam Geller and Richard Pipes.
This fact by itself doesn't mean we should lay the blame squarely at Mossad's doorstep. But it is a piece of a puzzle that we are constructing in the dark, and it will take time before all the pieces are put together.

The other day I was wrong to say only Mossad was behind the attacks in Oslo. I forgot to mention the rogue CIA and NATO as being suspects in the murders. This is not purely a Zionist crime. This is a crime by the entire axis of evil that has captured Western democracies: the rogue CIA, the criminal Mossad, and the illegal NATO. All their interests were being challenged by the democratic government of Norway.

Investigative journalist Webster G. Tarpley reports in his article "Norway Terror Attacks a False Flag," that Norway was getting ready to call off its bombing missions in Libya and stop its involvement in that ongoing war crime in August.

Tarpley also mentions the fact that witnesses reported two shooters at the scene of the crime, casting doubt that this is another "lone-assassin" terror strike. Tarpley says:
The presence of a second shooter is of course most inconvenient for the lone assassin theory, since it represents incontrovertible evidence of a criminal conspiracy, the very thing which the media coverage is usually anxious to avoid. In the Norwegian case, the reports of a second shooter seemed to be persistent enough 36 hours after the main event so as to hold out some hope that the entire official version can be brought down on this particular.
So, Norway made itself a democratic enemy of Israel by supporting the Palestinian effort for statehood in the United Nations in September, and a democratic enemy of the CIA and NATO because it no longer wanted any part in the takeover of Libya's oil fields.

Read this June 10 article, "Norway to quit Libya operation by August," for more information on Norway's decision to quit the Libya war.

Norway was attacked by the corrupt and secret forces behind the CIA, NATO and Mossad for refusing to go along with their overall agenda. They figured they could kill two birds with one stone by bringing Norway back into line on the issue of Israel-Palestine and Libya. What we are witnessing is the strategy of tension playing out in Norway.

II. The Return of The Gladio Villains

During the Cold War, secret NATO 'Gladio' networks carried out false flags attacks in European cities that were falsely blamed on leftist groups and which were intended to create an atmosphere of fear.

The chief beneficiaries of the terror attacks were government security forces, intelligence agencies, and ruling political coalitions.

But state violence and state terror will not bring down the voice of the people of Norway and its democratic government. After the attacks, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said:
"No one will bomb us to silence. No one wil shoot us to silence. No one will ever scare us away from being Norway. You will not destroy us. You will not destroy our democracy or our ideals for a better world." - (At a press conference in Oslo. Source: BBC's report "As it happened: Norway attacks")
God bless Norway and god bless freedom. The criminals in the CIA, Mossad and NATO have to pay for this crime against innocent human beings and the voice of the people.

And there is a way out of this dark age of state terror. We have to dig for the truth and then tell it, write it, scream it. We are not destined to be hostages of state terrorists.

We cannot give into artificially stimulated fear, into ignorant peer pressure, and into the blind herd mind that says "it's a conspiracy theory, you have no evidence, you have no proof that Mossad and CIA are ran by criminals." Bullshit.

We have all the proof in the world that the biggest terrorists on this planet are in the Mossad, CIA, MI6, and other Western intelligence agencies. They are destroying self-government, freedom of speech, and our basic humanity.

Madsen writes:
With ample evidence of Mossad involvement in Oslo, it is up to every one of us to report to the Nth degree any suspicious contacts with Israelis or Israeli sympathizers.
Truth-telling is a task that we must all embrace. We have to bury the nonsensical theory of the "crazed lone gunman" to explain politically motivated assassinations and terror attacks because it is simply not true. State political conspirators are responsible for the attacks in Oslo and other terrorist attacks in America and the Western world.

We cannot let the rascals and demons in the Mossad and the CIA get away with the murder of innocent people. For justice to be done, the truth must be spoken about State staged terror attacks, and as early as possible, as loud as possible, and as much as possible.

How to backup your Blogger blog and print your whole blog
from the original Blogger Tips and Tricks by Peter @ Enviroman

Update: Blogger has introduced an easy export and import functions for you to easily save a backup copy of your blog in xml format and easily import it back into Blogger. Sign into Dashboard > Settings > Basic and the Export/Import/delete blog will be at the top, just under the tabs:

Save the xml file in a suitable folder in your computer and use it to export to your blog if the situation requires it.

Regarding printing as PDF file and also hard copies, Blogger has partnered with Blog2Print for you to easily convert it to pdf format and also to print hard copies. Go to Blog2Print

For instruction on how to backup your whole blog, convert it into a PDF file and print it in one go, refer to BlogCollector below.

Why backup your blog you may ask. Well, for one, Blogger has a robot doing its round on the web to identify spamblogs, block them, and after a period of time, delete them. There are many reports of false positives, much to the chagrin of the blog owners. Another reason is to guard against accidental delete (not rare) and hardware failure of the blogging service provider. Your blog may be hacked into one fine day. It is good to protect your hard work by backing up the blog.

Blogger does not have an export or download function. However, Blogger provided some instructions to create a single file with all your posts which you may publish and then copy to your own computer for use as a backup. See How do I create a backup of my entire blog? However, this will involve replacing your current template with a temporary template, saving, republishing and then putting it back again. I do not like this method.

HTTrack Website Copier
Another way to backup your blog is to make a mirror of your blog on your computer. HTTrack Website Copier allows you to download your blog from the Internet to your computer, building recursively all directories, getting HTML, images and other files. It also allow you to update an existing mirror. HTTrack Website Copier is a freeware.

Blog Collector
Blog Collector is a nice software to use to backup your blog, particularly if you use the standard Blogger template. If you use non-standard template or you use a extensively modified standard Blogger template, you may have problems and it may only backup the posts in your index page and not the whole blog. There is also a provision to publish your blog as a PDF book. There are 2 versions, Blog Collector and Blog Collector Lite (free) (update: now there are 3 versions - BlogCollector Lite, BlogCollector Standard and BlogCollector Professional. With BlogCollector Professional, you can export your backup file in PDF. WORD or Rich Text and print it in that format.
.

Other ways to backup the blog is to have Blogger send email of your posts. Go to SETTINGS > EMAIL and enter your email address in the BLOGSENT ADDRESS box. You can also have emails of the comments sent by going to SETTINGS > COMMENTS and enter your email address in the COMMENT NOTIFICATION ADDRESS box. In this method, you will only backing up the text, not the HTML.

Update 3 October 2007: Sorry to hear about your problem. I have stated that BlogCollector only works well with Blogger standard templates and/or templates that have not been modified extensively. What template are you using?

Anyway I think this post need editing as they still haven't got a way to put what they backup automatically back into your blog although they say they are working on it (if they did, they did not inform me). I think the only way to reliably backup your blog is to edit your post in the HTML mode one by one, copy everything into Notepad files and save them.

I have no time, so I think I will just copy and paste part of my reply into the post to update it.

CERN: CLOUD: Jasper Kirkby's talk in Canada
from The Reference Frame by Luboš Motl
As far as I remember, this 65-minute talk by Jasper Kirkby that he gave on March 23rd, 2011 at SFU in Vancouver hasn't been embedded on TRF pages yet. Here it is:

Kirkby is the lead scientist in the CERN's CLOUD experiment that was scheduled to release the final papers within a month or so from now but a political intervention could affect the timing as well. He's been focusing on cosmoclimatology for something like a decade.

After you listen to the talk, try to answer the question whether this guy should be stripped of his right to work on the interpretation of what the experiment he leads means for the world climate. I personally find this suggestion shocking.

The talk above is mostly about the cosmic-rays-induced, solar, aerosol-related, and cloud-related effects in the whole climate because that's what Kirkby has been focusing upon for years. His work and expertise in the last 10 years is about climatology.

The lab experiment - CLOUD - occupies about 1/4 of the talk only (Kirkby must respect the expectations of "exclusivity" in the journal where he's submitting) and it is just a part of a much broader picture. This experiment run in a particle physics laboratory is a part of climate research (and Kirkby says so explicitly). So Heuer's ban, if it were taken seriously, would de facto prevent Kirkby (and potentially dozens of his collaborators) from making similar talks, doing the corresponding scientific research, and writing corresponding scientific papers.

Call it in any way you want but to me, such a treatment of scientists is fascism.

Those people who dare to say that Kirkby is incompetent and those effects must be studied by some "real climate" scientists (pun!) should show me a talk by some of these "real climate" scientists about similar effects in the atmosphere that would show that these "real climate" scientists are more competent than the likes of Kirkby.

I am eagerly waiting for such evidence.

Content

The content of the talk is pretty impressive - there are many graphs showing the historical correlations between the climatic, heliophysical, and cosmic-ray observables.

Kirkby points out valid (and later celebrated) papers that were rejected, completely wrong (Lean) assumptions about the variations of the solar spectrum and the spectrum of the cosmic rays in all the IPCC models (the changes in UV and visible are actually anticorrelated with one another, not aligned, as Lean instructs the whole IPCC "consensus" to believe), and many other things.

He dedicates 10+ minutes to the experiment which is quite amazing - simulating the atmosphere with different pressure and so on and analyzing the resulting aerosols in detail by mass spectrometers and other devices. They also simulate "daily cycles" etc.

In the conclusions, he says that there is extensive evidence of the solar-climate variability already in the pre-industrial era and the order-of-magnitude estimate of these cosmic-cloud effects in the current climate evolution is comparable to what we're seeing. But there's a lot of uncertainty about the solar contribution - including the sign (as he mentioned previously: all existing climate models can actually have the completely wrong sign) which is also uncertain. The whole effect of cosmic rays variability is absent in the climate models people are using today.

So he says that it's obviously crucial for climatology to determine the details of these mechanisms much more accurately, to see whether they're smaller or equal or larger than the observed recent climate change and what they're really doing.

Questions and answers

In the question period, a very old man says that a chemical reaction on a transparency by Kirkby doesn't occur.

The same guy asks another question about the dust which is very naive and Kirkby explains that the meteorites are the primary source of aerosols in the upper stratosphere, a basic fact that's been known for 50 years but that was being "deliberately forgotten" by most of the people who try to talk about the climate, but the meteorites are not important in the lower/mid troposphere.

In another exchange, Kirkby says that MeV-scale photons capable of producing electron-positron pairs don't get too low and deeply into the atmosphere, either.

Two more questions: what's the percentage difference in the cloud cover (the gap between the maximum and minimum) that the cosmic rays may induce? And how does it translate to the climate (he meant temperatures)? Of course, Kirkby says that 10% would be "huge"; controversy exists in literature whether the changes are huge (as surely Svensmark says) or zero or anything in between.

He points out that the cosmic effects are likely to seriously affect clouds in some places and attitudes, under some circumstances, only: a task for CLOUD is to find the most relevant parameters where the effect matters and then atmospheric science is to be applied. Kirkby suggests that the atmospheric effects of the changes in forcing (which changes within days after the cosmic rays changes) may be complicated and affected by lags as long as half a century. It's not known.

Someone wants to know the influence of airplanes and contrails on aerosols - like after the air traffic shutdown after 9/11. Kirkby says that the radiative impact of clouds that already exist is probably well understood but what's not understood is the creation stage, the origin of the clouds in the aerosols (both man-made and natural ones).

Another question makes Kirkby revisit a plot showing the variation of the cloud cover - Earth's albedo (Earth shine on the Moon etc.) - in the last 20 years - reflectivity dropped a lot since 1985, exceeding the anthropogenic CO2 forcing by a large factor (up to 5) - but also having a large error bar.

Why Do People Believe Stupid Stuff, Even When They’re Confronted With the Truth?
from The Web (Untangled) by *C*
by David McRaney, AlterNet
The Misconception: When your beliefs are challenged with facts, you alter your opinions and incorporate the new information into your thinking.The Truth: When your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger.
Wired, The New York Times, Backyard Poultry Magazine – they all do it. Sometimes, they screw up and get the facts wrong. In ink or in electrons, a reputable news source takes the time to say “my bad.”
If you are in the news business and want to maintain your reputation for accuracy, you publish corrections. For most topics this works just fine, but what most news organizations don’t realize is a correction can further push readers away from the facts if the issue at hand is close to the heart. In fact, those pithy blurbs hidden on a deep page in every newspaper point to one of the most powerful forces shaping the way you think, feel and decide – a behavior keeping you from accepting the truth.
In 2006, Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler at The University of Michigan and Georgia State University created fake newspaper articles about polarizing political issues. The articles were written in a way which would confirm a widespread misconception about certain ideas in American politics. As soon as a person read a fake article, researchers then handed over a true article which corrected the first. For instance, one article suggested the United States found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The next said the U.S. never found them, which was the truth. Those opposed to the war or who had strong liberal leanings tended to disagree with the original article and accept the second. Those who supported the war and leaned more toward the conservative camp tended to agree with the first article and strongly disagree with the second. These reactions shouldn’t surprise you. What should give you pause though is how conservatives felt about the correction. After reading that there were no WMDs, they reported being even more certain than before there actually were WMDs and their original beliefs were correct.
They repeated the experiment with other wedge issues like stem cell research and tax reform, and once again, they found corrections tended to increase the strength of the participants’ misconceptions if those corrections contradicted their ideologies. People on opposing sides of the political spectrum read the same articles and then the same corrections, and when new evidence was interpreted as threatening to their beliefs, they doubled down. The corrections backfired.
Once something is added to your collection of beliefs, you protect it from harm. You do it instinctively and unconsciously when confronted with attitude-inconsistent information. Just as confirmation bias shields you when you actively seek information, the backfire effect defends you when the information seeks you, when it blindsides you. Coming or going, you stick to your beliefs instead of questioning them. When someone tries to correct you, tries to dilute your misconceptions, it backfires and strengthens them instead. Over time, the backfire effect helps make you less skeptical of those things which allow you to continue seeing your beliefs and attitudes as true and proper.
In 1976, when Ronald Reagan was running for president of the United States, he often told a story about a Chicago woman who was scamming the welfare system to earn her income.
Reagan said the woman had 80 names, 30 addresses and 12 Social Security cards which she used to get food stamps along with more than her share of money from Medicaid and other welfare entitlements. He said she drove a Cadillac, didn’t work and didn’t pay taxes. He talked about this woman, who he never named, in just about every small town he visited, and it tended to infuriate his audiences. The story solidified the term “Welfare Queen” in American political discourse and influenced not only the national conversation for the next 30 years, but public policy as well. It also wasn’t true.

Source: www.freerepublic.com
Sure, there have always been people who scam the government, but no one who fit Reagan’s description ever existed. The woman most historians believe Reagan’s anecdote was based on was a con artist with four aliases who moved from place to place wearing disguises, not some stay-at-home mom surrounded by mewling children.
Despite the debunking and the passage of time, the story is still alive. The imaginary lady who Scrooge McDives into a vault of foodstamps between naps while hardworking Americans struggle down the street still appears every day on the Internet. The memetic staying power of the narrative is impressive. Some version of it continues to turn up every week in stories and blog posts about entitlements even though the truth is a click away.
Psychologists call stories like these narrative scripts, stories that tell you what you want to hear, stories which confirm your beliefs and give you permission to continue feeling as you already do. If believing in welfare queens protects your ideology, you accept it and move on. You might find Reagan’s anecdote repugnant or risible, but you’ve accepted without question a similar anecdote about pharmaceutical companies blocking research, or unwarranted police searches, or the health benefits of chocolate. You’ve watched a documentary about the evils of…something you disliked, and you probably loved it. For every Michael Moore documentary passed around as the truth there is an anti-Michael Moore counter documentary with its own proponents trying to convince you their version of the truth is the better choice.
A great example of selective skepticism is the website literallyunbelievable.org. They collect Facebook comments of people who believe articles from the satire newspaper The Onion are real. Articles about Oprah offering a select few the chance to be buried with her in an ornate tomb, or the construction of a multi-billion dollar abortion supercenter, or NASCAR awarding money to drivers who make homophobic remarks are all commented on with the same sort of “yeah, that figures” outrage. As the psychologist Thomas Gilovich said, “”When examining evidence relevant to a given belief, people are inclined to see what they expect to see, and conclude what they expect to conclude…for desired conclusions, we ask ourselves, ‘Can I believe this?,’ but for unpalatable conclusions we ask, ‘Must I believe this?’”
This is why hardcore doubters who believe Barack Obama was not born in the United States will never be satisfied with any amount of evidence put forth suggesting otherwise. When the Obama administration released his long-form birth certificate in April of 2011, the reaction from birthers was as the backfire effect predicts. They scrutinized the timing, the appearance, the format – they gathered together online and mocked it. They became even more certain of their beliefs than before. The same has been and will forever be true for any conspiracy theory or fringe belief. Contradictory evidence strengthens the position of the believer. It is seen as part of the conspiracy, and missing evidence is dismissed as part of the coverup.
This helps explain how strange, ancient and kooky beliefs resist science, reason and reportage. It goes deeper though, because you don’t see yourself as a kook. You don’t think thunder is a deity going for a 7-10 split. You don’t need special underwear to shield your libido from the gaze of the moon. Your beliefs are rational, logical and fact-based, right?
Well…consider a topic like spanking. Is it right or wrong? Is it harmless or harmful? Is it lazy parenting or tough love? Science has an answer, but let’s get to that later. For now, savor your emotional reaction to the issue and realize you are willing to be swayed, willing to be edified on a great many things, but you keep a special set of topics separate.

Source: www.xkcd.com
The last time you got into, or sat on the sidelines of, an argument online with someone who thought they knew all there was to know about health care reform, gun control, gay marriage, climate change, sex education, the drug war, Joss Whedon or whether or not 0.9999 repeated to infinity was equal to one – how did it go?
Did you teach the other party a valuable lesson? Did they thank you for edifying them on the intricacies of the issue after cursing their heretofore ignorance, doffing their virtual hat as they parted from the keyboard a better person?
No, probably not. Most online battles follow a similar pattern, each side launching attacks and pulling evidence from deep inside the web to back up their positions until, out of frustration, one party resorts to an all-out ad hominem nuclear strike. If you are lucky, the comment thread will get derailed in time for you to keep your dignity, or a neighboring commenter will help initiate a text-based dogpile on your opponent.
What should be evident from the studies on the backfire effect is you can never win an argument online. When you start to pull out facts and figures, hyperlinks and quotes, you are actually making the opponent feel as though they are even more sure of their position than before you started the debate. As they match your fervor, the same thing happens in your skull. The backfire effect pushes both of you deeper into your original beliefs.
Have you ever noticed the peculiar tendency you have to let praise pass through you, but feel crushed by criticism? A thousand positive remarks can slip by unnoticed, but one “you suck” can linger in your head for days. One hypothesis as to why this and the backfire effect happens is that you spend much more time considering information you disagree with than you do information you accept. Information which lines up with what you already believe passes through the mind like a vapor, but when you come across something which threatens your beliefs, something which conflicts with your preconceived notions of how the world works, you seize up and take notice. Some psychologists speculate there is an evolutionary explanation. Your ancestors paid more attention and spent more time thinking about negative stimuli than positive because bad things required a response. Those who failed to address negative stimuli failed to keep breathing.
In 1992, Peter Ditto and David Lopez conducted a study in which subjects dipped little strips of paper into cups filled with saliva. The paper wasn’t special, but the psychologists told half the subjects the strips would turn green if he or she had a terrible pancreatic disorder and told the other half it would turn green if they were free and clear. For both groups, they said the reaction would take about 20 seconds. The people who were told the strip would turn green if they were safe tended to wait much longer to see the results, far past the time they were told it would take. When it didn’t change colors, 52 percent retested themselves. The other group, the ones for whom a green strip would be very bad news, tended to wait the 20 seconds and move on. Only 18 percent retested.
When you read a negative comment, when someone shits on what you love, when your beliefs are challenged, you pore over the data, picking it apart, searching for weakness. The cognitive dissonance locks up the gears of your mind until you deal with it. In the process you form more neural connections, build new memories and put out effort – once you finally move on, your original convictions are stronger than ever.
When our bathroom scale delivers bad news, we hop off and then on again, just to make sure we didn’t misread the display or put too much pressure on one foot. When our scale delivers good news, we smile and head for the shower. By uncritically accepting evidence when it pleases us, and insisting on more when it doesn’t, we subtly tip the scales in our favor.
- Psychologist Dan Gilbert in The New York Times
The backfire effect is constantly shaping your beliefs and memory, keeping you consistently leaning one way or the other through a process psychologists call biased assimilation. Decades of research into a variety of cognitive biases shows you tend to see the world through thick, horn-rimmed glasses forged of belief and smudged with attitudes and ideologies. When scientists had people watch Bob Dole debate Bill Clinton in 1996, they found supporters before the debate tended to believe their preferred candidate won. In 2000, when psychologists studied Clinton lovers and haters throughout the Lewinsky scandal, they found Clinton lovers tended to see Lewinsky as an untrustworthy homewrecker and found it difficult to believe Clinton lied under oath. The haters, of course, felt quite the opposite. Flash forward to 2011, and you have Fox News and MSNBC battling for cable journalism territory, both promising a viewpoint which will never challenge the beliefs of a certain portion of the audience. Biased assimilation guaranteed.
Biased assimilation doesn’t only happen in the presence of current events. Michael Hulsizer of Webster University, Geoffrey Munro at Towson, Angela Fagerlin at the University of Michigan, and Stuart Taylor at Kent State conducted a study in 2004 in which they asked liberals and conservatives to opine on the 1970 shootings at Kent State where National Guard soldiers fired on Vietnam War demonstrators killing four and injuring nine.
As with any historical event, the details of what happened at Kent State began to blur within hours. In the years since, books and articles and documentaries and songs have plotted a dense map of causes and motivations, conclusions and suppositions with points of interest in every quadrant. In the weeks immediately after the shooting, psychologists surveyed the students at Kent State who witnessed the event and found that 6 percent of the liberals and 45 percent of the conservatives thought the National Guard was provoked. Twenty-five years later, they asked current students what they thought. In 1995, 62 percent of liberals said the soldiers committed murder, but only 37 percent of conservatives agreed. Five years later, they asked the students again and found conservatives were still more likely to believe the protesters overran the National Guard while liberals were more likely to see the soldiers as the aggressors. What is astonishing, is they found the beliefs were stronger the more the participants said they knew about the event. The bias for the National Guard or the protesters was stronger the more knowledgeable the subject. The people who only had a basic understanding experienced a weak backfire effect when considering the evidence. The backfire effect pushed those who had put more thought into the matter farther from the gray areas.
Geoffrey Munro at the University of California and Peter Ditto at Kent State University concocted a series of fake scientific studies in 1997. One set of studies said homosexuality was probably a mental illness. The other set suggested homosexuality was normal and natural. They then separated subjects into two groups; one group said they believed homosexuality was a mental illness and one did not. Each group then read the fake studies full of pretend facts and figures suggesting their worldview was wrong. On either side of the issue, after reading studies which did not support their beliefs, most people didn’t report an epiphany, a realization they’ve been wrong all these years. Instead, they said the issue was something science couldn’t understand. When asked about other topics later on, like spanking or astrology, these same people said they no longer trusted research to determine the truth. Rather than shed their belief and face facts, they rejected science altogether.
The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else-by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusion may remain inviolate
- Francis Bacon
Science and fiction once imagined the future in which you now live. Books and films and graphic novels of yore featured cyberpunks surfing data streams and personal communicators joining a chorus of beeps and tones all around you. Short stories and late-night pocket-protected gabfests portended a time when the combined knowledge and artistic output of your entire species would be instantly available at your command, and billions of human lives would be connected and visible to all who wished to be seen.
So, here you are, in the future surrounded by computers which can deliver to you just about every fact humans know, the instructions for any task, the steps to any skill, the explanation for every single thing your species has figured out so far. This once imaginary place is now your daily life.
So, if the future we were promised is now here, why isn’t it the ultimate triumph of science and reason? Why don’t you live in a social and political technotopia, an empirical nirvana, an Asgard of analytical thought minus the jumpsuits and neon headbands where the truth is known to all?

Source: Irrational Studios/Looking Glass Studios
Among the many biases and delusions in between you and your microprocessor-rich, skinny-jeaned Arcadia is a great big psychological beast called the backfire effect. It’s always been there, meddling with the way you and your ancestors understood the world, but the Internet unchained its potential, elevated its expression, and you’ve been none the wiser for years.
As social media and advertising progresses, confirmation bias and the backfire effect will become more and more difficult to overcome. You will have more opportunities to pick and choose the kind of information which gets into your head along with the kinds of outlets you trust to give you that information. In addition, advertisers will continue to adapt, not only generating ads based on what they know about you, but creating advertising strategies on the fly based on what has and has not worked on you so far. The media of the future may be delivered based not only on your preferences, but on how you vote, where you grew up, your mood, the time of day or year – every element of you which can be quantified. In a world where everything comes to you on demand, your beliefs may never be challenged.
Three thousand spoilers per second rippled away from Twitter in the hours before Barack Obama walked up to his presidential lectern and told the world Osama bin Laden was dead.
Novelty Facebook pages, get-rich-quick websites and millions of emails, texts and instant messages related to the event preceded the official announcement on May 1, 2011. Stories went up, comments poured in, search engines burned white hot. Between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. on the first day, Google searches for bin Laden saw a 1 million percent increase from the number the day before. Youtube videos of Toby Keith and Lee Greenwood started trending. Unprepared news sites sputtered and strained to deliver up page after page of updates to a ravenous public.
It was a dazzling display of how much the world of information exchange changed in the years since September of 2001 except in one predictable and probably immutable way. Within minutes of learning about Seal Team Six, the headshot tweeted around the world and the swift burial at sea, conspiracy theories began to bounce against the walls of our infinitely voluminous echo chamber. Days later, when the world learned they would be denied photographic proof, the conspiracy theories grew legs, left the ocean and evolved into self-sustaining undebunkable life forms.
As information technology progresses, the behaviors you are most likely to engage in when it comes to belief, dogma, politics and ideology seem to remain fixed. In a world blossoming with new knowledge, burgeoning with scientific insights into every element of the human experience, like most people, you still pick and choose what to accept even when it comes out of a lab and is based on 100 years of research.
So, how about spanking? After reading all of this, do you think you are ready to know what science has to say about the issue? Here’s the skinny – psychologists are still studying the matter, but the current thinking says spanking generates compliance in children under seven if done infrequently, in private and using only the hands. Now, here’s a slight correction: other methods of behavior modification like positive reinforcement, token economies, time out and so on are also quite effective and don’t require any violence.
Reading those words, you probably had a strong emotional response. Now that you know the truth, have your opinions changed?
Source: www.alternet.org

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