11. februar 2005

Pakistan helped pay off Al-Qaeda debts Pakistan admits it has paid $540,000 to help tribal 'militants' pay off debts to Al-Qaeda, effectively channeling money to the world's most dangerous terrorist organisation: Military operations chief in the region, Lt Gen Safdar Hussain, said the payments were part of a peace deal signed on Monday with tribesmen. It is the first time Pakistan has admitted making such payments. With friends like these, who needs enemies? First AQ Khan, now this, and Musharraf's democratic creditentials are not exactly shining. Yes, I realise we need to swallow some camels to keep nuclear-armed Pakistan out of terrorist hands, but we're approaching a limit here, aren't we? 11:55:22 PM    comment []  trackback []

Americans died in Soviet gulags A Pentagon reports says it is likely that hundreds of US servicemen died in Soviet gulags, prisoners from WWII, the Korean War, Vietnam and other cold war conflicts. Researchers for the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs have been investigating unconfirmed reports of Americans who were held prisoner in the so-called gulags. "I personally would be comfortable saying that the number [of Americans held in the gulags during the Cold War and Korean War] is in the hundreds," said Norman Kass, executive secretary of the commission's U.S. section. Russia, however, has not been helpful in finding the truth about these prisoners, and has refused to open its archives. Let's hope that doesn't mean Putin has plans to reopen the gulags. Update: Link corrected. Heh. 5:21:50 PM    comment []  trackback []

A climate of fear among scientists Hans Von Storch and Nico Stehr has written a strong article published in Der Spiegel, translated as A Climate of Staged Angst. Hans von Storch is a leading climate scientist, and he recently published findings that threw serious doubt about Michael Mann's (et al) "hockey stick" results that have been taken as gospel by climate scientists, the UN's climate panel IPCC and in particular the press. In fact, feeding random data into the same model also produced a "hockey stick" effect, showing this was a statistical artifact, not a reliable estimate of future climate changes. One example of this is the discussion of the so-called "hockey stick," a temperature curve that allegedly depicts the development over the last 1000 years, and whose shape resembles that of a hockey stick. In 2001 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the committee of climate researchers appointed by UNO, rashly institutionalized this curve as the iconic symbol for anthropogenic climate change: At the end of a centuries-long period of stable temperatures, the upward-bent blade of the hockey stick represents the human influence. In October 2004, we were able to demonstrate in the specialist journal "Science" that the methodological bases that led to this hockey-stick curve are mistaken. We wanted to reverse the spiral of exaggeration somewhat, without also relativizing the central message - that climate change caused by human activity does indeed exist. Prominent representatives of climate research, however, did not respond by taking issue with the facts. Instead, they worried that the noble cause of protecting the climate might have been done harm. Other scientists lapse into a zeal reminiscent of nothing so much as the McCarthy era. For them, methodological criticism is the spawn of "conservative think tanks and propagandists for the oil and coal lobby," which they believe they must expose; dramatizing climate change, on the other hand, is defended as a sensible means of educating society. What is true for other sciences should also hold for climate research: Dissent is the motor of further development, Differences of opinion are not an unpleasant family affair. The concealment of dissent and uncertainty in favor of a politically good cause takes its toll on credibility, for the public is more intelligent than is usually assumed. In the long term, these allegedly so helpful dramatizations achieve the opposite of that which they wish to achieve. I think the environmentalist fearmonging is in many ways a modern secular version of religious preaching of the coming apocalypse . The suppression of dissent surely strengthens that impression. And, given that there is still evidence that global warming is a real phenomenon, the mass hysteria can hurt us more than denialism. 3:00:05 PM    comment []  trackback []

© Copyright 2005 Jan Haugland. Last update: 01.03.2005; 01:30:09.