Dying to Believe

This is being reposted from Skeptical Analysis.

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Every con job it requires two to complete the deal. A con artist may be devious of mind and sharp of tongue, but if the mark does not perform his part, the thing falls through. Fortunately for this page that does not happen often enough to starve me of weekly material. It’s Tuesday again:

Six years ago, [James Arthur] Ray wouldn’t run out of a kitchen unless it was to speak to thousands of people—or the audience had paid four figures each for the privilege. After being featured in the book and movie of self-help sensation The Secret in 2006, Ray was propelled onto the national stage. At the time, he was touted as the latest in a long line of prominent self-help gurus who claimed to hold the keys to living a happy and successful life. Two appearances on Oprah followed, as well as his 2008 New York Times best seller Harmonic Wealth: The Secret of Attracting the Life You Want. The price of joining Ray’s World Wealth Society—a program of one-to-one mentoring—peaked at $90,000, and he bought a luxurious home in Beverly Hills. A glowing profile in Fortune magazine dubbed him heir to Tony Robbins’s motivational-speaker throne.

Then, in October of 2009, three of Ray’s followers died.

The good news, depending on how you define “good,” is that in 2013 the resilient Mr. Ray was released from prison, having served his two-year sentence for negligent homicide. On that fatal day in 2009 two people died immediately from heat stroke and another died nine days later of “organ failure.” The victims were among approximately 75 people who offered themselves to Ray’s cure, submitting to temperatures of 200 F inside a tent heated by rocks.

Back in business (as of March last year), Ray continues peddling “harmonic wealth.” It’s “the idea of energy fields attracting similar energy fields.” He will be successful so long as his dupes perform as scripted. He should not require much help.

Your Intelligence Insulted, for a Price

This is being cross posted from the Skeptical Analysis blog.

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I was headed back home from vacation on Thursday, and it was a new month and a new issue of the airline magazine. It featured a short item, see above:

Shut Eye, the drama that debuts on Hulu this month, is not a flattering portrayal of the L.A. psychic trade. The show, in  fact,  depicts a world whose foundation is trickery and greed, which is a very long  way from the view held by real-life Hollywood medium Fleur.

[American Way, December 2016. p39]

Before responding to writer Derrik J. Lang’s glowing depiction of the Los Angeles psychic trade, I pulled up the first episode of Shut Eye and gave it a look. True enough, the show depicts the psychic business as a deep and hardened criminal enterprise, with David Zayas as brutal Gypsy gangster Eduardo Bernal in charge.

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Gypsy gang leader Bernal in Shut Eye

With that in mind, it is interesting to see how Derrik Lang interprets the psychic trade. Apparently Fleur is not one of those phony psychics (redundancy alert). Fleur, we are told is “a six-year veteran,” working out of a West Hollywood office and “not under a neon sign.” Guess what, that appears to describe the psychics in the Shut Eye criminal enterprise. None of them work under a neon sign.

Fleur’s clients include Lana Del Rey and Emma Roberts, two people I would not have known existed were it not for Derrik Lang and American Way magazine.

We learn more about Fleur:

Fleur is also unfazed by the perception of storefront scam artists like those in Shut Eye. “I’ve definitely had people come in who are extremely skeptical—even cynical—and after a session have sad, ‘Well, you must have hired a private detective.’” Even if she wanted to pull such a stunt, she says with a sigh, she couldn’t afford to.

Fleur doesn’t bother debunking the doubters, but she does point to one ability that suggests she is for real: a knack for multilingual communication that she doesn’t posses in daily life. “”The spirit world doesn’t speak in language, it speaks in energy,” she explains. “So I can read anywhere; China, India, Germany. It makes no difference.” Fleur recalls a hospital stay, still fuzzy from anesthesia, when she effortlessly chatted with a nurse’s deceased Filipina mother. “I don’t even remember saying any of this stuff.”

[American Way, December 2016. p39]

My own experience with phony psychics (redundancy) differs from that of Lang’s. In 1992 Mike Sullivan of The North Texas Skeptics checked with local (Dallas) psychic Bette Epstein:

Mike Sullivan
The Skeptic Newsletter Editor
P.O. Box 111794
Carrollton, TX 75011-1794
(214) 746-3288 Day
(214) 492-8998 Evening

January 28, 1992

Betty Epstein
North Central Tejas Chapter
American Society of Dowsers
5409 Farquhar Dr.
Dallas TX 75209

Dear Ms. Epstein:

I found The Dallas Morning News article on January 24, 1992 about you and your Society’s recent convention in Dallas quite informative. The abilities claimed by dowsers in the article are truly incredible, Ms. Epstein, and The North Texas Skeptics are interested in seeing if you or any other dowsers can back up those claims with proof. We are willing to provide you with a public forum in which you can submit those claims to open inquiry.

The North Texas Skeptics is an all-volunteer, non-profit, tax-exempt scientific and educational organization dedicated to scientific inquiry and the examination of extraordinary claims. As part of our educational efforts, we present a series of free public programs on a variety of topics involving science and scientific inquiry. We would be delighted to have you or another of you members speak at one of our meetings. I’m sure our members and guests would welcome the chance to hear first-hand about your claimed dowsing skills or those of others. We have openings in our program calendar throughout 1992 for your presentations.

If you are not able to speak at one of our meetings, perhaps you would care to submit an article about your claimed skills and the evidence you have to support your claims. We would be happy to provide space for your article in our monthly newsletter, The Skeptic. I have enclosed a copy of a recent issue for your review.

You or one of your dowsing colleagues may also be interested in our $2,000 cash award. We have a standing offer to pay $2,000 cash to anyone who can prove a paranormal effect under scientifically controlled conditions, and we promise to publish the results of all such tests regardless of the outcome. If you or another dowser can prove the locating powers claimed in the newspaper article, the money will be yours, or you may wish to donate it to a charity of your choice. Please contact me if you are interested so I can forward complete details of our $2,000 challenge.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

Mike Sullivan

Interestingly, we received a response:

January 28

Ladies and Gentlemen … 

Well … that was a real nice invitation … for me to do show and tell for your group.

But … I must decline.

You see … I have been blessed with lots of money and a wonderful practice of hypnotherapy … and I tithe to my favorite charities on a regular basis … so I don’t need your money to give to them. And … I’m not at all competitive about the dowsing thing. It is not the least bit important to me that anyone else believe it. I believe it .. I know it … It is a vital part of my life on a daily basis and is as real to me as breathing. I would never degrade my other senses by proving to your group that I can see, smell, hear, taste or feel … and I wouldn’t need to prove to you that I have a well-developed sense of energies that surround me.

So … thanks for the invite. I will pass this letter on the national headquarters and they can re-print it in the quarterly if so deemed. There will probably be someone who will take you up on your offer … someone with a different value system about dowsing than I have.

However … if your club would one day like to have a lesson in dowsing so that they, too, can develop their gifts of the spirit … I am an excellent teacher and am offering my time to you.

May the most joyous days of your past be the darkest days of your future.

Bette Epstein 
5409 Farquhar Lane
Dallas, Texas 75209

Sadly, nobody ever took us up on our offer. Bette Epstein did offer to have her young daughter submit to evaluation by us, but we demurred. It was Ms. Epstein who interested us, and we were a mite off-put at the vision of a crowd of grown men grilling a young child.

Since about the time of that NTS newsletter item we have had a $10,000 (now $12,000) award payable to anybody who can demonstrate the kind of thing Fleur brags about doing. That’s over a quarter of a century, and in that time we have been approached numerous times by claimants seeking the prize. Nobody has ever brought us anything to test, and we still have our money. You can read about these cases in a section devoted to the NTS Paranormal Challenge.

Thinking back, I am considering the money Barbara Jean and I paid for our American Airline tickets on our recent vacation. I am thinking I shouldn’t have to pay that much to have my intelligence insulted.

 

 

 

Conspiracy of Lies

Review of a conspiracy theory video

This is a must see for skeptics keen  on conspiracy theory juice. It’s A Conspiracy of Lies: Flight 370 to 911, which came out two years ago. IMDb has a write-up on it, and there are other reviews out there. I’m going to just post some screen shots and a few comments. Here’s the opening title, just so you will know you are watching the right one.

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This is from Reality Films, produced by J. Michael Long, who also narrates.

You can get where  this is going from the title. Yes, they are going to talk about Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, and they are going to  talk about the 9/11 attacks. Yes, they are going to assert the Twin Towers were brought down by planted demolition charges, and then they are going on to  tell us WTC-7 was demolished by explosives after suffering no structural damage from the attacks.

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Lest viewers get the idea all of the stuff in this video is made up, there are some serious issues inserted. For example, the Tuskegee syphilis experiment was real, and it lasted from 1932 to 1972. It involved identifying a group of indigent black men in the rural South who had contracted syphilis. These men were not told they had syphilis, and they were given free medical treatment, but not for syphilis. The aim was to determine the course of the untreated disease in black men.

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Yes, there are flying saucers, and aliens from  outer space, and people abducted by aliens, and sexual experiments performed on humans by aliens. Just look at the graphic below.

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We have, in case you did not already know, alien technology, gleaned from crashed and recovered alien craft made for today’s modern wonders. Without this assist, we would not now have such technological marvels as integrated circuits.

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Black helicopters! Yes, there must be black helicopters. No conspiracy story is complete without black helicopters. Of course, they don’t actually show a black helicopter, because nobody ever gets to see one and live. But they do show shadows of black helicopters. Here is one.

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Chemtrails! There needs to be chemtrails. Chemtrails are real. Here are some photos.

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Yes, chemtrails are real, and they are mentioned in official documents. Congressman  Dennis Kucinich has sought to have them banned.

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But wait. Everybody knows these conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks have been well and thoroughly debunked. We have done some of  that ourselves:

Forget about the hapless “tourist guy” of 9/11, the rigged photo of a parka-clad sightseer atop the World Trade Center, with his back toward the oncoming airliner. Forget about the four thousand Jews who didn’t show up for work that day. French author Thierry Meyssan spins a yarn that shades both these tall tales. According to Meyssan’s book L’Effroyable Imposture (The Frightening Fraud), American Airlines flight 77 did not crash into the Pentagon building. Instead, a crafty plot by the U.S. government employed a truck bomb or a missile strike to further the pretense of the Twin Towers attack.

Producer J. Michael Long’s contention  that no piece of MH370 has ever been found turned out to be refuted since his video came out. At least three pieces of wreckage or debris have been recovered, definitely from the doomed craft.

A problem with conspiracy theories is that as additional evidence comes out, the theories tend to become increasingly refuted. On the other hand, the longer a conspiracy theory can exist, the more witnesses die off, and the further from the truth the theories drift.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime Video, but it appears also on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOoxMNVgpQ8 by subscribing.

Woo-Woo!

A review of the video Remote Viewing.

I’m going to recommend all skeptics watch this. It dates from 2009 and is only 20 minutes. I was able to watch it for free on Amazon Prime Video. Of course you have to have an Amazon Prime subscription, however you can watch it on YouTube by paying $1.99. Call it $2.00. Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rlgcSCLzaA

You’re going to see some people you recognize, so I will start out with a cast of characters:

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Charles Tart you are going to know for sure. He’s been familiar to the NTS for decades:

Charles Tart was a “parapsychologist” doing research at the University of California at Davis. He used a machine called a “Ten-Choice Trainer” (TCT) to help people with psychic ability improve their scores on tests for same. The test worked like this:

A sender in one room viewed a panel with ten playing cards, ace through ten. A randomizing mechanism would select one of the ten cards and would activate a light next to the card. The sender would then push a button, causing a signal to be sent to the receiver. This told the receiver that the sender was now looking at the selected card. The receiver would then turn a dial to select the correct card. The dial position was fed back to the sender in real time, allowing the sender to mentally direct the receiver to the correct card. Finally the receiver would select a card by pushing a button next to the card. If the receiver’s choice was correct, a chime would sound. This would provide positive reinforcement and would help the receiver to learn and to sharpen his extrasensory perception (ESP) skills.

Tart wrote a book describing his work, Learning to Use Extrasensory Perception, published by Chicago Press in 1976. In the book he claimed scores considerably better than could be expected by chance. He heralded his results a “breakthrough” in ESP research.

Came time for Gardner to review the book in 1977 for NYR, and he, as was his practice, went beyond checking for spelling and grammar. As Gardner reports, three of Tart’s colleagues at UC Davis wrote a critique of Tart’s experimental method. They had read Tart’s book and asked to see the raw data. Reviewing the data they realized, for one, the randomizer was not exactly random. They likened Tart’s protocol to a chemist using a dirty test tube and obtaining anomalous results, and they suggested that Tart repeat his experiments after fixing the problem of the non-random random number device.

Gardner saw an additional flaw in Tart’s technique. If the sender, subconsciously or deliberately, delayed sending his signal to the receiver, the receiver might pick up on this idiosyncrasy, and this could become a signaling path from the sender to the receiver. The receiver could pick cards depending on the amount of delay and could improve his score above chance.

Gardner also points out a finding by the mathematicians who examined the data. There is an unexplained absence of doublets. Not so many 2, 2 and 7, 7 sequences, for example, as one should expect. The TCT recorded only the receiver’s score, not the entire sequence of random numbers. This led to the possibility that the sender was hitting the send button a second time whenever the new number was the same as the previous number. The receiver could significantly increase his score by never choosing the same card twice in a row.

Wait, there’s more. The sender and receiver were in nearby office cubicles, and one sender, Gaines Thomas, revealed he would sometimes orally coax his own display of the receiver’s actions as he monitored them on his display. He would curse when the sender appeared about to stop on the wrong card. Whether the receiver was ever cued by these sounds coming from the sender’s cube is not known.

In response to the criticism, Tart revised his technique and repeated his experiments. He published his results as “Effects of Immediate Feedback on ESP Performance: A Second Study” in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research.1 Gardner tellingly quotes a significant statement in the paper: “There is no evidence that more percipients scored significantly above chance than would be expected if no ESP were operating.”

Rather than admit the initial results were due to his own faulty technique, Tart, as Gardner reports, attempted to explain away this lack of success. Principally, there was a lack of ESP talent for the follow-up experiment. “In the last year or two, students have become more serious, more competitive, more achievement-oriented than they were at the time of the first experiment.” And more.

Tart asserted the results of the first experiment were so significant they could not be ignored. As Gardner comments, Tart could not reconcile that the first experiment demonstrated his failure as a scientist. Rather, his earlier results put the results of the second experiment into doubt. Gardner, and the reader, are dumfounded at the audacity. Not speaking for Gardner, I would add I am not in the least surprised by Tart’s reasoning.

The information I have on Lyn Buchanan may be stale:

Leonard (Lyn) Buchanan is the Executive Director of Problems>Solutions>Innovations(P>S>I) which started as a small data analysis company in the Washington, D.C. area in 1992 after Lyn’s retirement from the military.

In late 1995, when the US government declassified their Remote Viewing project, information became public about Lyn’s prior involvement with that project as one of the unit’s Remote Viewers, Database Manager, Property Book Officer and as the unit’s Trainer. Public demands for training and applications became great, and P>S>I moved into the remote viewing field full time, bringing with it Lyn’s extensive databasing capabilities. At the present time, P>S>I possesses the most complete body of data on the applications of remote viewing in real-world applications.

Major Ed Dames:

The world’s foremost remote viewing teacher, and creator of Technical Remote Viewing, Major Edward A. Dames, United States Army (ret.), is a thrice decorated military intelligence officer and an original member of the U.S. Army prototype remote viewing training program. He served as both training and operations officer for the U.S. government’s TOP SECRET psychic espionage unit.

Edward Dames is a ROTC Distinguished Military Graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. Between 1979 and 1983, Major Dames served as an electronic warfare officer and scientific and technical intelligence officer.

In 1982, Ingo Swann, under the direction of Dr. Harold Puthoff, head of the Remote Viewing Laboratory at Stanford Research Institute, realized a breakthrough. Swann developed a working model for how the unconscious mind communicates information to conscious awareness. To test the model, the Army sent Major Dames and five others to Swann as a prototype trainee group.

The results exceeded all expectations – even those of Swann. In six months, Major Dames’ teammates were producing psychically-derived data with more consistency and accuracy than had ever been seen in similar intelligence projects using even the best ‘natural’ psychics. In late 1983, the team parted company with Swann. As the new operations and training officer for the unit, Dames took this breakthrough skill, dubbed ‘Coordinate Remote Viewing,’ and began a new phase of research, testing, and evaluation in order to both uncover its true capabilities, and to perfect its application to fit crucial intelligence collection needs.

Dr. Dean Radin:

Dean Radin, PhD, is Chief Scientist at the INSTITUTE OF NOETIC SCIENCES (IONS) and since 2001 has periodically lectured at Sonoma State University and served on doctoral dissertation committees at Saybrook University and the California Institute for Integral Studies. His original career track as a concert violinist shifted into science after earning a BSEE degree in electrical engineering, magna cum laude with honors in physics, from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and then an MS in electrical engineering and a PhD in psychology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. For a decade he worked on advanced telecommunications R&D at AT&T Bell Laboratories and GTE Laboratories. For three decades he has been engaged in frontiers research on the nature of consciousness. Before joining the research staff at IONS in 2001, he held appointments at Princeton University, University of Edinburgh, University of Nevada, Interval Research Corporation, and SRI International.

He is author or coauthor of over 250 peer-reviewed scientific and popular articles, three dozen book chapters, and three popular books including the award-winning and bestselling The Conscious Universe (HarperOne, 1997), Entangled Minds(Simon & Schuster, 2006), and a 2014 Silver Nautilus Book Award, SUPERNORMAL (Random House, 2013). These books have been translated into 14 foreign languages, so far. His technical articles have appeared in journals ranging fromFoundations of Physics and Physics Essays to Psychological Bulletin and Journal of Consciousness Studies; he was featured in a New York Times Magazine ARTICLE; and he has appeared on dozens of television shows ranging from the BBC’sHorizon and PBS’s Closer to Truth to Oprah and Larry King Live. He has given over 350 interviews and talks, including invited presentations at Harvard, Stanford, Cambridge, Princeton, and the Sorbonne, for industries including GOOGLE and Johnson & Johnson, and for various US government organizations including the US Navy and DARPA.

Dr. Jessica Utts:

Jessica Utts (born 1952) is a parapsychologist and statistics professor at the University of California, Irvine. She is known for her textbooks on statistics and her investigation into remote viewing.

In 2003, Utts published an article in American Statistician, a journal published by the American Statistical Association, calling for significant changes to collegiate levelstatistics education.[3] In the article she argued that curricula do a fine job of covering the mathematical side of statistics, but do a poor job of teaching students the skills necessary to properly interpret statistical results in scientific studies. The argument continues that common errors found in news articles, such as the common misinterpretation that correlative studies show causation, would be reduced if there were significant changes made to standard statistics courses.

Utts was elected to serve as the 111th president of the American Statistical Association, with her term as President-Elect to commence in January 2015, followed by her term as president in 2016.

Up front be prepared to be impressed by the power of the mind and the remarkable phenomenon known as remote viewing. Lyn Buchanan asks, “Do you want the party line history, or do you want the real history?” Of course, we want the real history. And it is remarkable.

Being able to pinpoint a target anywhere on the globe within 35 feet. Locate terrorists, their hostages… We’ve been finding information that saved lives.

Folks, this is good stuff.

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It was necessary for our government to engage in this research, because the Soviets were making great strides. They may have possessed the ability to beam some sort of energy at President Reagan during his participation in the SALT negotiations, thereby clouding his mind and putting the United States at a disadvantage.

Stop for a moment at this thought. There are many of the opinion that President Reagan’s mind did not require additional clouding, but that’s beside the point. We were concerned the Soviets were taking the lead.

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This is not woo-woo stuff. The video shows actual hardware. We see what may be two large electrolytic capacitors, and if you have ever dealt with those, you know how dangerous they can be, what with their ability to store large amounts of electric charge at high voltage.

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Proof of the ability of the human mind to work miracles is also demonstrated. Here are two shots from the video in sequence. Please observe the salt shaker has definitely moved.

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Additional benefit was derived from this research when participants were asked to review satellite imagery from a site in Siberia. The remote viewer said there was a very large shed there, and the Soviets were building a huge submarine vessel. Officials scoffed until such day as the end of the shed was opened and the submarine was rolled out. The Soviets thereupon constructed a canal and floated the boat to the “North Sea.” I regret that my search of the Internet has failed to learn anything regarding a large Soviet submarine constructed in Siberia. I’m also having difficulty with this geography, because my impression has always been that no part of the North Sea touches Siberia.

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There have been scoffers. A book by Jon Ronson, The Men Who Stare at Goats, pokes fun at this kind of nonsense. That was in 2004. A subsequent film came out in 2009, staring George Clooney.

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And all that is just a preamble to the real substance: What is the truth behind remote viewing and the research that purports to support it? Some discussion:

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Start with the ganzfeld effect:

The ganzfeld effect (from German for “complete field”) or perceptual deprivation, is a phenomenon of perception caused by exposure to an unstructured, uniform stimulation field.[1] The effect is the result of the brain amplifying neural noise in order to look for the missing visual signals.[2] The noise is interpreted in the highervisual cortex, and gives rise to hallucinations.[3]

It has been most studied with vision by staring at an undifferentiated and uniform field of colour. The visual effect is described as the loss of vision as the brain cuts off the unchanging signal from the eyes. The result is “seeing black”,[4] an apparent sense of blindness. A flickering ganzfeld causes geometrical patterns and colors to appear, and this is the working principle for mind machines and the Dreamachine.[5] The ganzfeld effect can also elicit hallucinatory percepts in many people, in addition to an altered state of consciousness.

Ganzfeld induction in multiple senses is called multi-modal ganzfeld. This is usually done by wearing ganzfeld goggles in addition to headphones with a uniform stimulus.

A related effect is sensory deprivation, although in this case a stimulus is minimized rather than unstructured. Hallucinations that appear under prolonged sensory deprivation are similar to elementary percepts caused by luminous ganzfeld, and include transient sensations of light flashes or colours. Hallucinations caused by sensory deprivation can, like ganzfeld-induced hallucinations, turn into complex scenes.[5]

The effect is a component of a Ganzfeld experiment, a technique used in the field of parapsychology.

Remote viewing is often associated with the ganzfeld effect. The viewer is subjected to sensory deprivation, typically by having halves of ping-pong balls taped over his eyes to completely obscure vision without blocking ambient light. White noise is played into headphones the subject wears.

Next, an agent goes to a remote place and at a specified time views the surroundings. And takes a photo. The subject—the viewer—is then asked to make a drawing of what the agent sees. Next, an independent referee is shown photos of what the remote agent saw and compares these photos with what the viewer drew. Also shown are photos from disparate scenes. The referee is required to pick the photo what most closely resembles what the viewer drew.

While some experimenters have claimed remarkable success, my own observation of these experiments leaves me unsatisfied. A healthy degree of rigor seems to be lacking. We at the North Texas Skeptics have engaged in what we consider to be more controlled studies, one of which was related to our Paranormal Challenge.

A few years back Rechey Davidson contacted us:

Thanks for your response. Sorry for having a “bad” subject line. I was just told to contact you. Mr. Kramer has my application and letter of explanation of what ability I have. His letter said the application was accepted for preliminary testing. His letter seemed to indicate he was forwarding you the necessary information. Am I just needed to contact you to arrange for testing. What is the next step now? Do we meet or what? From the Challenge Instructions, it sounds like you want me to resubmit my description to you. If so, do I just e-mail you or mail you a letter? Do I tell you what I can do and you draft something back?

Briefly, I have been able to dowse maps of people’s homes (Or other locations) where they have lost specific items and have been able to tell them where the item is. They have, so far, been able to verify they found the item where I said it was. This has happened even if I have never been to their home. Do I just need to submit more detail and suggest how to test this or what? Thanks. Rechey Davidson

This is not exactly remote viewing, but it illustrates the methods we employ:

I scanned in the builder’s floor plan for my house and labeled the major rooms with capital letters. I sent Mr. Davidson a link to the scanned image, and he printed it out. He said he was satisfied with that, and we got started.

The object of our affection was my Nikon digital camera. I chose that because I only have one like it, so Mr. Davidson would not have the problem of dowsing for one of several identical objects.

We got started in early September and finished up two weeks later. Each day or so Mr. Davidson would send me an e-mail telling me in which room the camera was placed, and I would record his score and move, or not move, the camera to a different room. Here is the result:

  • Test 01: 7 September 2004, Camera placed in B, Davidson called E
  • Test 02: 8 September 2004, Camera placed in A, Davidson called G
  • Test 03: 13 September 2004, Camera placed in D, Davidson called L
  • Test 04: 14 September 2004, Camera placed in D, Davidson called F
  • Test 05: 15 September 2004, Camera placed in F, Davidson called H
  • Test 06: 16 September 2004, Camera placed in J, Davidson called E
  • Test 07: 17 September 2004, Camera placed in G, Davidson called B
  • Test 08: 18 September 2004, Camera placed in A, Davidson called B
  • Test 09: 18 September 2004, Camera placed in F, Davidson called E
  • Test 10: 18 September 2004, Camera placed in E, Davidson called J
  • Test 11: 19 September 2004, Camera placed in E, Davidson called B
  • Test 12: 20 September 2004, Camera placed in E, Davidson called D

We all found it remarkable, but not impossible, that Mr. Davidson scored absolutely zero in twelve trials.

I have long considered how we would do a remote viewing experiment. It would go something like this:

  • Start off as before, sensory deprivation or whatever the remote viewer claims to require. The onus is on the remote viewer to perform.
  • Completely isolate the remote viewer from the remote agent. The agent is expected to be at a site of his choosing, unknown to anybody else conducting the experiment, at a given time.
  • At the given time a phone call verifies the agent is at the site, and is taking the photo.
  • The remote viewer is told to visualize what the agent sees and to make the drawing.
  • The agent produces additional photos of disparate sites.
  • The agent brings a collection of images, five or more, back to the location of the experiment. The photos are given to a referee with no evidence of when the photos were taken. The referee is given the drawing.
  • The referee must pick exactly one of the photos that best matches the drawing. All other photos are discarded.
  • If the chosen photo is not the one associated with the drawing, the test results are determined to be negative. There is no second guessing.

This latter point is something I find missing in descriptions of remote viewing experiments that show positive results. There is typically such language as, “This one was my second choice, and it’s the one taken when the viewer had the vision.” Or, “The referee chose this one, but it also resembles this one.” It’s this kind of stuff that points out the bad experimental procedure associated with remote viewing research.

The Jon Ronson book would make for a good review. I will obtain a copy and do a review. Watch for it in the next few months. The movie, as well.

The Comical Conservative

This is a repost from Skeptical Analysis. For the complete history follow the links, search for the title to see additional postings.

Don’t get too excited about the title. I’m reusing it to maintain continuity. This is going to be about the Comical Environmentalist.

Sometime back I reposted a Rick McKee cartoon from Facebook and used that as a starting point for a discussion about anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Here’s the cartoon:

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I have referred to this cartoon in multiple posts. After the most recent post Rick posted a lengthy comment, and I initiated an email dialog with him. And I agree with him on one point. From his comment:

So, I have a question for you: Can you not see how a reasonable person, having been bombarded with all of this contradictory, false and alarmist information for all these years, could be skeptical of anything to do with the topic of climate change, which, in fact, was the point of the cartoon?

And my answer is yes, I can see how environmental activists are sometimes their own worst enemy. You can have a noble cause. You can have a just cause. Your cause can be right. That is, it can be factually correct. And all of that can be undone by extremism in the name of conviction.

In a previous post I took the cartoon to task for oversimplifying a complex issue. A problem with the cartoon is it makes use of—as required by the cartoon medium—hyperbole and shallow presentation. I figure it’s no good to find fault without remedy. And I propose to provide remedy by doing better. I can do the cartoon one better. I can provide substance and detail. Where to start?

Let’s start with something Rick mentioned:

Ecologist Kenneth Watt stated, “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”

All right, I tried to run that one down. The references I found could not confirm that Watt actually spoke those words. Neither did he say anything like that:

Best Answer:  I’m not sure. Each and every single website I see, as you found too, merely gives the quote and no link to the transcript of the speech, or any further context besides “He once said in a speech at Swarthmore…” Of course, we all know how easily stories are taken and repeated without any sort of analysis at their validity.

I had graphed temperature data from NASA’s GISS, NOAA, and HadCRUT3v together a little while ago. I’m not sure what data Watt presumedly [sic] looked at, but there was no discernible trend during the “twenty years” he allegedly referred to. Temperatures actually began their descent in 1940, and leveled out after 1945 until they began to rise again in the seventies. Why would he claim that that trend would produce 4˚C cooling in 20 years? And 11 in 30?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/56645614@N0…

Nobody’s saying Kenneth Watt never said it. It appears to be completely apocryphal, with no contemporaneous account of such a speech. The Wikipedia entry for Earth Day includes the quote, but there is no associated link. However, it is the kind of thing Watt might have said, taking into account some of his other proclamations:

Watt also stated, “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil.”

Neither does that one have a home, and readers are invited to help me find a link.

A problem with Internet research is the fluidity of the information. Often the provenance of sources is incomplete, and this is particularly true of sources that date from before the time everything started getting put on the Internet. More particularly, this applies to sources from deep history. An example, one of the references Rick cites, is this:

The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot…. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone… Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds. – Washington Post 11/2/1922

Yes, we’ve seen this one before, and it was on this blog:

Second, Tom neglected to put the Post article into perspective. The article is based on an item inMonthly Weather Review, a publication of the American Meteorological Society. Here is the original article from the AMS:

And readers can go to the previous post and read the full context. It’s a context that is typically left out when enthusiasm gets the better of rigorous scholarship. The full context shows this was not some alarmist prediction from 1922 but was a report on a local climate anomaly observed in the vicinity of “Spitzbergen and Bear islands under the leadership of Dr. Adolf Hoel, lecturer on geology at the University of Christiania.”

What a serious writer will do is obtain access to contemporaneous sources—newspaper clippings, journal reports, correspondence.

Especially, newspaper reports are beyond value—they are next to impossible to forge. Somebody can print up a fake news clipping, but it can be exposed by matching it with any number of other copies of the same issue. Also of worth is the time value of a clipping. A news item published immediately after an event has credibility over something that finds print days, weeks, or years later. Additionally, corroboration can be obtained by comparing clippings from separate publications.

Journalistic sources published on the Internet are equally valuable, provided they are contemporaneous. Although Internet publications can be altered by a few keystrokes, the reputation of the source will preclude attempts at fraud. Absence of fraud is in no small part due to the thousands of readers who keep tabs on Internet news and place pages into archival storage.

The case of the 1922 Washington Post item is an example of obvious fraud. What happened is somebody scanned the clipping, did not follow up and obtain the complete context, and then posted the item on the Internet (or somewhere else) to highlight an argument against AGW. Subsequent users forwarded the fraudulent story without realizing the fraud, or caring. This is often the case when a story tells somebody what they want to believe. And it’s done by both sides of any divisive issue.

Rick McKee responded to my previous post with 124 years of Failed Climate and Environmental Predictions. I count 92 separate references in Rick’s comment, including the one relating to the 1922Washington Post item.

Some others of the 92 are worth mentioning. I have made slight edits to Rick’s list, adding item numbers and such, and have produced a PDF. Readers can refer to the enumerated list, which I have posted on-line.

Take number 1:

Is our climate changing? The succession of temperate summers and open winters through several years, culminating last winter in the almost total failure of the ice crop throughout the valley of the Hudson, makes the question pertinent. The older inhabitants tell us that the Winters are not as cold now as when they were young, and we have all observed a marked diminution of the average cold even in this last decade. – New York Times June 23, 1890

What’s this all about? It appears to be a news report about weather changes of interest. If you’re like me, you’re going to have difficulty reconciling this with “124 years of Failed Climate and Environmental Predictions.”

Items 2 and 3 appear to discuss a coming ice age. Here is number 2:

The question is again being discussed whether recent and long-continued observations do not point to the advent of a second glacial period, when the countries now basking in the fostering warmth of a tropical sun will ultimately give way to the perennial frost and snow of the polar regions – New York Times – February 24, 1895

The word “failed” has no apparent relationship with these two items. These are newspaper articles discussing the projected repeat of the previous ice age. Although AGW may turn out to forestall the next ice age, nobody 100 years ago was thinking about this. For your viewing, here is a chart of historical global temperatures relating to previous ice ages:

Science-Ice_Age_Temperature

Here’s number 5:

Scientist says Arctic ice will wipe out Canada, Professor Gregory of Yale University stated that “another world ice-epoch is due.” He was the American representative to the Pan-Pacific Science Congress and warned that North America would disappear as far south as the Great Lakes, and huge parts of Asia and Europe would be “wiped out.” – Chicago Tribune August 9, 1923

“North America would disappear as far south as the Great Lakes.” Yes. Just as in the previous ice age.

Number 8:

“Gaffers who claim that winters were harder when they were boys are quite right…weather men have no doubt that the world at least for the time being is growing warmer.” – Time Magazine Jan. 2 1939

As with a number of the others, it’s difficult to see how this is an argument for or against the current science related to AGW.

Here are numbers 76 and 77:

“Globally, 2002 is likely to be warmer than 2001 – it may even break the record set in 1998. – Daily Mirror August 2, 2002

Next year(2003)may be warmest recorded: Global temperatures in 2003 are expected to exceed those in 1998 – the hottest year to date – Telegraph UK- December 30, 2002

 

Would you believe these two predictions turned out to be pure bullshit. Actually not. They were only partially bullshit. An analysis of the top ten warmest years on record include 2002 and 2003. Both were warmer than 2001, which means the first prediction was true. But 2002 and 2003 tied for hottest years on record, meaning 2003 average temperatures were the same, not greater than, 2002. It might be interesting for readers to go to the NOAA site and check out the numbers.

Number 78 is a problem for climate scientists as well:

(The) extra energy, together with a weak El Nino, is expected to make 2005 warmer than 2003 and 2004 and perhaps even warmer than 1998 – Reuters February 11, 2005

Oops! Check with the NOAA page. 2005 turned out to be warmer than 1998, 2003, and 2004.

And I’m getting tired of playing this game. While I suspect there are some other clinkers among the 92, I’m going to spot Rick this, and agree that many of his references are accurate and pertinent. That allows me to avoid having to diagnose each of the 92 and to get back to the topic of this post. Sidestepping matters of AGW, here are some major fubars related to environmental issues:

By 1985 enough millions will have died to reduce the earth’s population to some acceptable level, like 1.5 billion people. – Paul Ehrlich

Yeah, you have to wonder what Ehrlich was thinking, if he was thinking, at all. It is comments like this and others that should have cost Ehrlich dearly in the marketplace of ideas. To give you an idea of how little effect this kind of silliness can have, I subsequently heard reference to “respected scientist Paul Ehrlich.”

Here are some additional silly comments by people who should know better:

“[Inaction will cause]… by the turn of the century [2000], an ecological catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible as any nuclear holocaust.” Mustafa Tolba, 1982, former Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program

“We’ve got to pause and ask ourselves: How much clean air do we need?” Lee Iacocca, CEO/Chairman, Chrysler Corporation, 1979-1992

It isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment. It’s the impurities in our air and water that are doing it. Dan Quayle

Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let’s not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources. Ronald Reagan

Rick McKee is right. We should be skeptical of what gets pushed into the nightly news or posted on the Internet.

In real science, as in real life, it’s not what what people say that matters, it’s what is that matters. In the end, facts trump opinion. People may, if they choose, post “124 years of Failed Climate and Environmental Predictions,” but that does not make an argument. What makes an argument is a statement of fact.  I’m going to restate something from previous posts:

I have been following the topic of AGW for over 20 years, and a recurrent observation is that people opposed to the science rely on quotes and opinions, some from real scientists, and not so much on the basic science. What any opponent to the science needs to do to refute AGW is to demonstrate one or more of the following:

  • Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does not absorb infra red radiation.
  • Carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are not increasing dramatically.
  • Increases in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are not due to human activities.
  • There are natural sources to the increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that supersede the human contribution.

I have put this out before, and nobody has come back at me on it. Keep reading.

 

Skeptical Honesty

NeildeGrasseTysonScienceTrue

An Editorial

First, I want to express my gratitude to fellow skeptics for allowing me to post to the NTS site. At this point I will take advantage of that privilege to express some personal thoughts. These are mine and do not necessarily represent those of the NTS Board of Directors.

The North Texas Skeptics is organized as a 501 (c) 3 non-profit educational and public service corporation. We do not get involved in politics, and officially we do not engage in religious disputes. That philosophy is not, however, a surrender flag on our intellect. Skeptics have always been and should always be able to call out religious stupidity.

While skeptics may step around religious statements of faith, there are still issues painted over by religion that we can and must dispute. If somebody tells us his faith in Jesus is a comfort to his life, then we nod, not necessarily approvingly, but knowingly. However, when statements about the creation of the universe, the age of the Earth, the origin of the human race conflict with known facts, skeptics must step up to the challenge. We have done that before.

Thirteen years ago James Cunliffe presented a talk on biblical historicity. The sum of it was that the Bible lacks any amount of factual content. This should not be seen as an attack on religious faith. Faith does not rest on fact. That’s why it’s called faith. We will continue to confront areas where faith conflicts with reality. Notable topics are:

  • Creationism
  • Faith healing
  • Biblical historicity

All the while, skeptics must take care to understand that people of faith are not the natural enemies of truth. Science, and rational skepticism, have many friends in the world of faith. One of the staunchest defenders of modern theories of biology is Professor Kenneth Miller, author of biology text books and a reliable defender of biological evolution. His testimony against creationist arguments has been invaluable.

All that said, the notable defenders of science in the face of religious objections have been prominent atheists. To name a few:

  • Richard Feynman
  • Carl Sagan
  • Richard Dawkins
  • Lawrence Krauss
  • Neil deGrasse Tyson
  • Bill Nye

Yes, Bill Nye, the Science Guy. Bill Nye, who turned 60 last month, graduated from Cornell University with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. His popular show Bill Nye the Science Guy ran from 1993 to 1998 and went a long way toward popularizing science for young people. More recently he has taken his honed TV personality on the road, giving lectures, delighting audiences, and at the same time continuing to educate the public on science.

Which brings us to today’s topic:

Waco Tribune did *not” pull its Bill Nye the Science Guy story

A Washington Post journalist sends this email:

I saw this posting today on Facebook — that the incident happened isn’t very surprising, but is it true that the Waco Tribune took down its story about it (mentioned at the bottom of this post)? I’d be interesting in knowing what really happened.

The emailer links to a ThinkAtheist.com piece from 2009 that’s apparently making the rounds on Facebook. It reports that Bill Nye (“The Science Guy”) “managed to offend” a Waco audience “when he suggested that the moon does not emit light, but instead reflects the light of the sun.”

The post adds that “this story originally appeared in the Waco Tribune, but the newspaper has mysteriously pulled its story from the online version, presumably to avoid further embarrassment.”

Wrong! says Waco Tribune editor Donnis Baggett. He tells Romenesko readers:

The story was published on April 6, 2006, and is still posted on our paid subscription website. Therefore, it’s available only to readers who pay for access.

Additionally, for arcane reasons connected to a change in site hosting two years ago, sometimes the story is erroneously labeled as having been removed. This has apparently led some to believe we pulled it because of
pressure, when in fact we have not.

I’ve copied the story from our site and am attaching it below for your reference.

Here is an excerpt from the Tribune-Herald article by Tim Woods:

The Science Guy is entertaining and provocative at MCC lecture

Author: Tim Woods Tribune-Herald staff writer

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in the Waco Tribune-Herald on April 6, 2006

Audience members who expected to see Bill Nye “The Science Guy” conduct experiments and wow their children received quite a surprise Wednesday when Nye spoke at McLennan Community College.

Nye instead addressed such topics as Mars exploration, global warming and energy consumption, particularly oil and gas. He even ruffled a few religious feathers along the way.

The problem came when Bill disputed the Genesis story of the creation of the sun and the moon as two great lights, one to do during the day time and the other to serve at night. Bill observed that the moon is not a light unto itself but serves only to reflect light from the sun. He could also have pointed out the moon shines during the day when its light is not needed, but that would have been superfluous.

Anyhow, some people objected to this as anti-religious and walked out. And the Tribune-Herald did not subsequently delete the story from their Web site. Like all their news, it eventually went behind their pay wall, as seen above.

And the Tribune-Herald did not pull the story in deference to the Science Guy. They could possibly have pulled it in deference to the fools who objected and walked out, but reputable news sources do not do this.

I have a separate blog that treats religious and political areas where the North Texas Skeptics must not venture. I do this so the NTS won’t have to. In the mean time there is no area of religious irrelevancy I will not avoid on behalf of the North Texas Skeptics, and these observations will continue to be posted here.

Keep reading. And may Jesus have mercy on your soul.

Program For September

The September program will be Saturday the 19th at the Center for Community Cooperation, 2900 Live Oak Street in Dallas. Proceedings will get underway at 2 p.m. The format will be a general discussion of the topic.

This item is also posted on the Skeptical Analysis blog.

electron_orbitals-svg

Electron energy states

Some Background

Here’s a story from a few years back. I wrote this term paper for an undergraduate physics class. I got an A in the course, and when Scott Chase, at the time moderator for the sci.physics discussion list, asked me to submit an item on the EPR paradox, I dressed up my term paper a bit and sent it in. The discussion has since been revised and improved by Scott and others, and you can find it here:

Does Bell’s Inequality rule out local theories of quantum mechanics?

In 1935 Albert Einstein and two colleagues, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen (EPR) developed a thought experiment to demonstrate what they felt was a lack of completeness in quantum mechanics.  This so-called “EPR Paradox” has led to much subsequent, and still ongoing, research.  This article is an introduction to EPR, Bell’s Inequality, and the real experiments that have attempted to address the interesting issues raised by this discussion.

One of the principal features of quantum mechanics is that not all the classical physical observables of a system can be simultaneously well defined with unlimited precision, even in principle.  Instead, there may be several sets of observables that give qualitatively different, but nonetheless complete (maximal possible), descriptions of a quantum mechanical system.  These sets are sets of “good quantum numbers,” and are also known as “maximal sets of commuting observables.”  Observables from different sets are “noncommuting observables”.

The heart of the matter is the measurement of quantum mechanical properties of sub atomic particles. To make it short, measuring such a property, measuring anything, involves interacting with the property so that additional parts of the Universe are irreversibly affected. For sub atomic particles it is claimed the measured property does not have the measured value until the measurement is taken. A classic example is the thought experiment involving Schrödinger’s cat.

For decades the argument raged back and forth over whether the studied particle had a built-in property that was measured. The ultimate conclusion was it did not. In my mind I sought to demonstrate the opposite. I supposed that, in my example, a radioactive nucleus has built in a specific time when decay will occur. When the time comes, the decay event happens.

Then I thought about it, and I realized that this could not be. The proof is in the decay statistics, and I will get into that in a different post. It’s going to be a Quiz Question.

The conclusion is, amazingly, that things happen in the Universe without having a cause. This contradicts most conventional wisdom. The batter hits a home run because he swung the bat. Swinging the bat was a principal cause for the home run. On another level this is not always the case. An atomic particle decays, and nothing has caused it.

Close Encounters

This and a number of other counterintuitive aspects of quantum physics have caught the attention of certain fringe elements. People seeking to rationalize claims of the paranormal have turned at times to spooky elements of quantum mechanics. For the North Texas Skeptics an early encounter was health quack Charlotte Gerson, whom we reviewed 23 years ago:

The lady (she is not quoted in the Gerson flier, and I didn’t get her name) found that with a family it was difficult to stick to the Gerson diet unless the whole family participated, which meant everyone ate nothing at home but fresh vegetables (organically grown, I assumed). Her grocery bill, as a consequence, was $200 per week. This is amazing when you realize that previously in this century unprocessed food was the cheapest way to eat. It is a statement of how we have come to depend on the food processing industry.

Another man was also questioning the Lady X, and he seemed to be asking some very intelligent questions. He was wearing a medical pager, and I asked him if he was a doctor. He said he was, but he declined to be identified. He considered it professionally unwise to acknowledge interest in alternative medicine. His wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, and he was seeking anything that promised hope. For some reason the conversation turned to other quack medical practices, and the subject of homeopathy came up. I was surprised when he stated complete confidence in homeopathy. Not only that, but the two others in our little conversation knot expressed the same convictions. Of course I shouldn’t have been surprised. Where did I think I was anyhow?

How could homeopathy work, I asked? What could possibly be the mechanism for the effectiveness of a remedy that mathematically could be demonstrated to consist of pure water after all of the active ingredient had been diluted out? One man (who also claimed to be a practicing alchemist) suggested quantum mechanics (Q-M). When I stated that I had some slight knowledge of Q-M he retreated slightly and stated, “But it produces results,” meaning that even if we don’t know the mechanism, we still have the empirical results to prove the effectiveness. (I wondered to myself that if he were willing to abandon Q-M and to fall back on results, then why had he bothered to mention a plausible mechanism in the first place.) My companions pointed out the famous work of Jacques Benveniste and the futile attempts by the “Amazing” Randi to debunk him. My own recollection of the whole affair was somewhat different. Skeptical Inquirer readers will recall Martin Gardner’s account of the “experiment effect” in the winter 1989 issue.

Gerson did not invoke quantum mechanics, but her audience that day encompassed this mentality. Which brings us to the curious case of homeopathic quack Jacques Benveniste.

After the Nature controversy, Benveniste gained the public support of Brian Josephson, a Nobel laureate physicist with a reputation for openness to paranormal claims. Experiments continued along the same basic lines, culminating with a 1997 paper claiming the effect could be transmitted over phone lines. This was followed by two additional papers in 1999 and another on remote-transmission in 2000 by which time it was claimed that it could also be sent over the Internet.

Homeopathy Explained

The principle behind homeopathic remedies is that a small amount of the substance known to produce a symptom will remedy the cause behind the symptom. My example: poison ivy causes a rash, a small amount of the substance from the plant will alleviate the symptoms. But the small amount needs to be really small. Surprisingly, the more dilute the active ingredient the more potent. Homeopathic pharmacology identifies dilutions using the letters X and C. Something that is diluted 10 to 1 is said to be 1X. 1000 to 1 is 3X, and so on. For higher dilutions C, representing dilutions in factors of 100, is used. 20C is a dilution of one part in 10020. That’s one part in 1040. The Avagadro Constant is 6.022×1023 per gram molecular weight. For a kilogram of a 20C homeopathic compound we would expect to find not a single molecule of the active ingredient, this to an astronomical degree of certainty.

So, how does this work? Quantum mechanics explains it. The previous existence of the ingredient in the solution has left its memory, despite being diluted to zero. It’s a remarkable claim, with no basis in quantum mechanics to back it up.

Industrial Homeopathy

In 2004 we encountered a Mr. Greg Nichols, who promised to amaze us:

More recently we received the following e-mail (it always seems to start with an e-mail out of the blue):

To: <skeptic@ntskeptics.org>I have an interesting test for your group. Please call or e-mail for details.

Sincerely,

Greg Nichols

We were naturally interested, and we invited Mr. Nichols to drop by. He came to our February meeting, even though we were snowed out of our meeting place, and we all had to huddle together inside a fast food place on Live Oak Street.

What Mr. Nichols had to show us was a substance that, when applied to the outside of a beverage container, would improve the taste of the beverage inside.

Even we skeptics had to agree that this was, indeed, a paranormal claim. We eagerly looked forward to the opportunity to see this miracle performed under controlled conditions.

Oops! That was the sticker. We wanted, as we always do, to completely control the test in a manner that would eliminate testing bias or even, gasp, trickery.

For example, I have the opinion that if somebody sees a magical substance applied to the outside of his drink container, that person might, just might, perceive a difference in taste. I would naturally insist that the test involve tasters who were required to sip identical drinks from identical containers without knowing which container had been so treated.

We are sorry to report that our insistence on these minor details eventually led to a complete breakdown in the negotiations between us and Mr. Nichols (and his partner, Mr. Willis). To make a long story short, Nichols and Willis told us in no uncertain terms what we could do with our challenge. More specifically, we received a final e-mail:

Dear John,I guess I have to talk to you like you’re a moron. Either you and your buddies can’t read, won’t read, are stupid, ignorant, or all of the above.

When you get the information we want to us, we can talk. When you are ready to comply with our demands, requests and concerns about the fairness of your so-called “Challenge”, we can talk.

I won’t print the rest of their dispatch here, because they became rather rude a few sentences later. However, you can read all the e-mail exchange on the NTS Web site. Here is the URL:

http://www.ntskeptics.org/challenge/nichols/nichols.htm

Mr. Nichols and Mr. Willis never did explain to us how their product was supposed to work. It’s possible they didn’t understand, themselves, because they had never studied quantum mechanics.

Structured Water

There is more odd stuff. There is structured water:

At first glance my mind played a trick on me. I thought they were selling mercury. You know, the liquid metal at room temperature, mercury? It goes by the symbol hg from Hydrargyrum, an archaic term for it. But I was glad to realize that this isn’t the symbol for that poisonous metal at all but stands for a molecule, which all my lost years learning chemistry were informing me wasn’t simply possible. Nine hydrogen atoms forming a molecular bond. This “water” is supposed to super-hydrate us and provide us energy. The thinking may be something like this: “More hydrogen, more will be the hydration.”

Creationist Carl Baugh was not beyond invoking spooky aspects of sub atomic physics. We ran an account of his explanation back in 2000:

Dr. Baugh went on to explain how all of this ties together.  The famous German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss originally studied the Earth’s magnetic field about 200 years ago and found that it was decreasing.  Actually it is not only decreasing, but it is varying up and down.  It is pulsing.  It pulses about eight cycles per second, and this action is what energizes water naturally.

The structure of water accounts for this effect.  As shown in the diagram, a water molecule is two atoms of hydrogen bound to an atom of oxygen.  The three atoms are not in line-the hydrogen atoms are separated by about 104.5 degrees (see Fig. 2).  This angle can stretch and rebound, and this motion is what puts energy into the water.

WaterMolecule

Figure 2. Diagram of water molecule showing angle between hydrogen atoms.

In clouds the molecules are spiraling downward.  When a water molecule passes through a thermal barrier this angle is flexed, and the water picks up energy from its environment.  This is why clouds darken.  Clouds get darker because the water is picking up energy.

One NASA engineer has told Baugh that they are producing mechanisms to energize water following Baugh’s principles.  They have learned that today we are depleting ourselves of energy by constricting the spiraling of the molecules.  Pipes, conduits, and channels constrict the natural flow of water and de-energize it.  Water that has so been mistreated takes energy out of our bodies rather than adding it.

An engineer added energized water to his regular organic fertilizer and was able to produce corn eighteen feet tall with three ears per stalk.  On another occasion at a university they added a few gallons of energized water to a sour well, and by the next morning the anaerobic bacteria in the well had been wiped out.

A rancher in West Texas once told Baugh that he now realizes why his cattle will drink rain water in muddy puddles rather than well water.  The cattle feel more energy from drinking the energized rain water than from drinking the de-energized well water.  Van Liew agreed, citing the fact that dogs drink out of puddles rather than their water dish.  The rain water still contains all the information that God put in it.

Baugh explained that living systems today use only 3% of the information stored in their DNA.  The other 97% is what geneticists call “junk” DNA.  In reality, that 97% tells the active 3% how to respond.  Energized water corrects this problem (presumably making more of the 97% active).  By conducting experiments in gene splicing and recombination geneticists today are playing God, and they need to stop that and get back on track.

Toward the end of the program van Liew and Baugh took calls from listeners.  Nancy posed the question of whether life on Earth would be more viable today had Adam and Eve never sinned.

I would like to answer that last (Nancy’s) question. Life on Earth would be more viable today if students weren’t forced to study quantum mechanics.

Regarding structured water, the acknowledged expert is Dr. Gerald Pollack:

You may have heard about “structured water” before. Many are quite skeptical, and some don’t even believe it exists, let alone that it has any value. But it’s important when trying to find high quality water. Water filtration processes used to clean our water supply frequently de-structures the water, so the question is whether or not this matters. Dr. Pollack explains this challenging concept in the following lecture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=V7jKL2-B0QA

“In terms of the water that we drink, it’s really a complicated issue,” Dr. Pollack admits.

But “the water inside your cells is absolutely critical for your health. If you have a pathology of an organ, it’s not only the proteins inside that organ that are not working, but also the water inside that organ. That near-protein water is not ordered in the way it should be.

So what you want to do is reestablish a kind of “ordering.”

What this means is that if you don’t have properly structured water in your cells, it can impact the functioning of the much larger protein molecules (and others) that are interfacing with it.

In fact, the protein molecule in your cells cannot be viewed as just a molecule by itself. It’s actually the molecule PLUS the water. These two factors together form the “entity” of the molecule in question.

“If you need that entity to function properly–take a muscle for example—if the muscle is not functioning, it’s the protein and the water that are not functioning,”Dr. Pollack explains. “You need plenty of this ordered/structured water and proteins in their right form in order to make the muscle function properly. So if you have a muscle injury then both are not functioning.”

So, how do you restore it?

Restructuring Water in Your Cells Creates Tissue Healing

Classically, one way of doing it is to use infrared radiation (heat). By applying heat to the muscle, you increase blood supply, which is helpful. But you’re also building water structure! Dr. Pollack’s research shows that infrared heat is very effective for ordering cellular water. In terms of the source of the infrared heat, as long as it emits the right wavelength of radiation, it will be effective. According to Dr. Pollack, the wavelength of 3 micrometers (microns) is ideal and very effective.

The sun also emits this wavelength, which may be yet another reason why sun exposure has such profound health benefits and just feels good through and through. Interestingly, the human body also emits radiation within the ideal range, which may explain why simple physical contact, including ‘hands-on healing,’ can contribute to improved health!

“I know there is a lot of skepticism about that,” Dr. Pollack says, “but from a physical point of view, it’s entirely possible.”

Another way to structure water is to use light.

The visible light spectrum, ultraviolet (UV) and near infrared also builds ordered water zones. Again, light therapy has been used for years to remedy various maladies, such as depression and jaundice, for example. But it’s only now that scientists are beginning to understand why such therapies work.

Clearly, one of the primary health benefits of sun exposure and UVB’s is that it makes your body create vitamin D, which we now realize is absolutely crucial for optimal health. But the fact that it also helps structure the water within your cells may be yet another contributing factor. After all, your body is a conglomerate of symbiotic relationships.

Dr. Pollack goes further addressing the question of whether we should drink structured water. He tells us the issue is still open to debate. Healing waters from the Ganges and from Lourdes have been studied. They have the same structure as water found in cells. It’s important for readers to remember:

In 1858 in the grotto of Massabielle, near Lourdes, France, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared 18 times to Bernadette Soubirous, a 14 year old peasant girl. She identified herself as The Immaculate Conception. She gave Bernadette a message for all: “Pray and do penance for the conversion of the world.” The Church investigated Bernadette’s claims for four years before approving devotion to Our Lady of Lourdes. Lourdes has since become one of the most famous shrines, attracting more than a million pilgrims each year. There have been thousands of miraculous cures at this shrine.

Structured water is something not to be sneezed at. But what would happen if you swallowed structured water. Regrettably, this question has not been answered. But, one thing is known: “structured water tends to stay together.” It’s wonderful  we have people like Dr. Pollack to conduct critical research into these questions.

The Global Healing Health site has additional information on structured water:

One of the fundamental perceptual changes that we need to make is to acknowledge that water is a living substance, not the inert “wet stuff” that we’ve dismissed as unimportant and treated it as. I know this may be hard for some, but I can assure you that life will be harder for those who do not accept water’s living, intelligent nature as truth, than for those who do. This is not because water will get pissed off or angry at us, but because we — meaning those who can’t get themselves to form a healthy relationship with water based on mutual respect — will have cut ourselves off from its most sublime gifts. And here’s a clue. If you are unwilling to establish a healthy relationship with water, you can’t establish one with anyone else, including yourself.

We can continue drinking water that has been forced to go through various “short cut” processes in order to “protect” us from harm, but what we’ve been getting is sicker, earlier in life, and therefore, for longer periods of time. Because we often continue to function day-to-day for quite some time in spite of chlorine and fluoride baths, which combine with countless chemicals that are in the processed foods that we eat and the simulated dairy products that we drink (“milk” as it is presently known, is definitely not milk), we believe that we’re putting our best nutritional foot forward. But this is not so.

The site also cautions us about GMO foods. They look natural and taste natural and have the appearance of being natural, but they can’t be metabolized by the body. This is because they lack the vibrational signatures. They don’t have the specific frequencies of light that would allow our cells, our protein, and our enzymes to respond.

Energized Water

Structured water is closely related to energized water. The American Monk’s Blog has a link to a report from Silva International. “Imagine the possibilities if you make a conscious effort to manipulate theenergies around you.” The report cites the work of Dr. Masura Emoto:

Research by Dr. Masaru Emoto done on crystals of various types of frozen water seems to show that besides environmental factors, thought; prayer, sound and words impress an effect on water.

Dr. Emoto used a device called a Magnetic Resonance Analyzer (MRA) and found that all substances have their own unique magnetic resonance field and must be understood functionally at the atomic or even sub-atomic level in order to achieve the complete cure of all diseases. Water being the essential component to all life became one focus of attention. Using the MRA he was able to measure objects of interest in micro levels smaller than molecules and believes he has discovered why diseases occur.

According to Dr. Emoto, the specific vibrating wave generated by the electrons orbiting the nucleus of an atom, and believed to be the source of energy behind the creation of all things emits a magnetic resonance. The magnetic resonance is influenced both positively and negatively by our thoughts. Negative thoughts influence micro-elements and microorganisms in our body, in such a way that illness results. His belief is that water is alive and has memory. Other research even suggests that the information recorded in water can be transferred to
other water molecules. Dr. Emoto suggests that the most effective cure for disease is an awareness that we are living in cooperation with microorganisms at moment of our lives and that they respond to thought.

Magnetic Resonance

Readers not familiar with magnetic resonance analyzers can obtain additional information on theDiscover Magazine site:

This is my fourth post on  ‘quantum resonance spectrometry’ (QRS), a strange medical technology that seems to be becoming increasingly popular in China. Proponents claim that QRS can quickly and painlessly diagnose almost any disease. However, as I discussed last time,the technology has a dubious history.

But we shouldn’t focus on the past. The important question is: how well do today’s QRS devices work? In this post I’ll look at some examples of the technology in action.

First some terminology. I believe that QRS is essentially the same product as “Quantum Resonance Magnetic Analysis” (QRMA) and “Quantum Resonance Analysis” (QRA). As far as I can tell, these are all variants of Ronald Weinstock’s original invention, “Magnetic Resonance Analysis” (MRA). For more details, see the previous post. Note that none of these technologies is related to Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).

Searching for some evidence on how QRS works, I discovered this TV segment broadcast onCCTV-1, the Chinese state TV channel. According to the show, QRS measures the magnetic field surrounding a sample of the patient’s hair. The hair’s field is, we’re told, a copy of the body’s own magnetic field. This field supposedly contains information about the health of all of the organs in the body. Water molecules which “remember” magnetic states are mentioned, which sounds like a reference to the strange “water memory” theories of Japanese author Masaru Emoto, which I discussed last time.

Quantum-Magnetic-Resonance-Analyzer-EHM-Q1-

In addition to this, quantum physics accounts for psychic phenomena. Blogger Craig Weiler explains it:

This is not an easy topic, as you can imagine.  Yet many fundamental underpinnings of the arguments against the existence of psi are based on a belief that it is incompatible with physics.  This is simply not true.  Most of the people who make this argument have no idea what the real situation is in the world of physics.  Much thanks here goes to Chris Carter and his book “Parapsychology and the Skeptics.”   He gives the clearest explanation I have read so far and I’m borrowing heavily from his take on this.  It is an excellent book and I highly recommend it.

Observer Created Reality

Most people believe in an observer independent universe.  This is a notion of classical physics that is no longer valid and is the first thing that must be addressed in any discussion about psychic ability and physics.  Quantum physics has totally re-made this view of the world.  An observer independent universe is one where an observer exhibits no effect on the universe.  The universe operates of its own accord and the observer is unimportant in the process.  That’s not what actually happens.  We not only don’t live in this universe, we don’t live in an observer dependent universe either.  We live in an observer created universe.

Supposed Reality

We have to listen to people like Craig Weiler, because they have studied this to great depth. He goes on to remind us of a few facts regarding our perceptions and reality:

Reality is not there when it is not being observed. We know this to be true at the quantum level but we don’t notice it because of a phenomenon called decoherence.  Basically, because the bazillions of quantum level phase relationships interfere with each other, they appear on the macroscopic level to even out, or decohere, much like the curvature of the earth appears to disappear in a limited area of its surface.  This decoherence effect allows us to get away with ignoring quantum effects on macroscopic objects and why classical physics works so well in the ordinary world.

We now know that something does not happen unless somebody observes it happening. Craig uses a technical term, bazillions, to accurately account for the total number of phase relationships that interfere with each other.

Physicist Quacks

Russell Targ is another serious researcher in this frontier of science:

Russell Targ (born April 11, 1934) is an American physicist, parapsychologist and author who is best known for his work on remote viewing.

Targ originally became known for early work in lasers and laser applications. He joinedStanford Research Institute (SRI) in 1972 where he and Harold Puthoff coined the term “remote viewing” for the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen target using parapsychological means. Targ’s work on remote viewing has been characterized aspseudoscience and has also been criticized for lack of rigor.

Disregarding for a moment the allegations of pseudoscience, a review of Targ’s insight is beneficial:

In this article I will present what I consider to be the  very best evidence for psychic abilities. These abili­ties—which we all possess—offer a spacious mind that can change your life and your view of reality. Buddhists and Hindus have known this since before the time of Christ. The scientific evidence is now over­whelming, and modern physics has the means and tools to embrace it. Such abilities have many names; ESP (extrasensory perception) is presently the most familiar. Others include clairvoyance and psi. The lat­ter is derived from psi ?, the twenty-third letter of the Greek alphabet, referring to the Greekpsych?, meaning “psyche” or “soul.”

As we all know, Russell Targ, along with physicist Harold Puthoff, opened up the science of remote viewing over 40 years ago. Targ explains:

Remote Viewing. At Princeton University, Profes­sor Robert Jahn and his associate Brenda Dunn over­saw two decades of remote viewing experiments with Princeton students as subjects. They asked students in the laboratory to describe their mental impressions of what it looked like where someone else was hiding at a randomly chosen distant location. These students had to fill out a thirty-item checklist to quantify their perceptions in this game of psychic hide-and-seek. Their findings — spanning several years and compris­ing a series of 411 trials — showed that it is no harder to look hundreds of miles in the distance than it to describe a person around the corner. Furthermore, it is no harder to describe a randomly chosen hiding place to be selected in the next hour, day, or week than it to describe a hidden contemporaneous event under way at the moment. Jahn’s highly significant results were published in Proceedings of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 1982 as a replication of our original SRI remote viewing experiments, which had been published in the same journal six years earlier.

Modern physics would describe these phenom­ena as nonlocal in that they are experimentally found to be independent of space and time. Nonlocality and entanglement, which were first described by Erwin Schrodinger in the late 1920s, are now among the hot­test research topics in modern physics. This intrigu­ing phenomenon is explained very clearly by Anton Zeilinger, one of the world’s leading experimentalists in quantum optics, in his 2010 book Dance of the Pho­tons: From Einstein to Teleportation: “Entanglement describes the phenomenon that two particles may be so intimately connected to each other that the measure­ment of one instantly changes the quantum state of the other, no matter how far away it may be. This nonlo­cality is exactly what Albert Einstein called ‘spooky’; it seems eerie that the act of measuring one particle could instantly influence the other one.”

Robert Jahn also oversaw the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab, which attempted to demonstrate psychic control of random event generators. Jahn is now retired, and the lab was closed in 2007.

Targ and Puthoff’s work on remote viewing at Stanford Research Institute has been roundly criticized, particularly by writer Martin Gardner:

My review of Mind-Reach, by Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff—a book on the testing of clairvoyance—appeared in The New York Review of March 17. Shortly thereafter theNYRreceived an interesting letter from Aaron Goldman, Sherman Stein, and Howard Weiner, three top mathematicians at the University of California, at Davis. Although their letter does not deal with P and T (as Puthoff and Targ are called), it concerns the closely related work of Charles Tart, a colleague of the three mathematicians at Davis.

Tart’s reputation as a parapsychologist is even higher than that of P and T. When his latest book, Learning to Use Extrasensory Perception, was published last year under the imprimatur of the University of Chicago Press, it was widely hailed as a major breakthrough. (See The New Yorker’s “Talk of the Town,” December 13, 1976.) Tart shares with P and T the conviction that ESP powers can be markedly strengthened by electronic teaching machines. The major work of P and T in this field, made possible by an $80,000 grant from NASA, was with a four-choice machine designed by Targ. I discussed this test, considered a failure by almost everybody except P and T, in my Scientific American column, October 1975.

Conclusion

Two oddities from modern physics give aid and comfort to claims of the paranormal.

  • Absence of causation
  • Non local action

If something can happen (a decay event), and there is no cause, then a basic feature of traditional science has been violated. This provides an opening to be exploited by anybody claiming to provide the absent cause. The supposed cause, available to be inserted, can be something like a mental power or a disembodied spirit.

Non local action can be invoked to back up claims for remote viewing and mental telepathy. Also prognostication.

Invoking odd physics to bolster claims will only purchase the claimant so much. At a certain point claims of the paranormal need to be demonstrated, and here is where they fall down. You can maintain that the human mind has the ability to influence a random event generator, but the lack of any measurable success will ultimately prevail. History has borne out that experimental failure will deter neither these claimants nor their supporters.

All About Ghosts

Saturday, 15 August, the North Texas Skeptics will give a presentation on Ghosts. It may not be all you ever wanted to know about ghosts, but it’s what we have. The presentation and discussion will be at the Center for Community Cooperation, 2900 Live Oak Street in Dallas, starting at 2 p.m.

A PowerPoint presentation has been prepared to get the discussion going. A PDF form of the presentation is available on request. Individual slides are below. You can join the presentation on Skype. Contact us if you need assistance joining the Skype video conference.

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Anthropogenic Global Warming

The NTS program presentation for today is Anthropogenic Global Warming.

  • 2:00 p.m.
  • Center for Community Cooperation
  • 2900 Live Oak Street
  • Dallas, Texas

Some members will be participating by Skype. To join the discussion on Skype connect to prasadgolla75075.

A PDF copy of the presentation is on-line here.

Phone Prasad Golla if you have problems connecting: 972 351 3342

The Heat Of Darkness

This is being reposted from the Skeptical Analysis blog in conjunction with our planned discussion of anthropogenic global warming (AGW).

The Heat Of Darkness

I will try to keep the introduction brief. It’s a little bit of physics that I was supposed to have learned a long time ago but retained only a little.

The planet Earth reflects about 30% of the light it gets from the sun. One way of saying this is the albedo of the Earth is 30%. Wikipedia says 30% to 35%, but I was only guessing. The remaining 65% to 70% the Earth gets to keep, and this warms the Earth.

Keep this in mind. The Earth does not keep this energy forever. If it did, then the Earth would keep getting hotter and hotter until it melted, and we know that has not happened recently. When the surface of the Earth is warm it radiates invisible infra-red energy out into space. The hotter the surface becomes the more intensely it radiates energy. After a time the Earth’s surface reaches a temperature at which the combined reflected and radiated energy exactly equal the energy received from the sun. This is a system in equilibrium.

OK, that’s not strictly true. One problem we poor students had to solve was to calculate this average surface temperature. The solution was about 20 degrees F cooler than what we actually measure. What was wrong? What was wrong, and we knew this going in, is that the sun is not the sole source of heating for the Earth. The Earth contains within it a vast nuclear reactor, large quantities of uranium and thorium undergoing radioactive decay and releasing heat. Enough heat to keep the Earth’s average surface temperature where it is now. Which some would say is just about right.

Electromagnetic energy (including visible light and infra-red) must pass through the Earth’s atmosphere coming in and going out. The atmosphere intercepts some of that energy passing through in both directions. To get to the point, the Earth’s surface reflects some visible light and some infra-red, but it (mostly) only emits energy in the form of infra-red radiation. Without consulting any charts I am going to say a large amount of infra-red energy passes through the atmosphere on the way out into infinite space, never to return again. But some of this infra-red making the trip out gets absorbed by the atmosphere.

This illustration from Wikipedia shows what goes on with energy and radiation in this circumstance. The plots for an idealized absorber/emitter show that as surface temperature increases, the body emits more energy and preferentially in the short wavelengths (for example, visible light). When the surface temperature is lower the total emission is less, and the distribution is concentrated in the longer wavelengths (infra-red). At ordinary surface temperatures on Earth (especially not the glowing lava from a volcano) the emission is entirely in the infra-red and longer wavelengths.

So, what would happen if the amount of energy getting absorbed on the way out were to increase? To answer my own question, more energy would be retained by the Earth as a whole (atmosphere plus ground plus water). The temperature of the Earth’s surface would rise until it reached a point that the amount of energy starting the trip out would be enough so that enough would make it out, and the inward and outward flows would balance again.

What would cause the atmosphere to increase its infra-red absorption rate (absorb a greater fraction of the infra-red passing through)? The answer is “some change in the nature of the atmosphere.”

The atmosphere is mostly nitrogen and oxygen gas. Water vapor makes up some, and argon gas and carbon dioxide make up even less. Due to some well-known principles of quantum mechanics, water molecules interact readily with photons in the infra-red part of the spectrum. Water molecules have a number of energy levels at which to store energy, and certain wavelengths of infra-red have just the right energy to raise the energy of a water molecule by the amount of the difference of two of the molecule’s well-defined energy levels. A water molecule readily interacts with a photon of the proper wavelength and absorbs all of its energy. This kind of interaction likes to be all or nothing. That’s why they call it quantum mechanics.

So, water vapor in the atmosphere is an excellent absorber of infra-red energy and contributes greatly to keeping the Earth’s surface warm. What about carbon dioxide? The same is true with carbon dioxide, but not so much, because, for one thing, there is much less of it. Water accounts for 36% to 72% of the I-R absorption, and CO2 accounts for 9% to 26%. CO2 makes up 0.039% of the atmosphere, while water makes up about 0.4%. It’s apparent that of the two major “greenhouse” gasses in the air, CO2 is pound for pound more absorbent of infra-red than water.

People who doubt the effect that something like water has on heat retention need to visit a desert climate. In Tucson, Arizona, the relative humidity may linger around 10%, and in the day time the temperature regularly exceeds 110F. When the sun goes down you look up, and you see nothing between you and the cold void of outer space but a layer of dry air. The temperature rapidly drops as energy radiates into space. The sky “feels” cold. A demonstration with CO2 uses an IR imaging system and a CO2 fire extinguisher. On the imaging view screen you can see all manner of objects in a completely dark room, because they emit IR. Spray a cloud of CO2 in front of these objects, and they disappear, because the CO2 has absorbed the IR.

Even so, water has a greater over-all effect on heat retention in the atmosphere, so what’s all the fuss about CO2? We regularly put a lot of water in the air and never give it a thought. The difference is that water has a transport mechanism called “rain” that removes it from the atmosphere as fast on average as it goes in. CO2 has no such mechanism. CO2 is removed mainly by the process of photosynthesis by plants, and it takes a long time to remove a large slug of CO2 from the air. The average life of a water molecule in the air is about 9 days. The average life of a CO2 molecule in the air is 20 years. That large slug of CO2 will show effects for about 200 years.

That was my brief introduction, and I now get down to the business of what has come to be called global warming. The CO2 concentration in the air has gone up 35% since the advent of the industrial revolution, and it appears that much of this has been due to the burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of forests.

Carbon dioxide is just carbon and oxygen joined into a molecule. The atmosphere contains a lot of oxygen (about 21%) but no carbon except in carbon dioxide, methane and some other minor gasses. If you can manage the carbon, you can keep the CO2 out of the atmosphere. Fossil fuels (coal-almost pure carbon and hydrocarbons-petroleum and natural gas) transport carbon, that has been sequestered underground for millions of years, back to the atmosphere. Trees store a lot of carbon, as well, and removing them without growing new ones to replace them returns their carbon content of the atmosphere.

None of that would matter if there were not detrimental effects of global warming. Nobody has yet projected more than a two to five degrees rise in atmospheric temperature in the next 100 years. However, even that small amount will have a very noticeable effect. If the oceans warm by that amount they will expand, and the sea level will rise. If the water locked in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets melts and flows into the oceans, the sea level will rise by several feet. There are some places that cannot tolerate such a rise in sea level. The Republic of Maldives is a collection of islands in the Indian Ocean on average less than five feet above sea level. The state of Florida is not much better, and the city of New Orleans is right at sea level with some parts lower than the surface of the Gulf of Mexico just a few miles away.

Also, there is concern with runaway warming. If warming melts the northern snow belts, then the darkened landscape will absorb more heat from the sun, and warming will increase, causing more snow and ice to melt. It’s called positive feedback.

Again, none of this would be controversial, except that some people do not want to take responsibility for what we are all doing to contribute to global warming. People do not want to stop burning gasoline in their cars. They do not want to stop burning coal in their power plants. They want to cut down forests to plant annual crops. And so on.

So, what do people do? They do what people always do. They shoot the messenger who brings the bad news. It’s as though if the message goes away then the problem will go away. As with all problems there is a profit to be made solving the problem. Which brings us to the matter of Heartland Institute.

A quick trip to their home page reveals their message in a circulating marquee:

HEARTLAND FIGHTS BACK

Left-wing groups commit fraud, but we’re fighting back! Join our legal defense fund and remove false and defamatory materials and prosecute the true criminals.

The site also mentions a number of these “left-wing” groups:

NCSE (National Center for Science Education)
Greenpeace
Desmogblog
Huffington Post
Thinkprogress
Pacific Institute

Some of these groups I am familiar with, others not so much. The Huffington Post I read often, and I can swear to you it has a liberal slant. Also, let’s call Greenpeace a given, although I am not sure why. When did protecting the environment become a liberal idea? How come conservatives have not picked up on this and marched with it? This is what I sometimes wonder when I consider the original meaning of the word conservative.

The NCSE promotes the teaching of science-based concepts in public schools. What conservative organization would be against this idea? It’s possible that because creationism has become the foster child of conservative politicians the NCSE is now on Heartland’s radar. The NCSE has been for the past 30 years a champion of teaching the science of biological evolution, and this science is now targeted by conservative groups. The NCSE strongly opposes teaching creationism, including the story of Genesis and the modern Intelligent Design form, in public science classes. Let’s make matters even worse. Recently the NCSE put “global warming” denial alongside creationism as one of the pseudo sciences it will oppose.

A little reading of Thinkprogress gives the impression of a liberal attitude, and Desmogblog is obviously liberal due to its stance against climate science denial. That brings us to Pacific Institute.

Pacific Institute was founded by Peter Gleick, an American scientist specializing in environmental issues. More recently he stepped down as head of the organization after revealing he had obtained confidential documents from Heartland using a faked identity. He created a bogus Gmail account and sent e-mails to Heartland claiming they were from a named board member and asking that duplicate notices from Heartland be sent to the new address, as well. He received confidential documents from Heartland and released these documents to various outlets, including Desmogblog, which has posted them on the Internet.

Gleick has clearly stepped beyond the bounds of legitimate science and into the realm of advocacy. In addition to his disconnection from the Pacific Institute, the San Francisco Chronicle has dropped his on-line blog.

Gleick was apparently motivated to tap into Heartland materials by an anonymous correspondence he received containing a memo that Heartland now says was forged. Heartland acknowledges the other published documents obtained by Gleick but contends the forged document has harmed its reputation. They are threatening legal action.

It is impossible to reconcile Gleick’s actions as those of a serious scientist. Particularly his release of unsubstantiated evidence is outside accepted practice. Regarding the materials Gleick obtained from Heartland, it was not his job to do this kind of thing. This is best left up to others, such as Desmogblog and this blog. The Skeptical Analysis blog makes no claim for political neutrality, but there will always be an advocacy for real science and for doing the right thing.

I have reviewed the purloined materials, and I am happy to report they confirm what everybody knew all along. It brings me to wonder why Gleick went to all the trouble to expose the obvious. Did anybody think for a moment that Heartland has a legitimate agenda that caters to the public interest? Any difference between Heartland and a for-profit propaganda mill is difficult to discern. Here is part of an item posted on Desmogblog regarding the materials from Gleick:

We are releasing the entire trove of documents now to allow crowd-sourcing of the material. Here are a few quick highlights, stay tuned for much more.

Confirmation that Charles G. Koch Foundation is again funding Heartland Institute’s global warming disinformation campaign. [Update: Apparently even the Koch brothers think the Heartland Institute’s climate denial program is too toxic to fund. On Wednesday, Koch confirmed that it did not cut a check for the $200K mentioned in the strategy memo after all. A statement released on KochFacts.com and the charleskochfoundationfacts.org states that “…the Charles Koch Foundation provided $25,000 to the Heartland Institute in 2011 for research in healthcare, not climate change, and this was the first and only donation the Foundation made to the institute in more than a decade. The Foundation has made no further commitments of funding to Heartland.”]

The allusion is apparently to an item in Heartland’s 2012 fundraising plan. It shows an anticipated $25,000 expected for this year from Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. For those who do not watch the news, the Koch (coke) brothers are politically conservative billionaires whose family fortune originated with the petroleum industry.

Particularly telling is a Heartland memo titled “Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy” and dated January 2012. The contents appear to be no longer confidential, so a bit of disclosure is in order.

One paragraph speaks of the development of a “Global Warming Curriculum for K-12 Classrooms.” This is being developed by David Wojick, who has a long history of working for industrial organizations opposed to climate science. According to Sourcewatch, “He has a Ph.D. in philosophy of science and mathematical logic from the University of Pittsburgh, and a BS in civil engineering from Carnegie Tech. He has been on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon and the staffs of the US Office of Naval Research and the Naval Research Lab.” Also “Wojick has been described as a journalist and policy analyst. According to a search of 22,000 academic journals, Wojick has not published any research in a peer-reviewed journal on the subject of climate change.” The Heartland memo states that Wojick will be paid $100,000 to develop 20 educational modules with the funds coming from “The Anonymous Donor.”

The memo also states that Heartland funds “high-profile individuals who regularly and publicly counter the alarmist AGW message.” These include Craig Idso at $11,600 per month, Fred Singer at $5000 per month (plus expenses) and Robert Carter, at $1667 per month.

About Idso, Sourcewatch has this to say:

Craig D. Idso is Chairman, founder and former President of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, a contrarian Arizona-based group funded in part by ExxonMobil. He is the son of its president, Sherwood B. Idso[1], and the brother of its vice president, Keith E. Idso.

According to Sourcewatch, Fred Singer “runs the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP).., which publicizes his own views on various topics, primarily climate change, ozone depletion, risks of chemical pollution (from DDT and others), nuclear power, and space policy.” He has a long history of advocacy for concerns who have behaved badly in the public arena. Again from Sourcewatch:

In 1993, Singer collaborated with Tom Hockaday of Apco Associates to draft an article on “junk science” intended for publication. Apco Associates was the PR firm hired to organize and direct The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition for Philip Morris. Hockaday reported on his work with Singer to Ellen Merlo, Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs at Philip Morris.

Sourcewatch has this to say about Robert Carter:

According to the Sydney Morning Herald in 2007, Carter was “on the research committee at the Institute of Public Affairs, a think tank that has received funding from oil and tobacco companies, and whose directors sit on the boards of companies in the fossil fuel sector” and believed, SMH said, that “the role of peer review in scientific literature was overstressed.”

If you have been reading along with me you have noticed one peculiar consistency. None of the people just mentioned are serious scientists working in the field of atmospheric science, environmental issues or any of the topics they are being paid to speak on. The word propaganda has a long history of various implications, but this case best illustrates the modern English usage.

When a dedicated cadre of serious scientists develops an idea that many in our society find objectionable, the only recourse for those who oppose this idea is to out-talk the scientists and call them liars and fools. The irony of this approach is that the accuser must take on the role of a liar or a fool. Another course of action would be to do real scientific research and develop opposing conclusions. The various industrial and political groups could take that route if they chose. Obviously they have not, and the reason they have not is because they cannot. If they could, they would. But they cannot, and they do not.