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Originally posted by darwin

How about you quit repeating the lie and then I'll quit pointing out that it's a lie?

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Originally posted by Broken Face

It's a MOOT point, not a MUTE point.

- Brian

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Originally posted by pot
I am basically saying there is little evidence,

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Originally posted by pot

Indicative of the entire debate, which has become overly polarised.

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Originally posted by pot

Actually, I am currently waiting for the divorce papers to come through...

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Originally posted by darwin

I only marry scientists.

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The myth that Albrecht Duerer is left-handed gives an insight into the history of information overload, writes Lisa Jardine.

As we enter a new decade with its fresh agendas and challenges, it feels more important than ever to know who we can trust to keep us well-informed. Bombarded with information by all kinds of new and traditional media, how are we to evaluate the available evidence, let alone decide which way we will vote?

The rhetoric of those in positions of power announces every decision reached to be a watershed moment.

"Today is a major step forward for the American people," Barack Obama proclaimed, as the Senate moved gingerly towards a decision on healthcare, just before Christmas. "After a nearly century-long struggle, we are on the cusp of making healthcare reform a reality in the United States of America."

It was the second time in recent weeks that the president of the United States had made such an announcement. At the end of the climate change meeting in Copenhagen too, he hailed the compromise, non-binding agreement reached at the end of protracted and at times chaotic negotiations in similarly decisive terms:

"For the first time in history, all of the world's major economies have come together to accept their responsibility to take action to confront the threat of climate change. This important breakthrough lays the foundation for international action in the years to come."

And yet the reams of paper and acres of screen space filled by pundits, critics, climate change protesters, bloggers and twitterers seem to be telling us the opposite - that there was no shape, no resolution, no positive outcome that could be identified under the flood of information washing over us as events in the conference halls unfolded, minute by minute.

As the exhausted delegates made their way home from Copenhagen, commentators on online sites, in newspapers and on television concluded that compromise and procedural manoeuvring had prevailed. It was all a terrible disappointment.

Data bombardment

Which of these versions tells us the truth about unfolding events? With today's continuous stream of media-coverage, more seems to be less when it comes to being able to reach our own conclusions on the basis of what we read and hear.

The more we are bombarded with data, the less clear it is which way any of us ought to go in giving our assent to social and political initiatives.

Of course, in the days when information travelled more slowly, it was that much easier for the eager recipient of the latest headline news to be misled.

In May 1521, news reached the German painter Albrecht Duerer - then in Antwerp - that the radical monk Martin Luther had been arrested and imprisoned, following his condemnation as a heretic by the Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms.

Rumours spread like wildfire - Luther had been incarcerated, he had been interrogated and murdered. A distraught Duerer contemplated the loss of the man he regarded as the saviour of Christianity with dismay:

"May every man who reads Dr Martin Luther's books see how clear and transparent his teaching is when he sets forth the Holy Gospel. O God, if Luther is dead, who will henceforth deliver the Holy Gospel to us with such clearness? What might he not still have written for us in ten or twenty years?"

In fact Luther was not dead or even detained against his will. It was many months, however, before his true circumstances became known to his devoted followers, let alone the general public.

The changes Duerer anticipated Luther might make did indeed take place, sweeping across Europe in an unstoppable tide. In fact, the instrument of Luther's success in spreading his reforming message was the very new technology that had misinformed Duerer about his death.

Shopping list

Duerer never met Luther, nor even heard him preach in person. Everything he knew of Luther's radical teaching came from his published pamphlets, printed on the newly invented printing presses, in runs of thousands, and distributed right across Europe.

In the autumn of 1520, on the way home to Nuremberg from a business trip to Aachen, Duerer did some shopping in Cologne, keeping a careful record of his expenses: "I have bought a tract of Luther's for five weisspfennigs. And I spent another weisspfennig for one pound of candles. I gave six weisspfennigs for a pair of shoes and 1 more for beer and bread."

For a little less than the price of a pair of shoes, Duerer acquired the latest instalment in the developing drama of Martin Luther's confrontation with the Pope. It clearly wasn't cheap, but it kept him abreast of the most important international movement of the day.

The printing press meant that Duerer, like thousands of other ordinary German men and women, experienced the Reformation not as a remote quarrel between members of the clergy, but at first hand. It made it possible for him to participate immediately in an international crisis within the Catholic Church as it took shape.

Still, truth across time apparently remains tantalisingly elusive, however hard the on-the-spot witness tries. Duerer - an early master of perspective - believed that where his own profession was concerned, the truth could be achieved visually through mathematical measure and proportion: "Whoever proves his point and demonstrates the fundamental truth using geometry should be believed by all the world."

Not so. Like many artists, Duerer painted and drew a number of self-portraits in the course of his life. In one delightful pen-and-ink drawing, made when he was about 22, the artist looks quizzically towards us, a flat cap perched jauntily on his head, his long wavy hair falling over his shoulders. His left hand is poised in the moment of drawing - thumb, middle and forefinger in the act of gripping the pen, his open palm facing out towards us, his two remaining fingers held elegantly aloft.

So does this mean that Duerer was left-handed? Well, no, of course, it does not. Like most artists, Duerer paints himself by looking in a mirror, and thus paints the "mirror image" of himself, reflected through 180 degrees, so that the painter's right hand - the one in which he holds his pen - appears to be his left one.

Yet Duerer's name continues to appear in any number lists of "south paw" or left-handed figures from history - just try putting "Duerer" and "left-handed" into your search engine. The precision of line and angle in his drawing still has the capacity actively to mislead.

Left-handed fellowship

As a left-hander myself I confess to being a little disappointed at not to be able to number Duerer among my confreres. It was a struggle growing up left-handed in the fifties. At primary school I vividly recall sitting obstinately over my pudding when the other children had crocodiled their way back from the canteen to the playground.

Unless I held my spoon in my right hand, my teacher told me firmly, I was not allowed any crumble and custard. Unless I finished my crumble and custard, I was not considered to have finished my lunch, and so could not go and play with my friends.

No wonder the left-handed are inclined to hail one another as soon as they notice a similarly awkward signer of a document or credit card slip. "Oh! I'm left-handed too!" they exclaim, with audible pleasure.

Perhaps the only answer to the problem of sifting the truth out of the dross of banal information is simply to wait and see, letting the tide of documentary material settle into not-yet-detectable patterns before deciding on a conclusion.

History will tell whether Barack Obama's much-criticised early policy decisions are part of a carefully set agenda or not. Of course that leaves us with the problem of just how we are going to act for the common good in the immediate future

There is however one thing we can learn about the president of the United States through the media coverage that is true beyond a shadow of doubt.

When you eventually watch the video clips of Barack Obama signing that much-contested, watered-down healthcare bill you will be able to confirm for yourself that the president is indeed left-handed.

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A BBC weather forecaster has suggested that the Met Office’s super-computer has a ‘warm bias’ which has stopped it predicting bitterly cold spells like the one we have just endured.

Paul Hudson said the error may have crept into the computer’s climate model as a result of successive years of milder weather.

His claim was rejected by the Met Office but other experts said there could be flaws in the system, which was first developed 50 years ago.

In a blog, the BBC Look North presenter writes: ‘Clearly there is the rest of January and February to go, but such has been the intensity of the cold spell…it would take something remarkable for the Met Office’s forecast (of a mild winter) to be right.

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Originally posted by pot

I just recently hooked up with an old friend who works at the CRU in East Anglia. I asked him what his view on all this was and he said he believed in the science, that the scientists who work at the CRU are dedicated, and that the science 'IS SETTLED". He told me to stop bringing up zombie arguments and to google any further questions I had. So there you go. The science is settled.

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Originally posted by trobrianders

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Originally posted by Broken Face



This is still the best argument for doing something about climate change: it will fundamentally improve our lives. Even if the science is faulty (which i don't believe because i trust the larger scientific community), it will still make our world a much, much better place.

- Brian

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Let me ask you which scenario is preferable?
1. The scientists are right but through concerted action we avert disaster.
2. The scientists are wrong and we can carry on as we are.

_______________
Ed is the hoo hoo

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The maximum "plastic density" was 200,000 pieces of debris per square kilometre.

"That's a maximum that is comparable with the Great Pacific Garbage Patch," said Dr Lavender Law.

But she pointed out that there was not yet a clear estimate of the size of the patches in either the Pacific or the Atlantic.

"You can think of it in a similar way [to the Pacific Garbage Patch], but I think the word 'patch' can be misleading. This is widely dispersed and it's small pieces of plastic," she said.

The impacts on the marine environment of the plastics were still unknown, added the researcher.

"But we know that many marine organisms are consuming these plastics and we know this has a bad effect on seabirds in particular," she told BBC News.

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