Science still says, ‘Creation occurred.’

George Rebane

The best brains in cosmology ranging from Stephen Hawking of Cambridge to Alan Guth of MIT have been trying to munge the equations and the data to come up with some/any kind of support for the proposition that the universe did not have a beginning.

NewScientist.com reports in ‘Why physicists can’t avoid a creation event’ -

YOU could call them the worst birthday presents ever. At the meeting of minds convened last week to honour Stephen Hawking's 70th birthday - loftily titled "State of the Universe" - two bold proposals posed serious threats to our existing understanding of the cosmos.

One shows that a problematic object called a naked singularity is a lot more likely to exist than previously assumed (see "Naked black-hole hearts live in the fifth dimension"). The other suggests that the universe is not eternal, resurrecting the thorny question of how to kick-start the cosmos without the hand of a supernatural creator.

While many of us may be OK with the idea of the big bang simply starting everything, physicists, including Hawking, tend to shy away from cosmic genesis. "A point of creation would be a place where science broke down. One would have to appeal to religion and the hand of God," Hawking told the meeting, at the University of Cambridge, in a pre-recorded speech.

After looking under every theoretical rock available today, and then some, the bottom line is that “all these theories still demand a beginning.”

As a proponent of Intelligent Design (not to be confused with Creationism), I continue to celebrate such corroborative reports as satisfying Occam’s razor to the max.

Comments

[George Rebane]

DougK 1010pm - Not wanting to get into the tete a tete between you and Gregory, and even less into a climate change debate under this post; nevertheless, I do want to interject that it is possible to do more than "project graphs of numbers forwards". It is possible to look at temperature records and assess how others have algorized them into a single measure of earth's temperature over the years. It is also possible to assess the validity of the general circulation models in their ability to forecast climate variables decades ahead. It is also possible to assess our understanding of specific and critical processes like the earth's carbon cycle and our ability to purposely control global temperature changes.

[Douglas Keachie]

I think what Greg misses, and possible all the rest of you, is that Global Pollution from anthropomorphic sources is undeniable and not pleasant and in general unhealthy for all and possibly deadly to some. It may be scientifically immoral of me, but I'll ride any train that sees this danger clearly, and attempts to stop it. The first link below shows the gray crap above China, which is only going to get worse, until alternative energy sources are cheap enough to replace coal. I might add, btw, that China at least is making major investments in solar, and whichever country makes that breakthrough will be like the USA when it got the Bomb in 1945.

The second is the main site at NASA that discusses climate, and the efforts to measure the situation, and numerous facets of the problem.

The third is a portion of the above mentioned site that discusses many of the Tales surrounding this particular cat.

http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/53000/53490/S1999324040624.png

http://climate.nasa.gov/

http://climate.nasa.gov/uncertainties/

Greg challenges a lot of this in part on the basis that the money spent cleaning up the atmosphere is "wasted" because it doesn't stop global warming or climate change. I submit that it does indeed clean up the atmosphere, and that we should do all we can at home and abroad to accomplish that end. Since cleaning up such toxins does not seem to be a priority for Greg, neither are efforts to get cheaper more efficient solar power. As I pointed out above, far more than global pollution or cheap energy is at stake. If China suddenly becomes the number one supplier to the world of very efficient solar panels, you can kiss the USA's economic sovereignty good-bye, and probably soon after, its political sovereignty as well. What we are doing to Iran, China could do to us. "You want our solar panels?" No trading with the USA." Given the debt we owe China, we'd be in very deep dodo.

[Gregory]

Please cite the last time I wrote "Quiet Sun", not including quoting you recently.

RR readers may be interested to know Keach's quote above was lifted from the Wikipedia entry for Maunder Minimum. You can lead a man to an encyclopedia but you can't make them think let alone put things in context. Really, Keach, get a grip. You may want to read Russ Steele's The Next Grand Minimum blog; you might find my gentle chiding about being premature about calling a grand minimum, something I have not done, your delusions not withstanding.

Keachie, as far as I know the the pioneering study that analyzed radiocarbon in tree rings was authored by Solanki in 2004 documented iirc in a letter to Nature. Give it a read. There's probably a link to it in the wiki.

[George Rebane]

DougK 927am - global pollution and global warming are separate notions; did you mean to confuse or connect them?

FYI, China has already become "the number one supplier to the world of very efficient solar panels". We are now considering high tariffs on their solar panels in an ongoing trade war.
http://www.npr.org/2012/01/19/145403625/cheap-chinese-panels-spark-solar-power-trade-war

Our butt stupid solution is to further insulate inefficient American solar panel makers from market realities so that more workers must be hired to make them for mandated use within our borders. This will guarantee that we will fall further behind in the technology while paying ever higher prices for solar energy. Not the smartest way to spread green technologies or green jobs. But then again, butt stupid is a government forte.

[Douglas Keachie]

I connected global pollution and global warming, by saying that the attack on global warming might not do diddle squat about global warming, but it WILL do a lot to clean up global atmospheric pollution. I agree with George about the Butt Stupid solution, and would hope he understands that I want the money put into research and development, not making more of what does not work so good. Let's at least match the Chinese 34 Billion dollar solar budget, and offer a 1 billion dollar prize to anyone inside or outside of the USA who comes up with twice as efficient panels at 1/2 the price, providing that royalties from panels made in the USA by any manuafacturer under license cannot exceed 10% of the cost of production.

As for "Quiet Sun the term was introduced in 1974 and here's Cliff's Notes for a definition: http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/The-Sunspot-Cycle.topicArticleId-23583,articleId-23517.html

Are you willing to say you've never made reference to the concept, Greg? Or just not under that label?

[Douglas Keachie]

On China and embargoes: USA gets pinned to the wall and is offered (you can't refuse), "complete forgiveness of all debts and full access to world trade in exchange for a few trifles......China wants WA and OR so that they have a good terminus for Canada's oil, which is now needed to make their new solar panels, and other items. Current residents are on a 5 year plan to pack up and get out"

[Gregory]

"the attack on global warming might not do diddle squat about global warming, but it WILL do a lot to clean up global atmospheric pollution"

It will also help with overpopulation. Malthus would be pleased, there's nothing like starving off the less fortunate to ensure fewer gas tanks need to be filled.

Keach, give Reality a try. And no, I've never had faith in or as far as I know ever chosen to use the term "quiet sun" in an original sentence.

George, the whole reason AGW gained momentum is that it folks like Keachie an excuse to force the world to do what they wanted the world to do anyway. Coercive utopianism at it's finest.

[George Rebane]

Gregory 102pm - RR is in its fifth year maintaining that the promotion of AGW and its nostrums is a matter of political control and not science. Glad that you are a fellow traveler. Also see Agenda21.

[Gregory]

It was March 2007 when I discovered there was a body of serious scientific literature that poked major holes in the AGW "consensus". Before that, I was a lukewarmer, pretty sure there was truth that was just being exaggerated but there was good reason to minimize fossil fuel use because of climate sensitivity to CO2. Instead, it's now clear that CO2 sensitivity is so low as to be lost among the natural variation.

George, Agenda 21 is of no concern of mine; political masturbation by in the inner sanctum of the UN as a result of IPCC machinations. Ain't an issue; kill the IPCC, Agenda 21 disappears. We've had this discussion before, we'll just have to agree to disagree.

It is science at the core of IPCC brand climatology. Bad science. It's just that it gets supporters from scientific ignorami like Keachie and Haynes because it fits their political bent.

[George Rebane]

While Gregory (301pm) and I have a difference here, I do want to point out to other RR readers that even though the suspect and discredited work in climatology of UN's IPCC is still the main engine of Agenda21, in my opinion it requires more than baseless hope to maintain that AGW/IPCC is the only arrow in Agenda21's quiver.

The work toward global governance went on long before AGW/IPCC, and it will definitely go on with the next manufactured and celebrated crisis if/when AGW bites the dust. There are several more such pending global emergencies standing in the wings that will require us to join wallets and relinquish freedoms if we are to successfully survive them. The only thing necessary to keep it all going is broad based populist dumbth ('power to the sheeple!'), which our state-mandated educational systems are prepared to deliver ad infinitum.

[George Rebane]

Administrivia - At no loss to this comment stream, I deleted the two last ad hominem exchanges that just got a bit too much.

[Douglas Keachie]

"t's just that it gets supporters from scientific ignorami like Keachie and Haynes because it fits their political bent."*

"Administrivia - At no loss to this comment stream, I deleted the two last ad hominem exchanges that just got a bit too much."

You did? Interesting criteria used, given what is still up.

* I made it perfectly clear that my support of pollution reducing measures proposed by AGW folks is 90% way to git her done, and a 10% hat tip to a possibly correct scientific theory.

Greg, do you believe the current poverty/starvation situation on this planet is going to be improved by pumping more oil, or by building more efficient technologies and liberating women from being baby factories?

[George Rebane]

DougK 928pm - Yeah, you're right that I should have leaped in earlier. But I tried to give a benefit of the doubt to the material content in those earlier snarky comments. It is truly a pain in the butt playing referee when a couple of otherwise coherent commenters take off after each other. I do my far from perfect best to keep things civil.

[Douglas Keachie]

You are doing a great job, George, I do appreciate the forum.

[Gregory]

Sorry, George, but Keachie really is a malicious liar and very possibly an idiot. I've no doubt I could make that stick in court, thanks to statements here, at Pelline's and at The Union.

Keach, if you artificially make fossil fuels more expensive worldwide through political means with the rationalization that it will spur cleaner energy developments, people will die. You won't know which ones. Might not be anyone you know. But less food of less quality takes a toll. So does cold in the winter and the heat in the summer.

If you just restrict fossil fuels in the 1st world, the 3rd world will take up the slack, and if you'd like to see what that's like, go to Shanghai or Mumbai and breathe deeply.

All the world's economically recoverable fossil fuels will be recovered. Eventually, it will be cheaper to produce energy from alternative sources and that will peter out but until that's the case the greater good is to let markets work.

It was cheap energy, western medicine and industrialization that allowed women in the 1st world to stop dying in childbirth after 10 kids. Forcing everyone into the ultimate green, sustainable economy, subsistence agriculture, will bring that back. Be careful what you wish for.

[Douglas Keachie]

Cheap energy is no longer with us, so working to get it back will free up more folks to work on poverty. In WWII they "wasted" a fortune on fighter planes doing aerial reconnaissance photography right? Those fighters should have been protecting the bombers which got the job (of putting random holes in German soils) done, instead of just snapping pictures. That would be your logic, that apparently doesn't see cheap solar driven pumps as a means to cleaner water and more crops in poverty stricken regions of the world. Give them tar sands $5 a gallon gasoline instead, you're doing them a big favor, right?

You are a real world 'Rhinoceros', if I ever saw one. See or hear, Ionesco's play 'Rhinoceros,' to understand the literary reference.

[Gregory]

"It is truly a pain in the butt playing referee when a couple of otherwise coherent commenters take off after each other. I do my far from perfect best to keep things civil."

Keachie isn't civil. You'll either have to curb his slanders yourself without my provocation, or put up with dealing with my responses.

[Gregory]

Fossil energy remains much cheaper than PV. As always, "cheap" is relative.

[Gregory]

"Cheap energy is no longer with us, so working to get it back will free up more folks to work on poverty. In WWII they "wasted" a fortune on fighter planes doing aerial reconnaissance photography right? Those fighters should have been protecting the bombers which got the job (of putting random holes in German soils) done, instead of just snapping pictures. That would be your logic, that apparently doesn't see cheap solar driven pumps as a means to cleaner water and more crops in poverty stricken regions of the world. Give them tar sands $5 a gallon gasoline instead, you're doing them a big favor, right?"

So George, you see that as "coherent"?

[George Rebane]

Gregory 1238pm - Coherence is an attribute of a given system of logic of which systems there are countably infinite in number. I have long ago given up on attempting to identify all the logics (some more risible than others) that seem to inform comments on these pages. When such comments are directed at me, I answer from the confines of my own logic which, hopefully, these pages have conveyed to my readers.
http://rebaneruminations.typepad.com/rebanes_ruminations/2009/11/why-reason-fails.html

But spouting from your own particular logic does not necessarily require an ad hominem response. If nothing else will suffice, and such a response is really required, my hope is that it would at least be delivered in a churchillian wrapper.

[Gregory]

/wrapper on
"The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is."

There's nothing as Churchillian as a quote from Sir Winston. Another one apropos to this current thread is:
"You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life."

And, apparently since GR thinks Churchillian is the standard only for some of us, we have,
Bessie Braddock: “Sir, you are drunk.”
Churchill: “Madam, you are ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober.”

If you would like to address perhaps the largest thorn in Keachie's paw, please, declare you would be happy to have Keachie teaching your grandchildren. Please, if any reader would want the likes of Keachie directing the intellectual development of a child they love, speak up. Keachie would love to hear it.

Now, I intend to go to a celebratory sports function. In the morning, I shall again be sober.

/wrapper off

[George Rebane]

Gregory 338pm - It is evident the spirits agree with you (as they do me). However, "... Churchillian is the standard for some of us ..." is not a constraint imposed on the few, but an invitation issued most uniformly.

[Douglas Keachie]

If you would like to address perhaps the largest thorn in Gregory's paw, please, declare you would be happy to have Gregory teaching your grandchildren. Please, if any reader would want the likes of Gregory directing the intellectual development of a child they love, speak up. Gregory would love to hear it.

Greg is so smart he knows the whole story behind this photograph:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_j7xkQHEYUok/S-epOzUBrpI/AAAAAAAAC-4/esoCSrrTbME/s1600/karsh_churchill.jpg

[Gregory]

Bizarre and incoherent even for you, Keach, including fabrications on many different levels. The biggest one being related to the fact I've never wanted to teach in a classroom.

A real problem with California public education as a career is that the smartest folks you work with every day are among the student body, and, with too few exceptions, not amongst faculty and staff.

[Douglas Keachie]

Greg, I am very close to taking every nasty piece of crap you've said about me (and others) and posting it on a separate site, where I control what's up and what's not. In each case I would, as I have here, change my name to yours, so that, you and all the world can see just exactly what you stand for. You are a smug, bombastic, compartmentalized, limited logic, "thinker" and it is high time you get a clue, as you are so fond of saying. You will not be able to sue for anything, as it will be your very on words that I will be using. Knock it off and grow up!

[George Rebane]

DougK and Gregory - gentlemen, I think the idea of taking your pissing match to another site is admirable. It will surely be appreciated by the other readers, one and all. You are both great advocates for your own views on the issues when you stick to that line of commentary.