The science is settled

Primitives celebrate Earth Day, 2013

Well no, of course it never is: plate tectonics comes to mind; but the global warmists insist that no new knowledge or contradictory data can be allowed to challenge the “settled science” of global warming (new since it replaced “global cooling, the settled science until 1983). Here’s some more settled science that has just been unsettled: The body’s immune system has another, heretofore unknown method of fighting disease.

It isn’t often that an entire field of medical science gets turned on its head. But it is becoming clear that immunology is undergoing a big rethink thanks to the discovery that antibodies, which combat viruses, work not just outside cells but inside them as well. The star of this new view is a protein molecule called TRIM21.

Until recently, the conventional wisdom was that the body fights off infection in two separate ways. First is the adaptive immune system, which works outside the cell. It generates antibodies to intercept specific invaders, locking onto them like a tracking missile and preventing them from entering the cell. A second line of defense, the innate immune system, operates within the cell; it is like an expansive air-defense network, blasting away at all invaders.

Three years ago work by Leo James, William McEwan and their colleagues at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge revealed that this understanding was incomplete. They found that the neutralization of adenoviruses (common viruses causing colds and other infections) by antibodies was happening mainly inside the cell, not outside, and by an unexpected mechanism.

Their announcement—a challenge to the entire field of immunology—elicited a predictable immune reaction of its own from the establishment. Sure enough, leading journals rejected the Cambridge group’s paper, sometimes without even reviewing it, while key funding agencies turned down the group’s grant applications.

Gradually, though, the authors have won the argument. New papers from the group have pinned down what is going on. They describe a potent detection mechanism that links the antibodies outside a cell with its innate immunity, somewhat dissolving the distinction between the two.

My point here is not that “everything’s relative, dude”, as is currently taught in our schools and believed by the products of that education, but rather, true science is based on demonstrable, repeatable facts. That’s in distinction to religion, which relies on faith. Global warming is based on faith, and anything that threatens that faith is denounced and rejected. Odd that western civilization is intent on committing economic suicide based on some quirky religion but it won’t be the first time in history that that’s happened.

UPDATE: Forbes: To the Horror of Global Warming Alarmists, Global Cooling is here. Lots of data, lots of scientists acknowledging the effect of solar activity or, in this case, the next cycle in that phenomenon: it’s stopped, and we’re heading back into a mini-ice age.

Global warming was never going to be the problem that the Lysenkoists who have brought down western science made it out to be. Human emissions of CO2 are only 4 to 5% of total global emissions, counting natural causes. Much was made of the total atmospheric concentration of CO2 exceeding 400 parts per million. But if you asked the daffy NBC correspondent who hysterically reported on that what portion of the atmosphere 400 parts per million is, she transparently wouldn’t be able to tell you. One percent of the atmosphere would be 10,000 parts per million. The atmospheric concentrations of CO2 deep in the geologic past were much, much greater than today, yet life survived, and we have no record of any of the catastrophes the hysterics have claimed. Maybe that is because the temperature impact of increased concentrations of CO2 declines logarithmically. That means there is a natural limit to how much increased CO2 can effectively warm the planet, which would be well before any of the supposed climate catastrophes the warming hysterics have tried to use to shut down capitalist prosperity.

Fox Butterfield, is that you?

They seriously thought they could buy me for that little? It is to laugh.

“Despite corruption, campaign reform encounters difficulty.”

They like it that way, dummy.

HARTFORD — Even as a recent influence-peddling trial laid bare the hold that money has over Connecticut politics and policy-making, state lawmakers have proposed bills to make it easier for candidates to get cash.

The changes chip away at campaign finance reforms passed into law in 2005 to combat the kind of corruption recently exposed during the trial of Robert Braddock Jr., former finance director for Democratic ex-state House Speaker Chris Donovan’s 2012 congressional bid.

Those involved testified they considered state politicians “whores” who could be bought with fat checks signed by false donors and envelopes filled with cash left in office refrigerators.

But even as the trial was taking place, some legislators were trying to find creative ways to legally funnel more money into their campaign coffers.

*Mr. Butterfield, NYT:

Butterfield is the eponym for “The Butterfield Effect”, used to refer to a person who “makes a statement that is ludicrous on its face, yet it reveals what the speaker truly believes,” especially if expressing a supposed paradox when a causal relationship should be obvious.^[6] The particular article that sparked this was titled “More Inmates, Despite Drop In Crime” by Butterfield in the New York Times on Nov. 8, 2004.

In our brave new world, can we afford to take even a chance of offending someone? I think not.

And neither does the Bronx school board, who fired Petrona Smith, 65   a (black) Spanish teacher for uttering the word “negro” in class while teaching her students the names of the colors in Spanish.

“Mepache, cabeza ondulado, even, if necessary and if she were very, very angry, sandía amante,” said school principal Otis Freebaser, “but negro? She must be fired, at once!”