How many times do you hear ‘experts predict’ or ’scientist say’ and then some claim. Appeals to ‘common sense’, ’statistical average’, or you can tell with your senses or also a sign of propaganda. If we could figure everything out through ‘common sense’ we wouldn’t need science, but some things, like electricity, defy common sense. Statistics are easily manipulated to come to conclusions not available in the data. I beleive it was Mark Twain who said “There are liars, damned liars, and statisticians. Finally if’n we could trust our senses we wouldn’t need measuring instruments.

These tools are equally used by hoaxers, con men, conspiracy theorist, and just people who really don’t understand the subject (as in the case of the above article). So just remember always look deeper before making up your mind.

As I pointed out in my other post the reality is that it has taken “400 YEARS!!!” to warm up 1.8 degrees from “the little ice age”

“collective opinion of thousands of scientists around the world” – Which scientists? scientists from the Royal Academy of Science? Brigham Young University? Or astronomers from the National Society of Fuzzy Thinkers??????? I have never heard a real Scientist say that global warming was an absolute fact. (Unless they are pseudo scientists from a institute set up to prove global warming Which gets grants for research ) All real scientists say it could be happening but there is not enough data to say for sure or if humans caused it.

“backed up by mountains of data” – most of that data is assumtive.

There is scientific data on the “medieval Warm period” that undeniable states that the earth was 1.8 degrees warmer then it is today. During the medieval Warm period wine grapes were grown in Europe as far north as southern Britain. For comparison: today vine is grown as far north as Gotland, a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea. The Vikings took advantage of ice-free seas to colonize Greenland and other outlying lands of the far north. The “medieval Warm period” was followed by “the Little Ice Age” were it was 1.8 degrees cooler then today. which is what we are “WARMING UP FROM”

A radiocarbon-dated box core in the Sargasso Sea shows that the sea surface temperature was approximately 1 °C (1.8 °F) cooler than today approximately 400 years ago (the Little Ice Age) and 1700 years ago, and approximately 1 °C warmer than today 1000 years ago (the Medieval Warm Period)

Or are you comparing the collective opinion of thousands of scientists around the world backed up by mountains of data to a single paragraph in MM?

First you have the eye grabbing headling “Explosion of Sun Overdue”. Then you have the line “According to the calculations of astronomers”. Which astronomers? Astronomers from the Royal Academy of Science? Brigham Young University? Or astronomers from the National Society of Fuzzy Thinkers (NSFT).

The article uses an out of date assumtive that the sun is 1 billion years old when by that time most scientist were comfortable with the earth being at least 3 billion years old.

The article then goes to say assuming are star is average. Well our star is average size and colour and of the type that is rarely given more than a catalog number by astronomers. Then it says “A definite number of star explosions occur in a definite area of space in a given period” but is really vague about details.

It is exposure to articles such as this even today that make it difficult for people to understand science today.

According to empirical data and commonsense, the astronomers calculations are wrong.

http://www.vectorsite.net/gfxpxr_06.html

The Yellowstone caldera is perfectly active:

http://gvgpd.proboards.com/ind.....;thread=50

It’s brewed up about 140 times over the past 16 million years. The last one was 640,000 years ago, not long by geological standards. If if brews up again it will render much of the USA west of the Mississippi uninhabitable for decades or more — and produce several years without summers, resulting in a global catastrophe. The similar explosion of the Toba caldera in Indonesia about 70,000 years ago seems to have coincided with a “population bottleneck” (near extinction event) of the human race.

The caldera is actually migrating (more or less), originally from northern Nevada and towards Billings, Montana. There are indications of three eruptions in its current location. It was in what is now southern Idaho when it brewed up about 12 million years ago. The result was recorded at Ashfall State Park in Nebraska, about two day’s drive away. See the photos of the “Rhino Barn” on the fifth and six rows down:

http://www.vectorsite.net/gfxpxr_06.htm

With 140 detonations over 16 million years, that means a blowup a bit over every 100,000 years, so stastically we may be overdue. It could happen in the near future — but on geological terms the “near future” could be 10,000 years. MrG / http://www.vectorsite.net/gblog.html

http://www.vectorsite.net/g2008m10.html#m13

Curse no edit feature! MrG

http://www.vectorsite.net/g2008m12.html#m16

It won’t hurt us directly but it could raise hell with satellites, communications, and the power grid.
There has been some speculation about “superflares” that could do worse — Larry Niven wrote a well-known story named INCONSTANT MOON on that subject. But otherwise exploding stars are only associated with double-star systems or supergiant stars. MrG / http://www.vectorsite.net/gblog.html

“The sun is exploding! The sun is exploding!”

Sounds much the same….