Discussion: Five reasons blog posts are of higher scientific quality than journal articles

For a great insight into statistics or popular topics using government data from around the world learn to use Gapminder, the creation of the late Hans Rosling carried forwardby his son. Uou can choose your own lin or log axes and run time series data for a s long as we have it.
You have to be able to check the data to comment on any paper in energy and climate change. Usually a “back of the envelope” check on the established physics of independently published data gives the BS alert if appropriate. I am lucky, as I trained in physcis (radiation speciality) and electrical engineering and worked in government science and Imperial College before spending the rest of my career in advanced technology business, where you don’t sell it if it doesn’t work as advertised, cost effectively and safely. Same for cars, [lanes, bridges, buildings, etc. ) Consensus won’t do, what bilogists, economists and doctors call science is not approriate to engineering a safe future that works as advertised.
All my comments come from what works or can work on the physics. I also did modelling (Chemical Process Plant) at IC so experienced how prediction can and can’t work in real systems, but only up to degree level with a bit of PhD research support in there. . In energy it is possible to get all the data you need from government and pan national sources, like the iEA, UN, UK DECC, US has the same.
KEY POINT: This is all proven science, not unprovable complex empirical models as with climate science, which must always be consesnus because it cannot be proven. So is an unprovable in science fact religion that can be used to justify anything the priests promote to its believers..
BUT you can check everything on the energy science facts and proven physics before posting, and I do. Mostly. Others seem less interested in such inconvenient science and factual data sets, particularly politicians , lobbysists and greens, who have other agendas that profit them through energy science denial that the technological facts of generation, for example, simply don’t support.
So they say your facts are opinions and theirs are better opinions. without any hard scientific support for that assertion on the proven science and actual data. Spot the difference betrween science fact and the unproven opinions of hypotheses (unproven guesses)? Watch Feynman on pseudo science for a better and longer but short description.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWr39Q9vBgo&w=640&h=390]
Belief in unrpovable so always unknowable climate change modelling is great way to justfy false enrgy solutions, because it diverts the arguemen t away from the hard facts of energy to the unprovable climate models (they have limited data, ov bviously can’t do experimets onthe planetary scale subject, the non linear complex multi variate relationships are extended beyond their kown range, a big statistical fail, and are obviosuly unrepeatable as there is only one continually changing planet, can’t hold other variables constant while modfying one to watch it’s effects on another e.g. “controlled conditions” can’t exist, and the models are all guesses they keep changing to fit, Bit like the Police farming an innocent person. But here Science basics 101 are overtly denied by most in the climate science acedemic bubble. Independnent validation by outsiders who understand ohysics is not their plan.
…………….they really only have a model, with limited understanding of what its relationships are.
Journalists are MUCH worse. They largely don’t have the basic foundation in scientific method and its actual application so work on received opinion, no understanding of the basics. . They are usually arts graduates who probably gave up maths as soon as possible and prefer soft logic where they can like things that don’t work best, probably not very numerate so checks at the root level are not possible. Two of my family work for National media and conform to the spec. No tools to validate what they believe from first principals. You will also find politicians in the West hold similar soft degrees, in contrast to the numerate disciplines of half the 20 Chinese politburo, , the PPE degree has very unchallenging economics, lets our hard of maths elite obtain an honours degree, mostly in winning argumets confrontationally instead of proving on the rational facts and laws, the rest of their degree is knowledge of things, not personal deduction from hard laws, or the creation of those laws that anyone can test and find wanting – they hate that discipline.
Outside of specialist professional periodicals, (but sadly not always – Nature/New Scientist and others are guilty of pubishing opinion as proven science, even the idiotorial pages of professional journals edited by journalists not scientists), editors want something that fits with popular topics, prejudices, public preconceptions they can exploit rather than correct, or meets editoral agendas for propaganda as with the Guardian or BBC in the UK.
Liberal left opinions are preferred to inconvenient truths of science, no scientists on editorial staff, etc..
If you would ike examples of how bad this was after Fukushima, watch this experience of Science Media in the UK,16.30 in. How the media behaves re science fact in crises.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVQ0NvEcyqw&w=640&h=390]
Honest facts were not of interest, because of course, no one died or will die from the contained meltdown of the commercial reactors there. Radiation release with resilient containment is significant but not large, and the actual effects of radiation nowhere near as toxic as a lot of other things, possibly hormetic up to 500 times the lelevels in most cities, a level which can occur naturally around our radioactive world.
Not what editors want to print, doesn’t “whip up a frenzy” of quite irrational fear, as another national journalist friend of my daughters said as he left one day .
I have been a scientist professional in the energy and radiation and risk area, when we believed the current craft beliefs because the science had not yet been understood, versus a craft practitioners who sy till used the dispoved LNT approachto radiation, and other hazards where low levels are harmless, natural and can be beneficial.
On the hard science my focus is on the fake relationship on the science facts between net CO2 emission and putting intermittent and weak renewable energy on the grid, as well as the wholly false approach to radiation and risk on the now available science and epidemiology of dose and dose effects.
So much rubbish is printed, using data that has not been independently corroborated, as fake news from pretend scientists, that the provable facts have been buried, AKA the truth. The goal of these organisations is to shout down the science facts with made up stuff.
As well as the realities of deploying renewables on the grid ihat make all the things claimed to be better expesnively worse in fact for fast buck, on the hard physics, the UNSCEAR reports on Chernobyl and Fukushima tell you all you neeed to know about radiation risks at civilian generating plants, same for 3 Mile Island. But no one one in the media, extremist pressure groups or troughing politics wants you to spoil what sells for therm, at your expense. Or Hollywood.
Get what happened in the UK with a respected science media communications service – who use independent expert scientists who volunteer their input, not pressure group so called concerned “scientists”/ “experts”. The mass media prefer the extremist organisations whose experts are pseudo scientists in this area, Osteopath, medical doctors, – hard of physics and scientific proof at the necessary level Feynman describes above.
The energy science denial points are already well discussed here, basically around the facts of CO2 emissions, energy density and intermittency, actual sustainability as viable sources after fossil, and the cost related impact of these fundamental physics. I lecture on this.
Here’s an image for you re facts and fear. For an interesting set of You Tube videos watch the radiation physicist shovelling radioactive sand over herself while mixing elevated background radiation bathing (a medical therapeutic treatment in fact, something Germans also do down mines) with sun bathing on the Monazite Beaches of Brazil, you can do this yourself, here and elsewhere. This is reality, not media nonsense. It may be a fact that many established Health Spas around the World are much more radioactive than elsewhere, perhaps beacuse of more radioactive releases from the geo thermal water sources, elevated background enhances the immune system, so a study may be interesting. Ramsar Iran at 300mSv pa, is 15 timse the Fukushima evacuation level, and the most famous. NO epidemiological evidence of adverse health effects. Thers ia much argued belief among radiation workers that they live longer and die less of cancer, you can research that 😉
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvgAx1yIKjg&w=640&h=390]
Note – this is FAR more radioactive that you see know-nowt journalists in hazmat suits and meters getting hysterical about on the news, and with no detectable short or long term epidemiological risk. They don’t want you to know the inconvenient truth.
Especially not Al Gore, who is unable to prove most of the assertions of his Inconvenient Truth on climate 19 years on, and whose effect has diverted $Billions from Extreme Weather defences that can save lives, to the pockets of renewable energy lobbyists who impose regressive solutions that can’t on the grid, that also make CO2 emissions per KWh avoidably worse, energy supply intermittent, expensive and insecure, and leave people at risk from weather.. You could claim Gore is a mass murderer, in consequential science fact. Politician, heal thyself.
I could go on. The only thing that suffers in this debate is the truth, as defined in science fact, not science fiction. But the masses seem not to want to know about science fact. It isn’t simple tribal belief, doesn’t create fear or excitement, doesn’t make easy money for lobbysits, politicians and insiders, sell papers. or justify extremist religions of climate change, anti-nuclear, anti GM, anti vaccination, anti-technology throwbacl Malthusians like Greenpeace et al, who know what’s good for you. So I blame people. We need the next ice age to become Neanderthal 2.0, so sometjhing more rational and smarter can evolve. Perhaps.