Shoppers Help Teens Find Freedom from Jail

Los Angeles, CA (November 21, 2012) – – American Teens are under attack with drugs, gangs, prostitution plus violence lurking around every corner. Shoppers can now help teens stay out of juvenile hall. Holiday Shoppers on InfluenceTV have a unique opportunity to save teens by providing a safe home at the Los Angeles Dream Center. With a menu of more than 5,000 everyday household products, Influencetv.org (www.influencetv.org) gives consumers the opportunity to donate a portion of their purchase to a life-saving Cause. This does not cost the shopper a single penny more because all of the products have been discounted by manufacturers, leaving a portion of every sale to support a specific Cause. The Dream Center Teen program serves youths between the ages of 12 and 17 years old from across America in a residential ten-month Christ-centered program that specializes in academics, substance-abuse training, anger management, character development, and behavior management. “America is a very different place for a teen to grow up in than when I was a teen,” said Dr. Michael K. Clifford, Chairman of InfluenceTV.org. “When you buy something for your family you can now help provide a safe home keeping a precious teenager out of jail, a pathway to more crime. We invite shoppers to come to the Dream Center to meet these teens with our terrific staff. ” ABOUT INFLUENCETV.ORG InfluenceTV.org is a not-for-profit organization with a mission to change the way America spends money shopping. Through its content-rich video-centric website, shoppers can buy goods and services they use every day while designating a portion of the purchase price specifically to the Cause or charity that they want to help.

Shoppers Help Feed Homeless with InfluenceTV.org Purchases

Los Angeles, CA (November 21, 2012) – – Shoppers can help serve 30,000 hot meals every week year round, meals delivered hot under bridges with love, 40,000 poor households get bagged groceries monthly, 30,000 more feed thru partner nonprofits, all by buying their everyday household products thru InfluenceTV.org. More than 5,000 available products can be purchased on Influencetv.org (www.influencetv.org) giving Shopper who care about others the opportunity to donate a portion of their purchase to a life-saving Cause. This does not cost the shopper a single penny more because all of the products have been discounted by manufacturers, leaving a portion of every sale to support a specific Cause. Under The Bridge, which is just one of the Food Services Program of The Dream Center, serves 1,500 hot meals every week to the homeless population of Skid Row. Under the Bridge offers many life-saving services to the homeless community which is rehabilitating to prepare these precious people for re-entry into their communities. “People would be surprised to know how close to being homeless millions of Americans, especially single Moms are in America,” said Dr. Michael K. Clifford, Chairman of InfluenceTV.org. “The Dream Center is making a real difference in Los Angeles. We are calling on Shoppers to buy their everyday household goods from InfluenceTV designating a portion of the purchase to feed the homeless. Make a difference in someone else’s life then you will make a difference in your own life.” ABOUT INFLUENCETV.ORG InfluenceTV.org is a not-for-profit organization with a mission to change the way America spends money shopping. Through its content-rich video-centric website, shoppers can buy goods and services they use every day while designating a portion of the purchase price specifically to the Cause or charity that they want to help. Watch Video Here

Social Media Marketing

Social Media: The World-Wide Explosion The past decade has seen the monumental explosion of social media and networking sites onto the Internet. From Facebook, Twitter and MySpace to Youtube, Bebo and Hi5; the number of social media and networking sites on the Internet is truly astounding and they are connecting people from every single city, country and continent on the globe. There is quite literally no limit to the reach of the Internet and this has facilitated immense social interaction. People can keep up to date with hundreds of friends, engage in conversation, share pictures, videos and music and reconnect with friends that they have long lost contact with. Where distances, obstacles and oceans once came in the way of communication and sharing, there are now literally hundreds of social media and networking sites making connection and reconnection possible in a way like never before. Social Media: The Statistics Social media essentially refers to the myriad of Internet-based sites that facilitate and promote social interaction and networking. In order to truly appreciate the marketing power of social media, one need only consider the following statistics: • 75% of the global consumers who go online visit social media and networking sites. • This figure has increased by a massive 24% since last year. • Each visitor spends approximately 66% more time on social media and networking sites than the previous year (from 3 hours per day to 6.5!) • 22% of the all human time is spent browsing social media and networking sites. • In July of this year (2010), Facebook announced over 500,000,000 (million) users. • LinkedIn currently has 60 million subscribers, which increased by 5 million in just 2 months. • Twitter has 110 million users • Myspace has 57 million users in the United States alone • Yelp sees over 30 million viewers per month • Tagged has 100 million registered users. So, what does this all mean? Social media has captivated the world’s attention and the number of users and time spent per day by each user is only increasing with each passing month. And what does this mean for business? Social Media Marketing and Advertising The explosion of social media and networking sites on the Internet and the vast number of people who subscribe to any of the hundreds out there has provided businesses of all sizes with an incredible opportunity to cash in on the exposure they can afford. Consider Facebook; one of the biggest of all the social networking sites to exist in the virtual domain. Facebook has over 500 million active viewers: subscribers who login and spend time on the site every day. The business that has visibility on Facebook is therefore being seen by tens, if not hundreds of millions of users on a daily basis. It is this potential for incredible exposure and the subsequent accumulation of leads that has made social media the new medium for modern marketing and advertising. The statistics have spoken: the business that does not make the jump into social media as a means for spreading their brand image and name will literally be left in the dust of its competitors.

Romney Landslide Victory Song!

Landslide Victory for Romney!!!

A ROMNEY LANDSLIDE VICTORY****

Here's why you shouldn't pay attention to the polls or the Main Stream Media, and why you should have a high degree of confidence that your vote matters and that the information below should motivate you to vote personally, as well as encourage all your family and friends to get out and vote!!!  Don't let the Main Stream Media discourage you...it just ain't so!!!!

A Las Vegas "odds maker" gives his reasons for big win by Romney in November. I think you'll agree this is an interesting analysis:****

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Most political predictions are made by biased pollsters, pundits, or prognosticators who are either rooting for Republicans or Democrats. I am neither.****

I am a former Libertarian Vice Presidential nominee, and a well-known Vegas odds maker with one of the most accurate records of predicting political races.****

But as an odds maker with a pretty remarkable track record of picking political races, I play no favorites. I simply use common sense to call them as I see them. Back in late December I released my New Year's Predictions.****

  #1. I predicted back then-before a single GOP primary had been held, with Romney trailing for months to almost every GOP competitor from Rick Perry to Herman Cain to Newt - that Romney would easily rout his competition to win the GOP nomination by a landslide.****

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#2. I also predicted that the Presidential race between Obama and Romney would be very close until election day. But that on election day Romney would win by a landslide similar to Reagan-Carter in 1980. Understanding history, today I am even more convinced of a resounding Romney victory. 32 years ago at this moment in time, Reagan was losing by 9 points to Carter. Romney is right now running even in polls.****

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#3. So why do most pollsters give Obama the edge? First, most pollsters are missing one ingredient- common sense. Here is my gut instinct. Not one American who voted for McCain 4 years ago will switch to Obama. Not one in all the land. But many millions of people who voted for an unknown Obama 4 years ago are angry, disillusioned, turned off, or scared about the future. Voters know Obama now - and that is a bad harbinger.****

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Now to an analysis of the voting blocks that matter in U.S. politics:****

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#4. Black voters. Obama has nowhere to go but down among this group. His endorsement of gay marriage has alienated many black church-going Christians. He may get 88% of their vote instead of the 96% he got in 2008. This is not good news for Obama.****

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#5. Jewish voters. Obama has been weak in his support of Israel. Many Jewish voters and big donors are angry and disappointed. I predict Obama's Jewish support drops from 78% in 2008 to the low 60's. This is not good news for Obama.****

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#6. Youth voters. Obama's biggest and most enthusiastic believers from 4 years ago have graduated into a job market from hell. Young people are disillusioned,frightened,and broke-a bad combination. The enthusiasm is long gone. Turnout will be much lower among young voters, as will actual voting percentages. This not good news for Obama.****

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#7. Catholic voters. Obama won a majority of Catholics in 2008. That won't happen again. Out of desperation to please women, Obama went to war with the Catholic Church over contraception. Now he is being sued by the Catholic Church.Majority lost. This is not good news for Obama.****

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#8. Small Business owners. Because I ran for Vice President last time around, and I'm a small businessman myself, I know literally thousands of small business owners. At least 40% of them in my circle of friends, fans and supporters voted for Obama 4 years ago to give someone different a chance. As I warned them that he would pursue a war on capitalism and demonize anyone who owned a business...that he'd support unions over the private sector in a big way...that he'd overwhelm the economy with spending and debt. My friends didn't listen. Four years later, I can't find one person in my circle of small business owner friends voting for Obama, Not one. This is not good news for Obama.****

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#9. Blue collar working class whites. Do I need to say a thing? White working class voters are about as happy with Obama as Boston Red Sox fans feel about the New York Yankees. This is not good news for Obama.****

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#10. Suburban moms. The issue isn't contraception, it's having a job to pay for contraception. Obama's economy frightens these moms. They are worried about putting food on the table. They fear for their children's future. This is not good news for Obama.****

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#11. Military Veterans. McCain won this group by 10 points. Romney is winning by 24 points. The more our military vets got to see of Obama, the more they disliked him. This is not good news for Obama.****

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Add it up.****

Is there one major group where Obama has gained since 2008? ****

Will anyone in America wake up on election day saying, I didn't vote for Obama 4 years ago, but he's done such a fantastic job, I can't wait to vote for him today.****

Does anyone feel that a vote for Obama makes their job more secure? Forget the polls. My gut instincts as a Vegas odds maker and common sense small businessman tell me this will be a historic landslide and a world-class repudiation of Obama's radical and risky socialist agenda. It's Reagan-Carter all over again.****

But I'll give Obama credit for one thing- he is living proof that familiarity breeds contempt.****

Heroes Died...Obama Lied!

This is NOT about politics, and I'd be as screaming mad if it were done by a Republican...but the Obama Administration's s handling of Libya has turned into a full blown BENGHAZI SCANDAL!!! BENGHAZI-GATE.

We've had bad presidents with scandals on both sides before, Nixon's (I am not a crook), Reagan's Iran/Contra scandal (and I loved/still love Reagan) and Bill Clinton's (I did not have sex with Lewinsky). And people have argued, "Clinton lied...no one died" but in this case..."Heroes died...Obama lied!" 

For two weeks President Obama called the attacks in Benghazi the result of a spontaneous protest gone wrong. There was no protest and now we know it was a well planned, well coordinated assault. Today we learn that the administration was emailed at 6:07pm, two hours after the attack began, citing terrorist involvement. These E-mails reveal that the White House knew Al Qaeda-linked group led the attacks on the embassy. 

What is happening with the Benghazi Scandal is so far beyond lying, it is staggering. The Ambassador was involved in running guns on behalf of the Obama Administration (making Fast & Furious look like kindergarteners play), and he was running guns to Al‑Qaeda in Libya. And he was running guns through Turkey into Syria (rebels now identified as Muslim Brotherhood in conjunction with Al-Qaeda). 

The president of the United States of America, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State have all lied to you. 

They have lied to you and said this might be caused by an ant-Islam video; we don’t have all the information; the information is still sketchy; it’s confusing. No. We now have the documents. We now have the documents that came into the situation room saying there’s an attack; they’re watching. Then we have the documents that we have a live video feed in the situation room, so they could see that there was no protest. Nothing less than a full Congressional Investigation is in order, and you wonder "where is the Main Stream Media on this?"


So, you may be asking, "what can I do about this?" Call or write your legislators & DEMAND OBAMA, CLINTON, AND PANETTA ARE LEGALLY HELD ACCOUNTABLE. This is a disgrace, and if you are not outraged ... WHY? What will it take to make people see the corruption in this administration? This is such blatant hypocrisy, deception, and corruption.



Questions...partial answers revealed...more questions...the pieces of the puzzle have not been put together yet by the media (no one is asking the "WHY?")...but when the full picture is revealed and when all the pieces are put together by Congressional Investigators...Impeachment should be pursued!!! 

President Barack Obama has crossed a line concerning the “lies” about the terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi on Sept. 11. Benghazi-gate is Fast and Furious times 1,000. Again, this isn't about politics. THIS IS A BIG DEAL AND EXTREMELY IMPORTANT THAT YOU UNDERSTAND THE FACTS!!! This truly is about the future of the country because we are in grave, grave danger. Here are recently revealed FACTS:

1. 300 to 400 national security officials received emails detailing the Benghazi terrorist attack as it was happening on 9/11. This was not disclosed by the White House. Why?
2. The emails show that the Libyan radical Islamic group Ansar al-Sharia claimed responsibility for the attack just two hours after it began via social media. This information was suppressed. Why?
3. White House officials told CBS News that an unmanned Predator drone was sent over the U.S. mission in Libya, providing Washington with a live feed to the chaos that unfolded. This information was suppressed. Why?
4. These emails were accompanied with video and links to be able see everything live as it was happening. It makes it very, very clear. This was a terrorist attack conducted by a terrorist organization. There’s nothing in the emails or security communications about a YouTube video inciting this attack. Why?
5. Our QRF (Quick Response Force) was capable of having boots on the ground within an hour of when the attack started, but no deployment was ordered. Why?
6. People in the White House Situation Room where standing around watching U.S. Citizens being killed. Why?
7. On the most dangerous day of the year, in one of the most dangerous cities in the world, four Americans were at a CIA safe house (not the Embassy in Tripoli and NOT at the Consulate in Benghazi). Why?
8. U.S. Ambassador Stevens took a meeting with the Turkish ambassador, who then leaves with no incident, unharmed. Why?
9. Libyan rebels provided massive amounts of weapons. The U.S. Ambassador (a CIA agent, not clear whether past or current) negotiated the arms deal with Libyan rebels, now known to be affiliated with Al-Qaeda. This information is not disclosed. Why?
10. Syrian rebels provided major shipment of weapons. These rebels are now known to be affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda. Weapons deal brokered through Turkey with same contact from Libya who negotiated with Ambassador Stevens. This information is not disclosed. Why?
11. Citizen journalists are able to discover these facts, but they are being suppressed by the Main Stream Media. Why?

“We’re going to gather all the facts,” Obama says, echoing Hillary’s plea to let the investigation play out until, oh, say, mid-November at the earliest. Simple question: Why does he need “all the facts” about Benghazi to find out (a) whether anyone at the consulate called for help during the attack (which we now know they did, 3 times!) and (b) if so, who in the chain of command denied that request? We know that a "stand down" order was given, so the question is by whom?  He could find that out with 10 minutes of phoning around and then spend another 10 firing the people involved — assuming, of course, that it wasn't The One himself who delivered the thumbs down on the calls for help.

Call or write your legislators & DEMAND OBAMA, CLINTON, AND PANETTA ARE LEGALLY HELD ACCOUNTABLE. This is a disgrace, and if you are not outraged ... WHY?

Charles Woods, father of Ty Woods, the former Navy SEAL who died while trying to save the U.S. Ambassador to Libya on 9/11, speaking to Megyn Kelly on the Fox News Channel:

"I appreciate your introduction, and I do want to reiterate this, and really emphasize again, this is not about politics. This is about--if it were about politics, it would dishonor my son's death. This has to do with honesty and integrity and justice...

This news that he disobeyed his orders does not surprise me. My son was an American hero. And he was going--he had the moral strength to do what was right. Even if that would professionally cost him his job. Even if it would potentially cost him his life. He was a hero who was willing to do whatever was necessary to respond to their cries for help. 

If, in fact, those people in the White House were as courageous, and had the moral strength that my son Ty had, immediately, within minutes of when they found there was the first attack, they would have stepped--they would have given permission, not denied permission, for those C-130s to have gone up there. And this is exact--I don't know much about weapons, but it's coming out right now that they actually had laser targets focused on the mortars being sent to kill my son and they refused to pull the trigger. They refused to send those C-130s.

To me--I'm an attorney, this may not legal test of murder. But to me, that is not only cowardice. For those people who made the decision and who knew about the decision and lied about it are murderers of my son. 

That's a very strong statement for me to make. But for their benefit, they need to bare their conscience, they need to stand up, and they need to change the direction of their lives. 

And I want to say right now: you know who you are. I totally forgive you. But I hope years from now, you change the direction of your life. For your benefit... 

This is all a pack of lies. And that's one thing as a father whose son who has been killed--I do not appreciate lies. I do not appreciate cowardice. And I do not appreciate lies.

And I'm a loving person. I love my son, and I want to honor him. And I hope I'm not speaking too strongly, but I am very glad the facts are coming out right now. I do not--the reason I'm even speaking up--we, our family had made the decision not to say anything. But after the facts came out that in real time, the White House, within minutes after the first bullet was fired, they watched my son--they denied his pleas for help. 

My son violated his orders in order to protect the lives of at least 30 people. He risked his life to be a hero. I wish that the leadership in the White House had the same moral courage that my son displayed with his life...

I sent you those pictures of him in high school, and I wanted you to show those to the people out there for one reason, and that is so that people can be inspired and know that Ty was just a normal kid, okay? We were an imperfect family, but we were a normal family. And I would hope that his legacy would live on. And that we would raise up a generation of American heroes, and that they would be inspired by his pictures and his life, and that we would raise up a generation of American heroes that are strong morally and strong in every other aspect of their life. 

We do not need another generation of liars who lack the moral strength that my son, who was an American hero, had...

I really wish the best to those people that allowed my son to be murdered. And I mean that very sincerely. I want the best for them. But they need to stand up, and they need to change the direction of their lives."

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Article #1

MIND & MATTER

July 20, 2012

When Bad Theories Happen to Good Scientists

There's a myth out there that has gained the status of a cliché: that scientists love proving themselves wrong, that the first thing they do after constructing a hypothesis is to try to falsify it. Professors tell students that this is the essence of science.

Yet most scientists behave very differently in practice. They not only become strongly attached to their own theories; they perpetually look for evidence that supports rather than challenges their theories. Like defense attorneys building a case, they collect confirming evidence.

In this they're only human. In all walks of life we look for evidence to support our beliefs, rather than to counter them. This pervasive phenomenon is known to psychologists as "confirmation bias." It is what keeps all sorts of charlatans in business, from religious cults to get-rich-quick schemes. As the philosopher/scientist Francis Bacon noted in 1620: "And such is the way of all superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like; wherein men, having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail, though this happen much oftener, neglect and pass them by."

Just as hypochondriacs and depressives gather ample evidence that they're ill or ill-fated, ignoring that which implies they are well or fortunate, so physicians managed to stick with ineffective measures such as bleeding, cupping and purging for centuries because the natural recovery of the body in most cases provided ample false confirmation of the efficacy of false cures. Homeopathy relies on the same phenomenon to this day.

Moreover, though we tell students in school that, as Karl Popper argued, science works by falsifying hypotheses, we teach them the very opposite—to build a case by accumulating evidence in support of an argument.

The phrase "confirmation bias" itself was coined by a British psychologist named Peter Wason in 1960. His classic demonstration of why it was problematic was to give people the triplet of numbers "2-4-6" and ask them to propose other triplets to test what rule the first triplet followed. Most people propose a series of even numbers, such as "8-10-12" and on being told that yes, these numbers also obey the rule, quickly conclude that the rule is "ascending even numbers." In fact, the rule was simply "ascending numbers." Proposing odd numbers would have been more illuminating.

An example of how such reasoning can lead scientists astray was published last year. An experiment had seemed to confirm the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that language influences perception. It found that people reacted faster when discriminating a green from a blue patch than when discriminating two green patches (of equal dissimilarity) or two blue patches, but that they did so only if the patch was seen by the right visual field, which feeds the brain's left hemisphere, where language resides.

Despite several confirmations by other teams, the result is now known to be a fluke, following a comprehensive series of experiments by Angela Brown, Delwin Lindsey and Kevin Guckes of Ohio State University. Knowing the word for a color difference makes it no quicker to spot.

One of the alarming things about confirmation bias is that it seems to get worse with greater expertise. Lawyers and doctors (but not weather forecasters who get regularly mugged by reality) become more confident in their judgment as they become more senior, requiring less positive evidence to support their views than they need negative evidence to drop them.

The origin of our tendency to confirmation bias is fairly obvious. Our brains were not built to find the truth but to make pragmatic judgments, check them cheaply and win arguments, whether we are in the right or in the wrong.

The first of three columns on the topic of confirmation bias.

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Article #2

MIND & MATTER

July 27, 2012

Three Cheers for Scientific Backbiting

By MATT RIDLEY

If, as I argued last week, scientists are just as prone as everybody else to confirmation bias—the tendency to look for evidence to support rather than to test your own ideas—then how is it that science, unlike cults and superstitions, does change its mind and find new things?

The answer was spelled out by the psychologist Raymond Nickerson of Tufts University in a 1998 paper: "It is not so much the critical attitude that individual scientists have taken with respect to their own ideas that has given science the success it has enjoyed…but more the fact that individual scientists have been highly motivated to demonstrate that hypotheses that are held by some other scientist(s) are false."

Most scientists do not try to disprove their ideas; rivals do it for them. Only when those rivals fail is the theory bombproof. The physicist Robert Millikan (who showed minor confirmation bias in his own work on the charge of the electron by omitting outlying observations that did not fit his hypothesis) devoted more than 10 years to trying to disprove Einstein's theory that light consists of particles (photons). His failure convinced almost everybody but himself that Einstein was right.

The solution to confirmation bias in science, then, is not to try to teach it out of people; it is a deeply ingrained tendency of human nature. Dr. Nickerson noted that science is replete not only with examples of great scientists tenaciously persisting with theories "long after the evidence against them had become sufficiently strong to persuade others without the same vested interests to discard them" but also with brilliant people who remained wedded to their pet hates. Galileo rejected Kepler's lunar explanation of tides; Huygens objected to Newton's concept of gravity; Humphrey Davy detested John Dalton's atomic theory; Einstein denied quantum theory.

No, the reason that science progresses despite confirmation bias is partly that it makes testable predictions, but even more that it prevents monopoly. By dispersing its incentives among many different centers, it lets scientists check each other's prejudices. When a discipline defers to a single authority and demands adherence to a set of beliefs, then it becomes a cult.

A recent example is the case of malaria and climate. In the early days of global-warming research, scientists argued that warming would worsen malaria by increasing the range of mosquitoes. "Malaria and dengue fever are two of the mosquito-borne diseases most likely to spread dramatically as global temperatures head upward," said the Harvard Medical School's Paul Epstein in Scientific American in 2000, in a warning typical of many.

Carried away by confirmation bias, scientists modeled the future worsening of malaria, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change accepted this as a given. When Paul Reiter, an expert on insect-borne diseases at the Pasteur Institute, begged to differ—pointing out that malaria's range was shrinking and was limited by factors other than temperature—he had an uphill struggle. "After much effort and many fruitless discussions," he said, "I…resigned from the IPCC project [but] found that my name was still listed. I requested its removal, but was told it would remain because 'I had contributed.' It was only after strong insistence that I succeeded in having it removed."

Yet Dr. Reiter has now been vindicated. In a recent paper, Peter Gething of Oxford University and his colleagues concluded that widespread claims that rising mean temperatures had already worsened malaria mortality were "largely at odds with observed decreasing global trends" and that proposed future effects of rising temperatures are "up to two orders of magnitude smaller than those that can be achieved by the effective scale-up of key control measures."

The IPCC, in other words, learned the hard way the value of letting mavericks and gadflies challenge confirmation bias.

The second of three columns on the topic of confirmation bias.

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Article #3

MIND & MATTER

August 3, 2012

How Bias Heats Up the Warming Debate

By MATT RIDLEY

I argued last week that the way to combat confirmation bias—the tendency to behave like a defense attorney rather than a judge when assessing a theory in science—is to avoid monopoly. So long as there are competing scientific centers, some will prick the bubbles of theory reinforcement in which other scientists live.

For constructive critics, this is the problem with modern climate science. They don't think it's a conspiracy theory, but a monopoly that clings to one hypothesis (that carbon dioxide will cause dangerous global warming) and brooks less and less dissent. Again and again, climate skeptics are told they should respect the consensus, an admonition wholly against the tradition of science.

Hot summers are invoked as support for climate alarmism; cold winters are dismissed as weather.

Last month saw two media announcements of preliminary new papers on climate. One, by a team led by physicist Richard Muller of the University of California, Berkeley, concluded "the carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we've tried" for the (modest) 0.8 Celsius-degree rise in global average temperatures over land during the past half-century—less, if ocean is included. He may be right, but such curve-fitting reasoning is an example of confirmation bias. The other, by a team led by the meteorologist Anthony Watts, a skeptical gadfly, confirmed its view that the Muller team's numbers are too high—because "reported 1979-2008 U.S. temperature trends are spuriously doubled" by bad thermometer siting and unjustified "adjustments."

Much published research on the impact of climate change consists of confirmation bias by if-then modeling, but critics also see an increasing confusion between model outputs and observations. For example, in estimating how much warming is expected, the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change uses three methods, two based entirely on model simulations.

The late novelist Michael Crichton, in his prescient 2003 lecture criticizing climate research, said: "To an outsider, the most significant innovation in the global-warming controversy is the overt reliance that is being placed on models.... No longer are models judged by how well they reproduce data from the real world—increasingly, models provide the data. As if they were themselves a reality."

It isn't just models, but the interpretation of real data, too. The rise and fall in both temperature and carbon dioxide, evident in Antarctic ice cores, was at first thought to be evidence of carbon dioxide driving climate change. Then it emerged that the temperature had begun rising centuries earlier than carbon dioxide. Rather than abandon the theory, scientists fell back on the notion that the data jibed with the possibility that rising carbon dioxide levels were reinforcing the warming trend in what's called a positive feedback loop. Maybe—but there's still no empirical evidence that this was a significant effect compared with a continuation of whatever first caused the warming.

The reporting of climate in the media is full of confirmation bias. Hot summers (in the U.S.) or wet ones (in the U.K.) are invoked as support for climate alarmism, whereas cold winters are dismissed as weather. Yale University's Dan Kahan and colleagues polled 1,500 Americans and found that, as they learned more about science, both believers and nonbelievers in dangerous climate change "become more skillful in seeking out and making sense of—or if necessary explaining away—empirical evidence relating to their groups' positions on climate change and other issues."

As one practicing scientist wrote anonymously to a blog in 2009: "honestly, if you know anything about my generation, we will do or say whatever it is we think we're supposed to do or say. There is no conspiracy, just a slightly cozy, unthinking myopia. Don't rock the boat."

Bring on the gadflies.

The final column of three on the topic of confirmation bias.