Astronomers from the Carnegie Institution of Washington and the University of California, Santa Cruz have announced another habitable planet found in the universe.

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International Space Station by SW/LITS.

Photo taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) shows high sunlight reflecting off the moon's Aristarchus crater. CREDIT: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

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Giant Moon Crater Revealed in Up-Close Photos

NASA Questions Astronaut's Right to Sell Apollo 13 Memorabilia

Written by Grant Cameron

In Winnipeg Manitoba Canada where I live we will see a high temperature today of 45 degrees or almost 37 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. It has brought a feeling of euphoria to most citizens of the city.

This is not a one day wonder. It has been not just a warm winter but an extremely warm winter with temperatures 20-30 degrees above normal. There has not been a temperature below 0 in a place that known as the coldest major city in the world where temperatures of up to -58 F with wind chill are not unheard of. There has been almost no snow.

Winnipeg is home to the largest skating rink in the world as the local river is turned into a skating rink extraordinaire with warming huts and people’s old Christmas tree lining the 5.3 mile path. This year there are warnings to stay away from the river as there are large patches of open water, instead of the 20 inches of ice that is the norm.

So what does the high Winnipeg temperatures mean? Scientists are now lining up to cry “global warming” and the end of the world as we know it. (Except maybe for the 31,486 Americans with university degrees in science who signed the Global Warming Petition Project in 2010 opposing the idea that human actions are the main cause for global warming) These are logical explanations from the scientific community to the warm temperatures but my main question was – What did the main scientists in the weather world had to say? I had the question because I faintly recalled they had made a prediction.

After a bit of searching I found it. The headline for the Winnipeg Free Press for October 11, 2011 read, “Quit gloating, Dig out those winter boots. Experts predict early, cold winter.” This prediction was revised by the same weather experts in late November to “near normal temperatures” and “near normal precipitation.”

Now, these scientists were not just some scientific enthusiasts off the street who happened to get interviewed by the media. The climatologists that had this dire prediction for a cold Winnipeg winter were from Environment Canada, the federal government group that gets all the government funding to monitor and predict the weather. The Free Press article made it apparent that these highly paid scientists, at the top of their research field were not just wrong, not even in the same ball park, but on the wrong planet.

I e-mailed the radio weather man at the Canadian government’s Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). I attached the October 11^th article and simply asked, “So?”

A couple hours later the CBC weather man went on air with Dave Phillips, the senior climatologist for Environment Canada. The answers provided by Phillips to the questions of high temperature and no snow provided flashback memories of Bill Nye the science guy years ago talking UFOs on the Larry King show.

Asked, “So what happened with the prediction?” Phillips replied, “The winter’s not over yet,” making it sound like the score is 60-0 but don’t worry – we’ll score 14 touchdowns in the final quarter. Asked to explain why the heat wave had gone on for so long Phillips went on to do what every scientific UFO skeptic has done – he changed the facts and then made up a new phenomena. Phillips stated the heat had begun on December 1 when anyone living in Winnipeg knows that winter weather starts before December 1, and we didn’t have any. Then as to the length of the heat wave said Phillips, “is caused by a super charged Chinook which started in California.”

Use the power of google and look up a California super-charged Chinook. There is no such thing. Like a UFO skeptic with a new and improved explanation for the events at Roswell he simple made it up.

The final insult to intelligence came when Phillips was asked if he had revised the weather prediction. Phillips replied that he had saying, “We’re not always right, and we reserve the right to change our minds.”

This weather story has an important lesson for UFO researchers. For the past 65 years a whole army of leading scientists have explained UFO sightings as planets, weather balloons, misinterpretations of natural phenomena, and hoaxes. According to figures used by researcher Dr. John Alexander in all his lectures, there is almost no belief among the scientific community to the reality of UFOs or any other paranormal phenomena. In fact, according to Alexander, the higher you go up the scientific food chain, the lower the belief in UFOs goes. Alexander directly references the National Academy of Sciences, the top scientific organization in the U.S., where there are only 4% who believe in anything beyond the material mechanical world view.

Those who have been forced to debate scientists such as Dr. Carl Sagan, Dr. Seth Shostak, Dr. Andrew Nichols, Dr. Donald Menzel, and Bill Nye the science guy point out that these scientists as a whole have never really looked at the UFO evidence, and are usually just making up explanations that pop into their minds that is good enough to derail any further discussion of the sighting in question.

Did we in the UFO community just inherit the 10 worst scientists? The 4% figure used by Alexander tends to indicate the answer is no. The negative UFO attitudes of Sagan, Shostak, and the others, is a widely held belief in science and that the 96% of UFO disbelievers probably haven’t looked at the evidence either.

With such a poor experience with scientists it is strange that many in the UFO community still propose using scientists and a hoped for scientific study to bring respectability and acceptance to the UFO subject. Some have even gone as far as to hint that the only evidence that should be acceptable should be material produced by scientists.

The failure of the top government weather scientists who predicted this year’s winter in Winnipeg, along with the very poor treatment of the UFO evidence by the vast majority of scientists should be a lesson to UFO researchers that science is not an infallible religion, and the National Academy of Sciences does not have all the answers like a Pope and his cardinals who are receiving direct inspiration from God.

Science can be as biased as any other field of study. As shown above with the weather experts or scientific UFO skeptics a percentage of what they put out as science is simply made up.

Moreover, many scientific world views come from a belief system, not much different from the believe systems adopted by many of the religions of the world. For many scientists their beliefs come not from personal experience and experiment, but from a lecture they received as their worked their way through their scientific training by an instructor who they trusted like a priest in church. The instructor told them and they believed it. Then just like a parishioner in church they will probably spend the rest of their life defending that belief as an infallible truth.

A prime example of this is the recent White House statement put out by scientists from NASA and the Office of the Science Advisor to the President who agreed on a statement that “there is no credible evidence” of an extraterrestrial presence on Earth. An FOIA asking for a list of evidence or documents that had been used to produce the “no credible evidence” conclusion brought the reply that they didn’t evaluate any evidence – because they didn’t have a single document on the subject in the office.

A second scientific consideration is that much of what science concludes in its studies is determined largely by which oil, drug, or food company financed the study. Every court case involving one of these three groups will have a list of scientists testifying for both sides as “expert witnesses.”

The scientific/UFO problem arises because the UFO community has always had a desire to sub-contract the UFO problem. For many researchers UFOs is a field that leaves them “with no respect” like Rodney Dangerfield.

This embarrassment over their UFO involvement has caused many researchers to make constant pleas for either the scientific community or the government to investigate and provide an answer to the UFO mystery.

This approach has not worked because scientists are beholden to the people who are paying for their research grants, and the White House is beholden to the supporters and interest groups who put up the $778 million of political contributions that were donated in 2008 to get President Obama into the White House. As UFO researchers do not sponsor scientific research or provide large contributions to the political process they are left out in the cold.

The moral of the story is that the UFO problem is ours. It is up to us to finance the study and evaluation of the UFO data. Once that answer is arrived at it is up to the UFO community to stand up and sell the idea. If it doesn’t sell – it provides a lesson about its importance in the world. That’s how things work in a free society.

To expect someone else to do the studies and the announcement of the results is equivalent to a child expecting his/her parents to do his/her homework. The UFO problem is our homework and we should quit expecting others to do it for us.

Written by Grant Cameron

In Winnipeg Manitoba Canada where I live we will see a high temperature today of 45 degrees or almost 37 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. It has brought a feeling of euphoria to most citizens of the city.

This is not a one day wonder. It has been not just a warm winter but an extremely warm winter with temperatures 20-30 degrees above normal. There has not been a temperature below 0 in a place that known as the coldest major city in the world where temperatures of up to -58 F with wind chill are not unheard of. There has been almost no snow.

Winnipeg is home to the largest skating rink in the world as the local river is turned into a skating rink extraordinaire with warming huts and people’s old Christmas tree lining the 5.3 mile path. This year there are warnings to stay away from the river as there are large patches of open water, instead of the 20 inches of ice that is the norm.

So what does the high Winnipeg temperatures mean? Scientists are now lining up to cry “global warming” and the end of the world as we know it. (Except maybe for the 31,486 Americans with university degrees in science who signed the Global Warming Petition Project in 2010 opposing the idea that human actions are the main cause for global warming) These are logical explanations from the scientific community to the warm temperatures but my main question was – What did the main scientists in the weather world had to say? I had the question because I faintly recalled they had made a prediction.

After a bit of searching I found it. The headline for the Winnipeg Free Press for October 11, 2011 read, “Quit gloating, Dig out those winter boots. Experts predict early, cold winter.” This prediction was revised by the same weather experts in late November to “near normal temperatures” and “near normal precipitation.”

Now, these scientists were not just some scientific enthusiasts off the street who happened to get interviewed by the media. The climatologists that had this dire prediction for a cold Winnipeg winter were from Environment Canada, the federal government group that gets all the government funding to monitor and predict the weather. The Free Press article made it apparent that these highly paid scientists, at the top of their research field were not just wrong, not even in the same ball park, but on the wrong planet.

I e-mailed the radio weather man at the Canadian government’s Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). I attached the October 11^th article and simply asked, “So?”

A couple hours later the CBC weather man went on air with Dave Phillips, the senior climatologist for Environment Canada. The answers provided by Phillips to the questions of high temperature and no snow provided flashback memories of Bill Nye the science guy years ago talking UFOs on the Larry King show.

Asked, “So what happened with the prediction?” Phillips replied, “The winter’s not over yet,” making it sound like the score is 60-0 but don’t worry – we’ll score 14 touchdowns in the final quarter. Asked to explain why the heat wave had gone on for so long Phillips went on to do what every scientific UFO skeptic has done – he changed the facts and then made up a new phenomena. Phillips stated the heat had begun on December 1 when anyone living in Winnipeg knows that winter weather starts before December 1, and we didn’t have any. Then as to the length of the heat wave Phillips claimed it was “caused by a super charged Chinook which started in California.”

Use the power of google and look up a California super-charged Chinook. There is no such thing. Like a UFO skeptic with a new and improved explanation for the events at Roswell he simple made it up.

The final insult to intelligence came when Phillips was asked if he had revised the weather prediction. Phillips replied that he had saying, “We’re not always right, and we reserve the right to change our minds.”

This weather story has an important lesson for UFO researchers. For the past 65 years a whole army of leading scientists have explained UFO sightings as planets, weather balloons, misinterpretations of natural phenomena, and hoaxes. According to figures used by researcher Dr. John Alexander in all his lectures, there is almost no belief among the scientific community to the reality of UFOs or any other paranormal phenomena. In fact, according to Alexander, the higher you go up the scientific food chain, the lower the belief in UFOs goes. Alexander directly references the National Academy of Sciences, the top scientific organization in the U.S., where there are only 4% who believe in anything beyond the material mechanical world view.

Those who have been forced to debate scientists such as Dr. Carl Sagan, Dr. Seth Shostak, Dr. Andrew Nichols, Dr. Donald Menzel, and Bill Nye the science guy point out that these scientists as a whole have never really looked at the UFO evidence, and are usually just making up explanations that pop into their minds that is good enough to derail any further discussion of the sighting in question.

Did we in the UFO community just inherit the 10 worst scientists? The 4% figure used by Alexander tends to indicate the answer is no. The negative UFO attitudes of Sagan, Shostak, and the others, are widely held beliefs in science and that the 96% of UFO disbelievers probably haven’t looked at the evidence either.

With such a poor experience with scientists it is strange that many in the UFO community still propose using scientists and a hoped for scientific study to bring respectability and acceptance to the UFO subject. Some have even gone as far as to hint that the only evidence that should be acceptable should be material produced by scientists.

The failure of the top government weather scientists who predicted this year’s winter in Winnipeg, along with the very poor treatment of the UFO evidence by the vast majority of scientists should be a lesson to UFO researchers that science is not an infallible religion, and the National Academy of Sciences does not have all the answers like a Pope and his cardinals who are receiving direct inspiration from God.

Science can be as biased as any other field of study. As shown above with the weather experts or scientific UFO skeptics a percentage of what they put out as science is simply made up.

Moreover, many scientific world views come from a belief system, not much different from the believe systems adopted by many of the religions of the world. For many scientists their beliefs come not from personal experience and experiment, but from a lecture they received as their worked their way through their scientific training by an instructor who they trusted like a priest in church. The instructor told them and they believed it. Then just like a parishioner in church they will probably spend the rest of their life defending that belief as an infallible truth.

A prime example of this is the recent White House statement put out by scientists from NASA and the Office of the Science Advisor to the President who agreed on a statement that “there is no credible evidence” of an extraterrestrial presence on Earth. An FOIA asking for a list of evidence or documents that had been used to produce the “no credible evidence” conclusion brought the reply that they didn’t evaluate any evidence – because they didn’t have a single document on the subject in the office.

A second scientific consideration is that much of what science concludes in its studies is determined largely by which oil, drug, or food company financed the study. Every court case involving one of these three groups will have a list of scientists testifying for both sides as “expert witnesses.”

The scientific/UFO problem arises because the UFO community has always had a desire to sub-contract the UFO problem. For many researchers UFOs is a field that leaves them “with no respect” like Rodney Dangerfield.

This embarrassment over their UFO involvement has caused many researchers to make constant pleas for either the scientific community or the government to investigate and provide an answer to the UFO mystery.

This approach has not worked because scientists are beholden to the people who are paying for their research grants, and the White House is beholden to the supporters and interest groups who put up the $778 million of political contributions that were donated in 2008 to get President Obama into the White House. As UFO researchers do not sponsor scientific research or provide large contributions to the political process they are left out in the cold.

The moral of the story is that the UFO problem is ours. It is up to us to finance the studies and evaluate the UFO data. Once that answer is arrived at it is up to the UFO community to stand up and sell the idea. If it doesn’t sell – it provides a lesson about its importance in the world. That’s how things work in a free society.

To expect someone else to do the studies and the announcement of the results is equivalent to a child expecting his/her parents to do his/her homework. The UFO problem is our homework and we should quit expecting others to do it for us.

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