Pulse Beat

Prof Dr BM Hegde 16 February 2015

Is the Globe Warming?

“When future generations look back on the global-warming scare of the past 30 years, nothing will shock them more than the extent to which the official temperature records—on which the entire panic ultimately rested—were systematically ‘adjusted’ to show the Earth as having warmed much more than the actual data justified,” wrote Christopher Booker in his blog quoted in The Telegraph UK, on 7 February 2015. “Of much more serious significance, however, is the way this wholesale manipulation of the official temperature record... has become the real elephant in the room of the greatest and most costly scare the world has known. This really does begin to look like one of the greatest scientific scandals of all time.”

Statistician Steve McIntyre exposed this fraud in 2007 when he found a paper published in 1987 by James Hansen who, for many years, ran GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies). “Hansen’s original graph showed temperatures in the Arctic as having been much higher around 1940 than at any time since.” But as Paul Homewood reveals in his blog post, “Temperature adjustments transform Arctic history.” GISS has turned this upside down. Arctic temperatures from that time have been lowered so much that they are now dwarfed by those of the past 20 years. The fiddling with temperature data is the biggest science scandal ever is the headline of The Telegraph article.

Some years ago, I had written an article about it and was condemned for doing that. Now, more and more scientists are coming out to spill the beans that the myth of global warming is being perpetuated by vested interests. If some readers remember, Pankaj Pachauri had admitted that all was not well with their record-keeping. Now, most of the stations recording temperatures have been detected to be falsifying the data to suit the convenience of their political masters.

Vaccination Policing in the USA

Vaccines are forced down the throats of all reluctant parents. There have been instances where the refusing parents were threatened with arrests! Now, there is a ray of hope. In an unusual move, the American Medical Association asserts that informed consent is a ‘fundamental right’ and can never be taken over by the State under any circumstances.

Brahmi Herbal Medicinal Plant

This plant (Bacopa monniera) grows extensively in south Kanara in coastal Karnataka. I remember, as a child, having chutney made out of it once or twice a week. This was used in Ayurveda for several small problems and also was used for enhancing memory. Now, a group of young enthusiastic researchers at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) tried to see if this plant has any medicinal properties and did a serious study of the whole herbal extract in a rat model.

The results shocked the researchers. The hippocampus major of the rats’ brain did show significant growth and there were also definite cell changes inside the hippocampus. The latter is that part of the brain which is known to be associated with memory. This little study teaches our conventional researchers a good lesson. Usually, the government has grandiose ideas of doing herbal research using the reductionist paradigm of taking the chemical extracts of the plants. I had opposed it then but was laughed at by the great scientists. All those studies came to grief. Now, the TIFR study will be the new way forward. Could we not make a new beginning to do our own studies instead of aping the West in every way?

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