"Claim: Meteorite discovered with signs of life in it"

[Chakravartin]

A remarkable coincidence that should be noted is that within several days of the meteorite fall, an extensive region around the site of the fall experienced an episode of red rain. The red rain analysed at the MRI in Colombo has been shown to contain red biological cells that show viability as well as motility. Preliminary studies from EDX analysis show that these cells are similar to the cells found in the red rain of Kerala that fell in 2001, cells that have not yet been identified with any known terrestrial organism...

Doctor Bigfoot, in consultation with Professor Jackelope continue to study the phenomenon.

[mrlynn]

Davester, the Moderators here consider the climate debate to be a political one, which in some measure it is, so if I respond to you at any length this thread is going to get bounced to The Other Side; and it's off-topic, anyway; my original post was about the claim of fossils in a meteorite, which is interesting in its own right, wherever it appeared (not originally in WUWT; that's just where I saw it).

In my view, Anthony Watts and others who regularly post on WUWT are far more objective and scientific than the True Believers of Climatism, whose claims rise only to the level of speculation, not even hypothesis, and have been abundantly falsified. I suggest you spend some time reading the posts and the often extensive and informative comment threads; I think you will be impressed, even if you disagree (many of the participants are scientists and engineers, and some, like Robert G. Brown, a Professor of Physics at Duke, are positively brilliant). Informed critiques are welcome there, if you wanted to engage on the issues.

Any further discussion of WUWT I suggest we postpone to another time. The question at hand concerns meteoritic 'life'; the consensus in the thread is highly skeptical, but on more solid ground than kneejerk slander.

/Mr Lynn

[pdq]

I agree with posters here and at the linked site that when I got to the "red rain" part, it lost it's believability.

[Will Collier]

davester wrote:
[quote=Will Collier]
[quote=davester]
Considering the amount of woefully inaccurate garbage posted on the wattsupwiththat.com blog, I would be highly skeptical of something like this.

You mean not equating the output of software models with actual science?

Why, the nerve.
There are two issues here:

1. Software models are an inherent part of virtually all science today. If you don't like it, then please abandon all technologies that rely on science. Software models are calibrated based on real world data sets, preferably multiple independent data sets. That's simply how science is done. If you don't understand this then you have no business trying to critique science.
That's pretty funny. I've had modelers tell me "that couldn't have happened!" when I pointed out actual empirical data from the real world that didn't comport with their simulations.

A model is a tool, often a useful tool, but the broader its application, the more limiting assumptions the model programmer is forced to make, the less useful it gets. The idea that its possible to model the entire atmosphere of (and oceans, and variant landmasses, and gravity effects upon, and solar interactions with... ) a planet, where the modeler is inevitably forced to leave out literally millions of variables (the existence of a great many of which they don't even know about) is laughable.

Having a couple of decades of real-world experience in the limits of modeling for very specific systems in which the modelers supposedly knew "everything" for the discrete functions they were attempting to simulate, you'll have to excuse me for scoffing at the idea of an accurate planetary model.

davester wrote:

2. Mr. Watts, the former weatherman, to his credit, has called out some errors in some of the data sets and some of the models used to simulate climatic effects. Unfortunately, and not to his credit, he has also called out errors or drawn conclusions that are in fact erroneous or at the least not supported by the data he presents. Mr. Watts does not practice, and never has practiced, science. A true scientist creates a hypothesis and then devises tests that attempt to invalidate his/her hypothesis to see if it will stand up to scrutiny. Mr. Watts creates hypotheses and then only gathers data that supports his hypotheses. Those of us in science refer to people like this as religious figures. Actually, given his single minded direction, he might better be described as a conspiracy theorist. Granted, there are some religious figures in the climate science world that tout hypotheses that are in opposition to those of Mr. Watts. However, that does not excuse Mr. Watts' behavior.

I'm waiting patiently for dismissal of cherry-picked data and "religious" behavior (putting charlatans like James Hansen on a saintly pedestal, for instance) on the other side of that particular debate. So far, not so much.