224 UN climate panel based claims on student dissertation & article in mountaineering magazine

(1) Skeleton of Western Man found in Ancient Mongolian Tomb
(2) UN climate panel based claims on student dissertation & article in mountaineering magazine
(3) China vs Google
(4) Dr. David Kelly post-mortem reports to be released; 70-year seal lifted
(5) Underwater Pyramids of Okinawa
(6) Confucius spruiks Chinese lottery

(1) Skeleton of Western Man found in Ancient Mongolian Tomb

From: IHR News <news@ihr.org> Date: 06.02.2010 05:55 PM

Science News

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/55811/title/Skeleton_of_Western_man_found_in_ancient_Mongolian_tomb

SKELETON OF WESTERN MAN FOUND IN ANCIENT MONGOLIAN TOMB

DNA from 2,000-year-old skeleton may put Indo-Europeans in East Asia

By Bruce Bower

Web edition : Friday, January 29th, 2010

Dead men can indeed tell tales, but they speak in a whispered double helix.

Consider an older gentleman whose skeleton lay in one of more than 200 tombs recently excavated at a 2,000-year-old cemetery in eastern Mongolia, near China’s northern border. DNA extracted from this man’s bones pegs him as a descendant of Europeans or western Asians. Yet he still assumed a prominent position in ancient Mongolia’s Xiongnu Empire, say geneticist Kyung-Yong Kim of Chung-Ang University in Seoul, South Korea, and his colleagues.

On the basis of previous excavations and descriptions in ancient Chinese texts, researchers suspect that the Xiongnu Empire — which ruled a vast territory in and around Mongolia from 209 B.C. to A.D. 93 — included ethnically and linguistically diverse nomadic tribes. The Xiongnu Empire once ruled the major trading route known as the Asian Silk Road, opening it to both Western and Chinese influences.

Researchers have yet to pin down the language spoken by Xiongnu rulers and political elites, says archaeologist David Anthony of Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y. But the new genetic evidence shows that the 2,000-year-old man “was multi-ethnic, like the Xiongnu polity itself,” Anthony remarks.

This long-dead individual possessed a set of genetic mutations on his Y chromosome, which is inherited from paternal ancestors, that commonly appears today among male speakers of Indo-European languages in eastern Europe, central Asia and northern India, Kim’s team reports in an upcoming American Journal of Physical Anthropology. The same man displayed a pattern of mitochondrial DNA mutations, inherited from maternal ancestors, characteristic of speakers of modern Indo-European languages in central Asia, the researchers say.

“We don’t know if this 60- to 70-year-old man reached Mongolia on his own or if his family had already lived there for many generations,” says study coauthor Charles Brenner, a DNA analyst based in Oakland, Calif.

Two other skeletons from the Xiongnu cemetery in Duurlig Nars show genetic links to people who live in northeastern Asia, according to Kim’s team. Other team members include Kijeong Kim of Chung-Ang University and Eregzen Gelegdorj of the National Museum of Mongolia in Ulaanbaatar.

The Duurlig Nars man’s genetic signature supports the idea that Indo-European migrations to northeastern Asia started before 2,000 years ago. This notion is plausible, but not confirmed, says geneticist Peter Underhill of Stanford University. Further investigations of Y chromosome mutation frequencies in modern populations will allow for a more precise tracing of the Duurlig Nars man’s geographic roots, Underhill predicts.

Scholars have long sought to trace the origin and spread of related languages now found in Europe, India and other parts of Asia. One hypothesis holds that Indo-European languages proliferated via several waves of expansion and conquest by nomads known as Kurgans who had domesticated horses and thus could travel long distances. In this scenario, Kurgans left a homeland north of the Black Sea, in what’s now Russia, around 6,400 years ago.

Another view holds that farmers from ancient Turkey spread Indo-European tongues as they swallowed up one parcel of land after another, beginning around 9,000 years ago.

Since 1978, discoveries of 2,400- to 4,000-year-old mummified corpses with European features in northwestern China, not far from Mongolia, have fueled the Kurgan hypothesis (SN: 2/25/95, p. 120). Remains of  found with these blond-haired individuals raise the controversial possibility that these foreigners introduced carts and chariots to the Chinese.

Add to those discoveries a report in the September 2009 Human Genetics. Geneticist Christine Keyser of the University of Strasbourg in France and her colleagues found that nine of 26 skeletons previously excavated at 11 Kurgan sites in northeastern Russia possess a Y chromosome mutation pattern thought to mark the eastward expansion of early Indo-Europeans. That same genetic signature characterizes the Duurlig Nars man.

By 2,000 years ago, the easternmost Indo-European languages were probably spoken in northwestern China, Anthony holds. So an Indo-European speaker could have aligned himself with Xiongnu political big shots and earned an eternal resting place in an elite Xiongnu cemetery, in his opinion.

Kim agrees. The Duurlig Nars man’s tomb lies close to the tomb of an especially high-ranking Xiongnu man whom he may have served in some way, he suggests.

Kim’s group plans to extract and study DNA from additional Duurlig Nars skeletons. For now, Anthony remarks, “this new study from Mongolia is important because it adds one more point of light to a largely dark prehistoric sky.”

(2) UN climate panel based claims on student dissertation & article in mountaineering magazine

From: ReporterNotebook <RePorterNoteBook@Gmail.com> Date: 31.01.2010 05:20 AM

UN climate change panel based claims on student dissertation and magazine article

January 30, 2010

By Richard Gray | Telegraph.co.uk | 30 Jan 2010

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7111525/UN-climate-change-panel-based-claims-on-student-dissertation-and-magazine-article.html

http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2010/01/30/un-climate-change-panel-based-claims-on-student-dissertation-and-magazine-article/

The United Nations' expert panel on climate change based claims about ice disappearing from the world's mountain tops on a student's dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine.

The revelation will cause fresh embarrassment for the The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which had to issue a humiliating apology earlier this month over inaccurate statements about global warming.

The IPCC's remit is to provide an authoritative assessment of scientific evidence on climate change.

In its most recent report, it stated that observed reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and Africa was being caused by global warming, citing two papers as the source of the information.

However, it can be revealed that one of the sources quoted was a feature article published in a popular magazine for climbers which was based on anecdotal evidence from mountaineers about the changes they were witnessing on the mountainsides around them.

The other was a dissertation written by a geography student, studying for the equivalent of a master's degree, at the University of Berne in Switzerland that quoted interviews with mountain guides in the Alps.

The revelations, uncovered by The Sunday Telegraph, have raised fresh questions about the quality of the information contained in the report, which was published in 2007.

It comes after officials for the panel were forced earlier this month to retract inaccurate claims in the IPCC's report about the melting of Himalayan glaciers.

Sceptics have seized upon the mistakes to cast doubt over the validity of the IPCC and have called for the panel to be disbanded.

This week scientists from around the world leapt to the defence of the IPCC, insisting that despite the errors, which they describe as minor, the majority of the science presented in the IPCC report is sound and its conclusions are unaffected.

But some researchers have expressed exasperation at the IPCC's use of unsubstantiated claims and sources outside of the scientific literature.

Professor Richard Tol, one of the report's authors who is based at the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin, Ireland, said: "These are essentially a collection of anecdotes.

"Why did they do this? It is quite astounding. Although there have probably been no policy decisions made on the basis of this, it is illustrative of how sloppy Working Group Two (the panel of experts within the IPCC responsible for drawing up this section of the report) has been.

"There is no way current climbers and mountain guides can give anecdotal evidence back to the 1900s, so what they claim is complete nonsense."

The IPCC report, which is published every six years, is used by government's worldwide to inform policy decisions that affect billions of people.

The claims about disappearing mountain ice were contained within a table entitled "Selected observed effects due to changes in the cryosphere produced by warming".

It states that reductions in mountain ice have been observed from the loss of ice climbs in the Andes, Alps and in Africa between 1900 and 2000.

The report also states that the section is intended to "assess studies that have been published since the TAR (Third Assessment Report) of observed changes and their effects".

But neither the dissertation or the magazine article cited as sources for this information were ever subject to the rigorous scientific review process that research published in scientific journals must undergo.

The magazine article, which was written by Mark Bowen, a climber and author of two books on climate change, appeared in Climbing magazine in 2002. It quoted anecdotal evidence from climbers of retreating glaciers and the loss of ice from climbs since the 1970s.

Mr Bowen said: "I am surprised that they have cited an article from a climbing magazine, but there is no reason why anecdotal evidence from climbers should be disregarded as they are spending a great deal of time in places that other people rarely go and so notice the changes."

The dissertation paper, written by professional mountain guide and climate change campaigner Dario-Andri Schworer while he was studying for a geography degree, quotes observations from interviews with around 80 mountain guides in the Bernina region of the Swiss Alps.

Experts claim that loss of ice climbs are a poor indicator of a reduction in mountain ice as climbers can knock ice down and damage ice falls with their axes and crampons.

The IPCC has faced growing criticism over the sources it used in its last report after it emerged the panel had used unsubstantiated figures on glacial melting in the Himalayas that were contained within a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report.

It can be revealed that the IPCC report made use of 16 non-peer reviewed WWF reports.

One claim, which stated that coral reefs near mangrove forests contained up to 25 times more fish numbers than those without mangroves nearby, quoted a feature article on the WWF website.

In fact the data contained within the WWF article originated from a paper published in 2004 in the respected journal Nature.

In another example a WWF paper on forest fires was used to illustrate the impact of reduced rainfall in the Amazon rainforest, but the data was from another Nature paper published in 1999.

When The Sunday Telegraph contacted the lead scientists behind the two papers in Nature, they expressed surprise that their research was not cited directly but said the IPCC had accurately represented their work.

The chair of the IPCC Rajendra Pachauri has faced mounting pressure and calls for his resignation amid the growing controversy over the error on glacier melting and use of unreliable sources of information.

A survey of 400 authors and contributors to the IPCC report showed, however, that the majority still support Mr Pachauri and the panel's vice chairs. They also insisted the overall findings of the report are robust despite the minor errors.

But many expressed concern at the use of non-peer reviewed information in the reports and called for a tightening of the guidelines on how information can be used.

The Met Office, which has seven researchers who contributed to the report including Professor Martin Parry who was co-chair of the working group responsible for the part of the report that contained the glacier errors, said: "The IPCC should continue to ensure that its review process is as robust and transparent as possible, that it draws only from the peer-reviewed literature, and that uncertainties in the science and projections are clearly expressed."

Roger Sedjo, a senior research fellow at the US research organisation Resources for the Future who also contributed to the IPCC's latest report, added: "The IPCC is, unfortunately, a highly political organisation with most of the secretariat bordering on climate advocacy.

"It needs to develop a more balanced and indeed scientifically sceptical behaviour pattern. The organisation tends to select the most negative studies ignoring more positive alternatives."

The IPCC failed to respond to questions about the inclusion of unreliable sources in its report but it has insisted over the past week that despite minor errors, the findings of the report are still robust and consistent with the underlying science.

(3) China vs Google

From: Mark MacCuish <markmaccuish@hotmail.com> Date: 02.02.2010 02:09 PM

With regards to China .vs Google -- who really cares ? In all likelihood, the vast majority of people from China have probably never even heard of Google, much-less the current "dispute" (this probably will stem from the Government's control over information)

But I find the rhetoric against China to be silly; it is not as if China is trying to "brainwash" their citizens -- I have been to China many times and have seen their media -- it is not all different from ours, the only difference is that everyone is Chinese on their TV / Movies and where in the West our media is heavily influenced by racial mixing, "diversity" and other topics such as homosexuality, such things are not visible in China's media, and if China was to open up their media to "privately owned" global media conglomerates, they would find themselves in the same situation the West's media is in, and China does not want this.

 Ministry of Justice is conducting a review to overturn the ban on post-mortem reports by

(4) Dr. David Kelly post-mortem reports to be released; 70-year seal lifted

From: orm <ormg1@bigpond.com> Date: 01.02.2010 06:10 AM From: media2009 <John@cecaust.com.au>

Lord Hutton's 70-Year Seal on Medical Records of Dr. David Kelly to be lifted

By WILLIAM F. WERTZ & DAVID CHERRY

Monday, February 1, 2010

http://www.larouchepac.com/node/13340

Less than a week after it was revealed that Lord Hutton had requested that a 70-year seal be placed on the medical records relating to the death of bio-weapons expert Dr. David Kelly in 2003 -- in a blatant effort to prevent an investigation as to whether he was in fact murdered because of his exposure of the Blair government's lies about weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion of Iraq -- it has now been reported in the British press that the Ministry of Justice is conducting a review to overturn the ban on post-mortem reports by Dr. Nicholas Hunt, a pathologist, photographs, and other medical documents.

A letter from a senior official at Oxfordshire County Council had first revealed that Lord Hutton had requested that records provided to the inquiry that were not produced in evidence should be closed for 30 years and that the medical reports, including the post-mortem reports and photographs, be closed for 70 years. But last night, the doctors heard through their lawyers that the evidence would be released.

Clearly under tremendous political pressure, Hutton released the following statement: "I consider that the disclosure of the report to doctors and their legal advisers for the purposes of legal proceedings would not undermine the protection which I wished to give to Dr. Kelly's family, provided that conditions were imposed restricting the use and publication of the report to such proceedings, and I have written to the Ministry of Justice to this effect."

The doctors are applying to the Attorney General, Baroness Scotland, for permission to go to the High Court for a new inquest, or the resumption of the previous inquest. Their case rests on Section 13 of the 1988 Coroners Act, which allows the High Court to order a new inquest, or to resume a previous inquest, in special cases. No coroner's inquest was ever held into Dr Kelly's death.

Last year, the six doctors published a medical dossier saying that Lord Hutton's conclusion -- that Dr. Kelly killed himself by severing the ulnar artery in his left wrist after taking an overdose of prescription painkillers -- was untenable because the artery is small and hard to access, and severing it would not in any case cause death.

The Herald Express reports that retired surgeon David Halpin, who is among senior doctors taking legal action to force a coroner's inquest, said: "This is an unexpected decision but from my point of view the autopsy is only part of what we want to see." Halpin also said the results of a chemical analysis of Dr. Kelly's body and blood will also be needed. He added: "After six years, we have never given up. We have laws in this land and us six doctors are trying our very best to make sure that the law is upheld in the case of Dr. Kelly."

Dr. Michael Powers, QC, also one of the doctors involved, said on Saturday: "Obviously we welcome this news that Lord Hutton is now going to disclose the medical reports and any post-mortem reports. We particularly welcome it if it can be assured that we shall have access to all the material, so that we can consider it. We are grateful to Lord Hutton for his change of mind, but if we are to be given access to post-mortem reports we need to consider all the medical and scientific evidence obtained after Dr. Kelly's death. There can be no justification for partial disclosure other than national security, and how could that be relevant to suicide?"

(5) Underwater Pyramids of Okinawa

From: Dr. Gunther Kümel <sapere-aude.H@gmx.de> Date: 02.02.2010 05:36 AM From: John Ray
Subject: Fw: UNDERWATER PYRAMIDS

http://rolandsanjuan.blogspot.com/2010/01/underwater-pyramids.html

Jomon (ancient northern Japanese) DNA has been found in small colonly in S. America dating back to last ice age.
-Duane

UNDERWATER PYRAMIDS

http://www.morien-institute.org/yonaguni.html

One of the greatest discoveries in the history of archaeology was made last summer, off Japan There, spread over an amazing 311 miles on the ocean floor, are the well-preserved remains of an ancient city. Or at the very least, a number of closely related sites.

In the waters around Okinawa and beyond to the small island of Yonaguni, divers located eight separate locations beginning in March 1995. That first sighting was equivocal - a provocative, squared structure, so encrusted with coral that its manmade identity was uncertain. Then, as recently as the summer of 1996, a sports diver accidentally discovered a huge, angular platform about 40 feet below the surface, off the southwestern shore of Okinawa. The feature’s artificial provenance was beyond question. Widening their search, teams of more divers found another, different monument nearby. Then another, and another. They beheld long streets, grand boulevards, majestic staircases, magnificent archways, enormous blocks of perfectly cut and fitted stone - all harmoniously welded together in a linear architecture unlike anything they had ever seen before.

In the following weeks and months, Japan’s archaeological community joined the feeding-frenzy of discovery. Trained professionals formed a healthy alliance with the enthusiasts who first made the find. In a progressive spirit of mutual respect an working alliance, academics and amateurs joined forces to set an example of   cooperation for the rest of the world. Their common cause soon bore rich fruit. In september, not far from the shore of the island of Yonaguni, more then 300 airline miles south from Okinawa, they found a gigantic, pyramidal structure in 100 feet of water. In what appeared to be a ceremonial center of broad promenades and flanking pylons, the gargantuan building measures 240 feet long.

Exceptionally clear sub-surface clarity, with 100 foot visibility a common factor, allowed for thorough photographic documentation, both still photography and video. These images provided the basis of japan’s leading headlines for more than a year. Yet, not a word about the Okinawa discovery reached the US public, until the magazine, “Ancient American” broke the news last spring. Since that scoop, only the CNN network televised a report about Japan’s underwater city. Nothing about it has been mentioned in any of the nation’s other archaeology publications, not even in any of our daily newspapers. One would imagine that such a mind-boggling find would be the most exciting piece of news an archaeologist could possibly hope to learn. Even so, outside of the “Ancient American” and CNN’s single report, the pall of silence covering all the facts about Okinawa’s structures screens them from view more effectively then their location at the bottom of the sea. Why? How can this appalling neglect persist in the face of a discovery of such unparalleled magnitude? At the risk  of accusations of paranoia, one might conclude that a real conspiracy of managed information dominates America’s well-springs of public knowledge.

Frank Joseph - “Ancient American”

.

Divers Find World's Oldest Building

by Trushar Barot

A STRUCTURE thought to be the world's oldest building, nearly twice the age of the great pyramids of Egypt, has been discovered. The rectangular stone ziggurat under the sea off the coast of Japan could be the first evidence of a previously unknown Stone Age civilisation, say archeologists.

The monument is 600ft wide and 90ft high and has been dated to at least 8000BC -- the center of the Japanese Matriarchal Jomon (braid rope) period. The oldest pyramid in Egypt, the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, was constructed more than 5,000 years later.

The structure off Yonaguni, a small island southwest of Okinawa, was first discovered 75ft underwater by scuba divers 10 years ago and locals believed it was a natural phenomenon.

Professor Masaki Kimura, a geologist at Ryukyu University in Okinawa, was the first scientist to investigate the site and has concluded that the mysterious five-layer structure was man-made. "The object has not been manufactured by nature. If that had been the case, one would expect debris from erosion to have collected around the site, but there are no rock fragments there," he said.

The discovery of what appears to be a road surrounding the building was further evidence that the structure was made by humans, he added.

Robert Schoch, professor of geology at Boston University, dived at the site last month. "It basically looks like a series of huge steps, each about a metre high. Essentially, it's a cliff face like the side of a stepped pyramid. It's a very interesting structure," he said. "It's possible that natural water erosion combined with the process of cracked rocks splitting created such a structure, but I haven't come across such processes creating a structure as sharp as this."

Further evidence that the structure is the work of humans came with the discovery of smaller underwater stone mounds nearby. Like the main building, these mini-ziggurats are made of stepped slabs and are about 10m wide and 2m high.

Kimura said it was too early to know who built the monument or its purpose. "The structure could be an ancient religious shrine, possibly celebrating an ancient deity resembling the Goddess Nirai-Kanai, whom locals say gave happiness to the people of Okinawa from beyond the sea. This could be evidence of a new culture as there are no records of a people intelligent enough to have built such a monument 10,000 years ago," he said.

"This could only have been done by a people with a high degree of technology, probably coming from the Asian continent, where the oldest civilisations originate. There would have to have been some sort of machinery involved to have created such a huge structure."

Teruaki Ishii, professor of geology at Tokyo University, said the structure dated back to at least 8000BC, the middle of the Jomon peiod, when the land on which it was constructed was submerged at the end of the last ice age. "I hope this site is artificial as it would be very exciting."

The first signs of civilisation in Japan are traced to the Neolithic period around 35,000BC, but could go back to 200,000BC. The people at this time lived as hunters and food- gatherers. There was nothing in the academic literature before to suggest the presence of a culture advanced enough to have built a structure like the ziggurat.

British archeologists are, however, cautiously enthusiastic about the discovery which will be featured this summer in a Channel 4 documentary.

Jim Mower, an archeologist at University College London, said: "If it is confirmed that the site is as old as 10,000 years and is made by the Jomon matriarchy, then this is going to change an awful lot of the previous thinking on southeast Asian history. It would put the people who made the monument on a par with the ancient civilisation of Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley."

(6) Confucius spruiks Chinese lottery

Last Updated: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 01:31:00 +1100

http://www.radioaustralianews.net.au/stories/201002/2808428.htm

Celebrated Chinese philosopher Confucius -- who has taken the form of a Hong Kong action movie star Chow Yun-Fat -- is now being used as the frontman for a new lottery scheme.

China's state-run Global Times reports tickets bearing Confucius' image and proverbs went on sale last week in his eastern hometown of Qufu.

The top prize is set at $US44,000.

Officials say the scheme is aimed at educating people about the teachings of Confucius, which centre on peace and social harmony.

An official in Shandong province tasked with lottery marketing, Tang Niangbing, says if sayings on the ticket match the ones drawn, the buyer wins.

He says the winning ticket reads, "Of all rituals, harmony is the most valuable."