Life on Venus and Why ‘Settled Science’ Is Often Hot Air

From John Stonestreet on Breakpoint.org (Sept. 28, 2020):

Hope for E.T. springs eternal, despite the definitive lack of evidence for his existence. After decades of peering through telescopes, listening with giant radio antennae, and hurling probes to distant worlds, astronomers have yet to find even a hint of life beyond Earth. So, instead of looking for actual evidence of life, some scientists have begun looking for conditions that could theoretically be associated with life. And when they find that, they hold press conferences.

When scientists discovered that liquid water may once have existed on Mars, it was reported with the excitement we’d expect if probes had found Martian guppies. The discovery of a probable ocean under the ice of a Jovian moon is reported as if alien life forms had already been filmed doing backstrokes in there. Just this year, the discovery of an Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting a distant red dwarf star was reported by most articles as if Kepler-1649c were a perfect potential host for life.

The latest episode of astrobiological hype involves our nearest planetary neighbor. Venus has long been dismissed in the search for extraterrestrial life due to its hellish climate. After all, it’s wrapped in sulfuric acid, with a surface temperature hot enough to melt lead.

Then, just a few weeks ago, an international team of scientists from MIT and Cardiff University published evidence of phosphine gas high in the atmosphere of Venus. On Earth, the only two known sources of phosphine are human industry and microscopic life. So, according to this team, the presence of large quantities of this gas on Venus can only be explained by living things.

The press’s reaction was predictable. Every headline featured the word “life.” Clamor to divert space exploration resources to Venus mounted so quickly that NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine had to issue a statement in which, while praising the insight of these astronomers, he noticeably downplayed Venus, pointing instead to other, more promising missions already on the space agency’s docket and in their budget.

Other critics were more measured: “[T]his can hardly be taken as a biosignature,” one biologist said to the New York Times, “…only for anomalous and unexplained chemistry.” Another professor of planetary sciences who was quoted in the Financial Times sounded even more skeptical: “The scientists can’t think of a way of getting these phosphine levels without it being a byproduct of life,” he said. “That doesn’t mean there isn’t another way, and it is a long way from proving that there’s life on Venus.”

So much of the fanfare of stories like this follow a familiar script: scientists rush through the peer-review process and go straight to the press with speculative conclusions. Along the way, “anomalous chemistry” becomes “alien life.” Later, once cooler heads prevail, the same newspapers and websites carrying the fantastical headlines, print a retraction with a less exciting explanation for all that phosphine gas … usually in small print on a back page somewhere.

Of course, proposing and challenging theories is what science is all about. Where science goes wrong is in treating these findings—especially in the early, speculative stages—as if anything is “settled,” much less announcing the speculations as settled conclusion with breathless news reports and demands that NASA rework their budget.

In one of our latest “What Would You Say?” videos, my colleague Brooke McIntire takes on the myth of “settled science.” Proposing and overturning theories is an ongoing part of the process. Even longstanding scientific consensus is vulnerable to new and contrary evidence, and scientists are fallible and biased human beings too. It’s a great video, especially one to share with your kids and grandkids. To watch and share it, just go to whatwouldyousay.org.

None of this means, of course, that life on Venus is impossible. What it does mean is that a pair of papers linking the presence of a particular gas to life doesn’t amount to all the hype it generated. Without more and better evidence, speculation about little E.T.s on Venus is like its sweltering atmosphere … so much hot air. [source]

Science is never settled because unlike God, humans are not omniscience. We are always learning. Seeking the Truth. Always updating our theories with better evidence. Or we should be doing that anyway.

Excerpts from Republican Party Platforms

• Resolved: That the Constitution confers upon Congress sovereign powers over the Territories of the United States for their government; and that in the exercise of this power, it is both the right and the imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism--Polygamy, and Slavery. (1856)
• Resolved, That Kansas should be immediately admitted as a state of this Union, with her present Free Constitution, as at once the most effectual way of securing to her citizens the enjoyment of the rights and privileges to which they are entitled, and of ending the civil strife now raging in her territory. (1856)
• 9. That we brand the recent reopening of the African slave trade, under the cover of our national flag, aided by perversions of judicial power, as a crime against humanity and a burning shame to our country and age; and we call upon Congress to take prompt and efficient measures for the total and final suppression of that execrable traffic. (1860)
• 10. That in the recent vetoes, by their Federal Governors, of the acts of the legislatures of Kansas and Nebraska, prohibiting slavery in those territories, we find a practical illustration of the boasted Democratic principle of Non-Intervention and Popular Sovereignty, embodied in the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and a demonstration of the deception and fraud involved therein. (1860)
• Thirteenth. We denounce repudiation of the public debt, in any form or disguise, as a national crime. We witness with pride the reduction of the principal of the debt, and of the rates of interest upon the balance, and confidently expect that our excellent national currency will be perfected by a speedy resumption of specie payment. (1872)
• 2. The Constitution of the United States is a supreme law, and not a mere contract. Out of confederated States it made a sovereign nation. Some powers are denied to the Nation, while others are denied to the States; but the boundary between the powers delegated and those reserved is to be determined by the National and not by the State tribunal. (1880)
• We favor the establishment of a national bureau of labor; the enforcement of the eight hour law, a wise and judicious system of general education by adequate appropriation from the national revenues, wherever the same is needed. We believe that everywhere the protection to a citizen of American birth must be secured to citizens by American adoption; and we favor the settlement of national differences by international arbitration. (1884)
• (c) League of Nations
• The Republican party stands for agreement among the nations to preserve the peace of the world. We believe that such an international association must be based upon international justice, and must provide methods which shall maintain the rule of public right by the development of law and the decision of impartial courts, and which shall secure instant and general international conference whenever peace shall be threatened by political action, so that the nations pledged to do and insist upon what is just and fair may exercise their influence and power for the prevention of war.
• We believe that all this can be done without the compromise of national independence, without depriving the people of the United States in advance of the right to determine for themselves what is just and fair when the occasion arises, and without involving them as participants and not as peacemakers in a multitude of quarrels, the merits of which they are unable to judge.
• The covenant signed by the President at Paris failed signally to accomplish this great purpose, and contains stipulations, not only intolerable for an independent people, but certain to produce the injustice, hostility and controversy among nations which it proposed to prevent. (1920)
• We advocate the issuance of a simplified form of income return; authorizing the Treasury Department to make changes in regulations effective only from the date of their approval empowering the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, with the consent of the taxpayers, to make final and conclusive settlements of tax claims and assessments barring fraud, the creation of a Tax Board consisting of at least three representatives of the taxpaying public and the heads of the principal divisions of the Bureau of Internal Revenue to act as a standing committee on the simplification of forms, procedure and law and to make recommendations to the Congress. (1920)

Tech expert reveals how boom in AI has enabled hackers to create sordid real-life scenarios to target victims online - and what you can do to avoid being extorted

From Dailymail.co.uk (Jan. 7, 2024):

Virtual kidnapping scams have crept into the US for more than two decades, but the bizarre scheme has recently evolved and exploited many individuals across the country.

In a recent case, foreign exchange student Kai Zhuang, 17, was reported missing on December 28 after his family in China received threatening messages that he had been kidnapped.

Despite his host family in Utah reporting he had been seen earlier that day, his family paid an $80,000 ransom fee to Chinese bank accounts.

He was later found in the Brigham City Canyon after cops said he fell victim to a sordid 'cyber-kidnapping' scam.

The teen was told that his family back home was in danger while his parents in China were told that he had been kidnapped before they were extorted out of $80,000.

Dr. Chris Pierson, the founder and CEO of BlackCloak, a cyber security firm for high profile individuals, exclusively told DailyMail.com that Zhuang's case is 'an interesting escalation in terms of the current common scams' and that artificial intelligence is making cases like these easier to facilitate.

Though Pierson specifically represents celebrities and successful cooperate executives, he was also the former president of the FBI's InfraGard chapter in Arizona and worked for the Department of Homeland Security on the Privacy Committee and Cybersecurity Subcommittee.

When asked about the Utah case and cyber kidnapping as a whole, Pierson said that criminals behind these suspicious and frightening schemes typically target the foreign demographic and strive to get as much money as possible from their victims.

He revealed that foreign exchange students are the 'perfect demographic' for the crime mainly due to the time difference that they share with their biological families.

In Zhuang's case, his parents were back in China at the time of his apparent abduction, making it difficult for them to get in contact at the time.

Pierson also said that language barriers play a role in the offenders game plan as the victims can't pick up on differences or red flags, making it easier for them to be 'preyed upon.' [read more]

Welcome to the brave new world.

Quantum internet breakthrough could help make hacking a thing of the past

From Siddarth Koduru Joshi on Live Science.com (Sept. 3, 2020):

The advent of mass working from home has made many people more aware of the security risks of sending sensitive information via the internet. The best we can do at the moment is make it difficult to intercept and hack your messages — but we can't make it impossible.

What we need is a new type of internet: the quantum internet. In this version of the global network, data is secure, connections are private and your worries about information being intercepted are a thing of the past.

My colleagues and I have just made a breakthrough, published in Science Advances, that will make such a quantum internet possible by scaling up the concepts behind it using existing telecommunications infrastructure.

Our current way of protecting online data is to encrypt it using mathematical problems that are easy to solve if you have a digital "key" to unlock the encryption but hard to solve without it. However, hard does not mean impossible and, with enough time and computer power, today's methods of encryption can be broken.

Quantum communication, on the other hand, creates keys using individual particles of light (photons) , which — according to the principles of quantum physics — are impossible to make an exact copy of. Any attempt to copy these keys will unavoidably cause errors that can be detected. This means a hacker, no matter how clever or powerful they are or what kind of supercomputer they possess, cannot replicate a quantum key or read the message it encrypts.

This concept has already been demonstrated in satellites and over fiber-optic cables, and used to send secure messages between different countries. So why are we not already using it in everyday life? The problem is that it requires expensive, specialized technology that means it's not currently scalable.

Previous quantum communication techniques were like pairs of children's walkie talkies. You need one pair of handsets for every pair of users that want to securely communicate. So if three children want to talk to each other they will need three pairs of handsets (or six walkie talkies) and each child must have two of them. If eight children want to talk to each other they would need 56 walkie talkies. [source]

Ten most important revelations about the Obama-Biden era of weaponization

From Just the News.com (Aug. 25, 2025):

The Trump administration’s probe into weaponization of the intelligence community, beginning with the genesis of the fake Russia collusion allegations in 2016, has kicked into full gear this summer.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and FBI Director Kash Patel have declassified and released a mountain of documents shedding light on how the bureau's deeply flawed and politically-motivated Trump-Russia inquiry, known as "Crossfire Hurricane," got off the ground.

The documents also detail fact-laden whistleblower complaints and an internal FBI probe into then-Rep. Adam Schiff’s and then-Director James Comey’s orders to leak classified information to the press, respectively.

"No one is above the law"

Ironically, several of the key players in what could be a coordinated abuse of power consistently chanted that "No one is above the law," and may face legal consequences of their own.

Senator Adam Schiff, D- Calif., under investigation for mortgage fraud, said through his spokesperson, Marisol Samayoa, that “It’s clear that Donald Trump and his MAGA allies will continue weaponizing the justice process to attack Senator Schiff for holding this corrupt administration accountable.”

Similarly, the DOJ initiated two grand jury investigations into New York Attorney General Letita James, one in the Northern District of New York related to her civil fraud lawsuit against President Donald Trump and one related to mortgage fraud allegations in Virginia, where James claims she "helped her niece purchase a home in 2023." James' civil lawsuit was overturned by a New York Appellate Court this week.

James' attorney in the mortgage fraud matter, Abbe Lowell, wrote to the DOJ that "[Y]ou are not conducting a serious investigation or review of 'mortgage fraud,' and that, despite the lack of evidence or law, you will take whatever actions you have been directed to take to make good on President Trump’s and Attorney General Bondi’s calls for revenge for that reason alone."

Lowell is best known to many Americans as the criminal lawyer for Hunter Biden.

Recently exposed documents also suggest that the FBI conspired with Hillary Clinton’s campaign to smear Trump with Russian allegations.

Here are the most significant developments covered by Just the News so far:

• New declassified emails show key spy shocked to learn Steele dossier used in Russian meddling intel

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has declassified bombshell emails showing the shocked reaction of a top cybersecurity spy when he was belatedly informed in 2019 that the discredited anti-Trump Steele Dossier had been used to develop the Obama administration’s intelligence assessment on Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Just the News reported.

• Intel community's assessment didn’t say Russia wanted Trump win, but that changed after he won

A newly declassified assessment by the U.S. intelligence community from September 2016, obtained by Just the News, showed the IC did not seem overly concerned by Russian meddling in that year's presidential election. More significantly, it made no mention of the Kremlin backing or even preferring GOP nominee Donald Trump – a tone that would shift dramatically after Trump won the race in November.

• Once-secret report confirms U.S. intel used Steele Dossier to push narrative that Putin helped Trump

A newly-declassified House Intelligence Committee report shows that the Obama-era intelligence assessment on Russian election meddling used the discredited Steele Dossier to underpin its conclusion that Putin aspired to help Trump win the 2016 election, directly challenging the congressional testimony of officials like CIA Director John Brennan, who denied that had ever happened. [read more]

Just a reminder of how the Left and Deep State tried to stop President Trump. They will continue the weaponization to their political opponents (or as Hillary called the republicans--the enemy) as long as the Left and their allies are not held accountable.

6 Things To Know About 2019 Impeachment Coup Against Trump, As New Docs Confirm Federalist Reporting

From The Federalist.com (Apr. 13):

From the beginning, the 2019 impeachment coup against President Donald Trump was a hoax riddled with Democrat collusion and deep state deception. Newly released transcripts of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s closed-door interviews of then-Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (ICIG) Michael Atkinson give even more details about how intelligence officials and anti-Trump politicians worked together in an attempt to charge the sitting president with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

The testimonies, recorded in September and October 2019 respectively, show Atkinson and his office bypassed normal credibility and bias assessments of a firsthand witness in favor of hearsay from the whistleblower who submitted the original complaint alleging corruption.

As Federalist Senior Legal Correspondent Margot Cleveland noted in her breaking news column on Monday, “the transcripts released Monday also highlight the politicization of the FBI that continued under Trump 1.0 after Director James Comey’s firing.” Atkinson testified that an FBI division, which he refused to name, tried to reopen the investigation into Trump even after the Department of Justice “concluded the matter.”

It’s been a long six and a half years since Democrats and the deep state managed to pull their first sham impeachment of Trump together, but the story isn’t over. Here are six key facts that you need to know about the coup, as reported by The Federalist.

Complaint Laden With Lies and Gossip

In a July 25, 2019, phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, President Donald Trump mentioned concerns about Biden family corruption in Ukraine — concerns that future reporting would prove to be legitimate. Weeks later, in August, a Democrat operative posing as a whistleblower misrepresented the content of the call to falsely accuse Trump of weaponizing the call as a quid pro quo.

The complaint alleging that Trump engaged in corruption and crimes in his phone conversation relied largely on “open-source information” such as gossip, corporate media articles, and even Twitter posts instead of the witness or firsthand evidence required for further investigation.

As Federalist CEO Sean Davis noted at the time, the complaint “follows the same template used in the infamous and debunked Clinton campaign-funded Steele dossier.”

The whistleblower admitted “I was not a direct witness to most of the events” and instead cited conversations with “more than half a dozen U.S. officials,” who remain unnamed, to falsely assert that Trump demanded Zelensky turn over “servers used by the Democratic National Committee (DNC)” and keep a certain prosecutor general “in his position.” [read more]

The Deep State at work. They will do it again and again as long as they can get away with their attacks. The whistleblower should be prosecuted. Also, Trump should sue the whistleblower for slander and Congress should reverse Trump’s impeachment.

Another article on the impeachment hoax:

Gabbard says intel community watchdog helped ‘manufacture a conspiracy’ in Ukraine impeachment saga

No Christianity, No “Human Rights”

From Breakpoint.org (Aug. 20, 2020):

In July, the U.S. State Department’s “Commission on Unalienable Rights” released a draft report that attempted to provide a grounding for our country’s commitment to human rights. Fundamental among those rights, the report declared, are freedom of religion and the right to private property.

The Commission sought comments from the public, and they’ve gotten them. While the part about property rights garnered little response, the insistence on religious liberty has sparked a firestorm of protest, including from a “group of academic and religious leaders.”

Most Americans take the existence of human rights for granted. We see them, to borrow a phrase, as “self-evident.” We can’t really imagine a world without them, or we look at places like China or North Korea with incredulity, as if it’s obvious that their way is clearly wrong. Instead, what these countries demonstrate is that there’s nothing “natural” about the idea of human rights. Rather they are the products of Judaeo-Christian beliefs about the intrinsic dignity of the human person.

After all, as the State Department report points out, “more than half the world’s population suffers under regimes where the most basic freedoms are systematically denied, or under regimes too weak or unwilling to protect individual rights, especially in the context of ethnic conflict.”

Most countries don’t deny the idea of human rights outright. However, because they lack adequate moral grounding for them, human rights become a kind of buffet. Those in power pick the ones they like, for the groups they like, and ignore the rest. Again, to quote the report, “human rights are now misunderstood by many, manipulated by some, rejected by the world’s worst violators, and subject to ominous new threats.”

Given these threats, it’s vital that we who take the idea of universal human rights for granted, ground them on something more permanent and transcendent than international consensus or “we’ve always done it this way.”

The only secure basis for human rights, of course, is the Christian belief that humans are created in the image of God. Think about that line from our founding documents: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” But it’s not self-evident that we are equal, if we only consider the external attributes humans have. We don’t all share those attributes. We don’t all share the same height, or weight, or IQ, or hair color, or skin tone. Thus equality must be based on some universal human quality that is intrinsic to our humanity. Christianity offers this in the idea of the image of God.

The report acknowledges this: “Protestant Christianity, widely practiced by the citizenry at the time [of the founders], was infused with the beautiful Biblical teachings that every human being is imbued with dignity and bears responsibilities toward fellow human beings, because each is made in the image of God.”

Even non-believers such as Tom Holland, the author of Dominion, have recognized that the West’s ideas about freedom and the dignity of the human person are the product of Christianity. Atheist philosopher John Gray has written that modern politics, with its idea of human rights, “is a chapter in the history of religion,” specifically Christianity. Another atheist philosopher, Luc Ferry, in his book A Brief History of Thought, observes that it is to the idea of the image of God that the “west owes its entire democratic inheritance.”

Without the Christian idea of the imago Dei, “universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated” human rights simply wouldn’t exist. In fact, even the guy who said “God is dead,” Friederich Nietzsche, said universal human rights, an idea he considered weak, came from a Christian view of the world.

Unfortunately, there are many, like that “group of academics and religious leaders” I mentioned earlier, who deny that connection. In a statement protesting the draft report’s emphasis on religious liberty, they said that the attempt “to elevate religious freedom above other human rights . . . will weaken religious freedom itself and undermine respect for and damage the protections of the universal values of human dignity.”

As you may have guessed, those they claim most likely to be violated by the elevation of religious freedom are those “denied these [human] rights because of who they are or whom they love.” In their minds, religious freedom is really code language for a “license to discriminate.”

In a world where religious minorities increasingly face persecution and death, to trivialize religious freedom in this way is myopic. However, it is inevitable once rich concepts like “freedom” and “human dignity” are defined down to mere personal autonomy and self-actualization.

Our first freedom, like the rights that depend on it, are grounded in a Christian view of what it means to be human. They cannot be sustained otherwise. This new U.S. State Department Report is a welcome reminder. [source]

Amen. Any polytheistic pagan religions that sacrifices people to their gods and goddesses (like the Mayans and Aztecs) definitely don’t recognize human rights. God never required the Jewish people to make human sacrifices to Himself.