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An amendment from Italy's anti-establishment government that removes mandatory vaccination for schoolchildren is sending shock waves through the country's scientific and medical community.
It suspends for a year a law that requires parents to provide proof of 10 routine vaccinations when enrolling their children in nurseries or preschools. The amendment was approved by Italy's upper house of parliament on Friday by 148 to 110 votes and still has to pass the lower house.
The law had originally been introduced by the Democratic Party in July 2017 amid an ongoing outbreak of measles that saw 5,004 cases reported in 2017 -- the second-highest figure in Europe after Romania -- according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). Italy accounted for 34% of all measles cases reported by countries in the European Economic Area, the center said.
Italy's Five Star movement and its coalition partner, the far-right League, both voiced their opposition to compulsory vaccinations, claiming they discourage school inclusion.
English Language Source: https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/07/health/italy-anti-vaccine-law-measles-intl/index.html
(Score: 4, Informative) by SemperOSS on Wednesday August 08 2018, @10:47PM
I wish he were right!
I've looked at the explanation given by Monckton and I'm not happy with it. The "scientific" paper is dense (possibly in more senses than one) and though the formulae are correct as such, they are correct on par with 2+2=4. The feedback algorithm is at first-year university level and not used in this simplified way by IPCC. The crucial point in this is that a Taylor series is used as an approximation for the actual formula. A Taylor series is an infinite sum of diminishing terms like Result = Term + Smaller Term + Even Smaller Term + ... + Much Smaller Term + Much Much Smaller Term + ... As the successive terms are diminishing, they are normally truncated after a certain level (in this case after the first term) to reach a usable form, but this truncation also reduces the applicable range of values for which the Taylor series produces a correct result (i.e. a result withing a certain, acceptable level of error). So, TL;DR: A truncated Taylor series is an approximation applicable only within a certain range of values.
Monckton cannot directly "see" the sun's radiation in the formula and therefor assumes the formula is wrong, when indeed the influence of the sun is implicit in the Taylor series as a constant value (another approximation) influencing the force factor. What he then does is to take a formula meant for a limited range of values (Delta T) around the sun's current influence and uses that with a completely different range of values (T), where it is not applicable. In effect, Monckton misapplies the formula and says his version is correct as it explicitly takes the sun's influence into effect. Not so!
It is also an indication of problematic science that the name of the government laboratory commissioned to verify the algorithm on an analog computer is missing. And how was the computer configured? Where is the evidence that the model used actually represents the real global warming?
I don't need a signature to draw attention to myself.
Maybe I should add a sarcasm warning now and again?