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The Island of Doubt

An irregular exploration of the struggle between the power of rational discourse and the scientific method on one hand, and the forces of superstition and dogma on the other. Mostly regarding climate change, though.

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me-fergus.jpg James Hrynyshyn is a freelance science journalist based in western North Carolina, where he tries to put degrees in marine biology and journalism to good use.

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Inspiration

The Demon-Haunted World:
Science as a Candle
in the Dark, by Carl Sagan
(A review)

The Doubter's Companion:
by John Ralston Saul (Excerpts)

Skeptic Magazine: www.skeptic.com

Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal: www.csicop.org

A poem by Yehuda Amichai:
The Place
Where We Are Right


The Meaning of the
Island of Doubt


Author's site: cyamid.net


Add to Technorati Favorites! Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops.
--- H. L. Mencken

By doubting we come to inquiry; and through inquiry we perceive truth.
--- Peter Abelard

Undisguised clarity is easily mistaken for arrogance.
-- Richard Dawkins

As for evolution, it happened. Deal with it.
-- Michael Shermer.

"There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve, then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving, and tiny blasts of tinny trumpets, we have met the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us."
--Walt Kelly

July 2, 2009

What science is really all about

Category: climate

And now we turn to a voice of reason. Ken Caldeira, discussing the nuts and bolt of science, and climatology in particular, as part of a group interview with Discover magazine, reminds us all just how silly it is to argue that anthropogenic global warming is bothing but a conspiracy theory propagated by disingenuous researchers (and former vice-presidents) who are only trying to line their own pockets:

July 1, 2009

George W. Bush reincarnated in Canada

Category: climate

I have an extremely low attention threshold for any mention of the small town of Inuvik, NWT, tucked away in the northwest corner of Canada's Northwest Territories. Not because it's a particularly beautiful place, or politically, economically or scientifically significant, but because I spent 14 months there back in the early 1990s as editor its newspaper, the Inuvik Drum. So when a former premier of one of Canada's provinces makes a speech there, I'm one of the few people outside of Inuvik who perk up. More so when the former premier is speaking about extracting more fossil fuels from beneath the Arctic Ocean. Even more so when the premier manages to invoke the thoughts of not one, not two, but half a dozen of the world's most notorious climate science deniers.

June 29, 2009

Every silver lining has its cloud and the climate-energy bill is no exception

Category: climate

Even the most optimistic elements of the environmental community know that Friday's passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act by the U.S. House of Representatives was the easy part. Getting something comparable through the Senate will be much tougher. Paul Krugman says it best:

June 25, 2009

Should Congress pass Waxman-Markey?

Category: climate

I've been agonizing over this for weeks. My initial stance was yes, because if Waxman-Markey (a.k.a. the American Clean Energy and Security Act) doesn't make it, I doubt we can afford to wait for Congress to take another stab at it. But the lobbying over the past few days has been fierce. I get emails from both sides, and by both I mean both sides of the environmental community.

The argument against ACESA is compelling. For example, the Climate Crisis Coalitions' latest email enumerate the weakness of the bill thusly:

Things are worse than I thought: Journalism is dead

Category: climate

IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri is no intellectual slouch. But I have no idea where he gets the idea that news media are doing are bang-up job covering the science and politics of climate change. He recently wrote this baffling piece:

June 24, 2009

Hansen arrested

Category: climate

Here's the headline I would have written if I was editing the West Virginia Gazette's coverage of Tuesday's protest against mountain-top coal mining:

Top government climate scientist arrested in coal protest

Here's the headline the editor(s) chose instead:

Daryl Hannah, scientist among 30 arrested at W.Va. mine protest

Sigh. Have we slid so far down the hole of celebrity worship that a second-string Hollywood personality (who hasn't made a memorable appearance on the silver screen since 1982's Blade Runner), gets top billing over the country's most senior and respected authority on the subject of the story? Apparently.

June 23, 2009

These numbers don't really mean much, but they're all we've got to estimate the cost of Waxman-Markey

Category: climate

The Congressional Budget Office is the probably the closest thing to a non-partisan source of economic analyses. On Friday it released its best guess on how much the ACES bill, a.k.a. Waxman-Markey, will cost the U.S. economy by 2020.

June 22, 2009

A prophet of doom dials it down a notch

Category: climate

James Lovelock hates wind turbines, likes nuclear power and generally makes it difficult for anyone who wants to pigeonhole him in the pantheon of environmental heroes. But there's little point in denying that few earth scientists have a better grasp of the big picture when it comes to planetary ecology, so it's always worth asking him for his take on the climate crisis. His most recent pronouncements seem a little less bleak. Relatively speaking.

A better idea for a "carbon clock"

Category: climate

Deutsche Bank recently turned on 41,000 LED lights that keep track of the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere. Nice idea, but I respectfully suggest a much better one.

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