May 9, 2013
Experiment showing the absoption of infrared radiation by carbon dioxide. From the BBC 2 program "Earth: The Climate Wars"
May 8, 2013
Simulate the ruination of the planet using common household ingredients!
May 8, 2013
As you know, Genie Scott of the NCSE will retire this year. Here is her story.
May 8, 2013
In honor of Genie Scott's imminent retirement as Executive Director of the NCSE, you are hereby offered a free downloadable PDF excerpt form Genie's classic book.
Click here to download the PDF.
Click here to read my review of the book.
Click here to find out about other books and resources…
May 8, 2013
This is interesting and important.
Hello Bethany, I've always been a huge fan.
May 8, 2013
Your morning caffeine fix is but a drop in the global bucket that makes coffee the number two most traded commodity in the world after petroleum. But with 100 million Americans like you drinking coffee every day, the bucket easily overflows to make the US the world’s top coffee consumer...…
May 8, 2013
Stop lying to your fans. They are beginning to figure it out. Watch:
Here is some background.
May 8, 2013
In the united states, bee keepers lose a certain number of colonies over the winter. This is normal, but bee keepers maintain that losses of about 15 percent or less are "acceptable." I don't know what the logical or empirical basis for that number is, however.
Yesterday, the results of a report…
May 7, 2013
Here is a presentation by Genie Scott of the National Center for Science Education.
Far more people are climate change deniers than evolution deniers, but both camps use similar strategies to promote their views. Genie Scott explores the connections, the similarities, and the divergent ideologies…
May 6, 2013
We recently discussed news from the EU on banning neonicotinoid pesticides in order to stem the so called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) among honey bees. Bug Girl has an important guest post on the phenomenon of CCD by bee expert Doug Yanega. This is a must read not only for those interested in…
May 6, 2013
This is fairly amazing. Watch:
May 6, 2013
My friend and colleague, executive director of the National Center for Science Education's Genie Scott, will retire by the end of the year. She's been director of the NCSE for 26 years. Genie is a key player, perhaps the key player, in the battle to keep science in the classroom and other things…
May 2, 2013
Two young boys are having an argument while their fathers, resting in hammocks, look on. The argument is over something silly but escalates until the dads decide to intervene. They equip each boy with a small pole and position them face to face, explaining the rules of the game. Each child has the…
May 1, 2013
Hey, guess what? It turns out that if 90% of the people want something, and it is the only right thing to do, and not doing it not only "not the right thing" but it is also an abysmally horrid, insensitive, immoral, and boneheaded thing to do, that YOU LOSE.
Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte of New…
April 30, 2013
Before the release of vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere mainly through the burning of fossil fuels, the atmospheric concentration of this gas was about 300 ppm or a bit more. Soon, that number will be 400 ppm. How soon? Let's see ... it is now Tuesday at about 7pm. Maybe mid morning…
April 30, 2013
Published on Apr 30, 2013
Science education is under assault again. Not just evolution education, but climate change education. NCSE policy director Dr. Minda Berbeco traces the history of science denial, the links between evolution- and climate change deniers, recent legislation targeting both,…
April 30, 2013
Vonvo.com is a new thing. We had a conversation about the Boston Marathon Bombing.
I wish there had been a sound check, I could have had my mic up higher. Also, that notification beep you will repeatedly hear is not your computer (or mine) so just ignore it! Anyway, it is in two parts:
April 29, 2013
I rarely review fiction, but I've got a nice book I'd like to recommend. My friend Amy suggested it to me on facebook a while back when I was casting around for a novel to read. The novel is People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks.
INTERNET WARNING: THIS BOOK IS LIKE FIVE YEARS OLD I DON'T CARE…
April 29, 2013
Being a bee is hard. I'm speaking specifically of the honey bee, Apis mellifera, the one that produces the honey you buy in the store. Many insects, and other critters, eat by finding food and then eating it, and then they do that for a while and now and then reproduce by finding a mate, laying…
April 29, 2013
What do UFO's, the belief that magnetism causes climate change but atmospheric gasses are not related, child molestation, and academic sock puppeting have in common with sea level rise? To find out, set aside some time to carefully read this: UFOs, Sea Level Rise And The Magnetism Of Climate…
April 29, 2013
You've all heard about the horrible tragedy in Bangladesh, still unfolding. Not to distract from that event, or diminish its importance, I thought it would be interesting to have a look at that low lying country in relation to long term sea level rise caused by climate change. I am making no…
April 29, 2013
James Hansen, author of "Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About The Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity", recently announced his retirement from his position as director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. My friend John Abraham write's about Hansen's…
April 28, 2013
This video by Media Matters on the Zany Denialists on Fox News .........
..... is nicely augmented by this blog post by Phil Plait: Climate Change or Global Warming? Both.
April 27, 2013
Almost a year ago, Edwina Rogers took over as the executive director of the Secular Coalition for America. It's been an ambitious, busy year for the Secular Coalition. This Sunday, Rogers joins us to talk with Scott Lohman about what they've accomplished and where they're going in the next year.…
April 27, 2013
I was chatting live on Vonvo.com, speaking about the Boston Marathon Bombing with a few others. Vonvo is a new social media talkie thingie, a little like if Blogging Heads and Google Hangouts had a baby which then married Twitter.
A bit later I'll have links to the discussion.
April 26, 2013
I gave a talk at the Brookdale Public Library last night as part of the celebration of DNA day. DNA Day, or DNAD for short, was created about the time of the "completion" (more or less) of the Human Genome in 2003, and is set to be on the date of the publication of the famous research on the…
April 24, 2013
... Or, Why Did Your Great-great-grandfather Marry His Cousin?
A talk I'm giving ....
Genealogy reveals the structure of family relationships among distant relatives. Why do certain families intermarry while others shun each other? For the young singles, how do you calculate your suaboyä, in…
April 24, 2013
Dana Nuccitelli writes:
The rate of heat building up on Earth over the past decade is equivalent to detonating about 4 Hiroshima atomic bombs per second. Take a moment to visualize 4 atomic bomb detonations happening every single second. That's the global warming that we're frequently told isn't…
April 23, 2013
No, it does not
We've had a winter-like spring here in Minnesota, and it was darn chilly on Saturday. In fact, we had a record low of 21F.
Paul Douglas, of Weather Nation did some digging: He tells us that while that was the first record low since 2004, there have been 42 record highs since…
