illconsidered | August 5, 2008So, investigation of anthrax terrorism attacks ends up pointing to lead investigator who then commits suicide. All neat and tidy, case closed. But it certainly does not look that simple after all. Check out that DemocracyNow! story for some intriguing details. (watch/listen/read)
Additional and voluminous material can be found here:
http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/
Lots of interesting reading there.
All that's missing now is for some serious questions to be raised about whether or not it was even a suicide.
They make it so easy to be a conspiracy theroist, where's the challenge aymore…
illconsidered | August 5, 2008Thanks to a find by In It For the Gold, I will now be adding a new blog called "The Way Things Break" to my Google Reader feeds.
I don't know anything about the author, but he has crafted an amazingly thorough and well sourced shredding of a recent Bjorn Lomborg op-ed, spouting more shrill paranoia about "inquisitions" and stifling of free speech.
If you don't subsribe to the blog, I highly recommend reading at least that one article, it alone is worth the price of admission.
illconsidered | August 4, 2008Roger comes down on Junkscience for a refreshing change, usually prefering to disguise himself and mingle with the sceptics. Of course, if you read him carefully, he is not one, he just plays one on "the internets". It is all about personal positioning in a very public debate.
Roger posts about Steve Milloy, who has written a letter to the U.S. government's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) trying to stop certain corporations from "making potentially false and misleading statements pertaining to global warming and other environmental issues".
Of course, the statements he calls out…
illconsidered | August 4, 2008 Sipping from the internet firehose...This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H.E.Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup(skip to bottom) August 3, 2008 Top Stories:Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, Melting Arctic, Geopolitics Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Carbon Cycle, Temperatures, Abrupt Climate Change, Paleoclimate, Glaciers, Sea Levels, Satellites Impacts, Forests, Tornadoes, Wildfires, Floods & Droughts Mitigation, Transportation, Buildings, Sequestration, Geoengineering, Adaptation Journals, Misc. Science…
illconsidered | August 1, 2008Announcing Matt Springer, a physics graduate student at Texas A&M and his blog Built on Facts ().
Welcome to the Blorg!
illconsidered | August 1, 2008Via Prometheus I read this article from the AFP that describes some new findings about land mass in the river delta that is Bandladesh. Apparently it is growing and has been for the last 32 years at about 20 km^2/year.
Roger points out, no doubt correctly, that the climate septics will make great hay with this, as supposedly another IPCC prediction turns sour.
But will they be correct?
Regardless of the extent of the Bangladeshi delta, obviously the only thing that will determine if it is submerged or not in future sea level rise scenarios will be its altitude. 640 square km of new land is…
illconsidered | August 1, 2008Posted just because I love this (besides, it's Friday, let's go dancing!)
Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.
illconsidered | August 1, 2008Michael Tobis has another interesting and thoughtful post up about some of the differences between good scientific work and "Lawyer's science. Always worth reading him.
illconsidered | August 1, 2008I don't know if you all have heard of Chris Jordan before. He does some interesting very large scale art work featuring garbage or consumable goods to illustrate the vast quantities of some of these things that we all consume.
One of his latest pieces is a rather powerful political statement about the Bush administration's abuses of power and human rights, called "We the People"
It is an image of a piece of the US constitution made out of pictures of abused and illegally detained people, abused and detained by the US. The image "depicts 83,000 Abu Ghraib prisoner photographs, equal to the…
illconsidered | July 31, 2008Via the contest notification I posted about here, I just watched a very effective video they say was conceived, written and directed by a 10 year old boy. Watch it below, it is about a minute:
"Save It" Global Warming message by 10 yr old from 1skycampaign on Vimeo.
Not to be critical at all, especially not of a 10 year old who has not contributed to the framing of environmental debates yet, but it does bring up something that has been bugging me for a while. The whole "Save the Planet" meme is a bit misguided and I think presents a weak point for activists in the media circus that…
illconsidered | July 31, 2008Via an unsolicited email, I have learned of a video contest I thought I would share with Science Blogs readers. The contest "gives Americans an opportunity to inspire our next president to take bold climate action." I will quote the press release below, you can participate by producing a video or just by watching and sharing your favorites. The 10 most watched will win.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact
Leah Borkin
Fenton Communications
212 584 5000Lborkin@fenton.com
Climate Matters Video Contest Launched
Brighter Planet and 1Sky Joined By Maggie Gyllenhaal and Others to Bring Americans' Hopes…
illconsidered | July 30, 2008Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy is a new film from scientist turned filmmaker Randy Olsen ("Rediagnosing the Oceans", "Flock of Dodos") and rather than being a film about global warming, it is a film about the making of a film about global warming. Sizzle is also a self described "novel blend of three genres - mockumentary, documentary and reality." Olsen, as well as directing, is the main character who sets out to emulate Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth but this time featuring the actual scientists.
The challenge of combining three genres is avoiding failure three times. The film needs to…
illconsidered | July 29, 2008Even the most mainstream of the mainstream media are finally onto the topic of Peak Oil.
Today the Washington Post came out with part 3 of the 5 part series linked to just above.
There is a nice picture gallery (beware the ad with sound) with very old photos of oil fields etc. My favorite is this one!
Ah, the good old days....
illconsidered | July 29, 2008Over the course of the last few years it has become quite clear to me that the attacks on the science of global warming in general are as often reiterated as they are clearly fallacious.
Initially created in 2006 for my own use as a handy way to reference and reuse the relevant material to rebut the sceptic talking points, How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic has grown into a well received and well used web resource for those willing to argue with and debate the purveyors of scientific fallacies and falsehoods who would deny the reality of anthropogenic climate change.
I am pleased to announce…
illconsidered | July 29, 2008Science Blogs had an event July 15 they called "Sizzle Tuesday" where a few dozen bloggers were given advanced screening copies of Randy Olson's new film "Sizzle". Seems it went well, there are links to 46 reviews on the Sizzle Tuesday page.
I was supposed to have been in on all that but July 15th came and went and my DVD never showed up....well now I know why at least.
I finally received it yesterday, much the worse for wear. It seems that customs had held it up at the border for over a month. I hope they at least watched it a few times! They also assessed its value at over$150 ($151.58…
illconsidered | July 28, 2008 Sipping from the internet firehose...This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H.E.Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup(skip to bottom) July 27, 2008 Top Stories: Wetlands, Green New Deal, WCI ETS, Gore, Melting Arctic, Geopolitics Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, Temperatures, Carbon Cycle, Paleoclimate, ENSO, Glaciers, Satellites Impacts, Forests, Wacky Weather, Wildfires, Floods & Droughts Mitigation, Transportation, Buildings, Sequestration, Geoengineering, Adaptation Journals, Misc. Science, Carbon…
illconsidered | July 24, 2008A new study from University of Southern California was just released, appearing in PNAS Early Edition the week of July 21, showing that run-off from the Amazon River powers a large carbon sink in the tropical North Atlantic ocean. New Scientist talks about it here.
According to the press realease, which I will quote at the end of the post, this overturns the previously held view that this area of the ocean was a net emmitter of carbon.
The river delivers iron and phosphorous to small organizims called diazotrophs which then fix nitrogen and carbon from the air and ultimately sink it to the…
illconsidered | July 23, 2008With that name, the silly post titles just don't quit!
But on the serious side, "This storm, heading for the Mexico-Texas border, is now a hurricane. Our second of the 2008 season, and it's not even August yet" says Chris Mooney.
Read some live storm blogging here, I guess it has already landed.
illconsidered | July 23, 2008The background for this post is The Great Global Warming Swindle and the recent judgement [PDF] by the British media regulator OFCOM regarding complaints of misleading the public and misrepresenting the science. Tim Lambert has a detailed look at the ruling here.
All in all it looks like the ruling was a mixed bag and will provide fodder for both sides of the climate disruption PR battle.
So on to the subject of the post.
Roger Pielke Jr. over at Prometheus rather predictably rises to the defense of Martin Durkin's socially destructive and cleary deceitful propoganda. His point is all about…
illconsidered | July 23, 2008The setup is George Bush, as usual, being an insensitive fool and making stupid jokes about tens of thousands of destroyed lives:
There's no question about it. Wall Street got drunk--that's one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras. It got drunk, and now it's got a hangover. The question is how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments. And then we got a housing issue, not in Houston, and evidently not in Dallas, because Laura's over there trying to buy a house.
The punchline?
The White House says Bush's comments were in line with previous…