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A Trifecta of Bonus Friday Woo: The SCIO woomeister, L. Vincent Poupard, and a fundamentalist Christian have appeared in my comments

Remember the SCIO? It was featured in Your Friday Dose of Woo two weeks ago. It's an amazingly woo-ey piece of woo that was just perfect for my little weekly feature. Unfortunately, not everyone appreciates my having a little fun with it. For example, one of the woomeisters responsible for the SCIO has appeared on my blog to complain and defend Professor William Nelson, the luminary of woo who's had a hand in not one, but two pieces of woo featured in YFDoW. This woomeister, who signed his comments "Dr. D," is displeased and showed up in the comments to tell me so: ill Nelson hasn't yet won…

Science as a Contact Sport by Stephen Schneider

In the 1960s, the whole idea of a "greenhouse effect" was well understood, and assumed to be an important potential factor in climate change. So was glaciation, and the short and medium term future of the Earth's climate was less clear than compared to now. But the basics were there ... C02 was being released into the atmosphere, this could cause a greenhouse effect, and that would warm the earth. Certainly by the early 1980s, it was possible to make some thumb-suck estimates of how much the earth would warm given various assumptions about CO2, and it was not that difficult to see that a lot…

All Quiet on the Scienceblogs Front

In those days, one of the hardest things to come by was a good pair of boots. Boots were carefully and painstakingly hand made of relatively rare materials. They were meant to last for years, re-soled now and then, re-heeled a bit more often. I myself barely remember, as a child, bringing the family shoes to the cobbler for new heels, or perhaps bringing them back home, acting as a tiny courier and not having to bring any money for the work being done since it was put on an account. But back in those days ... long before my time or even my father's time ... boots were even more rare and a…

The science of lion prides

Although the paper addresses Tanzanian lions, this is a photograph of a Namibian lion Starting some years ago, we began to hear about revisions of the standard models of lion behavioral biology coming out of Craig Packer's research in the Serengeti. One of the most startling findings, first shown (if memory serves) as part of a dynamic optimization model and subsequently backed up with a lot of additional information, is the idea that lions do not benefit by living in a group with respect to hunting. They live in groups despite the fact that this sociality decreases hunting…

What is going to happen in Pennsylvania tomorrow?

The democratic party is polling tomorrow in Pennsylvania. The conventional wisdom says that there is a number of percentage points reflecting Clinton's expected win above which this would truly count as a win for her, and below which it could be perceived as a victory for Obama. If Obama "wins" in this election, things could change quickly with Clinton being seen as heading for the door. However, a win is a win, and even a small margin for Clinton may be seen by the Clinton campaign as, well, what it would be, to be fair: Winning Pennsylvania. Were Obama to actually, numerically, win the…

Happy Birthday Clarence Darrow

Darrow was born this day in 1857. He was a lawyer and a prominent member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). We know him as the defender of John Scopes in the Monkey Trial of 1925. Darrow and Scopes lost that trial, which was the first of many court cases regarding the teaching of creationism vs. evolution in public schools. Virtually all of the subsequent cases were victories for the evolutionists. Indeed, the Monkey Trial was a victory for evolutionists as well, because it is widely recognized that although the judge ruled in favor of the plaintiff, Darrow's arguments were…

It is OK to be an atheist, but not an uppity atheist

When you get a chance (but not right now, only when you have absolutely nothing whatsoever else to do) have a look at Matt Nisbet's latest thinly veiled attack on PZ myers*. It is the usual crap. Atheists are not allowed to express annoyance, disgust, or anger, or to vilify, sillify, or nullify the religious, no mater how whacked-out those religious individuals are. If PZ reads this, he'll probably ignore it, but it is entirely up to him to respond (or not), if he does indeed view it as a veiled attack. I just wanted to point out one thing about Matt's post. The following comprises sections…

Science Is Self Correcting: Nobel Winner Retracts Paper on Smell

A team of scientists including Linda B. Buck, who shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, has retracted a scientific paper after the scientists could not reproduce their original findings. ... In the paper, the researchers described how they produced genetically engineered mice that produced a plant protein in certain smell-related neurons. The researchers had claimed that as the plant protein traveled between neurons, they could map out which neurons in the cortex of the brain received information from which smell receptors in the nose. In the retraction, published by Nature…

Skeptoid disappoints about DDT and the environment

You may have noticed that there wasn't the usual 3,000 word heapin' helpin' of Insolence this morning. That's because I happened to be away visiting family in Chicago over the weekend and I just didn't have time to come up with anything--and I enjoyed myself too thoroughly to worry overmuch about it. In case you're wondering, the posts that went up over the weekend were either written before I left or so short that they took me five or ten minutes to do. Sort of like this post. Unfortunately, this morning I did see something of interest that disappointed me enough that I took a bit of time…

Disgusting

Sometimes I wonder just how people can be so messed up. I know, I know. I spend considerable time writing about fools and charlatans, but this is a different kind of messed up, in which hatefulness is added to the ignorance. Consider this story, sent to me by a reader: "I'm 4 years old," he said, "and I have a sister named Olivia, and I ride my bike all day long." He lives in a piece of suburbia that seems picturesque: the Venzano development in San Marcos. His parents, Gary and Marla Trussle, moved the family here five months ago. "I thought it would be good for the children," Marla Trussle…

Happy New Year 2010!

Well, it's finally happened. 2009 is now in the dustbin of history. It was a thoroughly awful year, which is why hope springs eternal that 2010 will be better. Given that it would be difficult for 2010 to be worse than 2009, it's a pretty sure bet that it probably will be better, but I never underestimate the power of the universe to mess things up worse than they already are messed up. In other words, whenever I start thinking that things can't get any worse, I remind myself that they most definitely can. On the other hand, as far as the ol' blog goes, 2009 was a fantastic year. After around…

Bill Ingebrigtsen, Rethuglican

I live in the 11th Minnesota senate district, and I'm represented by a Democratic incumbent, Dallas Sams. I am not a fan of Sams; he's one of those pro-life moderate Democrats, not particularly progressive (although he did make the effort to squelch an anti-gay marriage act), and if there'd been an alternative candidate at the Minnesota caucuses, I would have pushed for them over Sams. I will be voting for Sams on November 7th, though—I won't even hesitate. His opposition is a Republican, Bill Ingebrigtsen. Ingebrigtsen has been sending ads—expensive-looking (he has raised twice as much money…

One source of inefficiency in American health care

The Buckeye Surgeon educates us with a case. In brief, it's the case of an elderly woman with a clinical picture, including right upper quadrant pain and an elevated white blood cell count consistent with rip-roaring cholecystitis who was admitted to the medical service for her right upper quadrant pain. She underwent an ultrasound, which was consistent with rip-roaring cholecystitis, after which she was admitted to the medical service, which duly consulted the gastroenterology service. Then a CT scan was ordered, which showed a rip-roaring case of cholecystitis. Then the patient was bowel-…

The Australian's War on Science

Last month the National Research Council report on climate reconstructions released its report and basically vindicated the hockey stick. This was widely reported in the media. But not in The Australian. I did a search through the archives of The Australian to see what they had published about the study. They did not report anything when the hockey stick study was published or when it was included in the TAR or publish anything supportive of it. They have, however, published several stories on how it was wrong or fraudulent. For example, Soon and Sallie Baliunas' badly flawed paper was…

Philip Musgrove rebuts Attaran

Philip Musgrove, one of the authors of the paper that Amir Attaran misunderstood writes: The one--and only--point on which Attaran and his co-authors are right is that in the Appendix to the Booster Program document, someone at the World Bank who had not participated in the analysis of the Brazilian program failed to notice that the data for 1996 referred to only half a year. This is because the paper by Akhavan et al., of which I am a co-author, developed a cost-effectiveness analysis and the cost data for the Bank project ran only through half of that year. It was a mistake to interpret…

Big Bang of Wrongness?

Folks are still having fun with Glenn Reynolds' "Let's invade Saudi Arabia and Iran and steal their oil" post. Sean Carroll reckons that the wrongness might be enough to form a singularity. But that can't be right, because the wrongness has escaped to form this post by Lubos Motl: Prices would plummet Sean thinks that they won't plummet because the oil fields are essentially running at full capacity. Sean has a naive idea about the driving forces behind these prices. In 2002, the oil price was $18 instead of $70. Does it mean that the oil fields were running at a much-higher-than-full…

Tim Blair's correction policy

Tim Blair reckons that Australian "leftoid" bloggers are losers. Why? Blair has discovered that those bloggers sometimes make mistakes!. For example, David Heidelberg mistook a spoof of Pajamas Media for the real thing, while Chris Sheil made a spelling mistake. But right-wing bloggers make mistakes too. How do they differ? Well, being weak lefties the bloggers he lists let themselves be swayed by facts and updated their posts with corrections and admissions of error. Whereas someone strong like Blair laughs in the face of mere facts and does not need to correct posts that are untrue…

More Poor Reporting by the Washington Post

The Washington Post continues its sorry record on the Lancet study with this piece by Sarah Sewall: The Lancet study relied on a door-to-door survey of Iraqi households in 33 neighborhoods. The surveyors asked for details of deaths in the months before and after the invasion and found a significantly higher death rate after. But the approach was flawed. War is not like a pandemic; it comes in pockets. And the study itself qualified its conclusions, acknowledging that the figure could range enormously between 8,000 and 194,000. Sewall fails to present any argument, any argument at all, why…

ABC makes lemonade

John Quiggin details how the ABC made lemonade from the lemon that is the Great Global Warming Swindle. You can see the video of Tony Jones' questioning of Martin Durkin here, or read the transcript here. Durkin was unable to offer any defence of his misrepresentation of the science. David Jones, Andrew Watkins, Karl Braganza and Michael Coughlan have a paper in the Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society on the Swindle: In summary the documentary is not scientifically sound and presents a flawed and very misleading interpretation of the science. While giving the…

Jason Soon defends John Lott

Jason Soon is very angry that I dared to criticize John Lott in this post. I wrote about Freedomnomics (where Lott claims that women's suffrage caused a massive increase in the size of the government): Lott doesn't like women's suffrage Soon writes: His basic thesis is that the size of government expanded after women's suffrage. It's an interesting thesis. It may be right or wrong. But it does not follow from it that Lott is advocating that women be deprived of the vote since there are far more systemic and less illiberal views of checking the growth of government than arbitrarily limiting…

Catallaxy's war on everything

Warning: This post concerns an inter-blog fight. Skip unless you find this stuff interesting. Over at Catallaxy Jason Soon has accused me "of generating a climate of fear about" global warming and "claiming that emergency intervention measures were needed to address it immediately". Apparently I'm doing this because I am one of those "advocates of big government" and I'm also just like Graeme Bird. When challenged to support his claim, he came up with something ridiculously vague: I recall John had some argument with someone on Tim's site who claimed we were all rooned if economic growth…

Astroturf case study

In 1995, several think tanks mounted vitrolic attacks on the title="Food and Drug Administration"> href="http://www.fda.gov/">FDA using expensive radio, television and print ads. In an article in the Los Angeles Times Myron Levin href="http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/yqd47d00">wrote: Although the attacks do not mention tobacco, the industry is a major beneficiary. By arguing that the FDA has neglected its basic mission, the critics have made a case against the agency embarking on new initiatives, such as tobacco control... Some of the FDA attackers -- including the Washington…

The Australian's War on Science IV

I only wrote my last post on the Australian's War on Science a couple of days ago and already there's more attacks on science from them. First we have this news article: Professor Henderson said yesterday the report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, handed down on February 2, was "alarmist". He said it had mislead Western governments over rising temperatures, and warned the cost of mitigation measures would be felt severely in Australia, unless it adopted a "balanced" view. ... Professor Henderson said IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri was "alarmist" and his report "a heavily…

Peiser admits he was 97% wrong

In 2004, Naomi Oreskes looked at a sample of 928 papers in refereed scientific journals and found that not one disagreed with the scientific consensus: that humans are responsible for most of the warming in the last few decades. Benny Peiser disputed this, claiming that 34 of them rejected or doubted the consensus. I asked him for his list of 34 and posted it. It was obvious that there was only paper in his list that rejected the consensus and not only was that paper not peer-reviewed it was from the AAPG (American Association of Petroleum Geologists). Despite this, Peiser insisted that…

The Iraq Math War

Robin Meija writes about the Lancet studies: In any case, such problems are common in war zones, according to nearly a dozen leading survey statisticians and epidemiologists I spoke with. "Iraq is not an ideal condition in which to conduct a survey, so to expect them to do the same things that you would do in a survey in the United States is really not reasonable," says David Marker, a senior statistician with the research corporation Westat. Even if the outdated population data led the researchers to a 20 percent overestimate, Marker explains, the revised death toll would still be at least a…

Stop me if you've heard this before

The latest story doing the rounds of the global warming deniers (Drudge, Instapundit, Andrew Bolt, Tim Blair etc ), is this one Michael Asher: Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out. Yes, they have repeated, yet again, that same misrepresentation of Tapping's views. I expect Drudge and co will do it yet again in a few more days. Asher also claims: All four major global temperature…

RNA therapy for autism?

Fellow ScienceBlogger Alex Palazzo has discovered autism quackery. I'm hurt. I'm hurt because apparently Alex doesn't read my blog. (Just kidding; I don't read every ScienceBlog, either, although I do read many of them and peruse the Last 24 Hours Feed regularly for topics of interest.) If he did, he'd know that simply giving useless RNA from yeast in supplements (it's useless because, as Alex points out in detail, RNA is highly unstable and broken down quickly in the stomach to its component ribonucleic acids) is actually one of the more benign forms of autism quackery. At least it probably…

Oreskes and Switzer on The Drum

Naomi Oreskes appeared on The Drum on Tuesday. Lotharsson has written a handy summary. I want to comment on a couple of extraordinary claims by Tom Switzer in that episode. First (at 31:56): "Interestingly, the IPCC models, there is a great deal of uncertainty, because the rate of warming has not increased to the extent that the IPCC models suggested it would in the 1990s -- there has been some tapering off. To the extent that that is true that does lead one to believe that there is more uncertainty. Switzer provides more detail in this column in the Spectator: I can name no better book to…

I think that they might have to rename it the Monckton gallop

A summary by John Abraham of his thorough demolition of Monckton was published last month in the Guardian, along with commentary by George Monbiot. Now Monckton has responded with 446 questions for Abraham. Just to be clear here, "446 questions" is not hyperbole for "lots of questions". There are 446 questions in an 86 page pdf. And what questions they are. Eli Rabbett is already enjoying himself here and here. I decided to pick out three questions to answer and question Monckton on, and let you guys have fun with the rest in the comments. 466: Will you, therefore, now be good enough to…

Wegman and Black Helicopters

Lifted from comments. John Mashey writes: The saga continues... inspired by Deep Climate, I've been examining the Wegman Report in detail. Plodding patience pays off... but the latest is an example of breathtakingly-bizarre incompetence. Many WR references were sourced through Barton staffer Peter Spencer, according to Yasmin Said p.5. I've been studying them, and I find BAD, WORSE, and AWFUL. BAD Of the ~80 references in the Bibliography, only ~30 are actually referenced in the body. Some are totally irrelevant, a 1.5 page review of Wunsch(2006). That is about Dansgaard-Oscher events,…

Update on Katie Wernecke

Last week, I wrote about two teens (Katie Wernecke and Abraham Cherrix) who, sadly, had been duped by the siren call of quackery and were, with the acquiescence of their parents, on the road to extinction. It figures that more information would become available over the weekend (after I had written my article) about both of them, first Abraham and now Katie: Katie Wernecke, the cancer-afflicted girl at the center of a bitter state custody battle last year, is receiving secret treatment from an alternative practitioner at an undisclosed location. "On a condition of receiving treatment, there…

Cellular responses to alcohol

Forgive me, but I'll inflict a few more zebrafish videos on you. YouTube makes this fun and easy, and I'm going to be giving my students instruction in video micrography next week, so it's good practice. This is a more detailed look at what's going on in the embryo. Using a 40x objective, we zoom in on a patch of cells near the surface of a 4-hour-old embryo—this is a generic tissue called the blastoderm. We just record activity with an 1800-fold time compression for a few hours to see what the cells are doing. The movie below displays typical, baseline activity: the cells are jostling about…

A Glimmer of Hope Against a Vicious Adversary

Here's a bit of encouraging news for patients afflicted with the brain tumor known as glioblastoma multiforme (GBM): U.S. biotechnology company Genentech, Inc. said on Sunday its blockbuster cancer drug, Avastin, showed encouraging results for patients with the most aggressive form of brain cancer. A pilot study from Duke University Medical Center, published in the Journal of Clincial Oncology, showed that the combination of irinotecan, a chemotherapy drug, plus the monoclonal antibody bevacizumab produced a significant improvement in the response rate and 6 month survival of patients with…

Best of The Cheerful Oncologist - "The Sales Pitch, Part I"

[Editor's note: While the narrator is off enjoying spring break in an balmy undisclosed location he asked us to reprint some of his old posts. We had actually planned to lease this space to a more intellectual project in his absence but when he gave us those Bambi eyes we relented. So here he is once again.] The Sales Pitch (originally posted in May, 2005) I let out a zephyr of relief as I guided the ol' Model T into the doctor's parking lot: another harrowing trip on the crash-test roadway known as my route to work had ended without me being extracted feet first by the jaws of life. I don…

Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind, by Gary Marcus

Originally posted by Seth Herd at Developing Intelligence On February 24, 2009, at 12:00 PM I disagree with many of Gary Marcus's theories, but I think that his book Kluge is important, entertaining, and even accurate. The book's main thesis is that if God had designed the human mind, He would've done a better job. I'm not all that interested in arguments about intelligent design, but Kluge also has a lot to say about the human brain/mind and even the human condition. I've frequently baffled and offended my students by saying "people are stupid!" Kluge is about how, exactly, we are…

AFP author--Day 4

I'll try to address some of the excellent questions that were asked and points that were raised. Regarding Jennifer's comment that the stated previous incidence of autism of 1 in 10,000 children is inaccurate: You're right. I'll make sure not to use that statistic in the future. Thanks for pointing that out. As you note, the incidence is closer to 1 in 2,500. Regarding the financial impact of vaccines: The CDC always performs a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether the anticipated savings in healthcare costs and indirect costs (i.e., lost time from work) justifies the price of a vaccine…

Confessions of a pint-sized ecoterrorist

I used to play among these tall grasses with my imagination running wild, pretending to be a warrior princess--nearly a decade before Xena hit the air. When I wasn't running, I'd often sit near the little lake by the railroad tracks, or wander through the abandoned greenhouse. Here, I learned to be a poet and a philosopher, a dreamer and a lover of nature. I'd watch the prairie dogs yip as the red-tailed hawks swept across the field, sometimes to catch a snack from the birdfeeder in my backyard. Sometimes, on hot summer days, I'd drag an inner tube down to lazily float down Big Dry Creek.…

Newsflash! DOJ ADA Changes Leaked -- All Animals Set to Be Banned Except Dogs

NEWSFLASH: In this weekend's New York Times Magazine, I reported that the Department of Justice had proposed a ban on guide miniature horses, service monkeys, and other non-canine assistance animals (brief overview of the story and legal issues here, several follow up posts here). In my story, I mentioned that no one knew whether the DOJ had removed the species ban from their proposal after the public hearings this summer. I just got a leaked version of the latest DOJ regulations, and the agency has in fact made the species ban more restrictive. The DOJ's initial proposal would have…

How to Sex a Chick

Sexing chicks is a very difficult task for naive people. Expert chick sexers are over 98% successful while the naive sexers can only do it with slightly above chance performance. Are you sufficiently confused/pissed yet? Ok ok... here's what's really going on: When chickens are born the chicks are examined by experts to determine what sex they are. This important task is performed in order to save money in feed costs and avoid conflict between the male and female chicks (the men are selfish and don't let the females eat or drink). What they do with the male chickens I'm not entirely sure.…

Help Jane! I don't know where to publish my research

Whenever I walk down the hall someone pulls me aside and says "Help me Steve! I don't know what journal to submit my paper to. As a matter of fact, I'm not even sure who does research similar to me. I need to help find people to review my article. I don't know my own field that I'm publishing in!" I tell each and every one of them that there's a new system out there called Jane (aka The Journal/Author Name Estimator) which allows you to put text (abstract, title, whatever) into a little text box and it will find journals and people who have written about your topic. Ok so maybe this is a…

No longer able to take

A friend of mine who finished her residency in June just took a job in a non-medical field. I talked to her over the phone last weekend. She is so happy in her new position, she said, so happy. Sure, I said, who wouldn't love a 9-to-5 job after what you've just finished? You know, it's not even the hours, she said. It's the respect. See, apparently, when you're not a resident, people sometimes appreciate the time you spend at work. People consider your feelings when they respond to your ideas. When you do something well in the real world, sometimes you even get praise. Praise! Apparently,…

Women behaving badly [encore edition]

While I was knee-deep in frozen river water the other day, someone said to me, "Your blog is great, but you hate men too much." Bollocks! I love men! It's the patriarchy I hate. Please regard this entry, one of my personal favorites. Does it not demonstrate my sensitivity to the position of the much-put-upon man? * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Today has been an unbelievably frustrating day in the hospital, but I don't want to bring anyone down. In an effort to promote peace, harmony, and blogular happiness, I'm going to instead write about something everyone can…

I'd had no idea

In my second month of internship, when I was a brand new intern on the medicine floors, I took care of a very sick man with a complicated family dynamic. I knew at the time that this made it unpleasant and difficult to take care of him--so much so that I wrote about it here. I remember thinking, "This is one of many complicated family dynamics with which I will deal. It's good that I'm getting some practice." Several days ago, there was a conference at my hospital to talk about the case, and I attended. I settled into my chair in the auditorium and regarded the panel at the front of the room…

As ornithology is to birds

Today, in another of her cantankerous and directionless "interviews," Deborah Solomon of the New York Times at least got something right. This time, the subject of her bullying is Louann Brizendine, a professor of neuropsychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Brizendine, who in her picture insists on the heeled ankle bootie, just came out with a book about why all women are catty bitches. (Finally!) Near the end of the interview, Solomon notes that while Brizendine draws on other scientists' research in writing her book, she hasn't done any research herself. In…

The switch

"Is someone down?" asked T., who was driving. We were on our way back from an intern retreat day in the mountains, and while stopped at a traffic light, we had noticed a cluster of people standing in the oncoming lane of traffic. Looking out my door into the dark, I could make out three people looking down at a black umbrella. Under the umbrella was a body. "Yeah," I said, "someone's down." I got out of the car, crossed the street, and ran toward the umbrella. S. was close behind me, and T. got out of the car and followed him. A young woman was lying down on the ground with her legs bent at…

Why I didn't finish my spring reading list

There's a meme going around about plans for summer reading. While I was reading Sciencewoman's list, I realized that I was avoiding the meme. See, I didn't even manage to finish my spring reading list, so I'm not ready to talk about big plans for the summer. I had good intentions. I read Dirt: the erosion of civilizations. I bought Last Child in the Woods, and brought it along on my spring break travels. And... I didn't finish it. Here's the gist of the book: kids should go outside and play in wild, overgrown places. Really, they should. They'll be happier and healthier and more creative and…

Scientiae: deadwood, or not?

When I saw there was going to be a discussion of issues facing mid-career faculty at last year's Geological Society of America meeting, my first thought was: "Call the waaaaaaahmbulance!" I mean, pre-tenure faculty have issues. Job-hunting post-docs have issues. ABD grad students have issues. Mid-career faculty, on the other hand, have stable jobs - more stable than most in this economy (assuming the department doesn't get torn apart during budget cuts). Mid-career faculty have the freedom to do the research that interests them, to teach large intro classes without worrying about getting bad…

Shielding Guyana's Rainforest

The black caiman is just one of the endangered species that inhabits the Guiana Shield. Back in November, the president of Guyana, one of the poorest countries in Latin America, offered the entirety of his country's rainforest to a British-led international body in return for help with development. Jagdeo was searching for alternatives to an obvious, but morally objectionable solution. "Maybe we should just cut down the trees. Then someone would recognize the problem," said Mr Jagdeo. "But I want to think we can fulfill our people's aspirations without cutting down the trees." British…

Advertising Slick with Green Paint

I just read a great editorial from E-Commerce Times discussing the grossly inflated advertising claims from businesses scrambling to embrace, at the very least, the imagery associated with the recent push in the environmental movement. ...this of course calls to mind the super-green-men of the new branding circus. As the green signal zips across the globe, the army of re-packaging experts awaits in their shiny green suits, carrying green flags while humming the song of the unicorn. Branding. I remember hearing this term spewed by every advertising/PR major bustling in and out of the newspaper…

Cutting Down Trees to Save the Earth

PNAS will print a study next Tuesday that takes a closer look at the effects of deforestation at specific latitudes. The study suggests that deforestation of higher latitudes may lead to a greater cooling effect than leaving areas intact or implementing afforestation plans. Needless to say, their findings have riled some folks. Part of what they found was already accepted. Forests on and around the equator (mostly rain forests) are exceedingly good at cycling water back into the atmosphere. When the forests are removed en masse, this evapotranspiration is greatly reduced, allowing the…