Alt-Truth
gregladen | November 10, 2012I am sure that by now you know about ScienceDebate Dot Org. It was set up for the 2008 US presidential election by a bunch of people including my friend Shawn Otto. The idea is to simultaneously push for an actual debate focussed on science and science policy as part of the presidential election process, and to make people realize that such a thing, which is not happening, is important.
We've had a couple of elections now that were almost overshadowed by major storms, the most recent, Sandy, being as much of a direct effect of Global Warming (a scientific issue) as any large storm ever was,…
gregladen | November 7, 2012The term “War on Science” comes from multiple sources, one being Chris Mooney’s book “The Republican War on Science” (see below) and another, the made up “War on Christmas,” a term attributed to Bill O’Really. Throw in a little “Culture War” rhetoric and I think we have a good basis for the origin of the term. The term “War on X” has been in used for decades if not longer, when some large perhaps organized group of people or institutions takes up the task of shutting down some thing or another. It does not mean an actual war with generals and troops and bullets, but the metaphor “war” is…
gregladen | November 5, 2012This is an interview at Atheists Talk (TV), an update on the war on science, and a rare opportunity to see me wearing a suit.
The first few seconds are sound free; do not adjust your television set.
I mentioned the NCSE, here's their web site.
Here's a couple of books related to the topic:
Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future by Chris Mooney and Sheril
Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America by Shawn Otto
Something on crying babies and vaccination is here, and something on milk allergy is here.
Minnesota Atheists YouTube channel is…
gregladen | September 7, 2012There has been concern over the safety of Gardasil (and other?) HPV vaccines. This concern emanates from the usual Anti-Vax sources. The Anti-Vax people are wrong, often to the point where we have to regard them as delusional, about everything they say. If you find yourself leaning towards thinking that they have a point, you need to check yourself because they don't. There are good reasons why parents worry about vaccines (see "The vaccination does make the baby cry, so why do it?"), but in the final analysis (or even way before the final analysis) these worries are falsehoods. I would…
gregladen | July 24, 2012In 2008, John O'Sullivan wrote a novel called "Vanilla Girl," which is actually a big giant blog post on blogger.com, about "A teacher's struggle to control his erotic obsession with a schoolgirl."
Blogger "About" Page of John O'Sullivan, "Vanilla Girl" author and climate change denialist. O'Sullivan was acquitted of sex related charges with exculpatory testimony supplied by his 17 year old step-daughter.
A few years earlier, it appears, the same John O'Sullivan, who was a teacher, was cleared of charges that he had sent 36 "sex txts" to a 16 year old girl within a three week period,…
gregladen | March 23, 2012Potholer54 has written a letter to Monkton that you will want to read, and he's also made a video that you will want to see. First the letter (from here):
Open letter to Christopher Monckton - please return to the debate
Dear Mr. Monckton,
A couple of months ago you entered into a debate with me on wattsupwiththat.com (See "Update on the Monckton-Hadfield debate" - http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/07/update-on-the-monckton-hadfield-d…) about alleged errors in your public lectures - allegations that I made in a series of videos on my YouTube channel "Potholer54". But as soon as I presented…
gregladen | March 21, 2012There is an interesting development in the area of Aids Denialism (and by extention climate change denialism and the rest of it) in Italy:
The University of Florence has launched an inquiry into the teaching activities of an academic who assisted on a course that denies the causal link between HIV and AIDS, and supervised students with dissertations on the same topic.
The Italian university's internal 'special commission' will examine the "teaching behaviour and responsibility" of molecular biologist Marco Ruggiero, a university spokesman told Nature.
Details and more here.
gregladen | February 28, 2012A report detailing an audit of a course called "Climate Change: An Earth Sciences Perspective" (ERTH 2402), taught at Carleton University, has been compiled by a team of concerned individuals and was released a few minutes ago. From the report:
The course... provides an unbalanced and, in many cases, factually inaccurate view of anthropogenic global warming which detracts from the high quality of teaching at Carleton University. We highlight 142 incorrect or equivocal claims and cite the relevant scientific literature to correct those statements. While the principle of academic freedom…
gregladen | February 14, 2012This seems to be fairly big news. The Heartland Institute is a conservative and libertarian "think" tank that cut its teeth on denying the dangers of cigarette smoking back in the 1990s. These days the Heartland Institute seems to be focused on Anthropogenic Climate Change Denialism and Science Denialism in general.
A piece of one of the revealed documents suggesting that the Heartland Institute wants to "dissuade teachers from teaching science."
Well, just a few hours ago, members of the climate change science, journalism, and blogging community received an interesting Valentine's Day…
gregladen | January 27, 2012An anti-science climate denialist "think" tank (the word "think" clearly does not actually applyl here) is said to have received a big chunk of money from some anonymous source, and an effort has been made to find out who that source is. This is all happening in Britain where all the legal systems are strange and alien to me. Here's a teaser and a link to the details.
THERE IS "enormous public interest" in naming the climate sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation's seed donor and "a pressing need to scrutinise" any links he has with the oil and coal industry, an information tribunal…
gregladen | December 13, 2011Acupuncture is the ancient East Asian practice of poking people with needles in specific places and in specific ways in order to produce any one of a very wide range of results that could generally be classified as medicinal or health related. I don't know much about it, but Wikipedia tells us:
Its general theory is based on the premise that bodily functions are regulated by the flow of an energy-like entity called qi. Acupuncture aims to correct imbalances in the flow of qi by stimulation of anatomical locations on or under the skin called acupuncture points, most of which are connected by…
gregladen | December 11, 2011Skeptics love to hate CAM. And often, with good reason. Alternative medicines or medical treatments, as is often pointed out, become "mainstream" when the available science suggests that they work, so it is almost axiomatic that "alternative" means "unproven" and it is probably almost always true that the kinds of things that end up as "alternatives" come from sources with poor track records. For instance, one of the most common forms of alternative medicine used over the last several decades is Extra X where X is some substance we know the body uses, and that we know a deficiency of is…
gregladen | November 29, 2011Bret Stephens does not mind looking like an idiot. Today, he published a column in the Wall Street Journal that is full of snark and devoid of thought, ill considered, misleading, moronic and in the end, embarrassing. It is a classic case of irresponsible journalism. Someone sent me the link and I swear, I checked twice while reading the piece to see if I had landing on TheOnion.com. I can't believe the Wall Street Journal published this.
I think it would have been impossible for a paper like the WSJ to publish a piece like this had main stream media not gotten rid of most of their science…
gregladen | November 19, 2011This is a bit long but you will benefit from watching all of it. It gets extra hot at 31:30.
I love the look on that woman's face at 31:38 and again at 31:47. LOL.
This particular member of congress, Don Young from Alaska, needs to get unelected. Frank J. Vondersaar seems to be the guy running against him, and this seems to be his web site. You can donate money to help Frank's campaign here.
I was originally made aware of this testimony from a blog post at Get Energy Smart blog, HERE. Please go check that out.
gregladen | October 20, 2011Urban areas can be warmer than surrounding non-urban areas because there is a lot of combustion, pavement and other structure can collect solar heat and retain it for a while, and other factors. It is not uncommon to look at a weather map where conditions for precipitation are marginal, and everywhere but the urban zone, or only the urban zone and nothing else, is showing a weather phenomenon. Because people and airports (where weather is very important) are located in or very near urban areas, it stands to reason that a lot of the data used to estimate global temperatures would be affected…
gregladen | September 19, 2011In order to do good climate science, you have to understand and control for the sources of variation in the system. In any system that involvs metric change over time, there are four sources of variation:
1) Measurement or observational error (goofs, inaccuracies, bad calibration). The speed was 23 feet per second but the instrument read 22.5 or the observer wrote down 32 by accident, etc.
2) Internal (secular, natural) variation. If A causes changes in B over time, variation in B that would have happened anyway don't count in understanding the A-B link.
3) Causal relationship (causal…
gregladen | September 19, 2011I want to say a word about what a proxyindicator is. And isn't.
I noticed that the term is not in some, perhaps many, dictionaries, so I guess this leaves me free to do what I want with it! But wait, the term "proxy" is of course in the dictionary. It is an ancient short version of the word "procuracy" which is the authority to act for another. Thus, a proxy vote. Proxyindicator (or proxy indicator) is a term widely used in climate science though it is used in many other fields as well to refer to a measurement that is indirect, or more accurately, that stands in for the direct measurement…
gregladen | September 6, 2011The question of whether clouds are the cause of global warming has been settled:
No, they are not.
The question was raised in July in a paper by Spencer and Braswell, published in the Peer Reviewed Journal Remote Sensing called "On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth's Radiant Energy Balance." (See this.) Spencer and Braswell's paper claimed that the Earth's temperature was not really rising due to fossil carbon in the form of CO2 being pushed into atmosphere. Rather, they said, any variation we see in global temperature is a result of natural…
gregladen | August 22, 2011The Inspector General of the National Science foundation has completed an investigation into falsifying research data, concealing or deleting emails or other data, misusing privileged information, and seriously deviating form accepted practices in relation to climate change research by climate scientist Michael Mann. This investigation, just completed, confirms what has been determined by other previous investigations:
An Investigatory Committee of faculty members with impeccable credentials has unanimously "determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in,…
gregladen | July 29, 2011Sunday's radio show is going to be a very special treat for all of us. Mike Haubrich and I are going to be speaking with Kevin Zelnio and John Abraham about climate change, global warming, and science vs. denialism.
John Abraham is an expert on Heat Transfer and Fluid Mechanics and stirred up a bit of trouble (in a good way) when he responded to a presentation made by AGW Denialist Chrisopher Monckton at one of our local TRC's1, Bethel University. Kevin Zelnio is a former Sbling, a science journalist, and member of the blogging teams at Scientific American Blogs and Deep Sea News. He has…