denailism
gregladen | December 14, 2012But not as severely as they should have been.
The IPCC, as you know, comes out with a set of reports every five years. The reports are written by groups of experts. Draft reports are widely accessible to people who register themselves as "experts" and there is no quality control in that process, in order to keep things as transparent as possible. This means that the worst climate change denialists can simply sign up as "experts" and flood the scientists trying to write these reports with irrelevant and stupid comments, thus, I presume, wasting valuable time and effort. But, such is the cost…
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 | September 25, 2011How do you know when alternative views are real alternatives, and thus should be considered in a "balanced view" vs. when those views are not any longer valid and should be ignored? This sounds like a hard thing to do but it is not as hard as you might think. I suggest two different approaches: "Tipping Points" and "Clues that Something is Wrong Here."
The Tipping Point approach works like this: As the percentage of qualified scientists that hold a particular view diminishes, when it reaches about 25 percent or so, the view should continue to be references but as a minority view. Many…