Denialism
pronald | June 10, 2012Why labeling of GMOs is actually bad for people and the environment « The Berkeley Blog.
This is a very balanced and knowledge-based post by the widely respected agricultural economist, David Zilberman. Thankfully, he brings some science to this hot topic. It is an important read for everyone in California who votes as we will soon have an initiative on GMO Labeling on our ballot.
One small point. Professor Zilberman indicates "Now, what about emergence of resistance to GMOs? '
Actually, the resistance is to the herbicide that is sprayed on the GMO. The more people plant HT crops, the…
pronald | June 8, 2012Conservation Remix was an event with a mission—to foster creative thinking about the big environmental issues of our time. The organizers aimed to broaden the definition of what it means to be “green”. For one thought-provoking day, innovators in diverse fields connected science, engineering, business, architecture, and design to peer ahead to a sustainable future. At Conservation Remix, last saturday in Seattle, we heard from inspiring, thoughtful, and remarkable people about ideas that can truly change the world.
Cassandra Profita and I were two of the many people Tweeting at Saturdays’…
pronald | May 31, 2012
MT The debate on genetically engineered crops (the so-called "GMOs") has begun to grow up. Anti-GMO protests are fizzling.
Why?
Some consumers are embracing an emerging "geek consciousness" – a science-friendly approach that rejects unfounded attacks on basic and applied science and that emphasize knowledge-based agriculture instead of faith-based agriculture.
Also, genetic modification is no longer new. GM crops have been grown commercially around the world for more than a decade, and have been eaten by millions with no harm to human health or the environment. Scary health effects that…
pronald | May 30, 2012Here is a link to a an interesting new book by Julia Gordon. She just graduated from Washington University in St Louis as a graphic design major, and for her senior thesis she designed an informational book, using the chapter "Green Genes" from Stewart Brand's book "Whole Earth Discipline". For this project she used his text as the body for the book, and created additional images, graphics, maps, captions and footnotes to accompany the text.
When given the assignment to design an informational book for her thesis, she was excited to base it on Green Genes because she found it "eye opening,…
denialism | May 17, 2012Many of the climate change denialist sites have been up in arms by comparisons of climate change denial to holocaust denial. In particular Marc Morano at climate depot has had multiple articles attacking and expressing hysterical outrage at these comparisons.
We know they don't like the comparison, but the question is, is it apt?
One article in particular from Micha Tomkiewicz, who is himself a holocaust survivor, has earned the ire of climate denialists around the web because in addition to the comparison of the tactics of global warming denialists and holocaust deniers, he additionally…
stoat | May 17, 2012From BigCityLib comes this gem from Bast: Joe Bast's Response to Scholars Feeling Pressure After Attacks on Heartland.
Since this is denial-world, everything is appropriately topsy-turvey. The "attacks" he is talking about are not plural but singular, and is the disastrous billboard campaign, which even Heartland has admitted was a mistake - though not very sincerely, and Bast clearly doesn't agree; he is still defending them here.
Bast is writing to his pet scholars, and begins
For 28 years, The Heartland Institute has tried to stay "above the fray," producing high-quality research and…
denialism | March 26, 2012He had to realize Nisbett's framing was worthless and write a whole book on defective Republican reasoning to realize it but it sounds like Chris Mooney has come around to the right way to confront denialism:
The only solution, then, is to make organized climate denial simply beyond the pale. It has to be the case that taking such a stand is tantamount to asserting that smoking is completely safe, no big deal, go ahead and have two packs a day.
Sounds a little bit like what I wrote in 2007 when I pointed out denialists should not even be debated:
The goal instead must be to enforce standards…
denialism | March 1, 2012About a month ago I asked if denialism is truly more frequent on the right or is it that the issues of the day are ones that are more likely to be targets of right wing denialism? After all, one can think of slightly more left wing sources of denialism like GMO paranoia, 9/11 conspiracies, altie-meds, and toxin fear-mongering. The mental heuristics that cause people to believe, and then entrench themselves, in nonsense seem generalizable to humanity rather than just those attracted to conservative politics. Why should those who identify as liberal be any different? Wouldn't they just…
denialism | February 16, 2012Everyone is writing about desmogblog's leak of internal documents from the Heartland Institute. But to me I think leaked documents are nothing compared to their fully public, out-in-the-open history of being openly contemptuous of science, funding cranks with advanced degrees (though not in climate) to disparage the field, and their hosting of denialpalooza.
James rightly points out that much hay is being made of a single sentence that, could "easily be the result of sloppy editing, or at perhaps a Freudian slip." This is of course is a sentence describing a curriculum developed by the HI…
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, 2012The Wall Street Journal has published one of the most offensive, untruthful, twisted reviews of what scientists think of climate change; the WSJ Lies about the facts and twists the story to accommodate the needs of head-in-the-sand industrialists and 1%ers; The most compelling part of their argument, according to them, is that the editorial has been signed by 16 scientists.
The scientists who signed to WSJ editorial are:
Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the…
denialism | January 23, 2012Today's NYT has Thomas Edsall's What the Left Get's Right, the follow up piece to last week's What the Right Get's Right, and what's fascinating is how even conservative commentators think liberals get science right more often than conservatives. Or at least they are less likely to view it ideologically:
A few conservative concessions to liberalism's strengths were made without qualification; others were begrudging. Nonetheless, in the conservative assessment, common themes emerge:
Liberals recognize the real problems facing the poor, the hardships resulting from economic globalization and…
pharyngula | January 22, 2012The requirements to be a TV weather presenter are fairly slack: an undergraduate degree with some training in meteorology is preferred, but not required, and the main skills seem to be looking presentable with nice hair, being able to dance with a green screen, and being glib and cheerful. So I guess it's not surprising that the "scientists" leading the charge against global warming are climate-denier TV weathermen. That link takes you to a long list of quotes from various television weather personalities — including a couple from Minneapolis — who all deny reality and use their position as…
denialism | January 14, 2012Being inactive for the last couple of years I still read about denialism being mentioned in some interesting places. Two in particular I thought I share.
Peter Gleick in Forbes write on "The Rise and Fall of Climate Change Denial is interesting largely because it's in Forbes. And predictably, for publishing in a right-wing magazine, the comments are basically 100% against Gleick, a national academy member, accusing him of everything from incompetence to dishonesty. It's actually pretty remarkable. But at least the scientific viewpoint is starting to infiltrate the literature of the right…
denialism | January 6, 2012When Duesberg was recently given space in Scientific American I think the blogosphere was rightly chagrinned that they would give space to a crank whose crackpot ideas are thought to be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands. But it seemed at the time he had been keeping his denialism on the down low, maybe appearing to have given up on his crank view that HIV does not cause AIDS. Not so anymore. He's back, and has secured publication of a paper denying HIV/AIDS in an Italian Journal.
The title, AIDS since 1984: No evidence for a new, viral epidemic - not even in Africa, seems…
gregladen | December 7, 2011I'm enjoying James Lawrence Powell's book "The Inquisition of Climate Science" Powell's book specifically addresses the clilmate change denialist movement and the global warming deniers themselves, and does so severely. He documents and discusses who is paying for climate change denialism documents the lack of scientific credenntials of the denialists, and outlines and describes in detail events such as "climate gate."
The book is exceptionally well documented and could actually be used as a supplementary text in a class on science policy or science and society.
Author's bio from the…
gregladen | November 13, 2011The British Medical Journal has published an editorial calling for a Parliamentary investigation realted to Andrew Wakefield's dishonesty:
It is now more than 18 months since the UK's General Medical Council found Andrew Wakefield guilty of dishonesty and other serious professional misconduct; and it is nearly a year since the BMJ concluded that his now retracted Lancet paper linking the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine with autism and bowel disease was an "elaborate fraud." At that time, January 2011, we called on Wakefield's former employer, University College London (UCL), to…
illconsidered | November 8, 2011For those of you who have not seen this at Deltoid yet, below is the hilarious "Denial Tango" from the Aussie group Men With Day Jobs.
Very clever and well articulated! I think it applies well to quite a few folks around these parts...
gregladen | October 13, 2011...I'd like to talk about an observation I made while writing for a now defunct monthly rag about global warming back in the early 1990s, and have always wanted to pursue formally, as a research project. Since I've not gotten to it yet, I thought it might be fun to outline the idea more informally, to give you, literally, a sketch or two that makes the point....
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pronald | August 17, 2011Generalizing about "GMOs" is almost completely useless. Each food we eat and each farm is so different that the genetic technologies and farming practices needed to optimize sustainability must be different too. That is why each crop (GE or conventional) must be looked at on a case-by-case basis, using science-based evidence.
I recently wrote a short Scientific American guest blog post for their "Passions of Food" day examining how cotton genetically engineered to express the organic protein Bt is affecting agriculture today. Thanks to Bora Zivkovic, former ScienceBlogger, for this…