mainstream media

Even 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....
The 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…
Save the planet! Ditch your flatscreen TV! Or so the breathless Telegraph would have us believe. But they got one thing wrong: all of it. Eli Rabbet has the very gory, very detailed details.
I have not done any checking on this (hey, what are blogs for?) but it is definately plausible and if true very important. It is also potentially avoidable. What they are saying, if you don't want to watch, is that they have some inside information on major ISP's plans to radically alter the way the internet is accessed. In short, by 2012, if this comes to fruition, ISP's will not offer open internet access, rather you will subsrcibe to packages of popular websites and pay extra for any other sites you want to visit. Net neutrality is not an unfamiliar issue for most of you out there I am…
0.12% is the number of sunday talk show questions posed to presidential candidates about global warming. (via DemocracyNow) A new study by the League of Conservation Voters found that the five major Sunday morning political shows asked the presidential candidates well over 2,000 two thousand seventy questions in 2007. Just three of the questions mentioned global warming. Another 22 questions were related to global warming. The League of Conservation Voters has launched a website around this. You can read/listen/watch the Democracy Now story here.
"Bright Scientists, Dim Notions" is the title of a NYT article from a few days ago prompted by the recent controversy over scientifically unfounded and racist remarks made by James Watson about the supposedly inherently inferior intelligence of the African race as compared to Caucasians. The article is an interesting review of a few other notable examples of scientific crack-pottery in one field coming from the mouths of scientists who have in fact achieved brilliance in there own fields. There is also some speculation as to why this happens and why it is different when a famous scientist…
If Gore Were Arrested is the title of an article at The Nation online. According to this report Al Gore has been invited to participate in civil disobedience with the Rainforest Action Network and he is considering it! The article finishes its headline sentence this way: If Gore did end up getting arrested during a protest against a coal-fired power plant, it would make front-page news throughout the world and put a spotlight on what some climate scientists and activists consider the single most important priority in the fight against climate change: halting the use of coal as the world's…
Just a brief followup on my recent post about The View and one of its co-hosts' agnosticism over the question "Is the world flat?" They had on the Gieco caveman as a guest (talk about being typecast as an actor!) and he couldn't resist a couple of digs about modern humans with caveman ideas like no such thing as evolution and the world is flat. I don't know if the cohost under scrutiny felt she was being made fun of or not.... (hat tip again to Crooks and Liars)
For most of us who believe in science as a great way to understand the physical realities around us, the question "Do you think the world is flat?" is hard to imagine as something to be asked seriously. But on The View, with millions of viewers, not only can it be asked, but the answer was "I don't know". Seeing is believing! (hat tip to Crooks and Liars) [Update: youtube link is fixed now, pertinent material begins around the one minute mark]
Ok, so this is not my first blog post ever, but it is my first post as a member of Science Blogs. Unlike Groucho Marx, who did not wish to join any club which would accept him as a member, I am very excited to be here and very flattered by that invitation. So some breif introductory messages... To fellow Sciblings, I would like to say hello and I look forward to getting to know you as people and writers. I am already a fan of Tim Lambert at Deltoid, William Connolley at Stoat and Chris Mooney of The Intersection and I have come across many excellent articles from others here, so I am eager…