science denialism
gregladen | August 20, 2015How do you explain a person seemingly legitimately trained in science drifting off and becoming more and more of a science denier?
In the case of Judith Curry I was unwilling to think of her as a full on science denier for a long time because her transition into denierhood seemed to be going very slowly, methodologically. It was almost like she was trying to drift over into denier land and maybe bring a few back with her. Like some people seem to do sometimes. But no, she just kept providing more and more evidence that she does not accept climate science's concensus that global warming is…
gregladen | March 3, 2015And by "me" I mean all the children of future generations.
Willie Soon is a soft-money scientist at Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who has been producing highly questionable 'science' casting, for several years, faux light on the reality of the human caused process of global warming. It appears that most or all of Soon's funding came directly or indirectly from the fossil fuel industry or supporters of that industry. (See also John Mashy's comment below about tax breaks.) Recently the dung has struck the rotating blades and the nexus of denialist 'science,' fossil fuel funding…
gregladen | February 17, 2015Are there cultural differences between those who accept and generally understand the current consensus on climate change science and those who don't? One gets the sense that there is, but it is possible to explore this in more detail.
I took the public Twitter profile descriptions, written by individual Twitterers, from two different Twitter lists that I maintain, and made word clouds out of them. The first is a list of "Global warming deniers." People get on this list when they actively deny climate change science in Twitter exchanges with me (or that I observe). There are 309 members as…
gregladen | January 29, 2015I've recently written about the Serengeti Strategy, a coin termed by climate scientist Michael Mann to describe the anti-science strategy of personal attacks against individual scientists in an attempt to discredit valid scientific research one might find inconvenient. Science Careers (from Science Magazine) has a new item called "Science under the microscope" looking at bad faith criticism of science and scientist. Some of this comes from within science itself, where the term "torpedo" is sometimes used. Rival scientists do take shots at each other in the peer review or grant review…
gregladen | January 21, 2015What is the Serengeti Strategy?
"The Serengeti Strategy" is a term coined by climate scientist Michael Mann in which "special interests faced with adverse scientific evidence ... target individual scientists rather than take on an entire scientific field at once." His invention of the analogy must have been an interesting moment, given the context. In his book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Line, Mann talks about a trip to scientific meetings in Arusha as an IPCC co-author, during which he took the usual side trip to the Serengeti:
After the meeting, I…
gregladen | July 7, 2014Regret Labs is a new science podcast by Aric McKeown and Levi Weinhagen, produced in the Twin Cities. It is a lot of fun. I did an interview with them and it has just come out. You can listen to it here.
We talked about science, science advocacy, climate change, and the use of social media to promote good science.
gregladen | March 4, 2014Who What When Where
Nic Lewis, an unaffiliated self described climate scientist, and a journalist, Marcel Crok, also unaffiliated, are known climate science denialists. The two of them have an objection to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) conclusions regarding an important thing called "Climate Sensitivity." Perhaps unable to get their work in the peer reviewed literature, the two of them wrote "a report" titled "OVERSENSITIVE: How the IPCC hid the good news on global warming," that is available here. They make a claim which is totally incorrect but if it was correct it…
gregladen | February 25, 2014I generally ignore climate change denialists on Twitter. I use The Zapper to do that, and it works great, better than blocking. But sometimes I check my Twitter feed on something other than Chrome on my own desktop or laptop and then I see them, and occasionally engage. When I do, I often see troubling or annoying visual tropes that seem to go along with this breed. Guns, exploitative photos of women, flag-draped symbols, and Nazis. That sort of thing.
So, this morning I put together a collage of images off the Twitter home pages of just the last handful of Denialists who were obsessively…
gregladen | January 18, 2014Copernicus Publications is an Open Access enterprise that provided the ability for an academic entity of some sort or another to create a new Open Access journal. In March 2013 the journal “Pattern Recognition in Physics" was started up and added to the Copernicus lineup. The journal apparently put out a few items, and then, recently, produced Special Issue 1, called “Pattern in solar variability, their planetary origin and terrestrial impacts." The special issue editors were Nils-Axel Mörner, R. Tattersall, and J.-E. Solheim. Readers of this blog will recognize R. Tattersall as TallBloke,…
gregladen | January 15, 2013You may know the blog What's Up With That. It is Anthony Watt's anti-science blog, dedicated to climate change denialism.
A current post reports the finding of life forms from another planet, in a meteorite.
This looks to be a huge story, the first evidence of extraterrestrial life, if it holds up....
This is from a recent meteorite find in December 2012. A large fire ball was seen by a large number of people in Sri Lanka on December 29th 2012, during that episode a large meteorite disintegrated and fell to Earth in the village of Araganwila which is few miles away from the city of…
gregladen | April 16, 2012Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America by Shawn Otto has won the prestigious Minnesota Book Award. The award is very well deserved.
Here's my writeup of the book, and here's a radio interview with the author that we did a couple of months back.
Shawn's book is a critically important analysis of science policy, its potentials and failings, in a world of denialism and politics. As you know, Shawn has been involved with Science Debate (see the big badge on the sidebar?) and the Science Pledge. I'm pleased to announce that in the political campaign that I was recently…