The War on Science
mikethemadbiologist | February 6, 2009'Blue dog' conservative Democratic Senator Nelson's list of proposed cuts from the National Recovery and Reinvestment Act was leaked to Huffington Post (the documents are available at TPM). I've never understood the Blue Dogs. While conservatives are full blown batshit loony (Tax cuts today! Tax cuts tomorrow! Tax cuts fo'evuh!), there is at least some kind of ideology there (albeit twisted). What motivates the Blue Dogs? Do they like the power of being spoilers? Does it make them feel good when they can be the ones to make the deal? Do they not realize that 'stimulus' means spending…
mikethemadbiologist | February 4, 2009In the midst of the Conservative War on Contraception, there's a broader assault by conservatives on public health initiatives. At Salon, Alex Koppelman does a good job rebutting the conservative opposition to vaccination, infection control, and figuring out if someone has AIDS (further fisking is available from IDSA). There's no reason to repeat this fine work, but it really does highlight just how unserious movement conservatives have become.
This mindless backlash reminds me of Michael Fumento, and his opposition to influenza prevention:
In my post, I challenged him to offer alternative…
mikethemadbiologist | February 3, 2009I think the creationist controversy sheds a lot of light on the conservative movement as a whole. So, in the comments of this post by Brad DeLong that wondered how in the hell anyone still seriously argues on behalf of the Treasury View in economics, I remarked that it reminded me of creationists:
....in biology, for example, the profession itself does not lend credence to creationism. The fundamentals, as opposed to the cutting edge (or arguments about the relative importance of various phenomena), are not in question. These are political controversies, not scientific ones. That is,…
mikethemadbiologist | January 30, 2009...such as a respect for the truth. So says Dennis Overbye:
Worse, not only does it [science] not provide any values of its own, say its detractors, it also undermines the ones we already have, devaluing anything it can't measure, reducing sunsets to wavelengths and romance to jiggly hormones. It destroys myths and robs the universe of its magic and mystery.
So the story goes.
But this is balderdash. Science is not a monument of received Truth but something that people do to look for truth.
That endeavor, which has transformed the world in the last few centuries, does indeed teach values.…
mikethemadbiologist | January 28, 2009Seriously. The political tactics are virtually identical. From The Krugman (italics mine):
As the debate over President Obama's economic stimulus plan gets under way, one thing is certain: many of the plan's opponents aren't arguing in good faith. Conservatives really, really don't want to see a second New Deal, and they certainly don't want to see government activism vindicated. So they are reaching for any stick they can find with which to beat proposals for increased government spending.
Some of these arguments are obvious cheap shots. John Boehner, the House minority leader, has already…
mikethemadbiologist | January 27, 2009Our Benevolent Seed Overlords ask "What is science's rightful place?" which refers to a line from Obama's inaugural address where he vowed to "restore science to its rightful place."
Since ScienceBlogling Jake discussed the importance of basing policy on evidence--as well as correctly recognizing that the method we use to solve problems does not shed much light on whether we should address those problems in the first place--I want to bring up one problem that science faces: it is, to a great extent, elitist.
Before all of the TEH SCIENTISMZ R EVUL!!! crowd gets all hot and bothered, what I…
mikethemadbiologist | January 26, 2009And you thought the War on Science was over. Bush appointee Kathie Olsen, who was the deputy director of NSF, and who couldn't give a straight answer to Senator John McCain when asked about human influences on global warming, might have been "burrowed" into the NSF:
How was Olsen permitted to slip inside the NSF bureaucracy after playing such a front-and-center role in the Bush administration's politicization of science? We're looking into whether her case fits the technical definition of "burrowing" -- and what the Obama team can do about it -- but suffice to say that her survival hasn't…
tlambert | January 19, 2009Today's Australian has a piece by Bob Carter predicting global cooling
Global atmospheric temperature reached a peak in 1998, has not warmed since 1995 and, has been cooling since 2002. Some people, still under the thrall of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change's disproved projections of warming, seem surprised by this cooling trend, even to the point of denying it. But why?
Well, look at this graph from my previous post. When you want to talk about climate trends, you need to use at a bare minimum ten years and not cherry pick your starting point.
Carter continues:
There are two…
tlambert | January 15, 2009Today's Australian included a double feature in its war on science. And they were both news stories, not opinion pieces. First up is John Stapleton. Last month Stapleton wrote a story arguing that winter was evidence against global warming. So how does Stapleton write a story about a heat wave here in Australia. Well, it's evidence against global warming:
It's a scorcher, but 70-year record stands
Much of inland Australia sweltered as towns from Ivanhoe and Pooncarie in far-western NSW to Onslow in the Pilbara, Kerang in Victoria and Marree in South Australia hit 45C yesterday.
But even…
tlambert | January 7, 2009Ian Musgrave has written the post I was going to write on Jon Jenkins' article in the Australian, so I just want to emphasize that fitting a degree six (yes, degree six) to temperature data does not produce a meaningful trend line in any way shape or form. Go read.
Note that if the editors at the Australian had bothered to read their own paper just three days earlier they would have known that the Jenkins' claims about the Oregon petition and global cooling were rubbish.
News Limited blogger Grame Redfearn also pointed out the enormous holes in Jenkins' arguments and talked to Australia's…
tlambert | December 31, 2008Congratulations to The Australian for winning the 2008 award for Most consistently wrong media outlet, coming in ahead of Drudge favourite the London Daily Telegraph.
Well, they're not resting on their laurels in 2009. John Stapleton has a new article out before most of the world even started 2009
WHILE the official figures are not yet in, 2008 is widely tipped to be declared the coolest year of the century.
Only if you don't count 2000, the previous La Niña year. 2008 was the warmest La Niña year ever recorded. There is no mention of La Niña in Stapleton's article.
Whether this is a…
tlambert | December 29, 2008I suppose it was inevitable that the Australian would reprint Christopher Booker's claim that winter disproves man-made global warming. It was a global warming denial piece, it was picked up Drudge and the arguments were pathetically weak. So here it is in today's paper.
tlambert | December 24, 2008Josh Rosenau is collecting nominations for the top 5 anti-science think tanks in America. Clearly the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Discovery Institute have a lock on two of the places, but which ones should fill the other three places?
Here in Australia, the IPA is the easy winner as the top anti-science think tank, with staff including Alan Moran, Sinclair Davidson, Jennifer Marohasy and Tom Switzer (opinion editor at The Australian for much of their war on science).
mikethemadbiologist | December 23, 2008By way of Steve Benen, we read that, in response to Lou Dobbs' question of "What is dominant in terms of influencing weather?", CNN meterologist Chad Myers responds:
To think we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant. Mother nature is so big. The world is so big. The oceans are so big. I think we're going to die from a lack of fresh water or die from ocean acidification before we die from global warming, for sure. But this is like you said, in your career; my career has been 22 years long. That's a good career in TV. But in talking about climate, it is like having a car for…
tlambert | December 22, 2008Today's salvo in the Australian is a quote from Christopher "White asbestos is harmless" Booker. Booker writes:
Last weekend, US meteorologist Anthony Watts noticed that something very odd had happened to the daily updated website that shows how much sea ice there is in the Arctic.
Without explanation, a half million square kilometres of ice vanished overnight.
This might have brought cheer to Al Gore and the BBC, who have been obsessively telling us that the Arctic ice will soon disappear altogether. They were dismayed enough last winter when, after reaching its lowest point in 30 years, the…
mikethemadbiologist | December 18, 2008It's truly odd to hear a creationist make a population genetics argument--an idiotic one no less. Rick Warren, evangelist and who will be leading the invocation at Obama's inauguration, says the following about homosexuality:
Warren, a creationist, believes that homosexuality disproves evolution; he told CNN's Larry King in 2005, "If Darwin was right, which is survival of the fittest then homosexuality would be a recessive gene because it doesn't reproduce and you would think that over thousands of years that homosexuality would work itself out of the gene pool."
The stupidity permeates…
tlambert | December 18, 2008The Australian seems to have realized that their delight over Rudd's ETS was a giveaway and they are trying to provide some cover. Today we have a piece from Henry Ergas opposing the scheme:
As for the emissions trading scheme, if the main emitters are not reducing their emissions -- as the Government's 5 per cent target assumes -- why go it alone?
And a piece from Bob Carter with some almighty whoppers about the science.
First, global temperature warmed slightly in the late 20th century and has been cooling since 2002. Neither the warming nor the cooling were of unusual rate or magnitude…
tlambert | December 14, 2008I'm afraid the very silly editorial in the Weekend Australian about how environmentalists hate the proletariat, already taken to pieces by Glenn Albrecht doesn't qualify as part of their War on Science because it doesn't include anything on the science, but they can't resist taking another shot at climate science, so today's Australian has an article by political scientist Bjorn Lomborg:
Obama went on to say why he wants to prioritise global warming policies: "The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear. Sea levels are rising. Coastlines are shrinking. We've seen record drought,…
mikethemadbiologist | December 9, 2008
The Surgeon General urges that creationist dumbitude only be viewed through the StupidVu 9000 or other approved viewing device
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson is a very ignorant man. Sorry, he might get offended by that. Allow me to be more accurate: he's a creationist. Oh boy:
Johnson -- not a Ph.D. scientist -- received his bachelor of arts degree in biology from Taylor University, "an evangelical, interdenominational covenant community committed to advancing life-long learning and ministering the redemptive love of Jesus Christ to a world in need." His…
tlambert | December 4, 2008On Saturday the Australian published a story by John Stapleton offering as evidence against global warming the fact that "the Arctic ice is expanding". Something that happens every winter. Anyway, Stapleton's piece is about biased reporting on global warming. Stapleton is oblivious to the extraordinary bias displayed by the Australian -- he's alleging that it is the ABC and Fairfax who are biased.
The sole piece of evidence that Stapleton offers for this is their reporting on the question of whether global warming is reducing the Southern Ocean's ability to soak up carbon dioxide. Last year…