(hattip to Nick at terry.ubc.ca)
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Wherein the toughest part was trying to edit down 56 minutes of great stuff into a 20 minute clip (as required by his office). Some great anecdotes here, so do pass on if you enjoy this (p.s. He gave another great talk at TED2010, so am also looking forward to that one).
(From terry.ubc.ca)
A few months back I had a chance to be involved with Dawkins' visit to Vancouver, and here we had a chance to record his speech. Not a bad way to spend an hour on this particular day.
Actually, Richard's presentation is very good (quite humourous at times) and definitely worth checking out.…
I just realized that I've written a few science-y piece with an inherent Star Wars hook to it. As well, it seems to be something that comes up at McSweeney's and other similar humour sites. Anyway, here is a collection of the ones I'm aware of. Enjoy...(From the Onion)"WHEN CELEBRITIES, WHO HAVE…
(terry.ubc.ca is a webzine on global issues that I coordinate at UBC)
TERRY'S WRITING CHALLENGE
There once was a website named Terry1
That wanted to make people wary
Of things going on
In the world that are wrong
Without making it all seem too scary.
So this is a call for submissions
To write or…
The problem with the trick to hide the decline is that you can't separate the two.
Another meaning of trick apart from being clever is something designed to deceive.
How do you tell which is the meaning? You look at the word hide. Hiding something? Is that being clever or being deceiptful? It's being deceiptful.
Now, why is the last 50 years important and why should you switch from proxy to real? It's not the important point.
The critical point is that if the proxies do not show the recorded temperature, you can conclude one of two things.
1. The recorded temperatures are wrong.
2. The proxies don't work and show actual temperatures.
Take your pick
Nick
False dichotomy. You can also conclude that 3. The proxies don't work now due to recent anthropogenic, non-climatic influences, but work in the past when those influences were absent.
Not at all.
You have to assume that GW exists, in order to justify removing the proxies, in order to show that GW exists.
It's completely circular argument.
You can't haul yourself up by your own bootstraps.
No, Nick.
Look, it's actually very simple.
We started getting actual instrumental records over 150 years ago.
We have proxies for that period and for earlier periods.
For 110 of those 150 years, the proxies and the instrumental records matched up well. Then, the tree ring proxies fell away and the instrumental records indicated real rises.
What this indicates is that for most of that time, the tree ring proxies are good indicators of real temperatures, but in the 1960s something happened to make them not good indicators -- could well have been impact by other types of pollution.
We KNOW that the temperature rise is real, and we know that the proxies USED to be good indicators for temperature but aren't any more. This isn't conspiracy, it is trying to be sane about data. And we need assume nothing.
If I had a boiling pan I'd know it was about water's boiling temperature.
But apparently if the pan got so a hole melted in it and all the water fell out or evaporated, it would be circular logic to suggest the pan is getting hotter?
My analogy is terrible, but I like it, so there.