WHRC debuts detailed maps of forest canopy height and carbon stock for the conterminous US
at 6:23 am on Monday, 25 April 2011
http://bit.ly/gnwFRM
Can Science and Religion Get Along?
at 9:32 am on Tuesday, 8 March 2011
“WASHINGTON, D.C.—Can pastoral warnings of fire and brimstone be redirected toward a heating planet in the interest of preserving God’s creation? Or are those who build creation museums hopeless ideologues whose Stone Age ideas should be buried once and for all?
“Those were among the topics of discussion at a seminar here yesterday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science . . .”
So opened an online Science NOW article of 19 February 2011.
read the article
EPA backs burning food for fuel
at 11:57 am on Saturday, 22 January 2011
WASHINGTON — Over the objections of oil refiners and automakers, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday endorsed the use of more ethanol-blended fuel in most passenger cars.
The EPA concluded it is safe to use fuels made with up to 15 percent ethanol in cars, SUVs and light-duty trucks manufactured between 2001 and 2006. That decision builds on an EPA decision last October to waive Clean Air Act restrictions on new fuels or additives and allow the ethanol-blended fuel, known as E15, for use in passenger cars built since 2007.
At the request of renewable fuels advocates, the agency had been deliberating whether the higher ethanol blend could be used in cars without damaging their emission-control systems.
Worldwide extreme weather
at 10:55 am on Saturday, 22 January 2011
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — In the past year, every continent except Antarctica has seen record-breaking floods. Rains submerged one-fifth of Pakistan, a thousand-year deluge swamped Nashville and storms just north of Rio caused the deadliest landslides Brazil has ever seen.
Southern France and northern Australia had floods, too. Sri Lanka, South Africa, the list goes on.
Europe begins to run short of water
at 10:15 am on Saturday, 22 January 2011
PRAGUE, Jan 22, 2011 (IPS) – Half of the Czech Republic’s population could face water shortages because of climate change, a top climate change expert has warned.
The country has become one of the driest in the EU, according to local media, and climatologists say the land, and crucial underground water supplies, are drying up.
Load ‘n Lock Language
Blood libel, eh? Shows what happens to a person who owns a Thesaurus to look up cool sounding words, but neglects to look them up in a dictionary (or in this case even an encyclopedia). Does the speaker know what a blood libel is? Which is more chilling? ignorance? Or whatever the option is?
I am rereading Umberto Eco’s address to the Italian Parliament called On the Press. This is from his book Five Moral Pieces which I highly recommend for all five pieces in it. Migration, Tolerance, and the Intolerable, and Reflections on War are also awfully relevant right now. I then found a free copy of George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language on-line, and reread it.
Just to ground myself even more securely, I also revisited Aristotle’s Rhetoric to make sure I was correct in remembering that most political speech (writing) falls under the special topic of “Deliberative”. The purpose of Deliberative rhetoric is to persuade somebody to do or not to do something. Appeals used in Deliberative rhetoric fall under two heads: 1) worthy vs unworthy or 2) advantageous vs disadvantageous. Aristotle recognizes what centuries of deliberative rhetoric have since proven, that most human beings, especially at the cultural and intellectual level most useful to politicians, “the advantageous” whips “the worthy” nearly every time. What this means is that we would be as wrong to expect a high level of discourse from politicians on the prowl as they would be wrong to try to appeal to the desires and fears of their constituencies to be good or worthy rather than to be rich or safe.
Aside: Our president presented a beautiful example of another special topic: epideictic (ceremonial). Its subtopics are honor or dishonor, or praise or blame. Funeral orations are a familiar example of the type. Most common items of discussion in ceremonial speech are the following virtues or their corresponding vices: Courage, temperance, justice, liberality, magnanimity, prudence, and gentleness. As you view, hear, or read the orations honoring the victims of the Tucson massacre, look for the use of these rhetorical devices. Notice that each topic area comes with a vocabulary. One cannot think or cause another person to think a certain way without a certain vocabulary.
There has been, for a considerable time in our country, a vocabulary of mistrust, anger, fear, hatred, racism. etc. Notice that all of these appeals are loaded with emotional content. In short, the arguments that use this language are not rational appeals to our better selves, but most of them appeal directly to deep-seated emotions and fears. In short they are all logical fallacies, and would not be accepted in any rational argument.
I believe that it is extremely naive to suppose that the language of a discourse doesn’t make any difference. Such a naive assumption negates two thousand years of grammar, rhetoric, and semantics. Hundreds of men and women have written about the influence of language on thought and action, and the activities above (rhetoric, et al), and that certain uses of language can permeate a whole national tone (Orwell chastises England for allowing the degeneration of their language). When the most popular and biggest “news” organization habitually appeals to fear (immigrants, blacks, Hispanics, lesbians and gays, socialists, atheists, Democrats, etc.) and maintain in almost all stories a sense of anger, rage, mistrust, etc., then I believe that the general tone of the discourse will have the same undesirable flavor. When a communication medium concentrates on presentations that are trying through negative emotions to affect what we do, rather than what we know or understand, then they are no longer news organizations, but political/religious organizations. When they manipulate us by preying on our basest and least worthy instincts, they are despicable.
For most people thought consists of internal monologues or dialogues. Of course these thoughts are normally made up of words. The thinker has to use a language, and the language one uses (vocabulary, tone, etc.) is determined by the vocabulary one knows. Most politicians, for example, don’t know the vocabulary of most sciences, and thus, usually make perfectly irrational statements if they feel the urge to speak on scientific matters. I cannot talk intelligently about quantum physics because my physics training was Newtonian with a nod toward Einstein.
If the only political-speak I had heard consisted of logical fallacies based on strong, base emotions, then all my thoughts about politics and politicians would be expressed with this vocabulary. If, perchance, I were an unsettled young man suffering from paranoia or schizophrenia, whose thought processes are tangled in all kinds of ways we would have trouble imagining, and who has shown a obsession with language and how language means — if I were that young man in that environment, might I not act out my fear and paranoia with a gun?
There is nothing definite about this. The young man was insane, and insane people do inexplicable things. So one cannot blame the incident entirely on any or all of the purveyors of political garbage. But it is very unlikely that the incident occurred in a vacuum. The young man, just by being on the street, going to school, etc. was bombarded by this violent emotional tension every day. I cannot but believe that the political atmosphere of the last few years limited his options.
The great shame is that it is much easier to buy an assault weapon with a super magazine than it is to get help for a desperate and ill young man. A major topic for further discourse should be the availability of health care for everyone, and emphasis on mental (or brain) disorders. This would include the need to improve the way we are currently treating returning military people with serious head injuries. Instead, we are getting the same old language — “kill Obamacare”, for example.
Can “Supernatural” phenomena be scientifically tested?
at 9:56 am on Tuesday, 2 November 2010
A recent article on the Cosmic Variance blog has a very nice description of how science might go about responding to claims of the supernatural. This article adds, significantly, I believe, to the discussion of the relationship between religion and science.
Cosmic Variance, 11/10/2010. http://bit.ly/dkhqKG
Death of Aspens Caused by Climate Variations
at 10:14 am on Tuesday, 19 October 2010
GUNNISON, Colo. — Aspen trees, with their quivering, delicate foliage and the warm glow of color they spread across the high country of the Rocky Mountains this time of year, have an emotional appeal that their stolid, prickly evergreen cousins do not.
So tree lovers and scientists alike felt the impact when the aspen in the West started dying around 2004 —
Read article
SnowGoer magazine weighs in on global warming
The November 2000 edition of the popular snowmobilers’ magazine, SnowGoer, featured an article by Phil Michelson, a technical writer for the magazine, about global warming. Because I found it extraordinary I am reproducing the article in its entirety below.
I have numbered the paragraphs for ease of reference in the Comments, where I will analyze the article for its rhetoric, its logical flaws, factual errors and misrepresentations of scientific information.
Global Warming: A Convenient Scam
(1) I’ve been involved in the snowmobile industry for 45 years, and I’ve seen it attacked from all angles, some that made sense and some that didn’t. (2) I clearly remember environmentalists suggesting that snowmobiles packing the snow would make it impossible for moles, voles and mice to move around under the snow cover and they would all die. That concern was studied and quickly debunked. (3) There have been concerns over the movement of snowmobiles disturbing wildlife like deer and wolves. Well, it was quickly determined that snowmobiles moving down a trail didn’t excite wildlife. Instead, the animals simply moved off the trails and let the snowmobiles pass. Stopping a sled, however, would concern the critters and make them take off into the woods, just like a cross–country skier or snowshoer would. (4) Concerns over the sound levels became an issue in the early 1970s. This was a legitimate concern as the growing number of snowmobiles created an annoying din in high–use areas. The Snowmobile Safety Certification Committee (SSCC) established sound level limits and the manufacturers quickly complied. (5) The same was true when a call was made for all off–road vehicles to reduce their exhaust emissions, the first phase of which went into effect for snowmobiles in model year 2006. The industry responded with re–engineered snowmobiles with four–stroke and clean two–stroke engines that met the new regulations.
Carbon Dioxide Factor
(6) The latest attack on motorsports is aimed at promoting the theory of man–made global warming. Since the 1970s, the theory of anthropogenic (man–caused) global warming (AGW) has gradually been accepted as fact by many academics, and their acceptance has inspired a global movement to encourage governments to make pivotal changes to prevent warming. (7) As former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and others have suggested, the burning of fossil fuels and the release of carbon dioxide leads to global warming. In reality, the majority of carbon dioxide comes from nature. The hot springs and thermal features of Yellowstone National Park vent millions of tons of carbon dioxide every year. The same is true of locations with hot springs and other thermal features around the globe. Volcanoes can burp just once and expel enough carbon dioxide and other gases that would take humans many years to produce. (8) Carbon dioxide is the gas we all exhale each time we breathe, and it is necessary for all plant life to create its food through photosynthesis and provide us with oxygen. When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wrote those new regulations for off–road vehicle manufacturers to follow, they didn’t consider carbon dioxide to be a pollutant, but political pressure to support the theory of AGW. forced the EPA to declare carbon dioxide a pollutant. (9) What many people seem not to understand is that there are many other “greenhouse gases” that make up the air we breathe. The atmosphere consists of 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen and the remaining 1 percent is a mixture of argon, neon, methane, helium, krypton, hydrogen, xenon, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, iodine, carbon monoxide, ammonia, some man–made gases, water vapor and carbon dioxide. The percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, to be exact, is 0.0314 percent. (10) Water vapor in the atmosphere affects the percentage of the rest of the compounds in the air. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has fluctuated through the years; the effect of a significant increase would probably be non–threatening to the planet. Only a few of the gases in the atmosphere are greenhouse gases, including water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases. (11) When was the last time anyone told you greenhouse gases were actually a good thing and that life on earth as we know it couldn’t exist without them? Probably never, but without those gases, the heat gained from the sun during the day would radiate back into space each evening, leaving us frozen solid like many other planets orbiting the sun. Plain and simple, we need greenhouse gases in order to survive on this planet.
The Only Constant Is (Climate) Change
(12) I remember listening to Brian Williams report on “NBC Nightly News” a couple of years ago. He noted that the Great Lakes were rapidly drying up because of global warming. Shots of Lake Superior used in the story were taken in my hometown of Duluth, Minnesota, and showed sand bars in the harbor that weren’t there a few years earlier. Well, yes, we had a few years of lower–than–average rainfall and virtually no snow in the winters. The lake level was below average but the body of water was hardly going away. Today the lake’s water level is back to normal but you’ll probably never hear Brian Williams say so. (13) Earth is said to be about 6.4 billion years old, and you can bet that the climate has changed over those years. It always has and always will. One can’t begin to determine what the climate is going to be in the future if we make assumptions based on results gleaned from only the past 130 years that weather records have been kept. Ice cores, ocean sediment cores, the geologic record and studies of ancient plant and animal populations all demonstrate a regular cyclical pattern of Ice Age glacial maximums that each last about 100,000 years, separated by intervening warm interglacial periods, each lasting about 12,000 years. (14) Most of the long–term climate data collected from various sources also shows a strong correlation with the three astronomical cycles, which are together known as the Milankovich cycles. The three Milankovich cycles include the tilt of the earth, which varies over a 41,000 year period; the shape of the earth’s orbit, which changes over a period of 100,000 years; and the precession of the equinoxes, also known as the earth’s “wobble,” which gradually rotates the direction of the earth’s axis over a period of 26,000 years. (15) According to the Milankovich theory of Ice Age causation, these astronomical cycles, each of which affects the amount of solar radiation that reaches earth, act together to produce the cycle of cold Ice Ages and warm interglacial periods. It is far more likely that the earth is headed for a cooling period than a warming period.
Cleaner Is Better
(16) There have been many regulations put in place that have truly improved conditions in our country. Sound level and emission limits on vehicles have resulted in cleaner air and water and provided more hospitable living conditions, not to mention engines that run better, are more powerful and more reliable. For this, clean technology should be applauded. (17) But further government action to try to control earth’s climate will drive up energy costs, increase taxes on virtually everything corporations produce, make internal combustion engines cost–prohibitive and, therein, reduce standards of living while not doing anything to help the planet. Governments of all the nations of the world can’t control Mother Nature. (18) The term “man–made global warming” is morphing into “climate change,” but Gore and his followers are trying to maintain or improve the revenue stream created by scare tactics of the supposed damage man has committed by burning fossil fuels. Fortunately, Mother Nature is far more powerful than man and she has a plan that is way beyond anything of which man has any control.
Phil’s wisdom about a controversial issue
Go to “Comments” for detailed analysis.
Who Are the Science Deniers?
at 9:28 am on Tuesday, 7 September 2010
Hopefully without sounding angry, I would like to briefly explore a rough categorization of people who deny either Darwin, Einstein, or global warming. It appears that they disbelieve for similar reasons, and can be divided into three rough groups.
1) They don’t understand the science or they are simply not interested enough to think about it themselves and they accept the word of someone they consider an authority.
2) They can understand most of the science pretty well, at least in general, but they deny it because they don’t want to believe it. Their reasons may be religious, economic, or political.
The religious denier of evolution, for example, believes evolution theory contradicts the word of God. The same person may believe that God created the earth for mankind to dominate and would not let us harm the earth by our activities. Or they may believe that it is irreligious hubris for humans to presume to want to control the climate.
The economic denier is likely to have an interest in fossil fuels, manufacturing, the stock market, or other issues that might suffer if global warming theory interferes with commerce or the economy in any way.
The non-professional political denier might not want government messing with their life-style by making a bunch of regulations, rules, and limits on things they think ought to be free.
3) There are surely some deniers who understand the science pretty well in general, and who understand it well enough to know that it is probably true, but have ulterior motives for denying it. A preacher might not want to affirm global warming in a sermon to avoid offending or frightening his flock. A politician might deny it because s/he knows his/her constituents don’t believe global warming or are hostile to the idea for other reasons. I believe there are a lot of politicians who understand global warming pretty well, but who are denying it now that we are about to have an election where the lines are solidly drawn around global warming. We have senators and congresspersons who have supported and even introduced bills for energy policy based on global warming, who now deny the science and are voting against bills they previously supported. It looks suspicious when nearly all Democrats appear to believe in human-caused climate change, and nearly all Republicans are deniers.
Opinion-makers are hard to figure. Many of them simply want to stir the pot. Their business thrives on controversy and if there is not a controversy going they will invent one. Some of them have literally millions of avid followers. The climate change controversy was practically invented by them and they restir this pot on a regular basis, using the same old, solidly refuted propositions they started out with. They don’t give a damn about the science.
Voltaire on Religion
at 12:21 pm on Friday, 27 August 2010
On reading what our founding fathers thought on the subject of religion and government, one is constantly finding references to the great rational and “Enlightenment” philosophers and thinkers. One of the favorites is Voltaire, and their favorite work by Voltaire seems to have been his Philosophical Dictionary ( Downloadable for free, in English, from Project Gutenberg.)
I am reproducing the most often quoted section, used in the writings of nearly everyone who took a serious interest the Constitution, from Adams, Jefferson, Madison, to Paine, who quotes large chunks of Voltaire’s “Sect” almost verbatim.
SECT
SECTION I
Every sect, in whatever sphere, is the rallying-point of doubt and error. Scotist, Thomist, Realist, Nominalist, Papist, Calvinist, Molinist, Jansenist, are only pseudonyms.
There are no sects in geometry; one does not speak of a Euclidian, an Archimedean.
When the truth is evident, it is impossible for parties and factions to arise. Never has there been a dispute as to whether there is daylight at noon.
The branch of astronomy which determines the course of the stars and the return of eclipses being once known, there is no more dispute among astronomers.
In England one does not say—”I am a Newtonian, a Lockian, a Halleyan.” Why? Those who have read cannot refuse their assent to the truths taught by these three great men. The more Newton is revered, the less do people style themselves Newtonians; this word supposes that there are anti-Newtonians in England. Maybe we still have a few Cartesians in France; that is solely because Descartes’ system is a tissue of erroneous and ridiculous imaginings.
It is likewise with the small number of truths of fact which are well established. The records of the Tower of London having been authentically gathered by Rymer, there are no Rymerians, because it occurs to no one to combat this collection. In it one finds neither contradictions, absurdities nor prodigies; nothing which revolts the reason, nothing, consequently, which sectarians strive to maintain or upset by absurd arguments. Everyone agrees, therefore, that Rymer’s records are worthy of belief.
[Pg 268]
You are Mohammedan, therefore there are people who are not, therefore you might well be wrong.
What would be the true religion if Christianity did not exist? the religion in which there were no sects; the religion in which all minds were necessarily in agreement.
Well, to what dogma do all minds agree? to the worship of a God and to integrity. All the philosophers of the world who have had a religion have said in all time—”There is a God, and one must be just.” There, then, is the universal religion established in all time and throughout mankind.
The point in which they all agree is therefore true, and the systems through which they differ are therefore false.
“My sect is the best,” says a Brahmin to me. But, my friend, if your sect is good, it is necessary; for if it were not absolutely necessary you would admit to me that it was useless: if it is absolutely necessary, it is for all men; how then can it be that all men have not what is absolutely necessary to them? How is it possible for the rest of the world to laugh at you and your Brahma?
When Zarathustra, Hermes, Orpheus, Minos and all the great men say—”Let us worship God, and let us be just,” nobody laughs; but everyone hisses the man who claims that one cannot please God unless when one dies one is holding a cow’s tail, and the man who wants one to have the end of one’s prepuce cut off, and the man who consecrates crocodiles and onions, and the man who attaches eternal salvation to the dead men’s bones one carries under one’s shirt, or to a plenary indulgence which one buys at Rome for two and a half sous.
Whence comes this universal competition in hisses and derision from one end of the world to the other? It is clear that the things at which everyone sneers are not of a very evident truth. What shall we say of one of Sejan’s secretaries who dedicated to Petronius a bombastic book entitled—”The Truths of the Sibylline Oracles, Proved by the Facts”?
This secretary proves to you first that it was necessary for God to send on earth several sibyls one after the other;
[Pg 269]
for He had no other means of teaching mankind. It is demonstrated that God spoke to these sibyls, for the word sibyl signifies God’s counsel. They had to live a long time, for it is the very least that persons to whom God speaks should have this privilege. They were twelve in number, for this number is sacred. They had certainly predicted all the events in the world, for Tarquinius Superbus bought three of their Books from an old woman for a hundred crowns. “What incredulous fellow,” adds the secretary, “will dare deny all these evident facts which happened in a corner before the whole world? Who can deny the fulfilment of their prophecies? Has not Virgil himself quoted the predictions of the sibyls? If we have not the first examples of the Sibylline Books, written at a time when people did not know how to read or write, have we not authentic copies? Impiety must be silent before such proofs.” Thus did Houttevillus speak to Sejan. He hoped to have a position as augur which would be worth an income of fifty thousand francs, and he had nothing.[20]
“What my sect teaches is obscure, I admit it,” says a fanatic; “and it is because of this obscurity that it must be believed; for the sect itself says it is full of obscurities. My sect is extravagant, therefore it is divine; for how should what appears so mad have been embraced by so many peoples, if it were not divine?” It is precisely like the Alcoran which the Sonnites say has an angel’s face and an animal’s snout; be not scandalized by the animal’s snout, and worship the angel’s face. Thus speaks this insensate fellow. But a fanatic of another sect answers—”It is you who are the animal, and I who am the angel.”
Well, who shall judge the suit? who shall decide between these two fanatics? The reasonable, impartial man learned in a knowledge that is not that of words; the man free from prejudice and lover of truth and justice; in short, the man who is not the foolish animal, and who does not think he is the angel.
[Pg 270]
SECTION II
Sect and error are synonymous. You are Peripatetic and I Platonician; we are therefore both wrong; for you combat Plato only because his fantasies have revolted you, and I am alienated from Aristotle only because it seems to me that he does not know what he is talking about. If one or the other had demonstrated the truth, there would be a sect no longer. To declare oneself for the opinion of the one or the other is to take sides in a civil war. There are no sects in mathematics, in experimental physics. A man who examines the relations between a cone and a sphere is not of the sect of Archimedes: he who sees that the square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the square of the two other sides is not of the sect of Pythagoras.
When you say that the blood circulates, that the air is heavy, that the sun’s rays are pencils of seven refrangible rays, you are not either of the sect of Harvey, or the sect of Torricelli, or the sect of Newton; you agree merely with the truth demonstrated by them, and the entire universe will ever be of your opinion.
This is the character of truth; it is of all time; it is for all men; it has only to show itself to be recognized; one cannot argue against it. A long dispute signifies—”Both parties are wrong.”
FOOTNOTES:
[20]
Reference to the Abbé Houtteville, author of a book entitled—”The Truth of the Christian Religion, Proved by the Facts.”
The Constitution vs Religion
I recently had reason to read what John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, James Madison, and others wrote about freedom of (from) religion. (My reading included the obvious Constitution of the United States, Constitution of Virginia, and the Constitution of New York, for a few examples. Sources of much of their thought on the subject came from John Locke, Voltaire, Hume, Adam Smith, and other members of the “Enlightenment”.
They were all keenly aware that nearly every country in Europe had a “state” religion that was abusive and coercive. There were ecclesiastical laws that were often brutally enforced by whatever church could wield enough power. People were required to give a certain amount of their income to the “established” churches, no matter what they believed. Churches ran schools in which they not only educated their students, they indoctrinated them in their religious beliefs. Believers in various sects fought bitter wars over what one was supposed to believe.
The founding fathers thought that, by not endorsing any church at all, there would be hundreds of sects and each sect would be small enough that it would be unlikely to take on the others for power and influence over government. They did not imagine that one species of religion, Reformation Protestantism, could become dominate enough to begin eroding the freedoms guaranteed by their Constitution.
There were many long and heated arguments over this at the Constitutional conventions, not only of the U.S. but of several states. Jefferson wrote a lengthy piece on the subject that became part of the Constitution of Virginia, and James Madison did the same for the Constitution of New York.
In America, largely as a result of the terrors of the French revolution, we had what was called the “Great Revival” (late 18th Century) in which old-line Protestants of numerous stripes, primarily in the South, declared that the French revolution happened because God had been left out of government. They immediately tried to redress this by insinuating religious doctrine into government documents and laws at every opportunity.
That they were successful is shown by the success of the religious right even today, who can influence law about marriage rights, abortion, stem-cell research, teaching of science, “In God We Trust” on our money (did not become official until 1956, it supposedly proved we were not communists), the pledge of allegiance itself, (In 1892, a socialist named Francis Bellamy created the Pledge of Allegiance for *Youth’s* *Companion*, a national family magazine for youth published in Boston. In 1888 the magazine started a fund-raising program in which they sold american flags to schools, along with the pledge of allegiance. Very few schools even had a flag until then.[http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur10.htm], and especially onerous is the insertion of “under God” (by Eisenhower in 1954, with the explanation that it was a quote from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address — where the phrase “under God” does not actually occur in any manuscript copy.” to name a few instances.
Not only are we very fortunate that we are not governed under the laws of Islam (for an extreme example) — we are very fortunate that our founding fathers fought so hard to try to keep religion completely out of governance.
They could not have expected that their hard won nation, built on rational philosophy, with no supernatural references except to some great force they usually called simply “Providence”, could have succumbed so much to organized religion and what they correctly called “superstition”.
Biological Diversity Correlates with Ecological Opportunity: Surprised?
at 9:28 am on Thursday, 26 August 2010
Jerry Coyne, on his Why Evolution is True site has a quick analysis of a new paper that is turning up all over the place under a headline that is some variant of Darwin Was Wrong, when it fact, the article doesn’t seem to prove anything of the kind.
Read a reasonable and rational review at Why Evolution is True.
Religious Accommodation: Heidegger’s cats?
at 10:31 am on Wednesday, 25 August 2010
Science (or statistics?) meets religion half way.
“I [Had] A Dream”: Religion and Social Justice
at 9:39 am on Wednesday, 25 August 2010
In an August 25 Washington Post op-ed, Martin Luther King III discussed Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally planned to take place on the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington and Martin Lulther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Writing that “it is clear from the timing and location that the rally’s organizers present this event as also honoring the ideals and contributions of Martin Luther King Jr.,” he stated, “I would like to be clear about what those ideals are.”
Read article here:
Government vs Islam: Treaty of Tripoli
at 11:58 am on Tuesday, 24 August 2010
In 1797 the US Senate unanimously approved (only the third unanimous vote out of 339), a treaty with the Barbary pirate state (Treaty of Tripoli). The Treaty was signed by President John Adams and Sec. of State Timothy Pickering. It was published in the Philadelphia Gazette and in two New York papers, and never raised even a letter to the editor in protest. Our nation seems to have been pretty comfortable with it, including Article 11:
“Article 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen,—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”
What do you reckon would happen if the Senate made bold to vote on such a statement today? (“senate make bold” is a joke)
Men are not animals
at 9:01 am on Tuesday, 10 August 2010
This parody of creationist arguments is so close to the truth it is painful to watch!
Critique of Cal Thomas’ article “More Abandon Climate ‘Myth’”
at 1:05 pm on Wednesday, 9 June 2010
“After spending years promoting ‘global warming,’ the media are beginning to turn in the face of growing evidence that they have been wrong.”
Just who are these media he talks about? Given the title of the piece, and this opening, one would suppose that some startling new evidence of flaws in the science was causing “media” to abandon the “climate myth.” However, Thomas does not cite any new science at all and doesn’t actually use any scientific information. He simply refers to some old denier scandals, such as the notorious and oft refuted climate-gate even though most of the articles don’t connect to the science at all, but to public opinion.
That quote is the first paragraph of the article and Thomas apparently didn’t read any further or he would have discovered that the article does not support his argument at all. We learn that the “rebellion” was from a tiny percentage of the Royal Society, who had been selected because they were hoped to be sympathetic to the cause, and asked to sign a petition to open the discussion on climate to more deniers. The article says that only a third of those asked actually signed, and nearly all of them were non-climate scientists and were retired.
The conclusion of the Royal Society? “Nothing in recent developments has changed or weakened the underpinning science of climate change.”
Hardly a groundswell of opinion shift. Add to this fact that the London Times has been a leading denier of climate change from the very beginning. The reference to this article is completely empty of information and is used only to vaguely suggest that the Royal Society is being forced to change its stand on climate change because of something wrong with climate science. Thomas is counting on the reader’s just taking his word for it that the article suggests scientists were suppressing the truth, and will not go to the trouble to find and read what the London Times article actually said.
Thomas next refers to a Newsweek article titled “Uncertain Science”, in the May 28 edition of newsweek.com, which he admits up front doesn’t support his thesis very well. The article, by Stefan Theil (who is not a science writer), is about how the general pubic is losing confidence in global warming, primarily because of other issues they hold to be more urgent, and because scientists have not done a very good job of communicating. No news there. No sudden abandonment of the “myth”.
Next, he drags out the old “polar bears are thriving” argument. According to Arctic Focus, October 27, in a routine re-evaluation of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) the convention recommended that all commercial trade in polar bears will be against the law. The Nunavut, whose income depends heavily on guiding sportsmen on polar bear hunts, claimed that polar bears were not currently under any stress in their part of the arctic, and asked for the hunting restrictions not apply to their territory. It is obvious that the Nunavut have a special interest. In fact, the polar bears may be thriving in their particular part of the arctic. That would not suggest that the science of climate change is affected in any way by this occurrence. Hence, there is no support here for Thomas’ assertion that climate change is a “myth”. He just need an opportunity to say “polar bears” and “thriving” in the same sentence, which is, in fact exactly what he did.
His reference to the New York Times has to be quoted in full to be appreciated:
LONDON — Last month hundreds of environmental activists crammed into an auditorium here to ponder an anguished question: If the scientific consensus on climate change has not changed, why have so many people turned away from the idea that human activity is warming the planet?
When I first read this I couldn’t believe that a New York Times editor had let such an obvious gaff pass. But then, unlike Mr. Thomas, I read the article. The article described a meeting in which hundreds of scientists and others gathered to discuss why global science had gone from being one of the hottest topics amongst the general public in Britain to being taken seriously by less than 30% of the population. The Times writer used two of the commonest of all logical fallacies to help explain the sudden shift. It was a “rhetorical” question with no fewer that two classical logical fallacies!
First it the equivocation on the word “consensus.” “Consensus” means “agreement”, or solidarity of opinion. The question about consensus is agreement amongst whom? The big question is “If the scientific consensus on climate change has not changed, why have so many people turned away from the idea. . . “Scientific consensus” would clearly mean a general agreement amongst scientists. In his very next sentence Thomas declares that there was not a consensus. It would seem that consensus should refer to “scientific consensus” above, but, no, the next sentence boldly declares that the consensus is amongst “those of us who didn’t get an ‘A’ in science”! By using a perfectly common word to mean two entirely different things, he has bamboozled himself. Or is he trying to deliberately bamboozle us?
The simple fact is: anyone who didn’t get an “A” in science does not get a vote in a scientific consensus. A scientific consensus is an agreement amongst experts. There was an overwhelming consensus amongst scientists, and the consensus has grown even stronger as more and more evidence supporting global climate change becomes available.
Appealing to a consensus view for support of an opinion or belief is called an “appeal to authority”. The value of the argument depends entirely upon on the quality of the authority and the relevance of the authority’s expertise to the subject. I think most reasonable people would agree that a “consensus of scientists” should carry more authoritative weight than a “consensus of those of us who never go an “A” in science” in the evaluation of a scientific thesis. Once one has determined whether the authority is reasonable and likely to actually be an expert in the subject under consideration, one must decide how much to depend on that authority’s opinion.
The 20th Century philosopher, Bertrand Russell, provided a good guide to evaluating expert opinion in his little book Let the People Think (London, 1941, p.2):
“When the experts are agreed, the opposite opinion cannot be held to be certain;
“When [they] are not agreed, no opinion can be regarded as certain by a non-expert;
“When they all hold no sufficient grounds for a positive opinion to exist, the ordinary man would do well to suspend his judgement.”
In the case of global warming the consensus of scientists is a trustworthy authority. And the experts (the climate scientists) are in agreement (over 94% at last count — an overwhelming majority).
Next, this big question (If the scientific consensus on climate change has not changed, why have so many people turned away from the idea that human activity is warming the planet?) is, itself, an example of the fallacy called argumentum ad numerum (appeal to numbers) or argumentum ad populum (appeal to the people). It is a logical fallacy that is taught to ever college student who takes freshman English. It is an appeal that is often used in political advertising, as in: “Nine out of ten of my constituents oppose the bill, therefore it is a bad idea.” How many people believe a thing has nothing to do with its truth or relevancy to a current situation. The oceans are getting warmer. Masses of data from all over the world demonstrate it. It does not matter at all what you or I or ten thousand Scandinavian sailors believe. Facts are facts. And the overwhelming number of expert scientists agree that the science behind climate change is good science. According to Bertrand Russell, any opposing view is unlikely.
The big job for scientists now is to try to get those who never got an “A” in science to understand enough about climate change that they will vote for people who can effect the kinds of change that will be required to mitigate the situation.
The horrifying thing about Thomas’ using this paragraph (in which he used both an unqualified) in an argument that is opposite to what Elisabeth Rosenthal was demonstrating in her quoted material, is that he fell for both fallacies! This seems to prove, beyond any doubt, that Thomas didn’t read the article. He took what he thought served his purpose and ran off to write his article.
Thomas obliquely refers to an article in the third most popular newspaper in Germany, Focus. He doesn’t actually cite anything in the article except the mention of El Nino, La Nina, and “shifting winds” as drivers of weather. These three phenomena are thoroughly described and accounted for in the scientific literature. He missed a big chance to enumerate a whole list of popular denier arguments that were featured in the article. (All of the arguments in the Focus article have long been debunked.
He then appeals to an authority, the meteorologist Joe D’Aleo, recently of the Weather Channel. Mr D’Aleo would seem to be a person who is qualified to speak on the subject of climate. Unfortunately, if Thomas represents D’Aleo’s views correctly, he is the person who confuses cause and effect in discussing El Nino, La Nina, and “shifting winds”. Also if we follow the advice of Bertrand Russell, since Joe D’Aleo is in the tiny minority of scientists who deny the importance of climate change, his conclusions are unlikely to be correct. It is fair, in this instance, to mention that almost all of D’Aleo’s publications are sponsored by Exxon, so he also has a vested political and financial interest.
TO BE CONTINUED
Cal Thomas: Sinking ‘climate change’
(The Washington Examiner, June 3, 2010)
Original title: “More Abandon Climate ‘Myth’”
Three modern myths have been sold to the American people: the promise of a transparent administration (President Obama); the promise of a more ethical Congress (Speaker Pelosi); and the myth of “global warming,” or climate change.
The first two are daily proving suspect and now the third is sinking with greater force than melting icebergs — if they were melting, which many believe they are not.
After spending years promoting “global warming,” the media are beginning to turn in the face of growing evidence that they have been wrong. The London Times recently reported: “Britain’s premier scientific institution is being forced to review its statements on climate change after a rebellion by members who question mankind’s contribution to rising temperatures.”
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Sinking-_climate-change_-95418754.html#ixzz0qHnJoV1U
Read the rest of this entry here:
Carbon-Friendly Beef? Look to Africa, Experts Say
at 2:36 pm on Monday, 7 June 2010
(Solve Climate, June 7, 2010)
Studies in Africa reveal that raising livestock through pastoralism is ‘far more’ ecological than crop production
In 2006, a landmark report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) found that livestock production contributes 18 percent to global carbon dioxide emissions — more than automobiles. Since then, meat production has been insistently and ringingly hammered, and the message has been loud and clear: eat less meat to cut your carbon footprint, slow deforestation and keep healthier.
Monckton Chronicles Part III – Acid Reflux?
(Skeptical Science, June 7, 2010)
Guest post by John Abraham
This time, we are turning our attention to a problem that is rapidly gaining attention in the public arena. That problem, commonly termed “ocean acidification” refers to the lowering of the ocean’s pH by the dissolution of carbon dioxide in seawater. It should be noted that the ocean is basic (It’s pH is greater than 7). Ocean “acidification” does not refer to the ocean becoming an acid. It means the ocean is becoming less basic.
Scientists believe that the pH of the ocean has decreased by about 0.1 point since pre-industrial times. This may not sound like a large change, but it must be recognized that the pH scale is logarithmic. On a log scale, a change in pH of 0.1 means that the concentrations of hydrogen ions in the water has changed by about 30%.
So, why does the decrease in pH concern us? In saltwater, living creatures that make calcium carbonate shells or skeletons (oysters, clams, sea urchins, corals, etc) require a pH around 8.2. When pH falls too low, these creatures have difficulty making and maintaining their shells.
Read the rest of this entry here:
Arctic Sea Ice at Lowest Point in Thousands of Years
at 8:58 am on Saturday, 5 June 2010
(Live Science, June 4, 12010)
By Andrea Thompson
posted: 04 June 2010 09:10 am ET
he shrinking amount of sea ice that covers the Arctic Ocean today is the smallest it has been in the last few thousand years, a new study suggests.
The sea ice that normally covers huge swaths of the Arctic Ocean has been retreating and thinning over the last few decades, due to the amplified warming at the North Pole, which is a consequence of the buildup of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere.
Read the rest of this entry here:
Suminia: Life in the Trees 260 Million Years Ago
(Laelaps, May 28, 2010)
When I hear the phrase “early human relative” I cannot help but think of an ape-like creature. Something like Sahelanthropus fits the bill nicely – it may not be a hominin but it is still a close relative from around the time that the first hominins evolved. That is why I was a bit puzzled to see MSNBC.com parroting a story written by the Discovery Channel which proclaimed “Early human relative predates even dinosaurs”! Was this another fossil that would change everything? While not quite as startling as a Precambrian rabbit, a 260-million-year-old-hominin (or even primate) would certainly be a shocker!
The truth of the matter, however, is that the fossil described in the MSNBC story is only a distant relative of humans. Called Suminia getmanovi, it was a synapsid (the diverse group of vertebrates to which mammals and their closest relatives belong) that lived during the Permian in what is now Russia. More specifically, it was an anomodont, or a relative of the tubby Lystrosaurus and the small, tusked Robertia. The attempt to make Suminia relevant to human ancestry, therefore, was a quick and dirty way of grabbing attention, but in this case I think it stirred more confusion than enlightenment.
Read the rest of this entry here:
Ocean heat content increases update
(RealClimate, May 29, 2010)
There is a new paper in Nature this week on recent trends in ocean heat content from a large group of oceanographers led by John Lyman at PMEL. Their target is the uncertainty surrounding the various efforts to create a homogenised ocean heat content data set that deals appropriately with the various instrument changes and coverage biases that have plagued previous attempts.
We have discussed this issue a number of times because of its importance in diagnosing the long term radiative imbalance of the atmosphere. Basically, if there has been more energy coming in at the top than is leaving, then it has to have been going somewhere – and that somewhere is mainly the ocean. (Other reservoirs for this energy, like the land surface or melting ice, are much smaller, and can be neglected for the most part).
Read the rest of this entry here:
On attribution
(RealClimate, May 29,2010)
How do we know what caused climate to change – or even if anything did?
This is a central question with respect to recent temperature trends, but of course it is much more general and applies to a whole range of climate changes over all time scales. Judging from comments we receive here and discussions elsewhere on the web, there is a fair amount of confusion about how this process works and what can (and cannot) be said with confidence. For instance, many people appear to (incorrectly) think that attribution is just based on a naive correlation of the global mean temperature, or that it is impossible to do unless a change is ‘unprecedented’ or that the answers are based on our lack of imagination about other causes.
In fact the process is more sophisticated than these misconceptions imply and I’ll go over the main issues below. But the executive summary is this: