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
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.”
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:
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:
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:
What we can learn from studying the last millennium (or so)
(Real Climate, May 15, 2010)
With all of the emphasis that is often placed on hemispheric or global mean temperature trends during the past millennium, and the context they provide for interpreting modern warming trends, one thing is often lost in the discussion: space matters as much as time. Indeed, it is likely that the regional patterns of past climate changes, rather than simple hemispheric or global mean temperature trends, will best inform our understanding of the dynamical mechanisms involved. Since much of the uncertainty in future projections relates to regional climate change impacts, it makes particular sense to focus on those changes in the past that involve regional changes and the underlying mechanisms behind them.
For instance, melting of the cryosphere (and consequent rises in sea level), subtle shifts in drought and rainfall patterns, and extreme events, are all regional effects that could be important threats to ecosystems and our environment. Such changes are often associated with phenomena like ENSO or the North Atlantic Oscillation. Yet there remain large uncertainties about how such mechanisms will respond to anthropogenic climate change.
Read the rest of this entry here.
New Climate Physics forum link added to arguendo
Falling Off the Climate Reporting ‘Balance’ Beam
http://www.climatecentral.org/breaking/blog/falling_off_the_climate_reporting_balance_beam
It was a straightforward study about a unique 114-year climate record from a weather observation station in New York, yet you wouldn’t know it from the headline in the New York section of The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on May 6: “Heated Exchange Over Climate.” The story, by Paul Glader, glaringly demonstrates one of the most pernicious pitfalls of climate science reporting, known as false equivalency or “balance as bias”, in which scientific experts are pitted against one another in a scientific jousting match.
(Climate Central, May 6, 2010)
Water levels down in Saint Lawrence seaway
at 11:46 am on Thursday, 13 May 2010
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100510/wl_canada_afp/environmentcanadawater
MONTREAL (AFP) – Seasonal water levels in the Saint Lawrence seaway – a major North American shipping corridor — have reached their lowest point in 40 years, the Quebec hydro center warned Friday.
This follows one of the warmest Canadian winters on record, in which very little snow fell.
Hydrometric meters showed an average of 7,000 cubic meters per second (247,200 cubic feet per second) flowing past the island city of Montreal, much lower than the norm of 10,000 cubic meters per second (353,100 cubic feet per second) for this time of year.
(Yahoo! News, May 10, 2010)
Do religious Americans accept evolution?
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/religion-and-evolution/
Well, now I’ve seen it all. There are many ways that accommodationists try to show that faith and science are compatible, but never before have I seen a scientist with this aim play so fast and loose with the data. Dr. Joel Martin, the Curator of Crustacea and chief of the Division of Invertebrate Studies at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, has written an astonishing article in the journal Evolution: Education and Outreach, “Compatibility of major U.S. Christian Denominations with Evolution”. (I can’t resist adding that besides his upcoming book, The Prism and the Rainbow: a Christian Explains Why Evolution is not a Threat, he also edited Crustacean Sexual Biology.)
(Why Evolution Is True, May 11, 2010)
Report: Climate change could render much of world uninhabitable
Hot enough for you?
A worst-case scenario of global warming, in which temperatures would soar some 21 degrees, is that much of the world may simply become too hot for humans to live in, according to new research published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“We found that … a 21-degree warming would put half of the world’s population in an uninhabitable environment,”says study co-author Matthew Huber of Purdue University.
(USA Today’s Science Fair, May 10, 2010)
109 Skeptic Arguments and What the Science Says
Here is a summary of what the science says on each skeptic argument. You can also view the arguments sorted by taxonomy or a print-friendly version.
Read the rest of this entry here.
National Academies develop policy advice, based on science, to guide the nation’s response to climate change.
http://americasclimatechoices.org/
View this video to learn about the National Academies America’s Climate Choices study from the experts who are working on it.
In response to a request from Congress, the National Academies have launchedAmerica’s Climate Choices, a suite of studies designed to inform and guide responses to climate change across the nation. Experts representing various levels of government, the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and research and academic institutions have been selected to serve on four panels and an overarching committee.
The Summit on America’s Climate Choices, held March 30-31, 2009 in Washington, D.C., provided an opportunity for study participants to interact with major thought leaders and key constituencies to frame the questions and issues that the study will address.
Four panels of experts will release consensus reports in 2010:
- Panel on Limiting the Magnitude of Future Climate Change
- Panel on Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change
- Panel on Advancing the Science of Climate Change
- Panel on Informing Effective Decisions and Actions Related to Climate Change
The Committee on America’s Climate Choices will issue a final report in 2010 that will integrate the findings and recommendations from the four panel reports and other sources to identify the most effective short-term actions and most promising long-term strategies, investments, and opportunities for responding to climate change… .
Do chimps say “no” by shaking their heads?
at 8:02 am on Friday, 7 May 2010
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/05/06/do-chimps-say-no-by-shaking-their-heads/
When people study primate behavior with the idea of relating it to human behavior, standards of evidence often seem quite low. There’s a lot of publicity and attention to be gotten by detecting the roots of our behavior in the other apes that are our relatives. Who among us hasn’t been fascinated by going to the zoo, watching a chimp, and saying, “Wow–they’re so much like us!”
This is not to deny that some of our behaviors descend from those of apey ancestors. They do, of course, and Darwin was the first to write about it. But we also have culture that can rapidly transmit un-apelike behaviors across diverse groups (e.g., dancing and making music).
(Why Evolution is True, May 6, 2010)
Futuyma reviews What Darwin Got Wrong
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/05/06/futuyma-reviews-what-darwin-got-wrong/
Crack evolutionary biologist Douglas Futuyma (from SUNY Stony Brook) assesses Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini’s What Darwin Got Wrong in this week’s Science. It would be an understatement to say that the book doesn’t fare too well: the review is called “Two critics without a clue.”
These theories of natural selection work: they successfully predict research outcomes. John Werren predicted and experimentally confirmed that the first of two female parasitic wasps who lay eggs in a host insect lays a more female-biased brood than the second,. . .
(Why Evolution is True, May 6, 2010)
Review of U.N. Climate Panel Begins
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/review-of-u-n-climate-panel-begins/?nl=opinion&emc=tyb1
The Interacademy Council has named the 12-member panel that will assess the activities and approach of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and issue a report by October. The committee, led by Harold Shapiro, a past president of Princeton and the University of Michigan, contains some scientific luminaries, including the Nobelist Mario Molina and Syukuro Manabe, one of the pioneers in efforts to simulate the climate system using computers.
But the committee lacks specialists in social sciences, the history of science or science-based policy making. I see this as a gap given that some of the most important issues related to the past performance of the climate panel and its utility going forward concern the interface between its scientific assessments, the governments that have final say over the reports and the wider audience.
(NYTimes.com., May 3, 2010)
Bill McKibben on Cochabamba, Congress and Eaarth
Twenty years ago, environmentalist Bill McKibben wrote The End of Nature, but his warnings went largely unheeded.
Now, as people are grappling with the unavoidable effects of climate change and confronting an earth that’s suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding and burning in unprecedented ways, Bill McKibben is out with a new book about what we have to do to survive this brave new world.
(Solve Climate, April 18, 2010)
The science of climate change: The clouds of unknowing
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15719298
FOR anyone who thinks that climate science must be unimpeachable to be useful, the past few months have been a depressing time. A large stash of e-mails from and to investigators at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia provided more than enough evidence for concern about the way some climate science is done. That the picture they painted, when seen in the round—or as much of the round as the incomplete selection available allows—was not as alarming as the most damning quotes taken out of context is little comfort. They offered plenty of grounds for both shame and blame….
(The Economist, March 18, 2010)
The Economist does not disappoint
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/04/the-economist-does-not-disappoint/
The March 20th -26th cover story of The Economist, “Spin, science and climate change,” deftly bypasses the politics surrounding ‘climategate’, to tackle the more important issue: whether any of this has any bearing on climate change science and policy. This is a refreshing bit of journalism that everyone should read.
It is no secret that we have been unimpressed by the quality of reporting of climate science or late. From the insinuation that data were manipulated (for which there remains no evidence,primae facie or otherwise), to the suggestion that “climate skeptics” had somehow been kept from publishing in peer reviewed literature (how, we wonder, does Lindzen keep getting published?), to the blind repetition of false claims of major errors in the IPCC (when only a couple of actual errors– and none of them in the primary (Working Group 1) report – have been found), to the falsehood that climate data have not been readily available (yes, they have), the reporting has been more akin to the populist fearmongering of the McCarthy era than to the celebrated investigative journalism of Watergate.
(Real Climate, April 13, 2010)
Climate Scientists Cleared of Malpractice Accusations in Hacked Email Case
The scientists at the center of the row over the hacked climate emails have been cleared of any deliberate malpractice by the second of three inquiries into their conduct.
The inquiry panel, led by the former chair of the House of Lords science and technology select committee Lord Oxburgh, was commissioned by the University of East Anglia with investigating the research produced by the scientists at its Climatic Research Unit (CRU).
The work of the unit has come under intense scrutiny since November when thousands of private emails between the researchers were released onto the Internet. At a press conference today Lord Oxburgh said:
(Solve Climate, April 14, 2010)
Can we refute creationism in evolution class?
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/04/15/can-we-refute-creationism-in-evolution-class/
Over at the Center for Inquiry, Michael De Dora has published a controversial piece arguing that while we can teach the evidence for evolution in public school biology class, we should not at the same time overtly refute the claims of creationism. While it’s okay to teach that the earth is 4.5 billion years old, says De Dora, and to outline the evidence for that age, it’s wrong to add that the earth is not 6,000-10,000 years old, for that is a religious idea, not a scientific one. And, says De Dora, that violates the Constitution’s provision of church-state separation: . . .
(Why Evolution Is True, April 15, 2010)