In a comment to a prior post, Net Research Man makes some pertinent observations and asks the climate alarmists penetrating questions.  All that follows is his: The thing that frustrates me is that the alarmist side does not even attempt cost benefit analysis. For example, they claim that droughts can reduce crop yields, while ignoring that CO2 increases crop yields. Crop yields are way up over the last century — there is yet no direct evidence that warming so far has caused any crop yield reduction, although it is possible technology has merely outpaced losses due to warming so far, and will eventually be overwhelmed. What evidence is there that any catastrophe will occur? There is no statistically significant trend Read More ›

From sociologist Matthijs Rooduijn at Nature: Initially I took the view that academics investigating these parties and politicians should approach their study as objectively as possible: they should try to be neutral observers who focus on understanding the causes and consequences of the rise of these political actors, without making moral judgements about the empirical patterns that they encounter. Yes, a scientist should be a neutral observer. However, things have changed. Populists in Hungary and Poland seriously challenge liberal institutions, populist discourse has become more widespread and, when in government, populists are no longer merely junior partners. It certainly sounds worth studying… Most disturbingly, mainstream parties in Europe seem to have incorporated elements of populism’s illiberalism. In France, for instance, Read More ›

Below: Note: Mentioning an experiment: “Information isn’t just something our stupid monkey brains made up.”and “If it’s [information] not real, neither are we.” Pop science today seems to hold that is physical (perceptronium, maybe?). Or that, whatever it is, we wouldn’t understand it. anyway. See this vid before it is overwhelmed with protest and yanked. See also: New Scientist astounds: Information is physical and Data basic: An introduction to information theory Follow UD News at Twitter!  

Recently, Barry Arrington noted, in Climate Alarmism and Crony Capitalism, a Marriage Made in Hell, As reported in the WSJ. As many of us suspected (knew for a certainty, actually) all along, it has never been about science or the environment. It has always been about money That realization is beginning to seep into the mud up  here in Canada, of course. Just for example, in Ontario province: Ontario electricity has never been cheaper, but bills have never been higher Why? A hidden tax on Ontario’s electricity has pushed the actual purchase price in the opposite direction, to the highest it’s ever been. The tax, called the Global Adjustment (GA), is levied on electricity purchases to cover a massive provincial slush Read More ›

From Suzan Mazur at Huffington Post: Censorship? Ineptness? Budgetary concerns? Whatever the problem is at the Royal Society, its Scientific Programmes office reversed its decision to post the public Q&A part of the recent “new trends” in evolution summit. The public discussion was one-third of the proceedings and considered “critical” to the event’s success. What’s more the Scientific Programmes office now denies that it ever said it intended to post the public discussion. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel expenses were likely spent by an audience of roughly 300 people to PARTICIPATE. Indeed, the Royal Society addressed attendees in correspondence as “Dear Participant” as well as in the meeting program.More. Skinny from News: The Royal Society meet was hijacked Read More ›

From anthropologist Barbara J. King at NPR: Did Neanderthals engage in some way with the supernatural or the sacred? Caution is required here. The bones and artifacts, after all, don’t clue us in to the meaning-making that went on in Neanderthal groups, and we can’t just overlay present customs onto the past. Perhaps the Neanderthals simply wanted to bury their companions’ bodies in order to protect themselves from predators, or disease, or both. … Given their intelligence, it seems to me likely that the Neanderthals contemplated, in some way, the mysteries of life. More. What does “religious” mean? If a skyscraper’s basement shopping mall today got fossilized, would anyone know thousands of years hence if any of the interred were Read More ›

This article sets forth an alphabetical list of hyperlinks to 883 (and counting) calamities that have absurdly been attributed to global warming.  Below is the list just through the letter “B.”  Go to the article and click on the links to see for yourself.   AIDS, Afghan poppies destroyed, African holocaust, aged deaths, poppies more potent, Africa devastated,  Africa in conflict, African aid threatened,  aggressive weeds, Air France crash, air pockets, air pressure changes,  airport farewells virtual, airport malaria, Agulhas current, Alaskan towns slowly destroyed, Al Qaeda and Taliban Being Helped, allergy increase, allergy season longer, alligators in the Thames, Alps melting, Amazon a desert, American dream end,  amphibians breeding earlier (or not),  anaphylactic reactions to bee stings,  ancient forests dramatically changed, animals head for the hills, animals shrink,  Antarctic grass flourishes, Antarctic ice grows, Antarctic ice shrinks, Antarctic sea life at risk,   anxiety treatment, algal blooms, archaeological sites threatened, Arctic bogs melt, Arctic in Read More ›

From Harvard astrophysicist Howard A. Smith at Nautilus: Almost in spite of themselves, scientists are driven to a teleological view of the cosmos. … As a research astrophysicist, I can say without exaggeration that a day never goes by when I am not impressed by the amazing explanatory power of modern science. But I am also trained to be open to the world as it presents itself, not just as I would like it to be. So it is worth calling attention to two recent discoveries that suggest our place in the cosmos needs reconsideration. We might not be ordinary at all. Voice from crowd: Guy might have a point. If we are so ordinary, where are all the others? Read More ›

At Themelios: The epistemology defended in this article leads to the recognition of plural Wissenschaften (see section 2.4 above). This has specific consequences for knowledge about our origins. There are facts about humans which fall outside the competence of the natural sciences, but which we learn from other disciplines. Psychology and sociology cannot be reduced to natural science, nor can philosophy and theology be discarded as providing no independent insights about human identity. This does not mean that natural science does not give us precious information about who we are and where we come from. But we cannot expect to know everything which is worth knowing about humans from this one source. Probably the oldest and best-known non-reductionist family of Read More ›

In a prior post about climate alarmism, Seversky asked: Do we really need to wait until Florida or the Netherlands disappear beneath the waves before we admit there might be a problem here? I responded: Assume for the sake of argument (1) global warming is happening; (2) the cost of trying to stop it is 10 times the cost of allowing Florida and the Netherlands to go under.  Sev, should we pay that cost even though it is 10X the cost of doing nothing? Daniel King responded by mocking me, and I responded to him as follows: I asked you to assume 10X for the sake of argument.  You are unwilling to do so. I am not surprised.  Progressives are Read More ›

From Joshua S. Weitz and Steven W. Wilhelm at The Scientist (2013, but worth revisiting): There are an estimated 1031 viruses on Earth. That is to say: there may be a hundred million times more viruses on Earth than there are stars in the universe. The majority of these viruses infect microbes, including bacteria, archaea, and microeukaryotes, all of which are vital players in the global fixation and cycling of key elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus. These two facts combined—the sheer number of viruses and their intimate relationship with microbial life—suggest that viruses, too, play a critical role in the planet’s biosphere. Of all the Earth’s biomes, the ocean has emerged as the source for major discoveries on Read More ›

As reported in the WSJ.  As many of us suspected (knew for a certainty, actually) all along, it has never been about science or the environment.  It has always been about money: During the decades we’ve been waiting for actual climate data to validate or invalidate our climate models (we’re still waiting), at least one phenomenon has been reliably observed. This is the political domestication and co-optation of the once-vexing global warming hypothesis. A pioneering shaman of this transmutation was BP CEO John Browne, who in the 1990s declared his company “beyond petroleum,” then proceeded on a series of mergers that made it an even bigger petroleum company. GE, Ford, DuPont and others quickly lined up behind a U.S. cap-and-trade bill. There can be Read More ›

Retro beefalo. From ScienceDaily: Ancient DNA research has revealed that Ice Age cave artists recorded a previously unknown hybrid species of bison and cattle in great detail on cave walls more than 15,000 years ago. The mystery species, known affectionately by the researchers as the Higgs Bison* because of its elusive nature, originated over 120,000 years ago through the hybridisation of the extinct Aurochs (the ancestor of modern cattle) and the Ice Age Steppe Bison, which ranged across the cold grasslands from Europe to Mexico. Research led by the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD) at the University of Adelaide, published today in Nature Communications, has revealed that the mystery hybrid species eventually became the ancestor of the modern European bison, Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: A tiny grape pip (scale 1mm), left on the ground some 780,000 years ago, is one of more than 9,000 remains of edible plants discovered in an old Stone Age site in Israel on the shoreline of Lake Hula in the northern Jordan valley, dating back to the Acheulian culture from 1.75-0.25 million years ago. The floral collection provides rich testimony of the plant-based diet of our prehistoric ancestors. … “In recent years we were met with a golden opportunity to reveal numerous remains of fruits, nuts and seeds from trees, shrubs and the lake, alongside the remains of animals and human-made stone tools in one locality,” Prof. Goren-Inbar said. Of the remains found on site, Prof. Goren-Inbar Read More ›

From University of Bergen: A new Norwegian diet intervention study (FATFUNC), performed by researchers at the KG Jebsen center for diabetes research at the University of Bergen, raises questions regarding the validity of a diet hypothesis that has dominated for more than half a century: that dietary fat and particularly saturated fat is unhealthy for most people. The researchers found strikingly similar health effects of diets based on either lowly processed carbohydrates or fats. In the randomized controlled trial, 38 men with abdominal obesity followed a dietary pattern high in either carbohydrates or fat, of which about half was saturated. Fat mass in the abdominal region, liver and heart was measured with accurate analyses, along with a number of key Read More ›