One reader sent in a link to a 2012 post at Watts Up With That?, a skeptical climate change site: Al Gore and Bill Nye FAIL at doing a simple CO2 experiment.
Climate change
Has anyone else noticed the blatant political flavor of many sciencey mags these days?
Yes, it was always there but recently, as the editors become ever more self-righteous (= Us vs. the Unwashed), it has become more open and that sure isn’t an improvement. Science writer Matt Ridley thinks science is reverting to a cult.
Forrest Mims has a new paper in the works at Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
He was named one of 50 best brains in science by Discover Magazine in 2008, despite the torrent of bigotry over his non-Darwinian approach to nature.
Proving that they are genuine “sceptics,” British group takes on the pieties of climate change
With a motto to live up to like “Question Everything. Stay Sane. Live Free,” they must sometimes tackle the Establishment’s fondest commitments. And the nonsense they skewer is practically surreal.
From the world of “Trust the science… ”
Reform is nearly impossible if the incentive structure remains as it is — rewarding publication in and of itself. On the other hand, nothing stays the same forever and growing public cynicism might provide a spur to reform.
At Mind Matters News: Physicist: If humans died out, the galaxy might lose all meaning
Brian Cox, host of The Universe, ended up becoming “more religious than I intended” when he reflected on why we care about the stars.
Bad timing or just plain tone deaf? Reuters puffs “modern-day Darwin” E. O. Wilson
Look, Reuters, if you really think the guy has a message worth hearing, quit calling him “the Darwin of the 21st century.” Unless, of course… naw, that’d be a conspiracy theory…
Science writer asks: Why are medical journals full of fashionable nonsense?
Alex Berezow: The point is that hopping aboard a political bandwagon is good for grabbing attention — and subsequently, funding. We are witnessing a similar phenomenon with respect to climate change. No matter how extraneous a topic, researchers try to tie it to climate change.
Here’s more on Canceled prof Dorian Abbot’s talk on climate and exoplanets — Thursday
Abbot: “Whether a planet could be habitable is determined primarily by the planet’s climate. This lecture will address insights we’ve gained from studying Earth’s climate and how those have been used to make predictions about which exoplanets might be habitable, and how astronomical observations indicate the possibility of new climatic regimes not found on modern Earth…” [The Woke are, of course, welcome to scream, assault passersby, and torch cars and buildings in the comfort of their own Zoom meeting at the same time.]
Google’s COVID vaccine info purge: The point many people seem to miss
The bottom line is that censorship in these matters leads inevitably to huge, endemic corruption. People who have something to hide make use of censorship rules for silencing opponents. People who know what is going wrong are stifled. After a while, the rot runs so deep, it cannot be excised and the information stock simply decays. Of course, English is assuming here that every alarm raised about vaccines is unjustifiable. Given how quickly so many anti-COVID-19 jabs were rushed onto the market, we would be awfully lucky if not a single one of them was a cure worse than the disease for many recipients. Maybe we are just that lucky this time out. But if we are not, we should want to know about it.
Talking to “science deniers”? How about a bit of self-reflection first?
Chivers, science editor at Unherd: “It’s mainly a book designed to tell readers that people they already think are dumb are, in fact, dumb. It is, really, How to Talk to A Contemptible Idiot Who Is Kind of Evil. ” That won’t be much use with serious problems science can help with.
What exactly is National Center for Science Education doing these days?
So even if every U prof was questioning Darwinism (and that will happen, the way things are going), nobody who works in the U.S. tax-funded school system is allowed to.
More on the Snowball Earth prof attacked by Cancel Culture
It is becoming increasingly clear that STEM is beginning to recruit students who just should not be at a university at all.
At the BBC: Should “killing nature” be a crime? Rob Sheldon responds
Sheldon:The contribution of humans to ecosystems is stability. And we get to choose what that stable state will look like. Nature is too chaotic to tell us. Even if we were to ask.
Did climate change cause the extinction of two hominin species?
Other researchers have offered some caution about the assumption that climate change is the cause, in part because of the sparseness of the fossil record.