Stephen Kane thinks that many Venus-like planets will be more than 4 billion years old and could well have evolved intelligent life on them at some point.
Climate change
Heckler’s veto: Protesters disrupt climate science conference
In St. Louis earlier this month: What do you do if you’re a climate activist and a geoscientist speaks at a meeting near you offering scientific evidence against your point of view? Well, of course—you do what any rational person would do. You attend and listen carefully and weigh the arguments and consider whether you […]
YouTube warns us against questioning consensus science
Further to kairosfocus’s thoughts yesterday on the digital empire suppressing the free flow of ideas: Buzzfeed reported August 7 that “YouTube Is Fighting Back Against Climate Misinformation.” As of July 9, “YouTube is now adding fact checks to videos that question climate change … as a part of its ongoing effort to combat the rampant […]
Climate change: Significantly limiting the right to be considered a “skeptic”
As opposed to a denier: I propose a basic test to determine who has earned the benefit of the doubt on whether to be labelled a denier or not. Does the person have an academic or professional background in atmospheric science or climatology? If the answer is yes, then they earn the benefit of the […]
Why climate activist scientist won’t debate the science
From climate scientist Kate Marvel at Scientific American: Once you put established facts about the world up for argument, you’ve already lost In fact, as a general rule, I refuse to debate basic science in public. There are two reasons for this: first, I’m a terrible debater and would almost certainly lose. The skills necessary […]
Physicist complains that climate scientists are giving science a bad name
From James Delingpole at Breitbart: Professor Garth Paltridge, formerly a chief scientist with Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Division of Atmospheric Research, says that the behavior of certain members of the climate science establishment is “seriously threatening the public’s perception of the professionalism of scientists in general.” Many climate scientists are much […]
Can Climate Scientist Do Climate Science?
Here’s a recent paper dealing with the deadly and devastating hurricane Harvey which hit the Gulf last year. I haven’t looked at very much of the paper; however, their basic take on it is that the ferocious effects of Harvey can be explained by the OHC (Ocean Heat Content) of the Gulf’s surface waters. And, […]
“Burning” climate change dissenters
From Peter Rees at Quadrant: The Little Ice age was quite severe in Europe from 1550- 1700. After the prosperity and plenty of the medieval warm period, the LIA led to impoverishment, crop failure, starvation and a resurgence in witch burnings. Every misfortune was an excuse to accuse someone of being a witch working under […]
Postpone the climate apocalypse, will you, till we finish trimming the shrubs?
No, seriously, a sober view from John Horgan at Scientific American: In his Breakthrough essay, Pinker spells out a key assumption of ecomodernism. Industrialization “has been good for humanity. It has fed billions, doubled lifespans, slashed extreme poverty, and, by replacing muscle with machinery, made it easier to end slavery, emancipate women, and educate children. […]
Breaking: Prominent science journal offers rational assessment of an unhinged climate claim
Specifically, the claim that global warming promotes violence. From the editors of Nature: Such retrospective analyses raise two questions related to cause and effect: did climate change alter the weather? And did the change in the weather provoke the conflict? Only a solid yes to both can justify bold statements that global warming promotes violence […]
At the Guardian: A big problem with murky science journals is that they publish climate deniers
Oh? From Graham Readfearn at the Guardian: Deniers have found a platform in emerging publications that publish without rigorous review Journals that are “open access” make their money by charging academics or institutions a fee for peer reviewing and checking submitted academic manuscripts, and then publishing them. There are many reputable publishers working this way. […]
Evolution is a Fact; So is Climate Change
For those of us who have been critiquing evolutionary theory for a long time, and hence, long-time observers of the kind of reasoning evolutionists/Darwinists employ, you can’t help but see the absolute parallel that exists between evolutionary theory and the “science” behind “global warming.” [N.B. If you have to change the name of the ‘science’ […]
Google’s Truthbot gets upended by reality
From Eric Worrall at Watts Up With That?: Google’s efforts to filter out positions which they think are fake news, like climate skeptic posts, have hit an unexpected snag: Google have just noticed large groups of people across the world hold views which differ from the views championed by the Silicon Valley monoculture. Like we […]
Hurting a scientist’s feelings could cost a journal $10 million?
From Alex Berezow at American Council on Science and Health: Climate scientist Mark Z. Jacobson of Stanford University has sued the National Academy of Sciences, which publishes the prestigious journal PNAS, for publishing an article that disagreed with him. The lawsuit claims that Dr. Jacobson was libeled and slandered. He is suing to get the […]
Nature paper from 2012: Education is not the answer in the war on dissent
A friend drew our attention to this: From a 2012 letter to Nature: Among egalitarian communitarians, science literacy and numeracy (as reflected in the composite scale Science literacy/numeracy) showed a small positive correlation with concern about climate change risks(r = 0.08, P = 0.03). In contrast, among hierarchical individualists, Science literacy/numeracy is negatively correlated with […]