Petteri Talalas: “The IPCC reports have been read in a similar way to the Bible: you try to find certain pieces or sections from which you try to justify your extreme views. This resembles religious extremism.”
Climate change
World population trends modelled 10,000 BC – 2100 AD
Here is a model of the top 15 “countries” across the span from the Agricultural Revolution onwards: Food for thought on trends and implications. Notice, the principle that trends (like pie-crusts) are made to be broken. To truly predict, we need dynamics and some reasonable idea of contingencies. Don’t forget to take reconstructions of the Read More…
Mark Steyn on the politicization of science journals
It sounds like, in their ideal scenario, the rest of us would never know, except for our own experience, if what they are saying is incorrect.
Ocean Methane Production is Ubiquitous
From a PNAS article: The conditions of methane (CH4) formation in olivine-hosted secondary fluid inclusions and their prevalence in peridotite and gabbroic rocks from a wide range of geological settings were assessed using confocal Raman spectroscopy, optical and scanning electron microscopy, electron microprobe analysis, and thermodynamic modeling. Detailed examination of 160 samples from ultraslow- to Read More…
Paleoanthropologist: Climate change will cause us to grow webbed feet
What we need right now is an earnest, just-published study offering convoluted neuroscience theories as to why so many people don’t trust science.
What Do Climate Scientists Really Know?
Scientistsdiscover the biggest seaweed bloom in the world: From Phys.Org:(https://phys.org/news/2019-07-scientists-biggest-seaweed-bloom-world.html) [N.B. I find the newest version of WordPress almost impossible to work with. There is no correlation between the commands they tell you to use and what actually happens. This might be the last post I post here. There’s no way I can set up Read More…
What Bill Nye is doing now
It’s not clear why people who behave this way expect their causes to be taken seriously. UD News’ take on Bill Nye is that he was a schoolroom celeb but didn’t really age into a science guru for adults
Megacarnivore found in drawer
The cat came back. so to speak. Actually, extinct Simbakubwa kutokaafrika was not a cat but a hyaenodont, larger than a polar bear, with three rows of shearing teeth. Found between 1978 and 1981, the jawbone had to be stored on special shelving due to its size.
Biologist responds to fretting over “denialism” at Nature
Why should we trust “authority,” when it has been publicly embarrassed over and over?
Should research funding agencies move resources away from particle physics to fighting climate change?
You know particle physics is in serious trouble when the idea of just putting the money into climate change instead gets serious face time.
Astrophysicist: Climate change killed the ET civilizations
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.
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 Read More…
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 Read More…
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 Read More…
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 Read More…