In Wednesday’s Republican Presidential candidate debate, Rick Perry said global warming was one big Ponzi scheme. And that Galileo was burned at the stake for being the climate skeptic of his day. Or something like that. UPDATE: Many readers seem thrown by my attempt at sarcasm. Next time I’ll be less subtle. But a direct…Continue Reading…
We’re days away from the 10-year anniversary of 9/11. Slate has an excellent piece on the “Truthers” and how they are impervious to reason. Here’s a quote from Philip Zelikow (the 9/11 Commission’s executive director), who makes this observation about the 9/11 conspiracists: “I play a very prominent part in their demonology of the world,…Continue Reading…
Would you eat a hamburger that was grown in a test tube? How about a chicken nugget from a petri dish? Sometimes called “shmeat” (as in, a sheet of lab-grown meat), in vitro meat might someday be an option for people with carnivorous inclinations who aren’t wild about the idea of killing and eating real…Continue Reading…
Hop on over to the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media, where I have a post on the big story dominating the climate blogosphere these past few days. Staring today, I’ll be blogging for the Yale Forum several times a week and will link to those posts from here when they go up. UPDATE:…Continue Reading…
While exploring the anti-vaccine mindset, Orac assembles this group under one umbrella: One of my interests in skepticism and critical thinking has been the similarity in the fallacious arguments, approach to data, and general behavior of those who are–to put it generously–not so skeptical or scientific in their approach to life. I’m talking about believers…Continue Reading…
After reading this essay (which has gone viral), I don’t know what worries me more: a nihilistic GOP, an incompetent Democratic party, “low-information” voters, or a neutered media. The author, a former Republican congressional staffer gone rogue, makes a forceful (and somewhat terrifying) case that the unfortunate combination of all the above is now undermining U.S. democracy….Continue Reading…
I’m not sure there is such a thing, but it’s probably good to know what your objective is. In this contentious thread, perspectives ran the gamut. One commenter observed: As difficult it is in this era of “Tea Baggers vs Marxists”, “Denialists vs. Warmistas”, “Conservatards vs. Mann-Made Glo-bull Warmists” or whatever other dumbass portmanteaus each…Continue Reading…
That we are yet again debating evolutionary theory and Earth’s origins “” and that candidates now have to declare where they stand on established science “” should be a signal that we are slip-sliding toward governance by emotion rather than reason. But it’s important to understand what’s undergirding the debate. It has little to do…Continue Reading…
So maybe Hurricane Irene’s middle name should be “harbinger,” instead? From the NYT’s Justin Gillis: The scale of Hurricane Irene, which could cause more extensive damage along the Eastern Seaboard than any storm in decades, is reviving an old question: are hurricanes getting worse because of human-induced climate change? The short answer from scientists is that they are still…Continue Reading…
Hurricane Irene may be front and center today, but wildfires commanded U.S. headlines earlier this summer. Via yesterday’s Guardian, here’s a spot-on observation from the lookout tower: There is a saying among some of my colleagues in the wildfire community: that during the 20th century, despite our phenomenal success in suppressing fires on public land,…Continue Reading…