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Those who deny the existence of global warming make much of polls which allegedly show that scientists have grave doubts that the Earth’s climate is warming. Those who tout such polls rarely mention that the scientists being polled are, by and large, not climate scientists. One might as well ask a plumber whether he thinks that mole on your shoulder could be cancerous…
What happens when climate scientists are polled? The so-called “controversy” vanishes, that’s what…
In 1991 the Gallup organization conducted a telephone survey on global climate change among 400 scientists drawn from membership lists of the American Meteorological Association and the American Geophysical Union.
We repeated several of their questions verbatim, in order to measure changes in scientific opinion over time. On a variety of questions, opinion has consistently shifted toward increased belief in and concern about global warming. Among the changes:
- In 1991 only 60% of climate scientists believed that average global temperatures were up, compared to 97% today.
- In 1991 only a minority (41%) of climate scientists agreed that then-current scientific evidence “substantiates the occurrence of human-induced warming,” compared to three out of four (74%) today.
- The proportion of those who see at least a 50-50 chance that global temperatures will rise two degrees Celsius has increased from 47% to 56% since 1991.
- The proportion of scientists who have a great deal of confidence in our understanding of the human-induced sources of global climate change rose from 22% in 1991 to 29% in 2007. Similarly, the proportion voicing confidence in our understanding of the archeological climate evidence rose from 20% to 32%.
- Despite these expressions of uncertainty, however, the proportion which rating the chances at 50-50 or better that the role of human behavior will be settled in the near future rose from 47% in 1991 to 69% in 2007.
The moral of the story: If you want to know what the experts in a field think, ask the experts in that field... not experts in some random mish-mash of other fields.
(hat tip: Deltoid)
BBC: ‘No Sun link’ to climate change:
Scientists have produced further compelling evidence showing that modern-day climate change is not caused by changes in the Sun’s activity.
The research contradicts a favoured theory of climate “sceptics”, that changes in cosmic rays coming to Earth determine cloudiness and temperature.
The idea is that variations in solar activity affect cosmic ray intensity.
But Lancaster University scientists found there has been no significant link between them in the last 20 years.
Presenting their findings in the Institute of Physics journal, Environmental Research Letters, the UK team explain that they used three different ways to search for a correlation, and found virtually none.
This will not, of course, stop the denialists from recycling their hoary lies. But facts simply don’t matter to their kind.
Also worth noting is this very pithy statement of fact from Mark Hoofnagle:
The goal of denialists is not to propose an alternative theory that is explanatory and useful, but to create controversy and doubt where it does not exist.
Over at Respectful Insolence, Orac has asked the blogosphere to join him in making certain that a coward and bully who goes by the remarkable moniker of “Professor Joseph Chikelue Obi FRCAM(Dublin) FRIPH(UK) FACAM(USA) MICR(UK)” doesn’t get away with suppressing legitimate criticism of his medical quackery. Two articles about him on the Quackometer Blog have been removed under threat of legal action in the UK. Orac has asked that those in the blogosphere repost these articles as widely as possible. My own copies of the articles appear just past the jump. Check Orac’s site for the full story.
Read the rest of this entry »
Scientist, writer, and rationalist Richard Dawkins recently presented his documentary “The Enemies of Reason” on Britain’s Channel 4. View part 1 and part 2 below.
In related news, both of Dawkins’ US and UK foundations have been officially recognized as charities.
(via Pharyngula and Denialism)
PZ Myers points us to Answers in Genesis BUSTED, a new blog devoted to grinding the claims of the creationists into tiny tiny pieces.
High school students interested in a career in the sciences should take as much math as they can, according to the results of a recent study published in the journal Science. PZ Myers has more.
John Scalzi reminds us that today is the last day to donate to the “Drag Scalzi’s Ass to the Creation Museum” project, and he ups the ante with a betting pool. Donate now to get in on the fun!
UPDATE 06/17/07 9:30 AM EDT: The final tally: $5,118.36. w00t! Scalzi’s going! Can’t wait for the report…
John Scalzi bows to the voice of the people, and tells us that “All Right, Fine, I Will Go to The Creation Museum… IF…
...AND ONLY IF I receive at least $250 in donations via PayPal by 11:59pm NEXT FRIDAY, June 15, 2007. ALL the proceeds (minus PayPal’s processing bite) will then be donated to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, an organization which for sixty years has striven to keep the chunky peanut butter of religion out of the dusky chocolate of good government.
I will most definitely be donating to this noble effort. Nothing would please me more than to see John Scalzi’s unique brand of snark applied to the idiocy of the Creation Museum. Get thee over there and make a donation today!
The “Creation Museum” opens this weekend near Cincinnati, a multi-million-dollar monument to ignorance and superstition. It’s designed to do just one thing: spread lies and ignorance to as many people as possible.
Over at Pharyngula, PZ Myers has collected a huge list of posts from around the blogosphere, reacting to this travesty. Go read the whole thing. I agree with PZ: the last entry is the saddest…
Does the opposition to creationism matter? Yes, it does. Answers in Genesis is a predatory organization: it thrives on ignorance, and it misinforms and misleads and lies specifically to inculcate the kind of gullibility and fear and desperation that will send more donations to its coffers.
It’s not just children who are scammed. Read my father knew no science for an example of what Ken Ham really feeds on.He needed more care, himself, but there was no money left to pay for a homemaker, or even a cleaning woman. I went out weekly and did as much as I could; church people mended his clothes and brought food, neighbours checked on him. But there was always a shortfall.
When he died, at 92, and I picked up the reins of his finances, I found that month’s bill from AIG: $70. For DVDs. To give away, of course; Dad had no TV, no DVD player, no video player: he was almost blind.
That’s what the museum is all about: fleecing the poor, the weak, the ignorant, the confused.
Chris Mooney provides yet another data point in the near-endless saga of the Bush administration’s love of lying:
So in sum, the White House deceived the public, trying to rewrite history and erase Bush’s indelible record of skepticism on the subject of human-caused global warming. It’s pretty outrageous behavior. And I must say, I’m really glad to see it happen.
The White House’s dubious repositioning can really only mean one thing: It’s just not acceptable any more to doubt that the planet’s warming. Previous “skeptics” — like Bush — are embarrassed and backing away. They’re trying to pretend that they never actually said what they said.
Conservatives love to lie. They live to lie. They can barely make an argument without lying. It’s simply in their nature.
Today is the tenth anniversary of the death of Carl Sagan: scientist, humanist, author, novelist, and champion of rationality. His PBS television series Cosmos stands as perhaps the most brilliant achievement in explaining science and the scientific method to the layman that our civilization has ever seen.
In honor of one of the truly great minds of the twentieth century, blogger Joel Schlosberg has organized the Carl Sagan memorial blog-a-thon. I find that I cannot do better than to present to you Sagan’s own words, taken from the end of his book The Demon-Haunted World:
One reason the Constitution is a daring and courageous document is that it allows for continuing change, even of the form of government itself, if the people so wish. Because no one is wise enough to foresee which ideas may answer urgent societal needs — even if they’re counterintuitive and have been troubling in the past — this document tries to guarantee the fullest and freest expression of views.
There is, of course, a price. Most of us are for freedom of expression when there’s a danger that our own views will be suppressed. We’re not all that upset, though, when views we despise encounter a little censorship here and there. But within certain narrowly circumscribed limits — Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous example was causing panic by falsely crying “fire” in a crowded theater — great liberties are permitted in America…
The system founded by Jefferson, Madison, and their colleagues offers means of expression to those who do not understand its origins and wish to replace it by something very different. For example, Tom Clark, Attorney General and therefore chief law enforcement officer of the United States, in 1948 offered this suggestion: “Those who do not believe in the ideology of the United States shall not be allowed to stay in the United States.” But if there is one key and characteristic U.S. ideology, it is that there are no mandatory and no forbidden ideologies. Some more recent 1990s cases: John Brockhoeft, in jail for bombing an abortion clinic in Cincinnati, wrote, in a “pro-life” newsletter:
I’m a very narrow-minded, intolerant, reactionary, Bible-thumping fundamentalist… a zealot and fanatic… The reason the United States was once a great nation, besides being blessed by God, is because she was founded on truth, justice, and narrow-mindedness.
Randall Terry, founder of “Operation Rescue”, an organization that blockades abortion clinics, told a congregation in August 1993:
Let a wave of intolerance wash over you… Yes, hate is good… Our goal is a Christian nation… We are called by God to conquer this country… We don’t want pluralism.
The expression of such views is protected, and properly so, under the Bill of Rights, even if those protected would abolish the Bill of Rights if they got the chance. The protection for the rest of us is to use that same Bill of Rights to get across to every citizen the indispensability of the Bill of Rights.
What means to protect themselves against human fallibility, what error-protection machinery do these alternative doctrines and institutions offer? An infallible leader? Race? Nationalism? Wholesale disengagement from civilization, except for explosives and automatic weapons? How can they be sure — especially in the darkness of the twentieth century? Don’t they need candles?
...
Education on the value of free speech and the other freedoms reserved by the Bill of Rights, about what happens when you don’t have them, and about how to exercise and protect them, should be an essential prerequisite for being an American citizen — or indeed a citizen of any nation, the moreso to the degree that such rights remain unprotected. If we can’t think for ourselves, if we’re unwilling to question authority, then we’re just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.
For a far more original take on Sagan, it would be hard to do better than John Scalzi’s contribution.
The complete works of Charles Darwin are being placed online by the University of Cambridge. It will be much harder for creationists and other varieties of nutjob to misrepresent what Darwin wrote when all his work is freely available to anyone who cares to look for it.
A few weeks ago, I noted that Jay “rope + tree + ACLU lawyer = pinata” Stephenson has persisted in his habit of protecting himself and his like-minded contributors and commenters from pesky questions about factual support for their claims. One of those commenters, hereinafter referred to as Crybaby Clay, has taken issue with my characerization of his claims as being unsupported by fact. In the process, he proves that he not only does not have any facts to support his claims, but he also does not even understand why factual support for his claims is necessary.
To those of us capable of making rational, evidence-based arguments, this is puzzling. Why would anyone trying to make a convincing argument deliberately fail to provide facts to back up the claims he makes? One possible answer is that such people are simply incompetent at the task of constructing an argument. Read the rest of this entry »
Biology teacher ‘Ms. SuperScience’ has a brand-new blog and a wonderfully direct message for the anti-science mouth-breathers:
Okay, folks, here we go. Once and for all…
I TEACH SCIENCE.
Therefore, I am going to teach evolution.
And I am getting completely and totally fed up with people who assume otherwise. Over the last few years, it has gotten to the point where I am just hoping some kid will start to challenge me — because there is nothing better than being able to back your position up with overwhelming evidence, and then actually TEACH someone why evolution is real and important. I don’t even live in a red-state area — but these people are so mindlessly following their blissfully ignorant leaders that they are making my job a whole lot bigger and harder.
Let’s make a deal: Your kids are in my public school classroom. They are going to learn science.
If my kids ever set foot in your fundie church (not likely, since we’re quite happy with our open-minded church, thank you very much), then you can start in on your opinions — which you are entitled to, as they are opinions — but they are not science.
You tell ‘em, Ms. S. No science teacher anywhere should ever have to apologize for teaching the facts.
Ed Brayton, responding to a commenter at Positive Liberty, explains exactly why the fight against "intelligent design" must continue.
The commenter asked “What exactly are you fearful of that these misguided youth are going to do as a result of being poisoned by ID?” Ed answered:
I’m fearful that it will only compound the already-serious problem we have with the public’s understanding of how science actually operates. It will subvert the teaching of real science and replace all of the scientific criteria by which we determine what is likely to be true and replace it with a well-conceived PR campaign guided by slick hucksters using the tools of marketing rather than earning their place in the classroom by doing actual scientific research. It will send the message that the truth doesn’t matter as long as you can dress up a religious mythology in a veneer of truthiness. We have enough of a problem with the public’s understanding of science as it is. If we allow this dishonest PR campaign to succeed in gaining a place in science classrooms despite having produced absolutely nothing in terms of actual scientific achievement – no coherent model or theory, no original research that might support such a model or theory, nothing but dishonest attempts to distort the evidence for evolution – we will do grave damage to our children’s already weak ability to understand how science operates. It’s hard to imagine a worse idea pedagogically.To which I can only add: right on, brother.
Fundamentalism — in any form, as an expression of any faith — isn’t wrong merely because it suppresses freedom of thought. It’s a danger to public health as well: Read the rest of this entry »
A recent article in the New York Times spotlights a movement that aims to make science accessible to the average citizen:
“A lot of people come to see real live scientists — some of whom are extremely famous and prominent — and see how their brains work,” said Dr. John Cohen, a professor of immunology at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and the founder of the Denver Café Scientifique. “People don’t often get a chance to do that. Some come to ask questions, others are content to listen.”
The Denver Café Scientifique was established in 2003 and is the largest in the country to date, drawing about 150 people (cafescicolorado.org). The topics vary from sleep to interstellar communication to Higgs bosons to nanotechnology, and they attract people of all ages and all occupations.
“Who would have thought you’d have standing room only at a geek event?” Dr. Cohen asked. He said he first read about science cafes in 1999 when they were catching on in England. “It just sounded like so much fun,” he said. “I saw it as a reminder of the peripatetic philosophers who wandered the Agora in Athens.” He imagined them, he continued, “stopping every so often to refresh themselves with a mug of wine from the local sellers.”
There are now several dozen Café Scientifique locations in Great Britain, and there are at least fifteen in the US. Faced with a rising tide of anti-science, anti-intellectual sentiment, scientists need to get out among the general population and explain their work and its value.
If you live near an existing Café Scientifique site, visit it at the earliest opportunity. If you don’t, consider taking up the challenge of organizing one.
James Randi, one of my personal heroes, is recovering from bypass surgery:
James Randi underwent bypass surgery last Thursday. He is currently in stable condition. He is receiving excellent care, but will need quiet time to recover. We will release more information as it becomes available, and we ask everyone to please respect the family’s wishes for privacy at this time.
For those who feel a need to help, please consider donating blood at your local Red Cross or Community Blood Center. Cards may be sent to Randi in care of JREF, 201 SE 12 Street, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33316.
Randi is a magician, debunker of the paranormal, instigator of the famous One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, and one of the leading lights in the skeptical movement today. Let us all send him our warmest thoughts for a speedy recovery.
...via Stupid Evil Bastard
Chip Gibbons at The Binary Circumstance makes an excellent point regarding the religionists’ tendency to pooh-pooh science because it does not explain absolutely everything:
Discounting science because it has not yet explained everything in nature is a rather odd position to for believers in Intelligent Design to take. Intelligent Design explains nothing, so shouldn’t it be completely discarded?
It’s true: Science cannot explain everything we observe in the universe around us. Some proponents of “intelligent design” would have us believe that this is proof that there is some deep flaw in the scientific method, that the materialistic methods of science should be abandoned. The scientific method can’t give us all the answers. Why should we continue to place our trust in it?
But this claim — that there are gaps in science, and that therefore science cannot be relied upon to explain the universe adequately — is a subtle cariacature of science. Science is not our body of knowledge about the universe. It is not the state of our understanding of the natural world. Science is the means we use to reach that state of understanding. Read the rest of this entry »
PZ Myers makes some interesting point about using ID in the classroom to illustrate how science works, as well as basic concepts in biology. I’m surprised that more secondary and university teachers don’t do this. Science should be taught as a method, not as a dry collection of facts… and if a pseudoscience like ID can be used (and demolished) in that cause, so much the better.
There’s a fine line to be trod here, to be sure. ID proponents are desperate to frame their attempts to force-feed their religion to students as part of a ‘controversy’, where no such controversy exists. It would be a capital mistake to ‘debate’ ID, as there’s nothing to debate: ID is religious dogma masquerading as science, and cannot be ‘debated’ on scientific terms. Nevertheless, a thoughtful teacher can make good use of the claims of ID to demonstrate how real science is performed, and how pseudosciences can be recognized as such.
Do our brains predispose us to a belief in God? “Science rules out the most cartoonish versions of God by debunking specific claims about ancient civilizations in North America or the creatio ex nihilo of human life. But it cannot tell us whether there is a force or entity or idea beyond our ken that deserves to be known as God. What we can say is that the universe is a complex place, that events within it often seem to turn out for the best, and that neither of these facts requires an explanation beyond our own skins.”
Denyse O’Leary misses the point. She quotes novelist Michael Crichton as saying:
I take the hard view that science involves the creation of testable hypotheses.
Ms. O’Leary is a big fan of intelligent design. So maybe she can tell us: What testable hypotheses have ever been produced by means of the “theory” of intelligent design?
Maybe she can tell us that. But I won’t hold my breath.
What’s the core claim of intelligent design? The so-called Discovery Institute, a lobbying organization bent on pushing ID into American classrooms, states that:
The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.
What does this mean? Read the rest of this entry »
