Denial
gregladen | August 24, 2017Remember the revelation back a year or so ago that Exxon Mobil knew all about the likely effects of the global warming they contributed to, and the subsequent denials by Exxon that this was not true, yada yada yada?
A paper has just come out that confirms what we all said then. From the abstract:
This paper assesses whether ExxonMobil Corporation has in the past misled the general public about climate change. We present an empirical document-by-document textual content analysis and comparison of 187 climate change communications from ExxonMobil, including peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed…
milhayser | July 27, 2017On Class M, James Hrynyshyn shows us how climate change will benefit the economies of some U.S. counties while damaging many others. This mostly has to do with location; coastal areas and southern latitudes are more threatened, with Florida poised to suffer worst of all. James writes, "we're not just talking about polar bears anymore. It's now about jobs, wages, infrastructure, crime." Meanwhile, William M. Connolley reports Antarctica's Larsen C ice shelf is 12% smaller due to a giant iceberg splitting off and heading (presumably) toward Miami. Greg Laden says denial of global warming has…
tsmith | July 26, 2017I recently finished a 2-year stint as an American Society for Microbiology Distinguished Lecturer. It's an excellent program--ASM pays all travel expenses for lecturers, who speak at ASM Branch meetings throughout the country. I was able to attend Branch meetings from California and Washington in the West, to Massachusetts in the east, and south as far as El Paso, Texas, with many in-between. Each Lecturer selects several topics to speak on, and the Branch chooses from those which they want to hear. Mine included basic research (zoonotic disease, antibiotic resistance) as well as science…
gregladen | April 27, 2017The New York Times
Elizabeth Spayed, Public Editor
Dear Elizabeth,
I am writing to express my concern for the addition of Bret Stephens to the NYT team as a columnist.
I don't expect a columnist who seemingly writes about everything to be wrong about nothing. But the Gray Lady should, at the very least, expect a columnist to know something about something.
Stephens doesn't simply express opinions that are not popular in certain, many, circles. He attempts to support his opinions with what we now seem to be calling alt-facts.
For example, his opinion about the importance of climate change is…
gregladen | April 5, 2017Last week, House Representative Lamar Smith held yet another masturbatory hearing to promote climate science denial. Smith is bought and paid for by Big Oil, so that is the most obvious reason he and his Republican colleagues would put on such a dog and pony show, complete with a chorus of three science deniers (Judith Curry, Roger Pielke Jr, and John Cristy). I don't know why they invited actual and respected climate scientist Mike Mann, because all he did was ruin everything by stating facts, dispelling alt-facts, and making well timed Princess Bride references.
The hearings were called "…
gregladen | March 29, 2017Congressman Lamar Smith is a well known science denier, especially a climate science denier.
Recently, he admitted that the House committee he runs is a tool of the anti-science forces.
At a recent conference at the pro-Tobacco anti-Science Koch (and others) funded fake think tank Heartland, this happened:
Smith: Next week we’re going to have a hearing on our favorite subject of climate change and also on the scientific method, which has been repeatedly ignored by the so-called self-professed climate scientists.
Audience Member: I applaud you for saying you’ll be using the term climate…
gregladen | October 29, 2015A week or so ago, I got a couple of emails and tweets about a blog post on Medium.com, an internet thing of which I had never heard. Apparently Medium.com is a big giant blog that anybody can go and blog their big giant thoughts on: like tumblr, but more bloggy.
Anyway, some dude by the name of David Siegel, Web Page Designer, posted a really long blog post about climate change on medium.com.
Have you ever been poking around on the Intertoobs, when somebody comes along and says, "Hey, I never really thought about global warming/vaccination/evolution before, but suddenly and unexplainably I am…
gregladen | September 8, 2015I'm on my way to a taping of the Humanist Views with Host Scott Lohman. I do these now and then and have done so since I first moved to Minnesota back when it was still cold here. We'll be talking about science knowledge, and why basic science knowledge is important. We'll also be talking about how to go about evaluating science stories you encounter in the news, or more likely, on your Facebook feed or in other social media.
Pursuant to this, I wrote a blog post that talks about how science stories go out to the general public. I also report on a request I sent out a few days ago to my…
tsmith | August 20, 2015
Long-term readers of the blog know of my interest in HIV denialism, especially as it is maintained and spread via the Internet. In my online travels, I recently met John Strangis via this blog post. John has an interesting story to tell regarding his experiences with HIV denialism and subsequently, his turn to patient and science activism. Many thanks to John for sharing it here.
John with his wife and son.
TS: Can you tell the readers a bit about yourself?
JS: My name is John Strangis. I was born in the United States from Italian parents but lived for fifteen years in Italy…
gregladen | July 8, 2015A new paper has just been published. This paper is going to cause an uproar in the science denialist community. Mud will be thrown. Tin hats will be donned. Somebody better check the oil pressure.
Conspiracies everywhere
I see conspiracies everywhere. It's true.
Look at any internet site that talks about health, disease, diet, or anything related. Some of those sites will be legit science based sites. The majority will be sites feeding you woo. The anti-Vaxers, the anti-Milkers, the Homeopaths, man of the "natural food" sites. Now look more closely at those sites to find out what they…
gregladen | May 5, 2015I'm auditing the EdEx course "Denial101x: Making Sense of Climate Science Denial." This is Week 2: Global Warming ins Happening. The course is covering indicators of warming, what is happening in the Cryosphere, and related matters.
Here is an example lecture segment:
A central theme of this week is the relationship between climate and weather, and how this relationship becomes fodder for the development of myths in service of denial about climate change. The climate is a cherry orchard. Weather is the cherries. Don't pick the cherries!
There are many dimensions the climate system that…
gregladen | April 28, 2015A group of scientists attending a major conference get together in a bar. They talk, but they agree on nothing because they are critical academics. The server comes along to take the beer order and says, "I noticed you all are constantly arguing. What are you arguing about?"
"Sensitivity," one of them says. "It is the number of degrees C the Earth's surface will warm with a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere. Is it 2, 3, 4? ... We cant settle on a number"
The server considers their plight for a moment. Suddenly, she rips several sheets out of her order book and hands one to each of the…
tsmith | September 25, 2014Everything old is new again. For years on this blog, I wrote about HIV denial and the few fringe scientists and journalists who espoused it. I attracted a host of trolls, some of whom repeatedly attacked my credibility, my appearance, even showed up at my academic office. One of the most prolific of these was Henry Bauer, who posts long-debunked ideas on HIV/AIDS (and the Loch Ness Monster to boot).
That was, oh, 2007-ish and prior. In that same year Steven Novella and I co-authored an article on HIV denial for PLoS Medicine. In 2008, a leader of the denial movement, Christine Maggiore of "…
tsmith | September 18, 2014Gregg Mitman's article in the September 17th New England Journal of Medicine, "Ebola in a Stew of Fear," is unfortunately all too prescient. Dr. Mitman highlighted "the ecology of fear" in Western Africa. Fear is present on both the part of Westerners (scared of Africa's yellow fever, malaria, Ebola, its mere "different-ness"), and by native Africans (of whites' history of colonization and slavery, of medical exploitation dating back well over a century). Fear of each other.
This history of fear, the cultural legacy of decades of mistrust of both Western people and their medical science,…
tsmith | March 28, 2011There has been a surge of interest recently in science denial, particularly revolving around the issue of vaccines. Last year saw the release of Michael Specter's Denialism; in the last few months, three others have been released: Seth Mnookin's Panic Virus, Robert Goldberg's Tabloid Medicine, and Paul Offit's "Deadly Choices." More about each of them after the jump.
"The Panic Virus" by Seth Mnookin focuses on the general topic of media-fueled science denial, using vaccines as the case study. Like Offit's recent "Autism's False Prophets, Mnookin details a bit of the history of the anti-…
sastyk | March 4, 2011Over the years I know a lot of people who have asked whether I get frustrated with other people's denial about energy and environmental issues. I do, but most of the time I'm pretty good at not allowing it to get to me. Yesterday, however, I just snapped. After a phone conversation with a news reporter who has every reason to understand peak oil and climate change but seems to decline to, I lost it. If everyone else - from the media to the president to Joe Bob down the street gets to live in denial and ignorance, how come I don't? It seems like such a happy place.
I determined that I too…
sastyk | October 9, 2010John reporting from the ASPO conference.
I first saw one of them when I was having an early dinner on the first day of the conference. A man in a yellow chicken suit was riding up one of the escalators. He didn't have the head on.
My wife came to town the second day to do some sightseeing at the Capitol while I remained entombed in the bowels of the hotel all day. When I first had a chance to talk to her, she told me how two people in chicken suits were handing out flyers outside of the hotel, one of which she took. Its title was "Oil Production: Is the Sky Falling? Or has the world…
sastyk | September 24, 2010I probably should have waited a little longer to steal this from Greenpa, until it was colder, but I couldn't.
oracknows | May 3, 2010As I pointed out yesterday before stirring things up a bit, I was up most of the night Sunday night working on a grant (two, actually), and I went full tilt all day yesterday to get it done. Consequently, last night I was in no shape to blog. I chilled. I copied. I picked a rerun. Interestingly, I remembered this post, which was something I did way back in early 2005. the last time I reran it was in 2006; so if you've been reading less than four years, it's new to you, and I'll be back for sure tumorrow. It's also interesting because this post is of a style and subject matter that I don't…
sastyk | February 25, 2010Mother Jones notes that in private interviews, Glenn Beck, fiery loon of the right, privately seems to believe in anthropogenic climate change.
Last week he mocked climate scientists for being "alarmists" who believe that "we're all going to die in a fiery flood." Not long ago he touted the global warming chapter of his An Inconvenient Book as "kryptonite against your Gore-worshipping psycho friends." And in May 2007 he hosted an hour-long television special, Exposed: The Climate of Fear, featuring an all-star lineup of climate change denialists and promising the "other side of the climate…