Planet Earth
tfk | April 12, 2013Disco. 'tute "research" director Casey Luskin is sad. Congressional Quarterly wrote about creationism and didn't say nice things about "intelligent design" creationism. Casey insists that ID shouldn't be lumped in with young earth creationism or geocentrism, asserting:
the vast majority of leaders of the ID movement accept the conventional age of the Earth and the universe
This is a tough claim to judge, and Casey's word choice here is interesting. Calling the best scientific estimates of the age of the earth "conventional" leaves Casey wiggle room: does he regard 4.54 billion years as a mere…
tfk | April 1, 2013The University of Notre Dame's Center for the Study of Social Movements is hosting a dialogue on science and politics, and I'm rather pleased with my contribution: "Will Climate Change Denial Inherit the Wind?" Do check out the other essays in the dialogue, especially Jeffrey Guhin's discussion of some results from his observations of creationist Muslim and evangelical Christian schools in New York, and Kelly Moore's debunking of 5 myths about science and politics.
I've been noodling around with the ideas in my essay for a while, ever since reading Michael Lienesch's In the Beginning, which…
tfk | December 12, 2012A month ago, I had a bit of fun at Senator Marco Rubio's expense over his "I'm not a scientist, man" response to GQ's question about the age of the earth.
I brought up his comments again in my talk last week at the American Geophysical Union meeting, to much audience amusement. It served as a perfect example of the Pillars of Science denial, and the geologists were especially intrigued by his view that the understanding the age of the earth "has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States." Accurately dating rocks and knowing how that fits into…
tfk | November 14, 2012At today's presidential press conference, New York Times reporter Mark Landler broke a trend that ran through the presidential campaign, a trend of silence about climate change. From the transcript:
Q: Thank you, Mr. President. In his endorsement of you a few weeks ago, Mayor Bloomberg said he was motivated by the belief that you would do more to confront the threat of climate change than your opponent. Tomorrow you're going up to New York City, where you're going to, I assume, see people who are still suffering the effects of Hurricane Sandy, which many people say is further evidence of how…
tfk | August 7, 2012
"High Flight"
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there, I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air....
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace. Where never lark, or ever eagle flew — And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod The high…
tfk | August 27, 2011Joel Mathis asks:
Anybody know the actual mathematical odds of experiencing a hurricane and an earthquake in the same week?
Not really, but I can take a pass at it. For simplicity, I'll assume we're talking about an earthquake of magnitude 5 or more (since quakes below that magnitude are often not that noticeable). According to the USGS, there are an average of 1469 earthquakes of magnitude 5+ per year, globally. We'll call it 1500 to make the math easy.
According to the University of Colorado's NCAR, there have been an average of 8 hurricanes per year in the last decade or so, a number…
tfk | July 5, 2011The New York Times reports: E.P.A. Chief Stands Firm as Tough Rules Loom:
In the next weeks and months, Lisa P. Jackson, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, is scheduled to establish regulations on smog, mercury, carbon dioxide, mining waste and vehicle emissions that will affect every corner of the economy.
She is working under intense pressure from opponents in Congress, from powerful industries, from impatient environmentalists and from the Supreme Court, which just affirmed the agencyâs duty to address global warming emissions, a project that carries profound economic…
tfk | June 15, 2011The National Center for Science Education is hiring a Climate Change Programs and Policy Director:
NCSE seeks candidates for our Climate Change Programs and Policy Director.
The Climate Change Programs and Policy Director's duties will include:
* counseling teachers, administrators, parents, and other concerned citizens facing challenges to climate change education;
* providing information on climate change, climate literacy, and related issues to the general public, the press, and allied educational, scientific, and environmental organizations;
* developing materials pertaining to climate…
tfk | April 1, 2011From Denial Depot, Jaws: A movie review:
A group of so-called government funded "experts" whip up alarmist fears of a killer shark off the coast of Amity, a sea side town. Their goal is to destroy the local tourist industry, send Amity back to the dark ages and thus achieve their underlying socialist agenda of wealth redistribution. The heroes of this tale are the local major and business leaders who lead a successful audit of the alarmist claims and by doing so manage to delay action long enough that the beach remains open. In the end it turns out a shark has been eating people.
Read the…
tfk | March 18, 2011Via Southern Fried Scientist, the Galapagos-based Charles Darwin Foundation reports:
In the aftermath of the tidal surges induced by the March 11th Japan earthquake and tsunami, a team of more than 20 staff and volunteers worked shoulder to shoulder to clear debris, retrieve equipment and clean laboratories, offices and storage buildings at the Marine Sciences complex of the Galapagos-based Charles Darwin Foundation (CDF) and Research Station on Santa Cruz Island.
The powerful surf hit Santa Cruz with waves up to 1.77m /5.8 feet above normalâ¦. The waves also coincided with the local high…
tfk | March 11, 2011@Dave Ewing:
The headline you won't be reading: "Millions saved in Japan by good engineering and government building codes". But it's the truth.
My heart goes out to all the people affected the earthquake in Japan, and by the resulting tsunamis which have hit much of the Pacific basin. Heck, we even saw tsunami surge in the San Francisco Bay. The damage and deaths are still being tallied, but it's worth noting that the 5th largest earthquake on record hit near the densely populated coast of Japan, and so far there are a mere 400 deaths reported. The earthquake in Haiti last year, which was…
tfk | February 25, 2011The Wonkroom's Brad Johnson takes on USA Today's Dan Vergano over geoengineering. Geoengineering is the idea that we could combat global warming by pumping sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere, thus blocking some solar radiation and keeping things cooler.
Vergano is a sharp science writer and his take is hardly boosterish, but Johnson dings him for having:
failed to accurately interpret the scientific literature. The only risks he has depicted â ones that involve the potential deaths of millions if not billions of people â are the âknownâ ones, the ones easily modeled by imperfect…
tfk | February 16, 2011HB 549, introduced by Rep. Joe Reed, has been referred to the state legislature's Natural Resources comittee:
A BILL FOR AN ACT ENTITLED: "AN ACT STATING MONTANA'S POSITION ON GLOBAL WARMING; AND PROVIDING AN IMMEDIATE EFFECTIVE DATE."
BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MONTANA:
NEW SECTION. Section 1. Public policy concerning global warming. (1) The legislature finds that to ensure economic development in Montana and the appropriate management of Montana's natural resources it is necessary to adopt a public policy regarding global warming.
(2) The legislature finds:
(a)…
tfk | January 7, 2011This week's Nature has a great report on efforts to get scientists more active in policy discussions. It starts with an ecologist who got some media training, which gave her the courage to go on the Colbert Report and defend a paper she co-authored about the dangers of mountaintop removal. From there, we get a survey of recent attacks on science, and efforts to push back.
Nancy Baron quotes the late and lamented Stephen Schneider, "Staying out of the fray is not taking the 'high ground'; it is just passing the buck," and she adds this useful trick for dealing with the boundary between…
tfk | January 7, 2011Wonk Room reports that Wichita-based Koch Industries is suing. Someone sent out a spoof press release in Koch's name, claiming they were going to stop funding climate change denial groups, and now:
Pollution machine Koch Industries is taking to court to defend its reputation as a cesspool of global warming denial. The right-wing carbon industry giant, owned by Tea Party billionaires David and Charles Koch, has filed a lawsuit in Utah to punish anonymous pranksters who claimed on the companyâs behalf that it was discontinuing funding to climate denial front groups. According to Kochâs lawyers…
tfk | December 17, 2010Shorter Martin Cothran: More evidence for Global Warming:
English winters are cold and snowy, therefore Al Gore is fat global warming is a hoax.
Outside the fictional world of Martin Cothran â where Lost Cause mythology counts as history, as does Noah's Ark â scientifically literate folks know that 2010 is shaping up to be the warmest year on record.
For context, here's the 12-month moving average of global temperatures as of last June:
Note that the last measurement is the warmest 12-month average temperature in recorded history.
tfk | November 9, 2010
Nothing should surprise me any more, but the video above (via Juan Cole) is just shocking. In it, Rep. John Shimkus, who wants to run the House Energy and Commerce Committee, explains his reasons for rejecting the existence of climate change. He starts by citing Genesis, in which a post-Flood God promises never again to "destroy all living creatures," then cites Matthew's claim that humanity's end will only come by God's hand, not by our own doing. He then argues, implausibly, that carbon dioxide was persistently around 4000 parts per million during the age of the dinosaurs. It's true…
tfk | November 3, 2010There's been some debate among the climate hawks about last night's election returns. Politico posted a story suggesting that the toll was especially hard on Democrats who supported the landmark climate change legislation passed by the House last summer. Kate Sheppard observed that quite a few of the Democrats who opposed the bill also lost their seats, and Chris Mims (formerly of Scienceblogs, now at Grist) argues that the election wasn't a referendum on climate change, pointing to the significant numbers of bill supporters who survived last night. NRDC finds the same thing.
The tricky…
tfk | September 20, 2010
That's the full video from my panel at Netroots Nation this summer. Mark Sumner (DailyKos's DevilsTower, and the author most recently of The Evolution of Everything), Greg Dworkin (DailyKos's DemfromCT), and Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway (co-authors of the excellent and important Merchants of Doubt.), joined me to talk about threats to science in today's society, and what scientists have done to fight back.
Don't miss my discussion of Leviathan melvillei and the Fail Whale.
tfk | July 1, 2010In February, Penn State issued a report clearing climatologist Michael Mann of 3 charges of academic misconduct arising from the theft of emails from a server at a British university. More recently, a British parliamentary report dismissed claims that climate scientists had behaved improperly. And now, the fourth charge against Mann has been dismissed as well.
Penn State's press release explains: "A panel of leading scholars has cleared a well-known Penn State climate scientist of research misconduct, following a four-month internal investigation by the University." The first charges were…