Anthropogenic Global Warming
oracknows | October 27, 2015I'm a clinician, but I'm actually also a translational scientist. It's not uncommon for those of us in medicine involved in some combination of basic and clinical research to argue about exactly what that means. The idea is translational science is supposed to be the process of "translating" basic science discoveries into the laboratory into medicine, be it in the form of drugs, treatments, surgical procedures, laboratory tests, diagnostic tests, or anything else that physicians use to diagnose and treat human disease. Trying to straddle the two worlds, to turn discoveries in basic science…
oracknows | March 10, 2015The human mind is amazing in its ability to compartmentalize. Many are the times when I've come across people who seem reasonable in every other way but who cling tightly to one form of pseudoscience or another. On the other hand, as I've noticed time and time again, people whose minds have a proclivity for pseudoscience tend not to limit themselves to just one form of pseudoscience. Indeed, my surgical and skeptical bud Mark Hoofnagle coined a term for this latter phenomenon, namely "crank magnetism." It's basically a pithy term to describe how people who are into one form of pseudoscience…
gregladen | January 9, 2013Climate change science denialism has pretty much run its course. We've been experiencing a large number of climate change related events (see this list for a brief summary) lately. It may well be that the number per year of such alarming events will go down and up over time. It may be that we will forget that some of them are happening because we grow used to them. But they are happening at a larger rate than just a few years ago, the years are getting warmer and warmer, and the effects predicted by the science have been manifest as predicted, but for on thing: They are happening sooner,…
gregladen | October 28, 2012If you are in the path...the thousand mile wide path...of Hurricane Sandy, a.k.a. Frankenstorm, then you should make sure you know what the storm could do in relationship to where you are. If you are in or near an area with mountains, look for very serious flash flooding. The winds will be strong everywhere. If you are near the coast, be aware that the highest storm surges seen in years are expected in many areas. At the same time, it is important for those of us writing or talking about this storm to be realistic and careful in making predictions. This is becasue every case of dire…
oracknows | June 27, 2012And now for something completely different.
Except that it isn't really. I say that it isn't really different because, although this post will seem to be about politics, in reality it will be about a common topic on this blog: Anti-science. And where is this anti-science? Sadly, it's in the platform of a major party of one of the largest states in the country. It also meshes with the anti-science inherent in a lot of so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) and all comes together in one place: The proposed 2012 Platform of the Republican Party of Texas. It's all there, as you…
gregladen | March 8, 2012Quite possibly Pete Sinclair's best and most important videos yet.
Click here to get more background from Peter Sinclair's site.
The post refers to this book: The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines
gregladen | February 14, 2012This seems to be fairly big news. The Heartland Institute is a conservative and libertarian "think" tank that cut its teeth on denying the dangers of cigarette smoking back in the 1990s. These days the Heartland Institute seems to be focused on Anthropogenic Climate Change Denialism and Science Denialism in general.
A piece of one of the revealed documents suggesting that the Heartland Institute wants to "dissuade teachers from teaching science."
Well, just a few hours ago, members of the climate change science, journalism, and blogging community received an interesting Valentine's Day…
gregladen | September 25, 2011How do you know when alternative views are real alternatives, and thus should be considered in a "balanced view" vs. when those views are not any longer valid and should be ignored? This sounds like a hard thing to do but it is not as hard as you might think. I suggest two different approaches: "Tipping Points" and "Clues that Something is Wrong Here."
The Tipping Point approach works like this: As the percentage of qualified scientists that hold a particular view diminishes, when it reaches about 25 percent or so, the view should continue to be references but as a minority view. Many…
gregladen | September 2, 2011There has been a major dust-up in the climate denialist world. A study published in late July made false claims and was methodologically flawed, but still managed to get published in a peer reviewed journal. The Editor-in-Chief of that journal has resigned to symbolically take responsibility for the journal's egregious error of publishing what is essentially a fake scientific paper, and to "protest against how the authors [and others] have much exaggerated the paper's conclusions" taking to task the University of Alabama's press office, Forbes, Fox News and others.
Let me break it down for…
gregladen | July 29, 2011Relying heavily on the excellent resource known as Dr. Jeff Master's Wunderblog and a few other sources, I've compiled a quick list of a few of the highlights of weather events related to global warming in the news these days, in preparation for this weekend's radio show "The Science of Global Warming: Science V Denialsim" on Atheists Talk #126, with Kevin Zelnio and John Abraham.
Here goes:
In recent months we have experienced the largest fire on record in Arizona, the largest fire in the history of New Mexico, the most extreme precipitation in the US ever, the hottest day in hell aka the…
gregladen | July 29, 2011According to a newly published paper in the journal "Remote Sensing" the Earth's atmosphere releases into space more heat than climate scientists had previously estimated in a way that effectively removes concern about fossil CO2 being released into the atmosphere.
The reason scientists have this wrong, according to the article's authors, Roy Spencer and William Braswell, is that climate scientists use a fundamentally flawed model of atmospheric heat dynamics and radiation of heat from the surface of the climate system into space. The senior author, Spencer, has previously argued that…
gregladen | July 11, 2011I woke up this morning and the world was slightly different than it was the night before. Well, it probably always is a little different each day, but there are certain times when you notice this. I'm not talking about the bits of siding, roofing, and trees scattered about the landscape because of the very severe thunderstorm we had last night, although I suppose this is indirectly related.
If you are not a Minnesotan this will take some explanation:
Don Shelby newscaster, was the Walter Cronkite of the Twin Cities. Stately in appearance, white-haired (since birth, presumably), deep…
gregladen | June 9, 2011There is no chance that there is any connection between the release of fossil carbon into the atmosphere, no chance, for instance that severe weather is increased because of global warming. Don't give it a second thought. The following video proves that you have nothing to worry about:
oracknows | March 24, 2010It has often been written on this blog and elsewhere that the mark of a true crank is hatred of the scientific consensus, be it consensus regarding the theory of evolution, the science that says homeopathy is impossible, anthropogenic global warming; various areas of science-based medicine; or the safety and efficacy of vaccines. Perhaps the most famous expression of distrust of a scientific consensus is the famous speech by Michael Crichton, in which he famously said:
Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science…