presidential election

I want to quickly mention two interesting items that crossed my desk. First is a study in Nature that looks at changes in extreme weather patterns between 1979 and very recently, the other is a study of how media has been addressing climate science denial among presidential candidates. Evidence that global warming is intensifying extreme weather First, the changes in weather. Human caused greenhouse gas pollution has resulted in important changes in key factors that affect the weather. The simplest (but not complete) explanation is probably this. Overall patterns of air circulation (…
Now let's be clear - we all knew Mitt Romney did not give a flying fuck about the poor. Other than the occasional service provider, he's never met any poor people, first of all. Moreover, it is a fact that no presidential candidate, Democratic or Republican for the last 30 years has cared about the very poor. Add in the fact that Mitt demonstrably cares only about his hair, campaign donors (not a lot of them among the very poor) and getting elected, and this isn't exactly news. GOP front-runner Mitt Romney said this morning that he's not concerned about the plight of the country's very…
Sadly, he's not alone, which is why this is worth debunking. Gingrich's sense that oil fields can be brought rapidly online, and his "we beat the Nazis and went to the moon so we can do this" statements reflect the general cultural misunderstandings about how oil is extracted that are endemic in our culture. While his claim that we could "open up enough oil fields in the next year that the price of oil worldwide would collapse. Now, that's what we would do if we were a serious country." is a bit of idiocy, it probably isn't atypical idiocy in a country that knows nothing about the basic…
tags: Sarah Palin, religion, The Rapture, Keith Olberman, streaming video Keith Olberman reports on the peculiar situation where Sarah Palin's pastor, whom Palin gives partial credit for making her the governer of Alaska (does this qualify as cheating?), was involved in chasing an innocent woman out of her home after accusing her of being a witch. We all know that Alaskans love to hunt mostly anything that moves, but .. witches?? What's next; will we be throwing misbehavin' women into ponds to see if they float? Or maybe all muslims will be perceived as witches .. what then? Because Palin has…
tags: ScienceDebate2008, AAAS, American Association for the Advancement of Science, presidential elections Hey, everyone. I know I have told you several times that things are really gaining momentum with regards to the proposed ScienceDebate2008, an idea that originated here on ScienceBlogs by my SciBlings, Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirschenbaum, but here is yet more proof that the idea is gaining more appeal: the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) today announced that it has joined our effort to mount a presidential debate on science, technology and the economy. "…