Watts Up With That’s continued ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
at 9:49 am on Monday, 15 March 2010
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Watts-Up-With-Thats-continued-ignorance-regarding-Antarctic-sea-ice.html (more…)
Understanding Science: How Science Really Works
http://undsci.berkeley.edu/
This is an outstanding website for both teachers and students at the University of California, Berkeley. It is interactive, has lots of links to great resources, and is presented in a way that will not insult most people’s intelligence but sophisticated that almost any literate but non-expert reader will find value here.
2010 State of the Birds Report
at 10:22 am on Saturday, 13 March 2010
http://www.stateofthebirds.org/
In this 2010 State of the Birds report, we consider one of the greatest environmental challenges of our time, climate change. How will the impacts of climate change influence our bird populations and their habitats? Accelerated climate change as a result of human activities is altering the natural world as we know it, diminishing the quality of our environment. This report calls attention to the collective efforts needed to protect nature’s resources for the benefit of people and wildlife.
New search engine added
at 9:53 am on Saturday, 13 March 2010
I just added a new search engine that should improve the usefulness of the “search” function considerably. Please let me know of any problems.
The previous search engine gave pretty spotty results. The new engine is comprehensive: if you search on “birds” you will get all of the postings in which the word “birds” appears. If you ask for “guardian” you will not only get all the articles from the Guardian itself, but all the articles in which that newspaper is mentioned.
Why scientists aren’t more persuasive, Part 1
essay, “The Scaffolding of Rhetoric.”
The ever-worsening reality of human-caused global warming is driving more and more scientists to become desperate about our future (see “Desperate times, desperate scientists“). Yet poll after poll shows that scientists and those who accept scientific understanding as the basis for action on climate change are failing to persuade large segments of society about the urgent need to act (see “The Deniers are winning, but only with the GOP” and “The deniers are winning, especially with the GOP“).
Anyone who wants to understand — and change — the politics of global warming, must understand why the deniers, delayers, and inactivists are so persuasive in the public debate and why scientists and scientific-minded people are not. A key part of the answer, I believe, is that while science and logic are powerful systematic tools for understanding the world, they are no match in the public realm for the 25-century-old art of verbal persuasion: rhetoric.
(Climate Progress, September 20, 2008)
Improving How Scientists Communicate About Climate Change
The need is urgent for climate scientists to communicate more effectively to policymakers and the public. This article details some of the problems with how climate scientists communicate and offers practical suggestions for improvement. For example, scientists can improve their effectiveness by avoiding jargon as well as words that mean different things to scientists than to non-scientists. They can use appropriate metaphors and re-frame poorly framed questions. As policymakers grapple with the climate challenge, scientists should take the opportunity and responsibility of clearly communicating what the wider world needs to know about this issue.
(Climate Progress, February 29, 2010)
Reframing the debate on climate science
The international consensus on global warming has seemingly experienced a spectacular slow-motion train wreck over the last few months, with “climategate” reports piling up in public debate like derailing rail cars filmed in freeze frame. The fascination for on-lookers, however, is that the science itself is largely blameless. Instead, the pile-up stands as a case study in how not to wage a political battle. And make no mistake; the attacks on climate science are pure politics. We have seen attacks on science before, just pick your favorite example: smoking, toxic pollution, seat belts, etc. However, until there is a fundamental reframing of the climate science debate, one that illuminates the politics, the current round of attacks will continue to enjoy success.
(Climate Progress, March 12, 2010)
If Lady Chatterley’s Lover, then. . .
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/RickyRood/article.html
The first paragraph of Sheila Jasanoff’s book, The Fifth Branch, starts
“Scientific advisory committees occupy a curiously sheltered position in the landscape of American regulatory politics. In an era of bitter ideological confrontations, their role in policymaking has gone largely unobserved and unchallenged. …” (1990, The Fifth Branch, Chapter 1, Rationalizing Politics; 2009 Interview with Professor Jasanoff)
The first chapter of The Fifth Branch is something that I think that all managers of science in the U.S. Agencies should read. The book, quickly and compellingly, describes the role of scientists in the U.S. political environment. There are references to and case studies of many instances where scientific investigation is motivating and informing policy. There are examples from environmental science, from waste management, and from approval and management of prescription drugs. The book makes it clear that if scientific investigation suggests a need to change, to regulate, or to restrict a certain practice or behavior, then there is a response to oppose that change, that regulation, or that restriction. The depth and vigor of the opposition depends on the wealth and power of those who perceive themselves as impacted; there is often the funding or the advocacy of “opposition science.”
(WeatherUnderground, March 10, 2010)
Pachauri Welcomes Independent Review of Embattled Climate Panel
UN climate science chief Rajendra Pachauri welcomed today’s announcement of an outside audit that could help scientists win back public and political support for the battered consensus on human-caused climate change.
“It is critically important that the science we bring into our reports — and that we disseminate on a wide scale — is accepted by communities across the globe, by governments, by businesses, by civil society,” Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said at UN headquarters.
(Solve Climate, March 10, 2010)
Today’s white rice is mutation spread by early farmers, researchers say
at 1:14 pm on Wednesday, 10 March 2010
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Aug07/WhiteRice.kr.html
Some 10,000 years ago white rice evolved from wild red rice and began spreading around the globe. But how did this happen?
Researchers at Cornell and elsewhere have determined that 97.9 percent of all white rice is derived from a mutation (a deletion of DNA) in a single gene originating in theJaponica subspecies of rice. Their report, published online in the journal PloS (Public Library of Science) Genetics, suggests that early farmers favored, bred and spread white rice around the world.
(CornellOnline, August 16, 2007) (more…)
EDF nuclear reactor carries ‘Chernobyl-size’ explosion risk
at 3:28 pm on Monday, 8 March 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/07/edf-nuclear-reactor-chernobyl-risk
Protest network Sortir du Nucléaire says leaked EDF documents show reactor’s defects could cause massive nuclear accident.
French anti-nuclear campaigners claim a new power plant being built in Normandy carries an accident risk of “Chernobyl proportions”.
Sortir du Nucléaire, a protest network, says leaked confidential documents show that tests on the third-generation pressurised water reactor present a potentially catastrophic scenario.
(Guardian, March 7. 2010)
U.S. needs fresh look at nuclear waste issue: Chu
at 1:59 pm on Sunday, 7 March 2010
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE6244NE20100305
SANTA BARBARA, California (Reuters) – U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said on Friday that the United States needs to come up with a better system for storing or disposing of radioactive nuclear waste than a planned repository near Las Vegas.
“The president has made it very clear that we are going to go beyond Yucca mountain. You should go beyond Yucca mountain,” Chu said. “But instead of wringing my hands, let’s go forward and do something better.”
“Ida” not a missing link
at 12:22 pm on Sunday, 7 March 2010
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/03/06/ida-not-a-missing-link/
On May 20 of last year, at a remarkable press conference in New York, a group of researchers announced—with much ballyhoo—that they’d found a 47-million-year-old primate fossil named Darwinius masillae(nicknamed “Ida”). Ida, the finest fossil primate in existence, was touted loudly as the missing link between the two major branches of primates, the Haplorhini (anthropoids [apes and monkeys] and tarsiers), and the Strepsirrhini (lemurs and lorises; see figure below). Concurrent with the press conference was a History Channel documentary and a book about Ida, Colin Tudge’s The Link, that proclaimed, with much heavy breathing, that Ida was, as one of the earliest primate ancestors of our own species, an earthshaking discovery (see my review of the book here).
Every skeptic argument ever used
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Every-skeptic-argument-ever-used.html
The Skeptical Science list of skeptic arguments is one of the larger compilations going around, currently numbering 91 different arguments. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Whenever I encounter a skeptic argument, I add it to the database which currently contains 242 skeptic arguments. The 91 are those which I’ve found the time to research and write a summary of what the peer-reviewed science says on the topic. Now all 242 arguments have been categorised and displayed on a new Global Warming Links page. And just to open up a potentially huge can of worms, you can add to the list of skeptic arguments yourself!
Did Dinosaurs Start Out on All Fours?
at 11:26 am on Sunday, 7 March 2010
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/03/did-dinosaurs-start-out-on-all-f.html?etoc
How much is that Asilisaurus in the window? That’s what prospective pet owners might be asking, if a newly discovered dinosaur ancestor were still alive. “It’s a lightweight, four-legged, plant-eating, scampering wonder that might have made a nice pet,” says paleontologist Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago in Illinois. The creature’s fossilized bones should cause a rethinking about dinosaur ancestors because they suggest that dinos evolved not from two-legged carnivores but from four-legged vegetarians.
Solving the Rangeland Paradox
at 11:09 am on Sunday, 7 March 2010
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/03/solving-the-rangeland-paradox.html?etoc
They have a saying in Texas: We don’t have a water problem, we have a brush problem. The idea is that when shrubs and trees invade former grazing lands, they soak up so much groundwater that streams slow down and water supplies to cities and towns decrease. But a new study suggests that the opposite is true: Trees and shrubs on the prairies may actually help recharge the groundwater. The findings should force a rethink of land-management techniques for much of the U.S.’s former rangelands.
The Spread of Superbugs
at 10:44 am on Sunday, 7 March 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/opinion/07kristof.html?th&emc=th
Until three months ago, Thomas M. Dukes was a vigorous, healthy executive at a California plastics company. Then, over the course of a few days in December as he was planning his Christmas shopping, E. coli bacteria ravaged his body and tore his life apart.
Mr. Dukes is a reminder that as long as we’re examining our health care system, we need to scrutinize more than insurance companies. We also need to curb the way modern agribusiness madly overuses antibiotics, leaving them ineffective for sick humans.
(New York Times, March 6, 2010)
Does record snowfall disprove global warming?
at 9:23 am on Sunday, 7 March 2010
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Does-record-snowfall-disprove-global-warming.html
The 2009/2010 winter saw a number of dramatic, record breaking snowstorms. Early February saw two “once in a 100 years” snowstorms hit Philadelphia, now being dubbed “Snowmageddon”. Does record snowfall prove that global warming isn’t happening? What do observations say? 2009 was the second hottest year on record. January 2010 was the hottest January in the UAH satellite record. Satellites data indicates last month was the second hottest February in the satellite record. Observations tell us that rumours of global warming’s death have been greatly exaggerated.
Figure 1: UAH satellite measurement of near surface temperature. January 2010 is the hottest January in the satellite record. February 2010 is the second hottest February in the satellite record. Click on the image for larger version.
Hacked Email Scientists: Temperature Data Withheld at Countries’ Request
at 5:50 pm on Saturday, 6 March 2010
Prominent British researchers at the heart of the hacked email scandal shot down accusations of illegally withholding scientific information charting the planet’s temperature, telling a parliamentary hearing that certain governments had prohibited them from publishing all the raw data.
Phil Jones (photo), head scientist of the premier Climatic Research Unit(CRU) at the University of East Anglia, acknowledged that he refused requests for the institute’s raw climate data, but only because of confidentiality agreements with national weather stations supplying the figures.
Surprising mtDNA diversity
http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/57199/
Mitochondrial genomes are not uniform across cells of the body as previously believed, but vary between different tissue types, according to a study published online today (March 3) inNature.
The findings may affect forensics and the search for biomarkers, both of which utilize mitochondrial DNA.
(more…)