Category Archives: Science and Edumacation

Politics, Science and Edumacation

Latest on GW

Why do I sometimes use the word “denial” for a certain class of global warming skeptics? Because of shit like this, in which hacked e-mails are quoted out of context to “prove” — in an extraordinarily weak way — that global warming is a hoax. As a scientist, the e-mails don’t sound unusual or conspiratorial to me. It sounds like what it is — private and sometimes flippant communication between people trying to unravel a very complex and difficult scientific question.

Update: Just read the comment stream over at Hot Air. I defy anyone to read it and not think “denial” is an appropriate word for the conspiracy theory that is thrown around anytime the subject of global warming comes up. The usual discredited talking points — global cooling, 1934, supposed falling temperatures, Mars temperatures, etc. — are all out in full force. And any attempt to dispute their absolute certainty that global warming is not just wrong, but a massive hoax, is shouted down and mocked. I put up a comment or too and was quickly labelled an idiot, a hysteric and asked if my screen was covered with spittle from a quite reasonable post.

This is not skepticism; this is sticking fingers in ears and yelling. This is not science; this is religion.

One question they never seem to have an answer for: what’s their big theory? What do they think the CO2 is doing? Nothing?

Healthcare, Politics, Science and Edumacation

Thursday Linkorama

  • Bruce Bartlett speaks. I agree with everything he says, especially about the Republican Party being brain dead. It’s horrific to watch, especially in the conservative friends and family I know that are following them into the abyss.
  • Nice. Pseudo-scientific woo like “therapeutic touch” is sneaking into the healthcare bill. This will not only drive up expenses, but move money to fund bullshit. Penn and Teller’s show had a great segment on Emily Rosa, the 11-year-old girl who proved TT was garbage.
  • There is no excuse for this.
  • How PETA sees abuse. I have to agree (with the graph; not with PETA).
  • It’s possible Massachusetts could replace Ted Kennedy with someone even worse.
  • Another “global warming is a myth” myth debunked. IN this case, it’s the “arctic ice is recovering” misrepresentation.
  • More stadium dumbassery.
    • Politics, Science and Edumacation

    Hawaii Linkorama

  • Huffpo has their most egregious examples of Fox News bias. I dunno. First, HuffPo continues to confuse opinion with news reporting. Second, almost all of these can be seen in the MSM for the Democrats. In particular, the criticism of Fox for reciting Republican talking points falls flat. I used to run a regular feature in which I would put Democratic Party press releases and NYT editorials side-by-side and invite readers to guess which was which. Narry a mention, of course, will be made about Olberman and Maddow’s secret meeting with Obama.
  • You know, couldn’t he prosecute the woman for trespassing?
  • What would life be like without the internet? My third favorite magazine takes a look. Not shown: me writing random thoughts on walls.
  • Ah, DMV. Do you ever fail to be a source of humor?
  • CO2 levels at 15 million year highs.
  • Soviet sentimentalism. Never grows old, does it?
  • Team Obama decides that voters are too stupid to vote without parties. I suspect, however, that the motivating factor here is to get more Democrats elected.
  • Again, remind me why Bloomberg is touted as a Presidential Candidate? How do you make the business environment in NYC worse?
    • Science and Edumacation

    The Cooling Canard

    If there is one meme in the anti-AGW camp that drive me nuts, it’s the idea that the scientific community was all about global cooling thirty years ago. This study destroys (PDF) that notion, looking at publications and citations of papers in the 1970’s. Global cooling was a theory, but far from a consensus one. Global warming theory did not succeed it; global warming theory competed with and defeated global cooling theory.

    Science and Edumacation

    Up In Smoke

    When I heard that the CDC was reporting huge drops in heart attack rates from smoking bans, I was immediately suspicious. The cig-grabbers have been caught — many times — faking it. There was the EPA’s landmark study years ago that changed the weights of the input studies. Then there was the Scottish study that cherry-picked certain hospitals in certain months. I hate to prejudge, but these guys have a track record of announcing huge finds only to quietly retract them later.

    God damn, do I hate being right all the time:

    The largest study of the issue, which used nationwide data instead of looking at cherry-picked communities, found that smoking bans “are not associated with statistically significant short-term declines in mortality or hospital admissions for myocardial infarction or other diseases.” Furthermore, “An analysis simulating smaller studies using subsamples reveals that large short-term increases in myocardial infarction incidence following a workplace ban are as common as the large decreases reported in the published literature.”

    That study, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in March, suggests that publication bias can explain what the IOM panel describes as the “consistent” results of the studies it considered (meaning that they all found drops in heart attacks, although the magnitude of these decreases varied widely, from 6 percent in Italy to an astonishing 47 percent in Pueblo, Colorado). If a researcher runs the numbers for a particular jurisdiction and finds no impact from a smoking ban, he is not likely to write up that result, especially if he supports smoking bans as part of the effort to reduce tobacco-related disease. Even if he does submit an article describing his findings, it is not likely to be published, not just because of an anti-smoking bias but because negative results are perceived as boring.

    The NBER paper was mysteriously excluded from the IOM report, even though the authors say they bent over backward to compensate for publication bias by looking for relevant data that did not appear in medical journals. They also ignored analyses that found no declines in heart attacks following smoking bans in California, Florida, New York, Oregon, England, Wales, and Scotland. The omission of the Scottish data is especially striking because they contradict one of the 11 studies included in the IOM report, showing that a decrease in heart attacks during the first year was exaggerated and in any case disappeared the following year.

    I hate to accuse anyone of fraud, but what else do you call this? The anti-smokers have pulled this crap again and again and again. Either they are deliberately canting the results or, as a whole, they are the sloppiest researchers on the planet.

    But the bell has been rung. This study — like all the discredited stories before it — will now be cited a justification for every new smoking ban.

    (PS – There’s a quote later on from the other Michael Siegel, who I am sometimes mistaken for (in cyberspace, that is, not meatspace). He’s a staunch anti-smoker who constantly attacks the sloppy research used to support his cause. I’m proud to share my name with anyone who bashes his own side’s BS.)

    Healthcare, Politics, Science and Edumacation

    Thursday Linkorama

  • Barbara Ehrenreich became famous for her book Nickeled and Dimed, a story of year she spent as a poor person. It had some huge flaws, mainly her insistence on changing jobs and refusal to avail herself of private assistance. Nevertheless, the book was very popular in academic circles for reinforcing liberal beliefs about poverty. Seems like she’s still at it, ignorantly attacking recent research indicating women’s happiness is beginning to fall off.
  • The New Paternalism: Old Paternalism with a little more condescension.
  • Two more horror stories from the UK NHS.
  • If the GOP can’t even run a website, how they can run the country. Oh, yeah.
  • What does Eliot Spitzers warrant a column on Slate? Ignore the man’s private behavior; he’s a puritanical totalitarian twerp.
  • Fascinating stuff on the Soviet doomsday machine.
  • Another interesting article on Obama’s love of language, both in speeches and writing.
  • Um. What?.
  • If we cut oil consumption, the Saudis want compensation. I knew there was a good side to this global warming stuff: it pisses off the oil sheiks something fierce.
  • Looks like the school that wanted to suspend a 6-year-old over his utensils has come to their senses. Now we can make zero tolerance policies work — so long as every wronged child gets an internet uproar.
    • Politics, Science and Edumacation, War on Terror

    Aussie Linkorama

    6 Comments
  • The “debunking” of global warming? Myth. Again. But the Denialists now have another few years of ammunition. Look how much mileage they’ve gotten out of the global cooling canard.
  • Now that Britain has banned guns and knives, they’re taking aim at pub glasses. Yes, pub glasses. Stand by for their next announcement to remove people’s fists.
  • God help me. I do sometimes like Scalia.
  • I would definitely eat irradiate meat. In fact, I suspect that with my travel schedule, I am.
  • The overcrowding doomsayers are crawling out of the woodwork again. Ignore them (although I don’t know where Bailey is getting his Year 2100 projections).
  • Good on the Obama team for having low-level talks with Iran. It looks like concessions were made. We are fools to not consider talking to Iran, given the demographic firestorm that is soon to dislodge their leadership. More on Iran here, although I think Cole is a bit too glib and far far too generous in his reading of Iran’s actions.
  • I’ve been predicting for a while that terrorists would put bombs inside their bodies. Increasingly, we see that finding terrorists is important than finding weapons.
    • Healthcare, Politics, Science and Edumacation

    Wednesday Linkorama

  • Prediction: when the Right realized that Pat Tillman opposed the Iraq War, they will drop him like a rock.
  • I have a feeling that Bruce Bartlett is right. We’re going to have to raise taxes to erase the deficit. There’s simply not enough spending that can be cut once you exclude Medicare, Medicaid and defense. To me, this is a very conservative point of view. The point is fiscal sanity, not mindless anti-tax rhetoric.
  • A great illustration of just how stupid trade protectionism is. Ford is building vans, then ripping them up to avoid trade barriers.
  • Greg Mankiw notes that healthcare will never be equal. I keep intending to pen a long post on why healthcare should not be considered a “right” (helping people in need, which I support in principle, is an act of compassion, but a matter of people’s rights). Mankiw makes a key argument here: if medical care is a right and a medical procedure is too expensive for all of us to have, how can any of us have it?
  • Conservative crowing about the revision of arctic ice melt illustrates perfectly what’s wrong with their thinking. One bad fact does not overturn thousands of others. This would be the equivalent of denying general relatively because a nuclear bomb didn’t work.
    • Law and Order, Politics, Religion, Science and Edumacation

    Friday Linkorama

  • And people wonder why tort reform is such a big deal to doctors. Brilliant article from Philip Howard looks into solutions.
  • A new study find CO2 levels track arctic ice levels. Let’s see if the global warming denier acknowledge this study the same way they’ll acknowledge a study that disputes an aspect of global warming.
  • It’s no surprise to me that more religious states have higher teen birth rates, although I suspect there’s a correlation-causation thing going on.
  • I have to say that I’m kind of against mandatory flu vaccinations even though I generally favor mandating vaccination. One factor here is that the flu vaccine is not anywhere close to 100% effective.
  • Just when you thought the birthers couldn’t get any crazier.
  • A great piece from Jesse Walker argues that it’s not radical groups — left or right — who present the real violent threat in America. It’s the response.
  • Yet more scientific coolness.