Group items tagged

[UPDATE: Gavin Schmidt at Real Climate has a post on this subject that  -- surprise, surprise -- is perfectly consonant with what I write below.] [UPDATE 2: Andy Revkin has a great post on the representations of the precipitation paper discussed below by scientists and related coverage by the media.]  

Nature published two papers yesterday that discuss increasing precipitation trends and a 2000 flood in the UK.  I have been asked by many people whether these papers mean that we can now attribute some fraction of the global trend in disaster losses to greenhouse gas emissions, or even recent disasters such as in Pakistan and Australia.

I hate to pour cold water on a really good media frenzy, but the answer is "no."  Neither paper actually discusses global trends in disasters (one doesn't even discuss floods) or even individual events beyond a single flood event in the UK in 2000.  But still, can't we just connect the dots?  Isn't it just obvious?  And only deniers deny the obvious, right?

Lever-Tracy confronted sociologists head on about their worrisome silence on the issue. Why have sociologists failed to address the greatest and most overwhelming challenge facing modern society? Why have the figureheads of the discipline, such as Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck, so far refused to apply their seminal notions of structuration and the risk society to the issue?

Earlier, we re-published an important contribution by Ulrich Beck, the world-renowned German sociologist and a Breakthrough Senior Fellow. More recently, Current Sociology published a powerful response by Reiner Grundmann of Aston University and Nico Stehr of Zeppelin University.

sociologists should not rush into the discursive arena without asking some critical questions in advance, questions such as: What exactly could sociology contribute to the debate? And, is there something we urgently need that is not addressed by other disciplines or by political proposals?

Sony has worked to strengthen its information security systems, 'placing our highest priority on ensuring the security of our customers' personal information, and regaining their trust.' The Japanese electronics and entertainment giant has faced a series of cyber attacks and said more than 100 million accounts have been affected, making it one of the largest data breaches in the history of the Internet. Analysts say costs associated with the breach could be as much as US$1 billion (S$1.24 billion), but deeper damage to Sony's brand image could undermine efforts to link its gadgets to an online network of games, movies and music.

Say the word “inventor” and most people think of a solitary genius toiling in a basement. But two ambitious new books on the history of innovation—by Steven Johnson and Kevin Kelly, both longtime wired contributors—argue that great discoveries typically spring not from individual minds but from the hive mind. In Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, Johnson draws on seven centuries of scientific and technological progress, from Gutenberg to GPS, to show what sorts of environments nurture ingenuity. He finds that great creative milieus, whether MIT or Los Alamos, New York City or the World Wide Web, are like coral reefs—teeming, diverse colonies of creators who interact with and influence one another.

Seven centuries are an eyeblink in the scope of Kelly’s book, What Technology Wants, which looks back over some 50,000 years of history and peers nearly that far into the future. His argument is similarly sweeping: Technology, Kelly believes, can be seen as a sort of autonomous life-form, with intrinsic goals toward which it gropes over the course of its long development. Those goals, he says, are much like the tendencies of biological life, which over time diversifies, specializes, and (eventually) becomes more sentient.

We share a fascination with the long history of simultaneous invention: cases where several people come up with the same idea at almost exactly the same time. Calculus, the electrical battery, the telephone, the steam engine, the radio—all these groundbreaking innovations were hit upon by multiple inventors working in parallel with no knowledge of one another.

Science stories usually fall into three families: wacky stories, scare stories and "breakthrough" stories.

these stories are invariably written by the science correspondents, and hotly followed, to universal jubilation, with comment pieces, by humanities graduates, on how bonkers and irrelevant scientists are.

A close relative of the wacky story is the paradoxical health story. Every Christmas and Easter, regular as clockwork, you can read that chocolate is good for you (www.badscience.net/?p=67), just like red wine is, and with the same monotonous regularity

Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman’s remarks in the Wall Street Journal Asia piece, “Leaked cable spooks some U.S. sources” dated 3 Dec 2010. The paragraph in question went like this: “Others laid blame not on working U.S. diplomats, but on Wikileaks. Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it had “deep concerns about the damaging action of Wikileaks.” It added, ‘it is critical to protect the confidentiality of diplomatic and official correspondence.’” (emphasis my own)

on 25 Jan 2003, the then Singapore Minister of Foreign Affairs and current Senior Minister without portfolio, Professor S Jayakumar, in an unprecedented move, unilaterally released all diplomatic and official correspondence relating to confidential discussions on water negotiations between Singapore and Malaysia from the year 2000. In a parliamentary speech that would have had Julian Assange smiling from ear to ear, Jayakumar said, “We therefore have no choice but to set the record straight by releasing these documents for people to judge for themselves the truth of the matter.” The parliamentary reason for the unprecedented release of information was the misrepresentations made by Malaysia over the price of water, amongst others.

The then Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir’s response to Singapore’s pre-Wikileak wikileak was equally quote-worthy, “I don’t feel nice. You write a letter to your girlfriend. And your girlfriend circulates it to all her boyfriends. I don’t think I’ll get involved with that girl.”

Studies of the effects of alcohol consumption on health outcomes should recognise the methodological biases they are likely to face, and design, analyse and interpret their studies accordingly. While regular moderate alcohol consumption during middle-age probably does reduce vascular risk, care should be taken when making general recommendations about safe levels of alcohol intake. In particular, it is likely that any promotion of alcohol for health reasons would do substantially more harm than good.

. The consistency in the vascular benefit associated with moderate drinking (compared with non-drinking) observed across different studies, together with the existence of credible biological pathways, strongly suggests that at least some of this benefit is real.

However, because of biases introduced by: choice of reference categories; reverse causality bias; variations in alcohol intake over time; and confounding, some of it is likely to be an artefact. For heavy drinking, different study biases have the potential to act in opposing directions, and as such, the true effects of heavy drinking on vascular risk are uncertain. However, because of the known harmful effects of heavy drinking on non-vascular mortality, the problem is an academic one.

This post is about how one should deal with a denialist of Delingpole's ilk.

I saw someone I follow on Twitter retweet an update from another Twitter user called @AGW_IS_A_HOAX, which was this: "NZ #Climate Scientists Admit Faking Temperatures http://bit.ly/fHbdPI RT @admrich #AGW #Climategate #Cop16 #ClimateChange #GlobalWarming".

So I click on it. And this is how you deal with a denialist claim. You actually look into it. Here is the text of that article reproduced in full: New Zealand Climate Scientists Admit To Faking Temperatures: The Actual Temps Show Little Warming Over Last 50 YearsRead here and here. Climate "scientists" across the world have been blatantly fabricating temperatures in hopes of convincing the public and politicians that modern global warming is unprecedented and accelerating. The scientists doing the fabrication are usually employed by the government agencies or universities, which thrive and exist on taxpayer research dollars dedicated to global warming research. A classic example of this is the New Zealand climate agency, which is now admitting their scientists produced bogus "warming" temperatures for New Zealand. "NIWA makes the huge admission that New Zealand has experienced hardly any warming during the last half-century. For all their talk about warming, for all their rushed invention of the “Eleven-Station Series” to prove warming, this new series shows that no warming has occurred here since about 1960. Almost all the warming took place from 1940-60, when the IPCC says that the effect of CO2 concentrations was trivial. Indeed, global temperatures were falling during that period.....Almost all of the 34 adjustments made by Dr Jim Salinger to the 7SS have been abandoned, along with his version of the comparative station methodology."A collection of temperature-fabrication charts.

The origin of Aids denialism lies with one man. Peter Duesberg has spent the whole of his academic career at the University of California, Berkeley. In the 1970s he performed groundbreaking work that helped show how mutated genes cause cancer, an insight that earned him a well-deserved international reputation.

in the early 1980s, something changed. Duesberg attempted to refute his own theories, claiming that it was not mutated genes but rather environmental toxins that are cancer's true cause. He dismissed the studies of other researchers who had furthered his original work. Then, in 1987, he published a paper that extended his new train of thought to Aids.

Initially many scientists were open to Duesberg's ideas. But as evidence linking HIV to Aids mounted - crucially the observation that ARVs brought Aids sufferers who were on the brink of death back to life - the vast majority concluded that the debate was over. Nonetheless, Duesberg persisted with his arguments, and in doing so attracted a cabal of supporters

It is here where I think that Gillard has made a bad bet. Carbon pricing is supposed to create jobs by making fossil fuels appreciably more expensive, thereby creating a market signal that disfavors carbon-intensive industry and stimulates less carbon-intensive economic activity. The economic parts of theory seem sound enough.

However, it is the political realities that the theory does not account for.  Australia's economy is very carbon intensive (PDF). Thus, if carbon pricing were to work exactly as the Prime Minister describes, it will necessary lead to a great deal of economic dislocation and change -- Consider that to meet the 5% emissions reduction target (from 2000 levels), without relying on offsets or other tricks, implies that Australia's economy would need to become as carbon efficient as Japan's by the end of this decade. How such a profoundly disruptive transitional period would be managed is the one issue that advocates of a high carbon price have never really dealt with -- the market's invisible hand will take care of it I guess.

How does one become "reskilled"?  Without an explanation, many people will translate "reskilled" to mean "unemployed".  The oft-stated idea that the proceeds of a carbon tax will be used to compensate those who fact higher costs does not address the issue of dislocation in the economy. There is a element of "magical thinking" in the idea that transforming a national economy starts with a simple decision: . . . clean energy will open up opportunities we are only just beginning to imagine. Those opportunities begin with that simple but momentous decision: Putting a price on carbon. Friends, a price on carbon is the cheapest way to drive investment and jobs.

we're so excited about checking e-mail and Facebook that we're neglecting face-to-face relationships, but that it's not too late to make some "corrections" to our high-tech habits. It's time to turn off the BlackBerry for a few minutes and set some ground rules for blending cyberspace with personal space.

examples such as Wikipedia and a ride-sharing Web site as proof that "the harnessing of our cognitive surplus allows people to behave in increasingly generous, public, and social ways."

the transformative potential of the Internet, as more people use their free time in active, collaborative projects rather than watching television.

Lingering would be a colossal waste of love and money.

I’d rather die. I respect the wishes of people who want to live as long as they can. But I would like the same respect for those of us who decide — rationally — not to. I’ve done my homework. I have a plan. If I get pneumonia, I’ll let it snuff me out. If not, there are those other ways. I just have to act while my hands still work: the gun, narcotics, sharp blades, a plastic bag, a fast car, over-the-counter drugs, oleander tea (the polite Southern way), carbon monoxide, even helium. That would give me a really funny voice at the end. I have found the way. Not a gun. A way that’s quiet and calm. Knowing that comforts me. I don’t worry about fatty foods anymore. I don’t worry about having enough money to grow old. I’m not going to grow old. I’m having a wonderful time.

Q. The debate over climate science has involved very complex physical models and rarefied areas of scientific knowledge. What role do you think social scientists have to play, given the complexity of the actual physical science?

A. We have to think about the process by which something, an idea, develops scientific consensus and a second process by which is developed a social and political consensus. The first part is the domain of data and models and physical science. The second is very much a social and political process. And that brings to the fore a whole host of value-based, worldview-based, cognitive and cultural dimensions that need to be addressed.

Social scientists, beyond economists, have a lot to say on cognition, perceptions, values, social movements and political processes that are very important for understanding whether the public accepts the conclusions of a scientific body.

The 10:23 demonstrations and the CBC Marketplace coverage have elicited fascinating case studies in CAM professionalism. Rather than offering any new information or evidence about homeopathy itself, some homeopaths have spuriously accused skeptical groups of being malicious Big Pharma shills.

Mike Adams of the Natural News website

has decided to provide his own coverage of the 10:23 campaign

Most people who have heard about the Craig’s list rape by proxy of the Wyoming woman that occurred in December have been shocked by not only the brutal rape of a woman who was an innocent victim of an ex boyfriends sick mind, but also by the rapist who actually committed the crime. Many people believe that both men should get what they deserve. But what exactly does that mean in the case of Ty Oliver McDowell? Should the man be convicted of a Rape? Or is he perhaps a victim in the diabolical scheme of Jebidah James Stripe?

Posing as the victim, Stripe placed an ad complete with picture on Craig’s list. He stated in the ad that he was the woman and that she wanted to fulfill a sexual fantasy in which she was raped. Stating specifically in the ad that she was looking for an aggressive male who had little regard for women.

If McDowell is telling the truth, he saw the ad and emailed the woman, who was stripe posing as the woman, and they communicated by messenger back and forth as she detailed her fantasy and exactly what she would like done. After, discussing the fantasy. McDowell then on December 11, 2009 broke into the woman’s home, tied her to a chair, held a knife to her throat, and raped her. Thus fulfilling what he claims he believed to be the woman’s fantasy. At this stage we have no reason to disbelieve his story. But, was his belief and actions based on that belief reasonable?

The Sex Life of the Screwworm -- a silly subject for federally funded research, no?Some members of Congress thought so: they singled out the project about 30 years ago as the nation’s top symbol of wasteful spending -- and later apologized when, upon further review, they realized the research was actually incredibly useful. Now, at a time when Congressional scrutiny of science spending (supposedly silly and otherwise) is rising, the other side of the debate is reviving the symbol of the screwworm to bring attention to its cause, through a method that seems too un-scientific to be true: a tabloid.

Using silliness to combat accusations of silliness, the Association of American Universities published its inaugural issue of "Scientific Enquirer," defending federal funding for research that may seem utterly irrelevant at first glance, but is actually productive.

The screwworms scored the cover story for the January 2011 issue. “Sex and the Screwworm,” the headline reads, “Your tax dollars go to study the sex life of a parasite, Congress wants to know why.” Directly below, slapped on like a bumper sticker and in commanding font: “Saves Country Billions!” It’s not what you’d expect to see from a prestigious group of research institutions better known for its formality (if not occasional stuffiness), but if attracting eyeballs is the goal, they just might be on to something. After all, who understands the art of getting attention better than tabloid publishers?