The Huffington Post (Free subscription) | yesterday | Sciences
How many epidemics and Katrinas will it take to expose the myth that the U.S. economy is somehow exempt from the threats of climate change?
Thoughts from Kansas (Free subscription) | 11/04/2009 | Sciences
Todd Wood is a creationist. He is a professor at Bryan College, named for William Jennings Bryan, who prosecuted John Scopes in 1925. He is, in particular, a professor of baraminology, the creationist notion that his particular Christian God created the "kinds" in the first week, and that by careful measurement, he can identify those "kinds." He thinks the earth is less than 10,000...
WattHead (Free subscription) | 11/05/2009 | Sciences
Breakthrough Institute founders Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus published a post today that finally calls out ClimateProgress' Joseph Romm for his repeated use of bullying and intimidation, ad hominem assaults and character assassination, and highly suspect efforts to prove guilt by association, arguing that it all adds up to one thing: Climate McCarthyism. Here's an excerpt, and you can find...
Gene Expression (Free subscription) | 11/02/2009 | Sciences
As I gave a nod to statistical tricks and subtle shell games very recently, the material I review subsequently should be viewed with skepticism and caution. A few days ago I also pointed to a paper which describes and models intergenerational transfers of wealth across various societies. In other words, what parents transmit to children. From the perspective of someone who reads this blog, obviously...
Watts Up With That? (Free subscription) | 11/03/2009 | Sciences
Gore started this. Note to journalists everywhere: IT’S THE EVAPOTRANSPIRATION STUPID! See this article to understand why linking snow on Kilimanjaro to small changes in global temperature is just flat wrong. The plains around Kilimanjaro have gone through years of deforestation. Less trees > less evapotranspiration > less snow. Don’t believe me? Here’s news of a recent [...]...
China Car Times (Free subscription) | 11/01/2009 | Sciences
Qian Xuesen, the brains behind China’s jet propolsion technology and also rocket technology, including technology that took the recent Shenzhou rockets into space past away at the age of 98 in Beijing yesterday: From the LATimes Qian Xuesen, a former Caltech rocket scientist who helped establish the Jet Propulsion Laboratory before being deported in 1955 on suspicion of being a Communist and...
Climate Progress (Free subscription) | 10/31/2009 | Sciences
The guest blogger today is the Nobel prize-winning Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, by way of HuffPost. As you’ll see, he’s the mirror image of Bush’s Energy Secretary (see “Bodman as Orwell: DOE erases ‘most successful’ weatherization program from website“). I’ve always been a bit of an energy efficiency nut. I’ve made it my mission to [...]
Think Progress (Free subscription) | 10/30/2009 | Sciences
During today’s forged letter investigation hearing in the House, Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) rebuked the authors of SuperFreakonomics for participating in a “continuing effort to deceive the American public” on the science of climate change. Inslee condemned the coal industry’s effort to “hoodwink, defraud, and deceive the American public now to cover up the toxicity [...]
Evolving Thoughts (Free subscription) | 10/29/2009 | Sciences
A paper has been published formally rebutting the single most stupid idea ever published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (PNAS(USA)). The story is in Scientific American but the gist is that Lyn Margulis, who sees the world in terms of endosymbiosis, having once correctly argued that eukaryotes like you and [...]
The Huffington Post (Free subscription) | 10/29/2009 | Sciences
Steve Miller, president and CEO of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, told a House panel on Thursday that his organization never opposed climate...
SciGuy (Free subscription) | 10/29/2009 | Sciences
The short answer is that, statewide, it was relatively mild. But for certain localized areas this spring and summer's drought was the second most severe drought in the state's history. Let's begin with a review of drought conditions nearly three...
Accelerating Future (Free subscription) | 10/29/2009 | Sciences
Robin Hanson is debating some new guy (to me) who bills himself as a futurist-oriented economist, Martin Ford. They’re mostly debating Robin’s paper on Economic Growth Given Machine Intelligence. The debate began with a post by Ford, followed by a response by Robin, followed by Ford again. I enjoy Hanson’s response, because he jabs [...]
Hot Air (Free subscription) | 10/27/2009 | Sciences
If people want a glimpse of what the world will be like with global-warming hysterics in charge, Lord Stern of Brentford lets the veil slip in an interview with the Times of London. Stern admits that the upcoming Copenhagen talks would produce a pact on energy usage that would send ...
What I'd liked to have said (Free subscription) | 10/27/2009 | Sciences
Obama Has File On Desk Under Afghanistan Troop Plans... While the media was busy writing about "The Balloon Boy" and the President's basketball skills and FOX News obvious Right Wing bias, I've been paying attention to NASA's being busy readying the first test flight of a new generation of space vehicles designed to place men in orbit after the Space Shuttles retire...eventually evolving...
Gene Expression (Free subscription) | 10/26/2009 | Sciences
Neanderthals 'had sex' with modern man : Professor Svante Paabo, director of genetics at the renowned Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, will shortly publish his analysis of the entire Neanderthal genome, using DNA retrieved from fossils. He aims to compare it with the genomes of modern humans and chimpanzees to work out the ancestry of all three species. ... Paabo recently...
