George Will’s irresponsible article denying climate change and the Washington Post’s irresponsible fact-checking

George Will has written an irresponsible article denying climate change (AKA global warming). Here’s the basic problem with George Will’s writing, as stated succinctly by The Wonk Room:

In “Dark Green Doomsayers,” Will attacked Secretary of Energy Steven Chu for discussing a worst-case scenario of California drought caused by the decimation of Sierra snowpack, falsely claiming Chu predicted this will come to pass “no later than 10 years away.” Will also incorrectly claimed that “global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979″ — based on a 45-day-old blog post by Daily Tech’s Michael Asher, one of Marc Morano’s climate denial jokers.

Will’s article is riddled with falsehoods. The radically untrue nature of Will’s article is beyond dispute. Confronted with Will’s cauldron of conservative climate denial propaganda, the Washington Post was faced with a stark choice. It could either A) confess that it failed to do any competent fact-checking or B) compound Will’s lies with its own by claiming that it did real fact-checking. It chose “B.”

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Isaac Asimov talks with Bill Moyers

This video was created many years ago--based on Moyers' description of the American space program, it was probably made in the early to mid 1960's. I had never before seen any video of Asimov (though I have read some of his writings), and I found this video (part of an episode from "Bill Moyers World") to be engaging. The topics: science and education. I also found what appears to be a full transcript of the interview at Harpers Magazine, which contains some additional information, including this exchange on the power and limits of science:

MOYERS: What's the real knowledge?

ASIMOV: We can't be absolutely certain. Science doesn't purvey absolute truth. Science is a mechanism, a way of trying to improve your knowledge of nature. It's a system for testing your thoughts against the universe and seeing whether they match. This works not just for the ordinary aspects of science, but for all of life. I should think people would want to know that what they know is truly what the universe is like, or at least as close as they can get to it. We don't pretend that we know everything. In fact, it would be terrible to know everything because there'd be nothing left to learn. But you don't want to be up a blind alley somewhere.

As you might assume, Wikipedia has an informative biography on Asimov. After viewing this video, I looked it up. I especially enjoyed his comment on religion:

In his last volume of autobiography, Asimov wrote, "If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul." The same memoir states his belief that Hell is "the drooling dream of a sadist" crudely affixed to an all-merciful God; if even human governments were willing to curtail cruel and unusual punishments, wondered Asimov, why would punishment in the afterlife not be restricted to a limited term? Asimov rejected the idea that a human belief or action could merit infinite punishment. If an afterlife of just deserts existed, he claimed, the longest and most severe punishment would be reserved for those who "slandered God by inventing Hell."

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Why do women in wealthy societies have fewer children?

I’ve often wondered why women in wealthy societies have fewer children. Melanie Moses (who teaches Computer Science at the University of New Mexico) offers a solution in an article entitled, “Being Human: Engineering: Worldwide Ebb,” appearing in the 2/5/09 edition of Nature (available online only to subscribers). This phenomenon is counter-intuitive because evolution by natural selection would seemingly predict that human animals with more resources would have more babies. Moses employs the Metabolic Theory of Ecology (MTE), an approach for understanding the dynamics of flow through networks. It was developed

to explain why so many characteristics of plants and animals systematically depend on their mass in a very peculiar way. . . According to the theory, the larger the animal, the longer its cardiovascular system (its network of arteries and capillaries) takes to deliver resources to its cells. That delivery time, which in turn dictates the animal's metabolic rate, is proportional to the animal's mass raised to the power of ¼. Thus, because its circulatory system works less efficiently, an elephant grows systematically more slowly than a mouse, with a slower heart rate, a lower reproductive rate and a longer lifespan.

Moses argues that this idea that networks become predictably less efficient as they grow has “profound” consequences. With regard to fertility, she starts with facts regarding our energy consumption.

The average human uses up only about 100 watts from eating food, consistent with predictions based on body size. But in North America, each person uses an additional 10,000 watts from oil, gas, coal and a smattering of renewable sources, all of which are delivered through expansive, expensive infrastructure networks.

How do energy networks interact with the reproductive choices of humans?

The decline in human birth rates with increased energy consumption is quantitatively identical to the decline in fertility rate with increased metabolism in other mammals. Put another way, North Americans consume energy at a rate sufficient to sustain a 30,000-kilogram primate, and have offspring at the very slow rate predicted for a beast of this size . . . As infrastructure grows we get more out of it, but must invest more into it, reducing the energy and capital left to invest in the next generation.

Moses disagrees with alternative explanations, such as availability of birth control or decisions to marry later, because these don’t explain decisions to have fewer children in the first place. She also dismisses the idea that “as societies become wealthier, greater educational investments are made in each child to make them competitive in labour markets” because investments in eduction correlate inversely with fertility rates.

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Why is there a fire hydrant in the middle of Forest Park?

Why is this fire hydrant in the middle of Forest Park, in St. Louis, Missouri? Is it there for the firefighters in case an ant hill catches fire? A flower? If I used the logic employed by Creationists, I might simply say that God put that fire hydrant there. To the extent that anyone accepts such an explanation, there would be no need for further inquiry (nor any real possibility for further inquiry). To the extent that someone accepts the "explanation" that "God did it," he or she would miss out on a rich factual history, teaming with direct evidence upon which one can build an incredibly strong circumstantial case. One really can explain the presence of this hydrant, even without direct evidence (presumably, no one who saw this hydrant being installed is still alive). I'm working on a post regarding creationism (including its modern version, "intelligent design"). Yesterday's walk in the park reminded me that circumstantial evidence can be strong, indeed. In fact, circumstantial evidence can make for airtight cases. Circumstantial evidence can even be much stronger than authority (because authorities--e.g., the park police--are often wrong). Therefore, people who really want to know don't simply throw up their hands and declare that the hydrant is there "Because God put it there" even when a person in a position of authority tells them this story. hydrant-up-close1An inspection of this hydrant shows that it was manufactured in 1887 (or is that number 1881?). It was thus installed sometime after 1881. Why would it be installed in the middle of a park? Perhaps it wasn't just a park back then. Perhaps it was installed because that land was to be the location of a huge construction project: the 1904 World's Fair held in St. Louis. Perhaps, after the Fair was over, this hydrant was not removed. Perhaps there are some photos of the Fair that would include this little fire hydrant, a vestigial reminder that something much more elaborate once occupied this place. All of these questions can be answered if one takes the time to examine real evidence that is currently available. If one looked further for evidence, one would find tons of corroboration, including a huge "Flight Cage" that now houses a bird exhibit at the St. Louis Zoo, also an original part of the 1904 World's Fair. Of course, one could also find numerous books filled with photos, names, dates and interviews. Notice that I'm referring to corroborative written materials--many sources that overlap--not simply reading one book over and over until one is more and more convinced. Creationists are happy to employ these open-minded investigative methods almost always, in almost every aspect of their lives. This method of asking questions and then following the evidence wherever it leads is actually an extension of common sense. It's a shame that when it comes to one particular incredibly important aspect of their lives, determining what kind of beings we are, creationists refuse to use this direct extension of common sense.

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Playing Tetris might reduce PTSD flashbacks

Oxford psychologists have recently concluded that playing Tetris might serve to lessen the effects of post traumatic stress disorder.

Playing ‘Tetris’ after traumatic events could reduce the flashbacks experienced in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), preliminary research by Oxford University psychologists suggests. If this early-stage work continues to show promise, it could inform new clinical interventions for use immediately after trauma to prevent or lessen the flashbacks that are the hallmark symptom of PTSD.

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