I have had countless, profound experiences of the Earth’s environment, from fleeting moments to periods of months-long duration and from my earliest years of life to the present. One of my earliest life memories, at four years of age in 1959 while on summer vacation, is of looking out of the window of the family car at the golden rolling hills of central California near Paso Robles, with the umbrella-shaped oak trees scattered across the landscape and the dry but heavy heat beating into the … [Read more...]
Rescuing Science from Itself: How to Restore Rationality to an Increasingly Irrational Endeavor
“You can give respectability to mythology if you couch your myth in sufficiently academic language.” —Dr. R.C. Sproul Who in twenty-first century America would say that “science … our one source of objective knowledge, is in deep trouble” because “much of [the] supposed knowledge” it brings us “is turning out to be contestable, unreliable, unusable, or flat-out wrong”? Obviously an anti-intellectual, benighted holdover from the Dark Ages. Right? Wrong. It’s Dr. Daniel Sarewitz, … [Read more...]
Radio Interview: Students Indoctrinated in Environmentalism
A couple days ago I did an hour-long live radio interview with Dr. Terry Lovell on “KYCA Talks,” originating at Yavapai College in Prescott, AZ. Terry is a veteran professor of business and economics. His statistics specialty enables him to recognize quickly the gross errors in climate alarmism. During that interview, Terry repeatedly mourned the fact that so many students arrive in his classes with their minds already made up about global warming and other alleged … [Read more...]
Whom to Trust? NASA GISS, NASA, or Cornwall Alliance?
After citing a couple of Cornwall Alliance's articles in discussion, an educator friend got this response from one of his former students: The problem with referencing the Cornwall Alliance to discredit statistics from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies is that one (the Cornwall Alliance) is a political advocacy organization with no scientific relevance while the other (NASA) has the weight of objective fact and science behind it. To me there is virtually no legitimate way one can … [Read more...]
Canine Predator Control Devices: Should We Use them?
M-44s are spring-loaded devices that eject powdered sodium cyanide to kill the animal that pulls it. They were designed for the purpose of controlling canine predators such as coyotes. Unlike other control devices which require the animal to push (e.g. footholds), M-44s require the animal to bite and pull. When the animal bites and pulls, the sodium cyanide is ejected into the animal’s mouth where it can be absorbed into its system usually resulting in death. It’s the biting and pulling … [Read more...]
How are Climate Alarmists Like Icarus?
In Greek mythology, the god Icarus tries, with his father Daedalus, to escape from Crete by flying, using wings Daedalus made from wax and feathers. Proudly ignoring his father's warning not to fly too close to the sun lest the wax in the wings melt, Icarus did so and fell into the sea. Ever since then, Icarus has been synonymous with hubris---a foolish combination of pride and over-confidence. Michael Hart, Professor Emeritus and inaugural holder of the Simon Reisman chair in trade policy at … [Read more...]
Where the Buffalo Roamed—and Roam Again
As a child in a good elementary school in the small town of Owego, New York, in the early 1960s, I learned dozens of old folk songs. Among them was “Home on the Range,” which I, like many of my fellow students, loved to sing, feeling all romantic about life on the range—ridin’ your faithful horse, sleepin’ under the stars, shootin’ rattlesnakes, tamin’ wild horses, herdin’ cattle, and singin’ ’round the campfire. Of course, none of us had ever seen the range, other than in cowboy Westerns, but … [Read more...]
Who Are the Real Science Deniers?
So you think of science (or maybe I should say “science”?) as a solid, objective, trustworthy activity? Certainly a whole lot more credible than, say, philosophy, or theology, or fortune telling? Before I go on, let me assure you that I value science (without the scare quotes) a great deal. (Philosophy and theology, too—but not fortune telling!) But today a lot of what goes by the name of science deserves the scare quotes. And that should scare us, for a lot of reasons, because it means we’re … [Read more...]
Dogs—Mankind’s Best Friend?
Readers of my posts know that nature is dangerous. Radical environmentalists who constantly assert that humanity’s relationship with nature would be fine if we would just “work in harmony” is idealistic nonsense to those with jobs in the outdoors. Nature is safe when it is subjected to human service. Consider dogs, domesticated hundreds of years ago, they are now a big part of the lives of many people. But their submissive behavior is often misunderstood as “love.” It doesn’t take long for … [Read more...]
A Gorilla, A Boy, and the Decline of Human Dignity
On May 29, 2016, a 3 or 4 year-old boy (sources differ on his age) was visiting the Cincinnati Zoo with his mother. As boys sometimes do, he got into trouble. In this case big trouble, life threatening trouble. He fell into the enclosure that housed a 450 pound male silverback gorilla named Harambe (for the meaning of Harambe click here). It’s amazing the child survived the 10-foot fall into the enclosure. The water in the enclosure’s moat must have broken his fall. The danger was not over … [Read more...]
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