The "closest thing to a celebrity scientist in Seattle" is what the Seattle Times calls Cliff Mass, "a meteorologist who specializes in weather prediction and modeling," according to his faculty bio at the University of Washington's College of the Environment. Mass, a Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at UW, wrote The Weather of the Pacific Northwest—one of the best-selling books from the University of Washington Press. He firmly believes that Earth has been warming for about the last 130 years, … [Read more...]
Does the Trump Administration Put Science in Jeopardy?
It's hard to imagine a more thoroughly ignorant statement than this: “The discipline of science is one where the facts, once they are peer-reviewed and published in scientific journals, are fixed. They’re not open to interpretation, or at least not much.” That's the opinion of Jeffrey Kluger and Justin Worland, writing in "How a war on science could hurt the U.S.---and its citizens." in Time magazine. The truth, of course, for these two apparent neophytes to science, is quite the … [Read more...]
Snarky—But Right
Okay, so most of the time here at the Cornwall Alliance we try to keep our language entirely civil, to avoid both formal and informal fallacies, and just stick to true premises and valid inferences to support our conclusions. Rational, yes. Entertaining? Well, not always. And in today's America, lots of people---at least if their conduct reveals anything about their values---value entertainment a good deal more than reason. So for their enjoyment---and for the enjoyment of those who really do … [Read more...]
Who Does John Tierney Think He Is to Challenge Chris Mooney about “Science Denial”?
Leftwing environmentalist Washington Post columnist Chris Mooney has made something of a cottage industry out of lampooning what he considers conservatives' "science denial" in four books. Count 'em: The Republican War on Science, 2005 Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle over Global Warming, 2007 Unscientific America---How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, 2009 (with Sheril Kirshenbaum, who holds Ph.D.'s graduate degrees in meteorology and climatology marine … [Read more...]
What does the Threat to Prosecute “Climate Deniers” Mean?
The threat by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and "AG's United for Clean Power" (a group of 17 attorneys general) to investigate and prosecute for fraud corporations and organizations questioning belief in manmade global warming so dangerous as to justify spending $Trillions to reduce it by fractions of a degree has some precedent. No, not in the prosecution of tobacco companies for covering up the evidence of their product's carcinogenicity. The biophysical link there was crystal clear … [Read more...]
Those Greedy Climate Deniers!
Can't help chuckling as the chickens come home to roost for the nattering nabobs of climate correctness. They've been telling everybody for over a decade that "the science is settled," "there is no debate": Human emissions of CO2 are driving catastrophic global warming and we must, absolutely must, drastically curtail emissions to save humanity and even planet Earth itself! Well, if that's so, why continue spending $Billions on research related to that settled question? I mean, we're not … [Read more...]
Climate Skeptics: Bought By Fossil Fuel Companies?
This video is worth watching and sharing. Well-known scientists, scholars, and policy leaders respond to accusations of receiving money from oil companies, and reveal where their funding really comes from. … [Read more...]
Obviously this Guy’s a Science Denier!
Was it a critic of the IPCC's notion of dangerous manmade climate change who wrote this? The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness. As one participant put it, "poor methods get … [Read more...]