Here’s a remarkable example of the post-truthiness of some elements of contemporary academia. A magazine called Issues in Science and Technology has published an article Fear Mongering & Fact Mongering, by Adam Briggle, a philosopher at a third-rate institution called University of North Texas. The article starts by dismissing the old-fashioned claptrap of Poincaré and Feynman, … Continue reading
Tag Archives: communication
August climateballs
Another round-up of some of the latest climate silliness – some stories that are worth commenting on but don’t really merit a full post on their own. Mr Hulot resigns The clueless French environment minister, appropriately named Mr Hulot, has resigned, see AFP report and Climate Home. Apparently he announced his resignation live on radio … Continue reading
Who Pushed the Alarmist Domino – Scientists or the Media?
Few have missed the fact that Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene, published two days ago is a reworking of 1990s ‘runaway global warming’ hypothesis, now dubbed ‘Hothouse Earth’. The abstract: We explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabilization … Continue reading
Lewandowsky, Parliament, and the Gloucestershire Village Idiot
The House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee has just published its “Interim Report on Disinformation and ‘fake news’.” I was mildly interested since Professor Lewandowsky was a witness. There’s a transcript of his oral evidence before the committee, and his written evidence can be found here. Professor Lewandowsky proved a bit monomaniac. … Continue reading
Well that was quick: SkS now offers same-day blognic cleansing
My friend Sady is not happy. Not one bit. She did everything right. She conformed—slavishly—to the house style. She made sure to throw in some inflammatory language directed at the Out-group, and only at the Out-group. She even had her comment peer-reviewed, like a real, live scientist: by asking three other mammals of the same … Continue reading
February Climateballs
Following on from the first in the series, here is another round-up of recent climate idiocy. Med islands renewable target Ibiza and Mallorca have set targets to go 100% renewable by 2050! How much of their electricity is currently from renewables? 2%. So only another 98% to go. Sounds like a complete load of … Continue reading
The Consensus Enforcers’ Fallacy Fallacy
John Cook of the SKS project (neither of which need an introduction here) has teamed up with Peter Ellerton and David Kinkead, both of the University of Queensland Critical Thinking Project, to offer a way of “Deconstructing climate misinformation to identify reasoning errors”. The offering in Environmental Research Letters seemingly takes the reader through the … Continue reading
