There is only one term for this

by greeblie

Global Warming, Creationism & Brain Death
[Via The Sensuous Curmudgeon]

The irrational union of creationism and the ClimateGate frenzy over global warming has reached what seems to be a journalistic climax. We don’t see how it can get any worse than what we’re going to discuss today.

We first observed this madness manifest itself at the Discovery Institute’s blog, and we noted it here: The Mask Falls Away. The Discoveroids were using the global warming email imbroglio as “proof” that brave dissenters from science orthodoxy (such as creationists like themselves) have been suppressed by ideological conspirators. We labeled this interpretation of ClimateGate as the “vindication of all kooks” doctrine.

The theme was picked up by former Senator Rick Santorum, a creationist and Presidential hopeful. See Santorum, ClimateGate, & Creationism: Axis of Idiocy.

The infection then spread to Human Events, which we wrote about here: Creationism & ClimateGate in “Human Events”. We can’t keep up with this virus, but we noted most recently that it had spread to a fringe publication called Right Side News. See: Global Warming & Creationism: Yet Again.

Today, dear reader, to no one’s surprise, the madness has spread again, this time to a very susceptible carrier of such infections, WorldNetDaily. They’ve already won our Buffoon Award, so we can’t decorate them further. Thus we’re adorning this post with the image of Alley Oop — our ultimate symbol for creationist madness.

Wait — we just realized that WorldNetDaily foreshadowed the ClimateGate-creationism coupling more than a year ago. See: WorldNetDaily Links Global Warming and “Darwinism”. Perhaps they started this plague. Now it’s come full circle.

We present to you, dear reader, some excerpts from Darwin is freezing over, which appears in the trashy pages of WorldNetDaily.

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The Stupid. It Burns. (for the picture. perhaps we researchers should buy a ton of them) I feel dumber just reading this second-hand.

” But don’t worry, it’s still okay if the white guy does it.”

Wonkette : Black Man Puts His Feet On Desk, Wingnuts Furious

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What Huxley applied to science also applies here – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.

Funny how the Internet does that to so much of the inchoate anger out there. I just wish being presented with the facts actually had any effect with the anger.

I guess some people would rather be angry than be right.

An example – denialists stick with debunked ideas

by Maltesen

Evidence that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is wrong?
[Via The Panda's Thumb]

by Joe Felsenstein, http://evolution.gs.washington.edu/felsenstein.html

The Discovery Institute Press has published a book by Granville Sewell, a mathematician at the University of Texas at El Paso. Under the title of In The Beginning And Other Essays on Intelligent Design, it apparently consists of previous writings of Sewell, some in revised versions. I hasten to say that I do not have a copy of the book, and have not read it. However Sewell makes it clear that its basic arguments can also be found online in earlier versions of these essays. The one that interests me is his argument that evolution contradicts the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which will be found online here, here, here, and here.

Now the statement that evolution can’t have occurred because it contradicts the Second Law is one of the hoariest old creationist myths. When you hear it you know you are dealing either with someone who does not understand science, or else someone who does understand science but is actively, and dishonestly, trying to get you not to understand science. It is easily answered, and has been, many times: in a closed system entropy does increase, but the biosphere is not a closed system — it is utterly dependent on inflows of energy, mostly from the sun, and the entropy increase from the outflow of energy from the sun far exceeds the decrease of entropy by reproduction and by evolution.

Surely the Discovery Institute wants its scientific arguments to be ones that can be taken seriously. Sewell must have come up with some new argument that is more powerful than the old creationist howler, no? Well … no. Granville Sewell’s arguments about the Second Law have already been answered, years ago and at length, by Mark Perakh (here) and by Jason Rosenhouse (here). Even in Sewell’s announcement of his book at Uncommon Descent, in the comments on that post the pro-evolution commentator “nakashima” has made a fairly devastating critique.

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Denialists just do not give up their ideas, even when they have been shown to be wrong. This is not science. It is not even skepticism. It is more like a cult.

You see it with creationism. You see it with climate change. You see it in anti-vax. Sometimes the facts just have to be ignored for some people’s world to exist.

Exactly right – Where are their scientific models?

by BlatantNews.com

Where is the global climate model without AGW?
[Via The Lippard Blog]

One of the regular critics of creationism on the Usenet talk.origins newsgroup (where the wonderful Talk Origins Archive FAQs were originally developed) was a guy who posted under the name “Dr. Pepper.” His posts would always include the same request–”Please state the scientific theory of creationism.” It was a request that was rarely responded to, and never adequately answered, because there is no scientific theory of creationism.

A parallel question for those who are skeptical about anthropogenic climate change is to ask for a global climate model that more accurately reflects temperature changes over the last century than those used by the IPCC, without including the effect of human emissions of greenhouse gases. For comparison, here’s a review of the 23 models which contributed to the IPCC AR4 assessment. While these models are clearly not perfect, shouldn’t those who deny anthropogenic global warming be able to do better?

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I have talked about this many times: Don’t like AGW? Come up with a better theory; come up with one that does a better job. That is science.

The problem seems to be that the things they come up with do not do as good a job fitting all the data as current models. Again, that is science.

Most scientists would love a new theory that did a better job, that modeled reality better than AGW. In fact, most researchers do their work hoping they will find something unexpected or unknown based on current models and knowledge. That is where Nobels come form. That’s science

Confidence lowered by swiftboating

Attacks on Climate Science Now “Completely Out of Hand”
[Via The Intersection]

This is one of the main stories here at the AAAS meeting in San Diego:

SAN DIEGO—A symposium organized here at the last minute by two of the world’s most prominent scientific organizations addressed recent attacks on an increasingly beleaguered climate science community. The panel met in the uncertain aftermath of the release of e-mails stolen from prominent climate scientists and critiques of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The panel of academics was convened by National Academy of Science President Ralph Cicerone, in conjunction with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (which publishes ScienceNOW), which is holding its annual meeting here. At a time when the biggest headlines on science have been over the flaws or legitimacy of climate science, said Cicerone, recent skirmishes over climate research “have really shaken the confidence of the public in the conduct of science [overall].” He cited a number of recent polls, which show a “degradation” in the respect of the public for science in general.

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A little more about the issue. One problem here is that a very well-funded political group of organizations have worked very hard to create these attacks on researchers. It is very similar to what happened with the Swift Boaters attack on Kerry. In fact, I would not doubt that some of the same people are involved.

They took a politician who was actually involved in fighting on the ground and water in Vietnam and made him look like a coward. They discredited an actual vet all for political reasons. Swiftboating is now a strong industry. Similar attacks on researchers are now in process. Simply because their science threatens the political views, and commercial interests of some people.

An interesting juxtaposition

[Crossposted at SpeadingScience]
by blprnt_van

Reaching Agreement On The Public Domain For Science
[Via Common Knowledge]

Photo outside the Panton Arms pub in Cambridge, UK, licensed to the public under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike by jwyg (Jonathan Gray).

Today marked the public announcement of a set of principles on how to treat data, from a legal context, in the sciences. Called the Panton Principles, they were negotiated over the summer between myself, Rufus Pollock, Cameron Neylon, and Peter Murray-Rust. If you’re too busy to read them directly, here’s the gist: publicly funded science data should be in the public domain, full stop.

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and this

BBC News – Science damaged by climate row says NAS chief Cicerone
[Via BBC News | Science/Nature]

Leading scientists say that the recent controversies surrounding climate research have damaged the image of science as a whole.

President of the US National Academy of Sciences, Ralph Cicerone, said scandals including the “climategate” e-mail row had eroded public trust in scientists.

[snip]

He said that this crisis of public confidence should be a wake-up call for researchers, and that the world had now “entered an era in which people expected more transparency”.

“People expect us to do things more in the public light and we just have to get used to that,” he said. “Just as science itself improves and self-corrects, I think our processes have to improve and self-correct.”

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It is important for Federally funded research to be in the public domain. But, Universities, who hope to license the results of this research, and corporations, who will not as likely commercialize a product if they can not lock up the IP, Both of these considerations must be accounted for if we want to translate basic research into therapies or products for people.

So, as the Principles seem to indicate, most of this open data should happen AFTER publication, so this would give the proper organizations to make sure they have any IP issues dealt with.

But what about unpublished data? What about old lab notebooks? The problem supposedly seen now has nothing to do with data that was published. It has to do with emails between scientists. Is this relevant data that should be made public for any government funded research?

Who determines which data are relevant or not?

And what about a researcher’s time? More time in front of the public, more time filling out FOIs, more time not doing research in the first place.

The scientific world is headed this way but how will researcher’s adjust? There will have to be much better training of effectively communicating science to a much wider audience than most scientists are now comfortable with.