Lamar Smith: Harassment of scientists continues.

So there really is no easy way to introduce the brouhaha that is fomenting between science and the idiots that make up the GOTP.  But it is important to highlight the situation not just because of climate change but science in general.  

,,,what good is it to have a mechanism to uncover the truth, if the truth is twisted into a lie, and unabashedly used to damage the credibility, reputation, and careers of scientists that simply defend science and teach inconvenient facts?  When scientists are guilty until proven innocent, and written realities are manipulated to create false narratives from public records, how do we stand a chance?

Lamar Smith is not qualified to pick lint from my ass let alone assess a well documented scientific paper.

As Plait notes, the gist of the situation is this ."Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas—chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee—doesn’t think global warming is real. He thinks it’s a huge conspiracy by climate scientists who fudge the data to make it look like the planet is heating up, because Obama."

Over the course of four articles, Plait delves into the nitty gritty of just how stoopid the Reich is being.  Part four being the most recent issue that has hit the mainstream, that "a paper was published in Science showing that the global warming “pause” so lauded by climate change deniers didn’t, in fact, exist."  And, "[t]hat the NOAA Science paper in question was rushed into publication, and that Smith has “whistleblowers” who will attest to it."

What strikes me though, is the tactics that science denialists (organizations such as US Right to Know; individuals such as Mike Adams, Andrew Wakefield, and Stanislaw Burzynski) are now engaging in.  And I am not talking "denying the established scientific consensus despite overwhelming evidence."  I'm talking the fifth grade tactics present in Climategate, the attacks against Dr. Paul Offit, writers Jon Entine and Emily Willingham, Dr. Dorit Reiss, Senator Richard Pan (SB 277) and Kevin Folta.  The play by our rules or else.

This mentality is now infiltrating a place it doesn't belong.  Science has no political ideology:

I strongly urge you to read Johnson’s letter; it really shows that Smith’s actions are the results of political grandstanding. NOAA had been complying with his requests, as silly and wasteful as those requests were, but Smith ignored this and kept making more and more unreasonable demands. Finally, NOAA put its foot down; NOAA Administrator Sullivan has refused to comply any further.

I’ve been saying that Smith is harassing scientists, and he’s abusing his power of congressional subpoena. Now we have even more evidence: He’s been pressuring Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker over all this, trying to get her to in turn pressure NOAA to turn over the scientists’ emails.* If NOAA doesn’t comply, he’s threatened to subpoena the secretary herself.
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Smith is out of control. I earlier likened him to Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who, in the 1950s, went on a huge and reckless witch hunt, looking for Communists in government, ruining people’s careers and lives in the process. That likeness grows ever clearer into focus.

I don’t see any reason to change my assessment of Smith now. He is a demagogue, using and abusing his power to stifle scientific research, to create a climate of fear and pressure for those scientists, and to obfuscate and further cast doubt in the public’s mind about the reality of climate change and its effects (an effort that has of course found purchase with the usual right-wing media suspects).

Lamar Smith: Harassment of scientists continues.

Stop Giving Airtime to Crackpots

In my write up concerning the Grady High creationism flap, I mentioned two recent happenings in the UK:  "UK bans teaching of creationism in any school that receives public funding" and "BBC staff told to stop inviting cranks on to science programmes."   While researching another story currently in the works, I came across the attached Phil Plait article in which he made two interesting points in response to the UK news.

The first deals with creating a "false balance" when "the science being discussed was solidly understood."  (A point that was also mentioned and discussed in chat during the most recent Atheist On Air episode.)  Plait was specifically echoing the BBC news decision when he said:

But more broadly, most TV news shows do this, especially when they are done with a talk show format. It’s all too easy for a news program or other venue with a biased ideological objective (cough cough Fox News cough Wall Street Journal cough) to bring on people who sound authoritative, but who are in fact simply cranks or contrarians with outlandish claims. This sort of bias sows doubt, which is far easier to do than to debunk it.

The second point, what really got my attention, in the Plait article was this: "In other subjects, it’s possible for honest people with different values to come down on different sides of a debate. But when it comes to science, especially firmly established and consensually agreed-upon science, putting on some crackpot who disagrees is not 'fair and balanced.'”

"[F]irmly established and consensually agreed-upon science,,,."

"[C]onsensually agreed-upon? 

Ding, Ding, Ding!! You mean science isn't a democracy?

For the most part my science blogging deals with countering creationism and the ideology behind it, as I have been "researching" and writing about it since forever.  But lately, as the stupid smart people seem to be falling out of the sky, I have gotten sucked into other science issues.  What I have discovered, there is a commonality amongst the crazies.  Whether it be anti-evolution, climate change deniers or anti-vaxxers, they all hold the unsupported belief that science is wrong or it is a vast conspiracy of false information to confuse then control the masses.

Steve Newton explains it in this way,

What it boils down to is that creationists and climate change deniers both reject central principles of science on ideological, religious and political grounds. Moreover, they deny not just these principles, but also the idea of science itself as a way of knowing about the world.

Attacks on evolution and climate science are both based on the rejection of well-established scientific techniques. Geologists demonstrate the age of the Earth with the techniques of radiometric dating. “Bunk,” say young-Earth creationists: These techniques rely on unproven assumptions. Climate scientists develop complex computer models as a technique to understand what might happen to future climates. “Bunk,” say climate change deniers: Such models are just a convenient fiction.

Where both are going wrong, however, is in failing to understand that the techniques they dismiss as bunk are part and parcel of the standard scientific toolbox. It’s not just geochronology that assumes the constancy of radioactive decay rates, and it’s not just climatology that deploys computer models to understand complex systems: These are principles and methods that work throughout the sciences, not just the areas under attack. Whether they realize it or not, climate change deniers and evolution deniers are committed to rejecting basic methodologies accepted by scientists across the disciplines.

Having failed to convince the scientific community of the credibility of their views, both creationists and climate change deniers have taken their case to the public in a way that distorts and misrepresents the nature of science.

Just something to think about that the next time you pop an antibiotic in your mouth,,,eh, eh think about it for a moment m'ok?

Stop Giving Airtime to Crackpots

To laugh or to cry, the science of "fake snow"

For starters, I grew up in Western New York in a suburb of Buffalo.  Ya know, home of the infamous Blizzard of '77.  Right now I am staring out my window at 9" of the white stuff.  So when this headline, "‘Massive chemtrail’ operations found to be dumping ‘fake snow’ over Atlanta and parts of West Virginia, may signify a false flag attack on the populace" came screaming across my news feed, I had to chuckle. (Bare in mind this is one of many.)

Stop the press! A recent snowstorm that blanked Atlanta and parts of Virginia sending thousands of residents into turmoil, causing nearly the entire city to come to a standstill, may have been a false flag operation or beta test carried out by diabolic factions of the U.S. government.

While the motive is not yet fully known, one thing is for sure, havoc has ensued and something is just not sitting right with people in the region.

[,,,]
I mean, anyone that has handled snow knows that it melts as it is simply made of water.

Shockingly, after “massive chemtrail” sightings over the state of Georgia and parts of West Virginia over the last few days, residents are becoming wiser–nonetheless the government and mainstream media remains silent.

Response by Atlanta city officials including the mayor have been limited, blaming the storm on a “faulty weather forecast”.

Concerned citizens and experts alike have been left to wonder how such a big city can be caught off guard by a snowstorm.

It is also important to point out that mainstream media rhetoric has become extremely unusual regarding the weather in Atlanta over the past 24 hours.  [Emphasis mine]

Now originally I was going to just ignore this garbage but a few things occurred that changed my mind. The con nutters, came out in full force, 40+ articles and still counting. Second, it came up in conversation at work (that was scarey). And third, Rachel Maddow did a piece about it.  Think about it people, a political commentator with a PhD in politics (and a Rhodes scholar to boot) is talking about "fake snow."

Not only did Maddow lampoon the "conspiracy" theory behind the "fake snow" she pointed to a scientific explanation behind it.  Enter Phil Plait:

To summarize, two things happen: One is that as the snow melts, the remaining snow absorbs the water. That’s why it doesn’t appear to drip; the snowball becomes a slushball.

Lots of people made videos showing the snowball not dripping so it looks like it’s not actually melting, but this is a classic case of confirmation bias. They only tested this part way; they didn’t finish the test by letting the snowball actually melt! I do that in my video, and you can even see the water getting absorbed into the snowballs I made.

[,,,]
The black scorch marks are actually from the lighters themselves. Butane is a hydrocarbon, a molecule made up of carbon and hydrogen. When you burn it, the molecule reacts with oxygen in the air, breaking the bonds between atoms, and reforming new molecules. If the burning were perfect, all you’d have left is carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H20).

But the burning is never completely perfect, and you get other stuff too. One thing that happens is that some of the carbon molecules reform into long chains, creating what we call soot. It’s that stuff that’s collecting on the snowball, not material from the snow itself!

So yet again we see the importance of teaching science, not a religious ideology!!

Just for shits and giggles, here are some more science based articles:

Why 'Fake' Snow 'Doesn't Melt'--Because It's Real

Curiosities: How does snow sublimation work? According to Steve Ackerman, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Wisconsin, this is actually a process that the US Geologic Survey calls “sublimation”.