Denialism Blog

Denialism Blog

  • No! Bad media!

    Do I have to roll up a newspaper?

    Big Tom warned me in today’s cranks post of the ABC news’ headline Global Warming Tipping Point in ’09?” in regards to this paper from the Hadley Centre on new more sophisticated modeling techniques. Could they be more boneheaded?

    Fortunately, nowhere in the article do they mention “tipping” points for ’09, it’s just that yellow headline. The point of the story is that this modeling that uses current weather patterns and data to model climate for the near future shows a likely lull in the current upward trend before further increases in temperature after 2009. This does not mean a “tipping point” has been reached, nor should such a thing be suggested.

    Bad ABC news. Bad!

  • A big day for cranks

    Today is a big day for cranks in two separate areas, but the interesting thing is the similarity of the responses.

    First we have Casey Luskin of the “top think tank” the Discovery Institute (wow, they must be right up there with Cato and CEI!) blathering about paleontologists don’t know anything because of the self-correcting nature of science.

    After this latest find, one researcher realized its implications and was quick to quash any doubts this may spark regarding human evolution, stating: “All the changes to human evolutionary thought should not be considered a weakness in the theory of evolution, Kimbel said. Rather, those are the predictable results of getting more evidence, asking smarter questions and forming better theories, he said.”

    I’m all for “asking smarter questions and forming better theories,” and it logically follows that I therefore must also favor abandoning theories that aren’t working. The aforementioned Harvard biological anthropologist, Daniel Lieberman, apparently did not get the memo about refraining from making statements that might lead to doubts about evolution: he stated in the New York Times that these latest fossil finds regarding habilis:

    “show ‘just how interesting and complex the human genus was and how poorly we understand the transition from being something much more apelike to something more humanlike.’” (emphasis added)

    Indeed, as explained here, the first true members of Homo were “significantly and dramatically different” from our alleged ape-like ancestors, the australopithecines. So far, the data isn’t doing a very good job of explaining precisely from what, if anything, did our genus Homo evolve.

    Well soooorrrry for actually looking for answers rather than stopping at, “a magic man done it.” Or rather, “I see design, therefore a magic man done it!” It’s really tiresome when denialist cranks like Luskin attack science and scientists because we’re self-correcting and willing to revise theories based on new evidence. That’s science people. I would hardly say looking for “smarter questions” involves dropping evolutionary theory, which is unaffected by this result as PZ has noted, to search for a magic man.

    Anyway, that leads me to the second group of cranks dancing around a new result today. In this case it is global warming denialists like Steven Milloy, Tim Blair, Joseph D’Aleo at Icecap, NewsBusters (It’s a scandal!), etc. jumping up and down because of an error found in a dataset of US temperature that revises the records to show that 1934 was actually hotter than 1998. The chart and more below the fold.
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  • Mike Adams Crank Magnetism – now it's the Secret!

    As if I needed more evidence for the phenomenon of crank magnetism, Mike Adams has a post on the Nutrition behind the Secret.

    Apparently, the secret to the Secret is Mike Adams nutritional advice.

    Few people really know one of the most important secrets to making “The Secret” work: Establishing the right nutrition and dietary habits that clear your nervous system and allow intention to flow.

    In this article, I’ll share some of the best nutritional secrets about The Secret, covering:

    1) Foods and substances that interfere with the power of your intention.

    2) Foods and substances that enhance the power of your intention.

    Ahh yes. Diet advice from a guy who thinks that microwaves nuke nutrients and denies the link between HIV and AIDS (people with HIV need vitamins not HAART!). Let’s see what impossible heights of stupid can be accomplished through the combination of Mike Adams’ paranoid ramblings and the new age crankery that is the Secret.
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  • Congressional Bigotry

    What is it about “family” organizations and bigotry? That’s some definition of family they’ve got there. The latest comes courtesy of the American Family News Network, and features the lovely hate of Congressman Bill Sali.

    “We have not only a Hindu prayer being offered in the Senate, we have a Muslim member of the House of Representatives now, Keith Ellison from Minnesota. Those are changes — and they are not what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers,” asserts Sali.

    Sali says America was built on Christian principles that were derived from scripture. He also says the only way the United States has been allowed to exist in a world that is so hostile to Christian principles is through “the protective hand of God.”

    “You know, the Lord can cause the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike,” says the Idaho Republican.

    According to Congressman Sali, the only way the U.S. can continue to survive is under that protective hand of God. He states when a Hindu prayer is offered, “that’s a different god” and that it “creates problems for the longevity of this country.”

    Yes, the founding fathers also did not envision women’s suffrage, a civil war over slavery, and a bunch of other amendments either. Who are these charming families that think the ideal America was formed 200 years ago, and refuses to acknowledge that the constitution is a living document? Tthe United States aims to become a “more perfect” union, we didn’t start out perfect.

    Do us all a favor and send this one back next year Idaho.

  • Utah Miners and Cranky CEOs

    Some readers have been emailing me about the Utah mine disaster saying the mine owners are using some seriously fishy arguments. I am in no way shape or form a geologist, but after reading the coverage of the Utah mine collapse I can’t help thinking the CEO saying it was an earthquake – not a mine collapse caused by unsafe practices – comes across as someone being deceptive.

    Scientists believe the seismic waves in the area of the Crandall Canyon mine were “the signature of the collapse and that the collapse was not caused by an earthquake,” said James W. Dewey, a seismologist at the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo.

    Scientists have not ruled out a natural earthquake since the region surrounding the mine is seismically active, and they do not know the exact time the mine collapsed.
    .
    ..

    On Monday, University of Utah seismographs recorded seismic waves of 3.9 magnitude near the mine. At least 10 aftershocks were felt more than 24 hours after the collapse, with the strongest registering 2.2 magnitude.

    Scientists say quakes caused by mine collapses tend to occur at shallower depths and at different frequencies than natural earthquakes.

    The first motions of the Utah disturbance indicated a downward movement consistent with a collapse, scientists said. If it was a natural quake, it would have produced up and down motions on the seismograms. The quake occurred anywhere from 2,000 to 8,500 feet underground.

    …

    Mine officials insisted Monday’s accident was caused by a natural disaster.

    “This was caused by an earthquake, not something that Murray Energy … did or our employees did or our management did,” an irate Robert E. Murray, chairman of mine owner Murray Energy Corp. of Cleveland, said at a televised news conference. “It was a natural disaster. An earthquake. And I’m going to prove it to you.”

    Then it gets a little disturbing. Usually with industry denialism, it’s things like cherry-picking and other tactics to create a deceptive picture. You need plausible deniability when the full story comes out. However, this Murray guy seems to just be pulling data out of thin air.

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  • Skeptics' Circle Number 67 – Call for submissions

    Deadline is next tuesday, and it’s at the Bronze Blog. Send your entries.

    August 9, 2007

  • I say, Hard Cheese!

    Responding to a commentor on a thread about animal rights, I again encountered this funny view of nature that some people have. Two sentences in particular just struck me as being out of touch with reality.

    The alternative may be to try to live in harmony with nature.

    …

    Trying to dominate nature has only caused suffering. There are alternatives.

    Where do people get this idea that nature is our friend? Hippies drive me nuts. Not only is this just totally unrealistic, but I think it also reflects a fundamental ignorance of biology, history, and the basic infrastructure of our society. I’m of the Monty Burns school of nature.

    i-cfb60742f311aae29209085fa6b8a093-monty-burns.gif

    “Oh, so Mother Nature needs a favour? Well, maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys. Nature started the fight for survival and she wants to quit because she’s losing? Well, I say hard cheese!”

    Nature is not our friend, nor have we advanced our species by living in harmony with it. We have survived, and tacked decades onto our lives by bending nature to our will. Nature is trying to kill us. All the time. Bacteria, and parasites and viruses oh my, they’re out to get us. We’re not buddy-buddy with nature, we’re in competition with it for our very survival, all the time. Further there is this nonsense that messing with nature is somehow a bad thing, or frequently unsuccessful. This view can only be held by people who seem to have forgotten all the progress we’ve made in the last couple of millennia.
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  • Do microwaves "nuke" the nutrients in food?

    No.

    However, there is never a shortage of crankery from Mike Adams who asserts Microwave ovens destroy the nutritional value of your food. There may be too much idiocy here to address but let’s get started.

    The rise of widespread nutritional deficiencies in the western world correlates almost perfectly with the introduction of the microwave oven. This is no coincidence. Microwave ovens heat food through a process of creating molecular friction, but this same molecular friction quickly destroys the delicate molecules of vitamins and phytonutrients (plant medicines) naturally found in foods. One study showed that microwaving vegetables destroys up to 97% of the nutritional content (vitamins and other plant-based nutrients that prevent disease, boost immune function and enhance health).

    What is is about any mention of radiation that makes people lose their minds? By the first paragraph the stupid is burning my eyes.
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  • Egnor lashes out at Dunford and hits himself in the face

    Ah Egnor. The chief purveyor of foot-in-mouth disease at Evolution News and Views takes on Dunford’s recent post on the intellectual dishonesty of the intelligent design creationist movement and shows exactly why Dunford has a point.

    Intelligent design is a cheesy attempt to smear a patina of scientific legitimacy on creationist ideas. Dunford quite reasonably points out that at least the creationists are honest about their objectives, while the ID cranks play a game of hiding their creationist dogma behind psuedoscientific nonsense. Egnor takes offense, and suggests that Dunford is alleging a conspiracy and dishonesty of his own by suggesting the IDers hide their religious views.

    Now, as someone who rejects conspiracy theories as a matter of course, I feel like I bear some responsibility for Egnor’s tactics here. I think it’s time I address this argument that ID is injecting religion into science is just a baseless conspiracy theory.
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  • Denialism in the news

    Alert readers have brought to my attention two articles of interest to the study of denialism. First a big fat article in Newsweek entitled The Truth About Denial is a good overview of the anti-scientific crusade of conservative crank tanks to dispute global warming. It has a nice timeline of the development of the denialist movement in response to the unwanted science, examples of the cranks in congress that have latched onto and internalized the arguments that confirm what they want to hear, and their classic tactics of cherry-picking and confusing climate with weather.

    The second, and I’d love to hear some feedback on this one, is a WaPo article on a conspiracy I’ve never heard of before. It sounds so implausible I have trouble understanding why anyone believed it, but apparently it’s still quite popular myth to spread around. That is, the conspiracy of memorandum 46:

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