An interesting and sympathetic take on Roger Pielke Jr. comes to us from from Dylan Otto Krider. One of the first comments on this blog was what I took to be a sincere welcome to the fray from RP Jr, and I’ve been torn about how to deal with him from well before I took…
Revkin falls into his old habit of splitting the difference between lies and truth, and then offers some lame justification on his blog. This is not acceptable. Revkin should take a hint from Joe Romm on what the actual climate news is this week. I am also 100% behind Joe Romm on his take on…
In another reminder that democracy and science are different games played by different rules, a recent Slashdot story links to this story on Ars TechnicaThe recent AAAS meeting had session devoted to understanding how the public receives and evaluates scientific information. I can’t find any primary information about it but the AT artcile itself is…
I don’t have much intellectual respect for B-school (school of business) types, and unlike most scientists I have had some dealings with them. It appears the pseudo-skeptics are getting a lot of mileage out of some bet that Al Gore is justifiably ignoring and some generic principles that do not apply promulgated by a Professor…
I started blogging because I saw scientists losing arguments to obfuscators and specifically largely because I saw RC coming off as arrogant and overly casual. Far be it from me to take any credit, but I’d like to take note of the current RC article, which is extremely elegantly put together, and in which the…
Thanks to the anonymous poster who pointed me to Quark Soup, which seems to maintain an excellent compendium of timely science links. I’ve blogrolled it and intend to follow it. I also won’t be shy about adding a few words about some of the more interesting links. (For instance I note the irrepressible Matt Huber…
Whew, it’s harder to maintain a blog when you are working than when you ain’t… Anyway, a couple of bits of essential reading from the blogroll today: Samadhisoft points to this BBC report which suggests that There is a global migration crisis climate change will make it worse Yep. It’s not a matter of climate…
My good friend Rob Jacob has an interesting anti-framing rant up on Climate Spin. I try to defend the framing position in the comments…
“In a market where the seller has more information about the product than the buyer, bad products can drive the good ones out of the market.” In an article on Wired, Bruce Schneier attributes this observation to economist George Akerloff. He discusses the implications for computer security products, which need not concern us here. A…
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. So there are two managers who are ballonists for a hobby, and they get blown off track and a bit lost. So one of them yells at someone he sees down on the ground: “Heyyy! Yes youuu! Wherre arre weeee?” to which the reply comes back “You’re…
Orac’s view gets it right as far as it gets it at all. Orac demonstartes that scientists who are threatened by N&M’s position can’t possibly be very introspective, because every communication is framed (and windowed too). Everyone I’ve read on this lately seems to be missing a key point, though. It’s about trust. Scientific communication…
Courtesy of Jim Torson who writes a lengthy diatribe to the globalchange googlegroup. Here’s Nisbet and here’s Mooney. Also Jim points to Blog around the Clock/Coturnix. I’m not sure whether Jim endorses this article, but I surely don’t. Consider this: The result of training is that scientists are uniquely trained to be poor communicators of…
wherein I disagree about disagreeing… Eli has some comments disagreeing with me, but oddly, I agree with them. I am not sure I understand what it is he thinks I am saying, but apparently I disagree with it. It’s very much worth a read anyway, if only to gain the worthwhile nomenclature of the “Overton…
It’s often a good source of creativity to take a question and flip it around. About when I pulled out of science, (and before I honed my political skills, at least a bit, in the private sector) I was at a meeting of paleoclimate modelers, when I kept saying “flip the question”. They were trying…
Dr. Lubos links to an amazingly painful Larry King snippet and scores some easy points. Brace yourself. In short, Bill Nye the science guy sputters a bit and then makes the usual blunder about the “Gulf Stream shutting down”, and Lindzen makes plenty of hay from it. If this is the story people are seeing,…