Some time ago I wrote a post about the Shakespeare authorship non-question. Yesterday PZ Myers at Pharyngula posted about someone who had a go at him for my post. I apologise to PZ who didn't deserve or want the idiocy directed at him and make a request.
If you disagree with what I say on this humble slice of the blogosphere, add your voice in the comments. I am happy to read what you say and give myself thr right to disagree with any comments. I don't have a comments policy so anything goes but I would prefer that any comments are thoughtful and supported by evidence but if you wish to be rude and insulting try to do it with wit. Don't find someone else to complain to. Moan at me.
Thursday, 25 July 2013
Wednesday, 24 July 2013
Giving the dog a bone - Pavlovian responses and dodgy headlines
Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) discovered conditioned reflexes. Had he lived a century later he would have not had to bother with dogs and dinners and bells. All he would have needed was Willard Anthony Watts and the WattsUpWithThat blog.
You see, Willard occasionally puts a bell into a headline, even if the bell doesn't belong there, and the dogs of commenters begin to salivate and slobber their comments all over the thread running beneath the article. It isn't enlightening in any way, other than that it shows a denier behaviour that no doubt he would deny.
Today he puts the headline
above a piece about a paper called Future changes in atmospheric rivers and their implications for winter flooding in Britain.
Can you see what he's done? Yes, boys and girls, he put in the phrase Met Office and used the word summer. Can you see what the paper is about? Yep, winter. I am no climate scientist (which puts me on exactly the same footing as Lord Monckton, Wallace Eschenbach and Willard himself) but I did pretty well at infants' school and could read by the time I was six. Why have the word "summer" in the headline when the paper (I've linked to it above) is about "winter". But I suppose living in California, it is hard to tell the difference between summer and winter - one clue though is that your electric car doesn't start so well in winter.
And the paper isn't from the Met Office. Here are the affiliations of the authors, and their names:
But Watts's headline specifically mentions summer and the Met Office when neither of them are relevant. His readers, such as their reading ages go, don't make the subtle distinction between nothing to do with summer or Met Office and let's shred the Met Office and, unexpectedly perhaps, go for the latter.
Would it be uncharitable to suggest that is precisely what Willard wanted? If he did, he gets what he wanted. You can detect the snarling a mile off:
The paper itself isn't difficult to read, explains patiently that this is about projected weather patterns in the latter half of this century and specifically about the winter six months. And it was peer reviewed.
Garbage in, garbage out, the IT folks tell me. So if you set up a rubbish headline, you can expect to get rubbish comments. And so it proves. WattsUpWithThat, the gift that keeps giving examples of bad science.
You see, Willard occasionally puts a bell into a headline, even if the bell doesn't belong there, and the dogs of commenters begin to salivate and slobber their comments all over the thread running beneath the article. It isn't enlightening in any way, other than that it shows a denier behaviour that no doubt he would deny.
Today he puts the headline
above a piece about a paper called Future changes in atmospheric rivers and their implications for winter flooding in Britain.
Can you see what he's done? Yes, boys and girls, he put in the phrase Met Office and used the word summer. Can you see what the paper is about? Yep, winter. I am no climate scientist (which puts me on exactly the same footing as Lord Monckton, Wallace Eschenbach and Willard himself) but I did pretty well at infants' school and could read by the time I was six. Why have the word "summer" in the headline when the paper (I've linked to it above) is about "winter". But I suppose living in California, it is hard to tell the difference between summer and winter - one clue though is that your electric car doesn't start so well in winter.
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| Is this Willard once he realises his simple error? |
1 Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, Reading, UKDon't see Met Office there. Looked deeper. Richard Allan has collaborated with the staff at the Met Office (which presumably would give James Delingpole reason to give him the same fate as WW2 collaborators). Ben Lloyd-Hughes also comes under that cover, having done some work with the Met Office, as has Brayshaw. But then that's not surprising. The Met Office is going to use expertise to try to do the best job they can. It would be stupid of them to ignore climate scientists entirely.
2 Walker Institute, University of Reading, Reading, UK
3 National Centre for Atmospheric Science, University of Reading, Reading, UK
4 IIHR-Hydroscience and Engineering, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA
5 Department of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Reading, Reading, UK
6 Present address: IIHR-Hydroscience and Engineering, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA.
But Watts's headline specifically mentions summer and the Met Office when neither of them are relevant. His readers, such as their reading ages go, don't make the subtle distinction between nothing to do with summer or Met Office and let's shred the Met Office and, unexpectedly perhaps, go for the latter.
Would it be uncharitable to suggest that is precisely what Willard wanted? If he did, he gets what he wanted. You can detect the snarling a mile off:
All this research is pointless. UK weather can be forecasted deterministically: it’s the opposite of whatever the Met Office predicts.
Er, the RMS Titanic was built and run by the White Star Line, a private enterprise, not a government one. So the UK didn't put a boat out to sea in 1912. But don't let facts spoil a good fight.The UK put a boat out to sea in 1912 and proclaimed it to be unsinkable.
Like this one?I wish the Met Office would stop predicting barbeque summers and the like, and give up and go home so that competent meteorologists can do the job.
Can't find a hosepipe ban in the UK but I do know the Met Office got the severe storms forecast right. I was one of those awoken the other night by the thunder.The Met Office has had its Tiljanders upside down for some time now.
The council inspector who checks to see if you have a hose pipe in use is finding it difficult to walk from house to house with his flippers on.
The invented phenomenon illustrated by a 2009 weather map posted by Willard himself. I notice Steve didn't just not read all of it, he didn't look at the pretty pictures either. So in case he's looking:
I couldn’t even read all of this.
My Bullshat detector was going wild.
On it’s face this is so unbelievable it almost hurts. The authors appear to have supplanted the jet stream with an entirely invented phenomenon.
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| WUWT |
Garbage in, garbage out, the IT folks tell me. So if you set up a rubbish headline, you can expect to get rubbish comments. And so it proves. WattsUpWithThat, the gift that keeps giving examples of bad science.
Tuesday, 23 July 2013
Argue the science, not the man
So said Anthony Watts the other day. The discussion was about the theologian scientist Roy Spencer who is a mate, so you cannot expect the same courtesy to apply to Dana Nuccitelli of SkepticalScience.com who is one of Willard's sworn enemies. If this is starting to sound like a Marvel comic, read on. Just think of Dana as one of The Avengers, along with his pal John Cook, and a cast of other superheroes. Loki Watts has joined forces with the frost giants (you need to have seen the earlier film Thaw to understand what happens next).
So who is Iron Dana, genius, billionaire, playboy philanthropist? No, just a person who works for a company that occasionally gets some money from the oil industry and sometimes from a whole heap of other things.
But the hypocrisy! I don't care what Dana does for a living. I don't care who pays his salary. What matters is that he is trying to find out the truth, unlike Roy Spencer. It is all right by me if a scientist believes in God and tries to work out how God makes the Universe works. It is not all right by me if the scientist starts telling me that God has already told them how it works.
So having established one rules for his mates and another rule for his enemies, Loki Watts lets the troglodytes glimpse some daylight.
Hmm. Carbon dioxide is poisonous, it's just a matter of how much. Nice to know those good old skeptics don't check their information first. Haven't they seen Apollo 13.
Well, at least Anthony comments on this though why he didn't just snip it, I don't know. Keen to do that on the Spencer thread but not here.
Let's remember that Neill has his own advisors, as illustrated by this battered photograph. For those deniers who haven't seen it before, where have you been?
Edited to remove company name lest I join the ranks of the hypocrites.
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| Funny cartoon by Tosh, supply your own caption |
But the hypocrisy! I don't care what Dana does for a living. I don't care who pays his salary. What matters is that he is trying to find out the truth, unlike Roy Spencer. It is all right by me if a scientist believes in God and tries to work out how God makes the Universe works. It is not all right by me if the scientist starts telling me that God has already told them how it works.
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| Some of this might not be true |
So having established one rules for his mates and another rule for his enemies, Loki Watts lets the troglodytes glimpse some daylight.
Nice keyboard skills there Greg. And such a deep and meaningful comment about the science.The two mugshots they’ve chosen for Guardianenvironment make them look like a stand-up comedy doulbe act. Probably not far from the truth.
Here's some info from Buzzle.com:Hmmm – Benzene – CO2?, Benzene – CO2? does any body know an environmental scientist who can tell me which one is poisionous, i think we’re gonna regulate CO2, but what do I know I’m not an expert.
Mild poisoning symptoms are:
Muscle twitching
Reduced neural activity
Flushed skin
High blood pressure
As the severity of hypercapnia increases, the following symptoms may be experienced:
Headache
Lethargy
Elevated rate of cardiac output
Irregular heartbeat
Panic
Convulsions
Chest pain
Hallucinations
Vomiting
Stomach pain
Seizures
Memory problems
Changes in vision
Unconsciousness
Eventually death
Dana is obviously schizophrenic. His Dr. Jekyll personality (Dana has no phd even though he thinks he is qualified to slander those that do), works in oil and gas. His self inflicted guilt concerning his sins working in O&G, brings out the delusional Mr. Hyde who works for SkS.Dana, see your Doctor. He can prescribe Lithium for what ails you!REPLY: I think that is way off base. I don’t see that at all, and you are wrong to suggest it. I nearly snipped this. I simply see Dana and others in his peer group as having a simple case of “noble cause corruption”. They feel they are doing a noble service to mankind, and that end justifies any means. That’s not a mental illness, but a self rationalized attitude. – Anthony
Well, at least Anthony comments on this though why he didn't just snip it, I don't know. Keen to do that on the Spencer thread but not here.
File under H for hypocrite.For an individual who knows so little about so much (as he has repeatedly demonstrated by his blogging and tweeting), Mr. Nuccitelli has no hesitation in broadcasting his ignorance while being extraordinarily disrespectful to people who have far greater expertise than him (e.g. Richard Tol, Roy Spencer, etc.)There’s a word for individuals who carry with them a highly inflated but wholly undeserved sense of self worth.
He used the D word. How come he gets away with it?So Dana makes his living getting paid by deniers.
Read the science again, just in case you didn't understand it. Poommph indeed.
Another mug that screams for a Hawaiian-punch.Hey, how about a Hawaiian-punch?
Sure!
Poommph
Thanks, Jimbo. Why don't you get off your hypocritical buttocks and register for your own, just like I did (I have one at the Daily Telegraph too).It’s just like Pachauri who some years back established a residual oil extraction technology company called Glorioil (name now changed) to help big oil companies extract those last remaining remnants of oil. As for Dana he is a hypocrite. I hope someone on WUWT with a Guardian commenting account point this fact out to him on his next watermelon posting.
Busy man, Jimbo. You almost missed the most important word but just got it in at the end. Evidence. This discussion is based on an innuendo by Andrew Neill and running with it in the absence of real evidence of what Dana actually does at work. Wouldn't it be better to argue that he is being hypocritical when you know what he actually does? I'd have thought so. If he were to spend all day coming up with cunning schemes to, for instance, deny that fossil fuels cause climate change, then goes home at night and blogs the opposite, that would be hypocrisy. But if, for example, his job is to provide environmental clean up schemes dealing with the crap that fossil fuels dump on the planet, then going home and saying that fossil fuels are bad, now that isn't hypocrisy.Joseph Bastardi says:
July 22, 2013 at 12:06 pmwho cares who pays him? I really don’t. If he is truthful and accurate, that is all we should care about, trusting the art, not the artist. So the pursuit of the truth as far as what is going on is what we should be after……….It’s really not about who pays him but the HYPOCRISY. Dana regularly lets out ad homs about fossil fuel shills. Why should we tolerate this? This is not about polite discussion anymore, it is guerrilla warfare. I say that sometimes you have to fight fire with fire (and evidence).
Let's remember that Neill has his own advisors, as illustrated by this battered photograph. For those deniers who haven't seen it before, where have you been?
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| Baseball cap tip to Lord Gnome, 3rd viscount of Pressdram |
Edited to remove company name lest I join the ranks of the hypocrites.
Monday, 22 July 2013
Life's not fair
This won't mean much to me but I learnt something today. Because we have much better cancer treatments, patients who presented with cancer a few years ago, say 30, didn't survive long enough to develop a second kind of cancer. Now they do.
I learnt this because I went with my father to see his oncologist. My dad was diagnosed with skin cancer in 1991, prostate cancer in 1997 and non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2006. Today be bad to take a diagnosis of an aggressive secondary tumour in the liver with others in various bones, the primary being in a lung.
He's been through a lot already, was widowed in 2008 just short of 58 years of marriage and has run out of chances, I'm afraid. He's realistic enough to know that an Arsenal season ticket isn't a sound investment. He probably won't get to see his only great granddaughter go to school. He's not going to chase expensive and pointless quack treatments. He is accepting his limited future with tears and dignity.
I always knew life wasn't fair. Sometimes it just sucks too much.
I learnt this because I went with my father to see his oncologist. My dad was diagnosed with skin cancer in 1991, prostate cancer in 1997 and non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2006. Today be bad to take a diagnosis of an aggressive secondary tumour in the liver with others in various bones, the primary being in a lung.
He's been through a lot already, was widowed in 2008 just short of 58 years of marriage and has run out of chances, I'm afraid. He's realistic enough to know that an Arsenal season ticket isn't a sound investment. He probably won't get to see his only great granddaughter go to school. He's not going to chase expensive and pointless quack treatments. He is accepting his limited future with tears and dignity.
I always knew life wasn't fair. Sometimes it just sucks too much.
Saturday, 20 July 2013
Roy Spencer's beliefs - what are they?
Dr Roy Spencer is a darling of the denier crowd at WUWT because he is a real qualified scientist in the field of climate.
He is also theologically minded. He signed up to the Cornwall Alliance's Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming which tells us that global warming is natural because God did it. Perhaps Spencer didn't read it first but on the Cornwall Alliance website page of signatories, Spencer is top of the list of scientists.
Spencer is also an avowed supporter of Intelligent Design. If the ID debate has slowed down in recent years it must be because one of the top ID scientists, Michael Behe, was thoroughly taken apart at the Dover trial a few years back. ID is creationism in a shabby coat.
One comment at WUWT said Spencer had claimed he is agnostic. If he has, and I couldn't find it, then that change is both recent and goes against the flow of what he has said and done over the years. Importantly, Spencer is ignorant of evolution, uses typical creationist arguments and does it all with a straight face. Yet he claims much in a 2005 essay.
Leaving aside the fact that intelligent design was invented about the time that Spencer claims he was studying it, the rest of what he says betrays a pile of ignorance as tall as the Empire State Building. For someone who supposedly studied evolution v creationism for two years, his essay is content free. For example, Stephen Jay Gould did not argue from absence of evidence. He had plenty of evidence to support his punctuated equilibrium theory. It is not a theory I subscribe to. I didn't think the evidence was sufficiently compelling but there is more to it than just a set of missing fossils.
The fact that Spencer talks in exactly the same hackneyed and debunked creationist sentences suggests he has plugged in a creationist robot and got that to type his essay. Those scientists who do study evolution claim that even if there were no fossils ever, the evidence for evolution would be overwhelming. I tend to agree. But I don't expect Spencer to read Richard Dawkins The Greatest Show On Earth, or The Ancestor's Tale, or Climbing Mount Improbable or... For a good reading list on evolution perhaps some of these authors might be useful: Jerry Coyne, Steve Jones, Sean Carroll, Stephen Jay Gould and others.
Spencer ought to know that Intelligent Design is not the only other show in town besides evolution.
"Argue the science, not the man" says Anthony Watts without a flicker of irony. But when the man bases his science on a two to three thousand year old set of stories, whether true or not, there is a real difficulty making the distinction. Spencer has made a decision not clearly based on science to deny evolution and to deny climate science. He has said so publicly. It is hard to unpick the faith from the evidence based decisions. When he speaks of the critical thinking skills of scientists being lost after they graduate, he wasn't thinking of himself but he is a clear example of one who has done just that. If he truly read anything on evolution written by one who studies it, then he has ignored it. Totally.
If there is one thing Spencer might have learned from the creationists it is how to set up a false debate. Question everything, look for little holes ("no intermediate forms" as a false argument which, when countered with an example, gives two missing links - think about it), cherry pick, take quotes out of context, even change them. Spencer, remember, did not get around to correcting his error on the satellite data very promptly. A rather unscientific oversight.
Mind you, concern trolls at WUWT give Spencer advice on handling the politicians:
I am not trying to attack the man. I am attacking the man's thought processes. If he chooses to base his science on the Bible then I am entitled to take that to task. Willard at WUWT clearly got fed up of that and felt the need to snip and defend, using Newton's rather heretical ideas on Christianity and his rather more scientific ones on gravity as an example. Fair enough, but Newton wasn't saying that he felt the Bible proved his science correct but that his science proved the Bible correct - his science supported his Christianity not the other way round. And the philosophy of science is entirely different today.
Spencer has spent a good deal of his life in trying to find flaws in the science because he believes that God is in control and humans cannot do the damage that is claimed. If he doesn't, then he lied when he put his name to the Cornwall Alliance Declaration because that's what it says. As for being a liability, clearly Spencer's dodgy scientific conclusions on climate science must be coloured by his personal faith, because he has told us so. That signature on that Declaration is a smoking gun.
Perhaps the thing that climate science deniers should most worry about is Spencer's treatment of the mistake he made on satellite data that he apparently sat on for years. Not the best example one could give when deniers try to wave around a few quotes from 5000 emails and prove a conspiracy. When scientists really get it wrong, they end up being sad characatures of true scientists, becoming more and more isolated from the mainstream and from reality. I would suggest Spencer is on that road.
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| Roy, not Frank |
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| Frank, not Roy |
He is also theologically minded. He signed up to the Cornwall Alliance's Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming which tells us that global warming is natural because God did it. Perhaps Spencer didn't read it first but on the Cornwall Alliance website page of signatories, Spencer is top of the list of scientists.
Spencer is also an avowed supporter of Intelligent Design. If the ID debate has slowed down in recent years it must be because one of the top ID scientists, Michael Behe, was thoroughly taken apart at the Dover trial a few years back. ID is creationism in a shabby coat.
One comment at WUWT said Spencer had claimed he is agnostic. If he has, and I couldn't find it, then that change is both recent and goes against the flow of what he has said and done over the years. Importantly, Spencer is ignorant of evolution, uses typical creationist arguments and does it all with a straight face. Yet he claims much in a 2005 essay.
Leaving aside the fact that intelligent design was invented about the time that Spencer claims he was studying it, the rest of what he says betrays a pile of ignorance as tall as the Empire State Building. For someone who supposedly studied evolution v creationism for two years, his essay is content free. For example, Stephen Jay Gould did not argue from absence of evidence. He had plenty of evidence to support his punctuated equilibrium theory. It is not a theory I subscribe to. I didn't think the evidence was sufficiently compelling but there is more to it than just a set of missing fossils.
The fact that Spencer talks in exactly the same hackneyed and debunked creationist sentences suggests he has plugged in a creationist robot and got that to type his essay. Those scientists who do study evolution claim that even if there were no fossils ever, the evidence for evolution would be overwhelming. I tend to agree. But I don't expect Spencer to read Richard Dawkins The Greatest Show On Earth, or The Ancestor's Tale, or Climbing Mount Improbable or... For a good reading list on evolution perhaps some of these authors might be useful: Jerry Coyne, Steve Jones, Sean Carroll, Stephen Jay Gould and others.
Spencer ought to know that Intelligent Design is not the only other show in town besides evolution.
If the public school system insists on teaching evolution as a theory of origins, in the view of many a religious activity, why is it discriminating against the only other theory of origins, intelligent design?Wishful thinking of the teach the controversy kind. Which controversy should be taught? Which creation myth is the one a science teacher should be teaching? If Spencer is to be believed it is the Abrahamic God.
"Argue the science, not the man" says Anthony Watts without a flicker of irony. But when the man bases his science on a two to three thousand year old set of stories, whether true or not, there is a real difficulty making the distinction. Spencer has made a decision not clearly based on science to deny evolution and to deny climate science. He has said so publicly. It is hard to unpick the faith from the evidence based decisions. When he speaks of the critical thinking skills of scientists being lost after they graduate, he wasn't thinking of himself but he is a clear example of one who has done just that. If he truly read anything on evolution written by one who studies it, then he has ignored it. Totally.
If there is one thing Spencer might have learned from the creationists it is how to set up a false debate. Question everything, look for little holes ("no intermediate forms" as a false argument which, when countered with an example, gives two missing links - think about it), cherry pick, take quotes out of context, even change them. Spencer, remember, did not get around to correcting his error on the satellite data very promptly. A rather unscientific oversight.
Mind you, concern trolls at WUWT give Spencer advice on handling the politicians:
Sadly for JFD, the proponents of ID do not claim it is theological but scientific, so the question would have caught out Spencer - if he answered as the comment would have had him answer, he would have opened himself up to the accusation that his science really is based on the Bible. If he had answered that it was science after all, the rejoinder is that the Dover case concluded otherwise. Spencer must know he is caught on this one. Apparently he is an intelligent man. Can't say, I've never met him.Who prepped Roy for the debate? Anyone who has ever testified on the witness stand would know that the question on creation would be forthcoming. His response should have been, “Senator, this is a scientific hearing. Do you have a scientific question for me. I will be glad to discuss theology with you over dinner. We could also discuss at that time why you were eyeing that woman in the red dress”. Then grinned.
I am not trying to attack the man. I am attacking the man's thought processes. If he chooses to base his science on the Bible then I am entitled to take that to task. Willard at WUWT clearly got fed up of that and felt the need to snip and defend, using Newton's rather heretical ideas on Christianity and his rather more scientific ones on gravity as an example. Fair enough, but Newton wasn't saying that he felt the Bible proved his science correct but that his science proved the Bible correct - his science supported his Christianity not the other way round. And the philosophy of science is entirely different today.
Spencer has spent a good deal of his life in trying to find flaws in the science because he believes that God is in control and humans cannot do the damage that is claimed. If he doesn't, then he lied when he put his name to the Cornwall Alliance Declaration because that's what it says. As for being a liability, clearly Spencer's dodgy scientific conclusions on climate science must be coloured by his personal faith, because he has told us so. That signature on that Declaration is a smoking gun.
Perhaps the thing that climate science deniers should most worry about is Spencer's treatment of the mistake he made on satellite data that he apparently sat on for years. Not the best example one could give when deniers try to wave around a few quotes from 5000 emails and prove a conspiracy. When scientists really get it wrong, they end up being sad characatures of true scientists, becoming more and more isolated from the mainstream and from reality. I would suggest Spencer is on that road.
Wednesday, 17 July 2013
Plant evolution - some thoughts
The climate change deniers have a meme - carbon dioxide is plant food. Leaving aside what the word food means in the world of autotrophic nutrition, something occurred to me.
It is this: although plants as a kingdom and plant phyla and classes evolved at times when carbon dioxide levels were higher, the same is not necessarily true of individual plant species. Many plant species will have evolved less than 1 million years ago, plenty of them within the last 10,000 years. Those will have evolved in low carbon dioxide levels. The key is not the time of evolution but whether these plants are adapted to the current climate or not.
Most plants will be in some shape or form adaptable. They have to be. It is the only way to survive. But adaptability has limitations and since the climate is expected to change at rates never or only rarely seen in the history of life, there can be no guarantee that plants will be able to adapt. This is especially so for those plants that are wholly reliant on humans. Domesticated plants such as maize any not have the powers to adapt to a different climate.
Deniers miss another point about plant evolution - co-evolution. Many plants are co-evolved with insect pollinators, fungal mycorrhizae (filaments of fungi in the soil that link roots of plants, growing into the plant tissues and helping them to grow) or nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Even if the plants can adapt, their symbiotic fellow travellers may be unable to do so, or change at the required rate. Survival for many plants may be a matter of pure chance.
Simply put, the denier argument about carbon dioxide benefitting plants is true on a superficial lever, but climate change could produce unexpected results in plant adaptations, including some extinctions, as symbionts adapt at different rates. We shall see, of course.
It is this: although plants as a kingdom and plant phyla and classes evolved at times when carbon dioxide levels were higher, the same is not necessarily true of individual plant species. Many plant species will have evolved less than 1 million years ago, plenty of them within the last 10,000 years. Those will have evolved in low carbon dioxide levels. The key is not the time of evolution but whether these plants are adapted to the current climate or not.
Most plants will be in some shape or form adaptable. They have to be. It is the only way to survive. But adaptability has limitations and since the climate is expected to change at rates never or only rarely seen in the history of life, there can be no guarantee that plants will be able to adapt. This is especially so for those plants that are wholly reliant on humans. Domesticated plants such as maize any not have the powers to adapt to a different climate.
Deniers miss another point about plant evolution - co-evolution. Many plants are co-evolved with insect pollinators, fungal mycorrhizae (filaments of fungi in the soil that link roots of plants, growing into the plant tissues and helping them to grow) or nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Even if the plants can adapt, their symbiotic fellow travellers may be unable to do so, or change at the required rate. Survival for many plants may be a matter of pure chance.
Simply put, the denier argument about carbon dioxide benefitting plants is true on a superficial lever, but climate change could produce unexpected results in plant adaptations, including some extinctions, as symbionts adapt at different rates. We shall see, of course.
Monday, 15 July 2013
Slanted minds, where do I get one?
I have decided to have fewer opinions. I used to have lots of opinions in the eighties. For example, Morrisey of The Smiths whined too much, Salman Rushdie's novels were incomprehensible, the Space Shuttle was a cost effective way of launching satellites, that sort of thing. Then I found that having an opinion based on what I read in, say, the Daily Mail, was not a solidly defendable one.
Then I saw a UFO. I had an opinion on UFOs, naturally. My opinion was that they were definitely real metal craft from distant planets. The books I read told me so. Why wouldn't I believe von Danikan? Because he wasn't telling the truth, that's why. Because he misrepresented solid research, cherry picked his information and presented ifs and buts as certainties. But I saw a UFO and it changed my perspective.
The reason was remarkably simple. I stood and watched this bright white dot move across the sky for several minutes before it disappeared from view. What could it have possibly been? A tin vessel from Alpha Centauri? Something a bit more significant, ready to come down and play its ice cream jingle for me in my third kind encounter? No, what changed my mind was thinking about what I had seen, really seen.
I had seen a light, no shape or detail. It did not blink or flicker and it disappeared suddenly. Perhaps it was an aircraft, but those had navigation lights. It was too slow for a meteor. Perhaps it was a satellite. Yes, that was it, and some research in the local library told me it was true.
Now this shouldn't really be a big deal but it was the first time I had found something out like that for myself, using my grey matter and research rather than accept the simple and entertaining, but wrong, answer. It wasn't what I hoped for that mattered, it was what reality provides.
I was reminded of that by a comment by Victor Vermena over at WUWT which was snipped by the moderator because, presumably, it didn't meet the biased and slanted views of the deniers over there. Snipping the comment, which I read before it was snipped and didn't seem slanted to me, won't change reality. This is boy standing on burning deck attitude, the band plays on but the ship still sinks. Reality won't help so let's try and avoid it.
A real skeptic will have a look, at least, to see if there is something in the comment, and the blog it linked to, and make up their mind. A fake skeptic knows in advance. A fake skeptic is sure what is true and what isn't before they read up on the subject. A fake skeptic looks for evidence to support, a real skeptic looks for evidence for and against.
My wife gets irritated when I put so many conditional statements around virtually anything I say that I am sure the only reason she doesn't divorce me is that she couldn't face the defence I would put up. But I do it because I know that there are uncertainties and errors and all sorts of reasons not to be entirely sure of something that to say so becomes unreal. I can't help being skeptical. I want to check everything and the more outlandish the claim, the more I want to check it. And if someone says something that contradicts so much well established science, I have to check it. And usually the claim turns into vapours.
But being a skeptic is tiring. There's all the googling of facts, papers, blogs by experts, to be done. I'd rather just know in advance, have more opinions. So if someone knows where I too can get a slanted mind like the deniers, then please let me know in the comments.
Then I saw a UFO. I had an opinion on UFOs, naturally. My opinion was that they were definitely real metal craft from distant planets. The books I read told me so. Why wouldn't I believe von Danikan? Because he wasn't telling the truth, that's why. Because he misrepresented solid research, cherry picked his information and presented ifs and buts as certainties. But I saw a UFO and it changed my perspective.
The reason was remarkably simple. I stood and watched this bright white dot move across the sky for several minutes before it disappeared from view. What could it have possibly been? A tin vessel from Alpha Centauri? Something a bit more significant, ready to come down and play its ice cream jingle for me in my third kind encounter? No, what changed my mind was thinking about what I had seen, really seen.
I had seen a light, no shape or detail. It did not blink or flicker and it disappeared suddenly. Perhaps it was an aircraft, but those had navigation lights. It was too slow for a meteor. Perhaps it was a satellite. Yes, that was it, and some research in the local library told me it was true.
Now this shouldn't really be a big deal but it was the first time I had found something out like that for myself, using my grey matter and research rather than accept the simple and entertaining, but wrong, answer. It wasn't what I hoped for that mattered, it was what reality provides.
I was reminded of that by a comment by Victor Vermena over at WUWT which was snipped by the moderator because, presumably, it didn't meet the biased and slanted views of the deniers over there. Snipping the comment, which I read before it was snipped and didn't seem slanted to me, won't change reality. This is boy standing on burning deck attitude, the band plays on but the ship still sinks. Reality won't help so let's try and avoid it.
A real skeptic will have a look, at least, to see if there is something in the comment, and the blog it linked to, and make up their mind. A fake skeptic knows in advance. A fake skeptic is sure what is true and what isn't before they read up on the subject. A fake skeptic looks for evidence to support, a real skeptic looks for evidence for and against.
My wife gets irritated when I put so many conditional statements around virtually anything I say that I am sure the only reason she doesn't divorce me is that she couldn't face the defence I would put up. But I do it because I know that there are uncertainties and errors and all sorts of reasons not to be entirely sure of something that to say so becomes unreal. I can't help being skeptical. I want to check everything and the more outlandish the claim, the more I want to check it. And if someone says something that contradicts so much well established science, I have to check it. And usually the claim turns into vapours.
But being a skeptic is tiring. There's all the googling of facts, papers, blogs by experts, to be done. I'd rather just know in advance, have more opinions. So if someone knows where I too can get a slanted mind like the deniers, then please let me know in the comments.
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