97% - Study of 12,000 peer-reviewed papers shows overwhelming consensus that climate change is happening

Reblogged from Watching the Deniers:

Congratulations to John Cook and his team for their paper demonstrating the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change:

They reviewed 12,000 papers: an enormous task.

Well done - now, lets see how the sceptics try to wave this away.

Conspiracy perhaps?

Something I feel that bares repeating over and over again because people just don't get it.

Silence of the milestone: how humanity is greeting 400ppm with continuing indifference

Reblogged from Watching the Deniers:

History affords us lessons if we are prepared to pay attention.

To paraphrase, those who ignores the Earth's geologic history seem destined to relive it.

Among those who follow such things (scientists, climate bloggers and the journalists chronicling this act of civilisational suicide) the passing of the 400ppm milestone was met with a mixture of resignation, calls for action and a hint of fatalism.

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Finally, we've reached that point and the silence is deafening...

Measles Outbreak – Who Saw That Coming?!

Andrew Wakefield, supported by scientific ignorance at the reactionary media, firstly in the UK and then across the world, fabricates data to promote a personal agenda. He destroys his own credibility as a researcher and is eventually struck of from medical practice. A willing media not only supports him but goes on to fuel one of the most dangerously malevolent anti-scientific movements in the modern age – the AntiVax Movement

That Wakefield was struck off and can no longer practice because of his actions has gone largely ignored by a willingly ignorant public. The media that once championed him quickly distanced themselves from his claims and forgot their own complicity in what was to follow. They also ignored the weight of criticisms in the scientific journal where he published his data.

Conspiracy nation: 37% Americans think climate change a hoax; 30% fear a New World Order; 27% think Obama is the anti-Christ

Reblogged from Watching the Deniers:

The prevalence of conspiracy theories within a society or nation can have a profound effect on its politics. Indeed for the last several decades scholars of conspiracy culture have been signalling the growing acceptance of conspiracy beliefs across the globe and their potential to distort political debate.

As Kathryn Olmsted notes in her work, Real Enemies: conspiracy theories and American democracy from World War 1 to 9/11…

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Sad, I feel, that a significant portion of any nation's population is so driven by paranoia and conspiracy theory - especially in view of overwhelming scientific evidence.

Hot Planet – BBC documentary

What are the dangers of global warming? What is causing it? What can we do about it? I know I post a lot of scientific data on this blog but it is documentaries like this that help to raise awareness of the problem for those who are not scientifically minded or who are baffled by conflicting media reports.

Here is a documentary in layman’s terms about the changes we are experiencing now and what we can expect in future.

Horse meat - the hardest thing to digest is that it's your fault.

Reblogged from The Making Progress Blues:

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No doubt you are outraged about the horse meat scandal. You have every right to be – criminality, profiteering, potential fraud, all have led to many people eating an animal they would probably prefer to see in the 3.20 at Kempton and possibly also ingesting dangerous veterinary drugs. 

However, I’m going to come at this from another angle and it’s this: it’s your own bloody fault.

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Can't really argue with any of this. I know this is stretching the boundaries of what this blog is about, but I guess it is - in a round about sort of way - that we have all come to expect something for nothing, by convincing ourselves that cheap food can still be ethical and high quality. That, of course, is nonsense and that is precisely what this blog is about.

Hitchens vs Dembski

Found this surfing YouTube the other day, a debate between Intelligent Design proponent William Dembski and the late great Christopher Hitchens.

Get some popcorn and your beverage of choice because this is a long one!