Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
Public Health Warning: Reading about Rick Perry can potentially inflict serious face palming. Trump appointee, Rick Perry, the energy secretary was interviewed on CNBC’s “Squawk Box”. When asked about the role that Carbon Dioxide play in our warming climate and if it was “the primary control knob for the temperature of the Earth and for climate,”, he … Read more
A new study entitled “Global risk of deadly heat” has just become available online. It is very timely given the observation that currently we have a Heat Wave in various locations including the US and the UK at the moment. That however is just a coincidence. The paper has been in the pipeline for some … Read more
NASA maintains the GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP) data set, and so on a monthly basis there is an update. What exactly is GISTEMP? GISTEMP is an estimate of global surface temperature change. They collect raw data files from NOAA GHCN v3 (meteorological stations), ERSST v4 (ocean areas), and SCAR (Antarctic stations). This is all then combined. … Read more
Shakespeare in the Park is a long tradition in New York and so this year they put on a production of Julius Caesar. To connect with the audience they made it relevant by dressing up in modern clothes and having a Julius Caesar character that was rather familiar. Lois Beckett writing in the Guardian describes … Read more
Filter out the con men such as Jim Bakker and you are still left with the vast majority of weirdness. This is because the con men are leveraging the existence of such ideas, they are not the root cause. When faced with absurd religiously inspired claims, then there are two things that you can be … Read more
This week has seen some utterly bizarre behaviour by Scott Pruitt who was appointed by the Trump administration to run the EPA. While attending a meeting of the House Appropriations subcommittee that was reviewing the proposed 2018 budget for the EPA, he proceeded to stand up and defend the cuts that would in effect completely gut his … Read more