Bad Astronomy » Skepticism

A case study of the tactics of climate change denial, in which I am the target

Phil Plait — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:00:35 +0000

Over the years I have pointed out the fallacious arguments of climate change deniers when they attack legitimate climatologists like James Hansen and Michael Mann. This is, of course, like kicking at a bee hive, and whenever I do the comments section of my posts fill with lots of angry buzzing.

But now, for what I think is the first time, I find myself the target of an attack. And I have to admit, I welcome it: it’s a textbook case of denialist sleight of hand, of distraction, distortion, error, and misdirection.

Stick around for all of this. It’ll be… interesting.

Our story so far

OK, first, here’s the scoop: a few days ago, I wrote a blog post taking apart two intellectually bankrupt climate change denial articles, one in the Wall Street Journal, and the other in the UK’s Daily Mail. Both were claiming that global warming appears to have stopped in the past few years, a claim which is trivially easy to show wrong. In fact, I linked to two articles doing just that: one at Skeptical Science, and another I myself wrote. Finding actual scientists destroying that claim is not hard at all; those ...

Q&BA: Getting kids into science

Phil Plait — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:24:55 +0000

A few years ago, I started doing a weekly video question-and-answer session I called "Q & BA". It was a series of short videos that were a lot of fun to make. Unfortunately, the overhead got to be too high — it took all day to edit them! — and I had to stop.

But now, Google+ has changed that: Hangouts On Air is a feature that allows me to go on camera and broadcast a live video chat session to an unlimited audience. I take questions via Twitter and G+, and it’s a lot of fun. It lasts about an hour, and I put the whole session on YouTube. But some of the answers stand alone, and it’s easy to extract them out, package ‘em up, and post ‘em by themselves.

So I’m very pleased to announce I’m starting the series again! The first Q&BA is a great question: "What’s the best way to get kids into science and skepticism?" — what better way to get the series going again? Enjoy.

I’ll be posting more of these, maybe even one per day as time allows. If ...

While temperatures rise, denialists reach lower

Phil Plait — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:20:22 +0000

Over the weekend, two amazingly bad articles were published about climate change. Both were loaded with mistakes, misinterpretations, and outright misinformation, and are simply so factually wrong that they almost read like parodies.

Just so we’re clear here.

The first was in the Wall Street Journal. The article, called No Need to Panic About Global Warming, is a textbook example of misleading prose. It’s laden to bursting with factual errors, but the one that stood out to me most was this whopper: "Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now."

What the what?

That statement, to put it bluntly, is dead wrong. It relies on blatantly misinterpreting long term trends, instead wearing blinders and only looking at year-to-year variations in temperature. The Skeptical Science website destroyed this argument in November 2011, in fact. The OpEd also ignores the fact that nine of the ten hottest years on record all occurred since the year 2000.

The WSJ OpEd makes a lot of hay from having 16 scientists sign it, but of those only 4 are actually climate scientists. ...

The Gingrich Who Stole The News Cycle

Phil Plait — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:38:39 +0000

Because I was on the road Wednesday night, I missed the first few hours of reaction to Newt Gingrich’s speech in Florida, when he said he wants to have a permanent station on the Moon "by the end of my second term". It wasn’t until Thursday morning that I opened up my web browser and saw that every blog, every news site, everyone, was talking about it. I must have had dozens of tweets and emails telling me about it and asking my opinion.

So I found a video of the speech and watched it. The only reason I didn’t laugh out loud at the nonsense unfolding from Mr. Gingrich’s mouth was that I already had seen the reaction online.

In Discover Magazine’s Crux blog I wrote a dissection of his speech and why he’s so vastly and profoundly wrong: The Newt-onian Mechanics of Building a Permanent Moon Base. You’ll get all the details there of why I think Gingrich’s plan is the worst possible way to go about trying to go to the Moon: in a hurry, with the wrong source of funding, and maybe ...

Five shots against global warming denialism

Phil Plait — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:41:58 +0000

It’s a truism that whenever I write about the solid fact that the Earth is warming up, that post will get comments that make it clear that denialists — and please read that link before commenting on my use of the word — are like religious zealots, writing the same tired long-debunked arguments that are usually debunked in the very post they’re commenting on.

Still, we press on. The noise machine only wins if they can outshout reality, so it’s important to keep writing about it. Here are five news items about climate change that might help mitigate the nonsense.

1) Last week, I posted the results from studies showing 2011 was the 9th hottest year on record. Forbes online has more information on this. They take a different tack on it, but get the same results I do: the Earth is warming up, and humans are why.

2) Some very welcome news: the National Center for Science Education — who for years have been at the forefront of battling creationists getting their "curriculum" into schools — is adding climate change to their syllabus. ...

Independent researchers find no evidence for arsenic life in Mono Lake

Phil Plait — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 21:04:32 +0000

Late in 2010, scientists participating in a NASA news conference dropped a bombshell: they had found evidence that bacteria in California’s Mono Lake were metabolizing arsenic and using it in their life processes.

This was huge news, since arsenic is toxic for carbon based life. If some forms of life evolved a way to process it, this would open up a whole new field of biochemistry!

However, almost immediately, the work came under attack. Biochemists accused the original team of not performing the research carefully (to put it delicately). Rosie Redfield, a microbiologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, was particularly critical. She decided, in fact, to try to verify the original work, and set out to do so openly, writing up her progress on her blog.

And now, according to an article on Scientific American, she can confidently provide a "clear refutation" of the arsenic uptake in the organisms:

Their most striking claim was that arsenic had been incorporated into the backbone of DNA, and what we can say is that there is no arsenic in the DNA at all.

That’s a pretty clear statement! The ...

Skeptic Zone interview: Doooooomsday

Phil Plait — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:37:28 +0000

My old pal Richard Saunders from Australia skyped me up (which sounds dirtier than it is) and we chatted about doomsday prophecies — 2012, mostly, but also all the endless failed predictions of years gone by — for his podcast The Skeptic Zone (you can grab the MP3 here too). It’s always fun to chat with Richard. We’ve known each other a long time (as you can tell by the picture of the two of us there — click to southernhemispherenate) and I think that helps.

I also gush a bit about the live stuff I’m doing with Fraser Cain on Google+, including astronomy news roundups every Thursday, and live video telescope viewing via webcams. My part starts at about 12:30 in, but you should listen to the whole thing. It’s a good podcast, and he has an adorable accent.

No, SETI has not detected an alien signal from a Kepler planet

Phil Plait — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 18:41:42 +0000

Last night, I started getting emails and tweets asking about a possible detection of a radio signal coming from two of the newly-discovered planets orbiting other stars.

Cutting to the chase: yes, a signal has been seen, but no, it’s not coming from some alien civilization. It’s almost certainly something much closer, like a satellite interfering with the observation.

So what’s the deal?

You talkin’ to me?

The Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is a privately-funded group of scientists and engineers who are trying* an ongoing effort to figure out ways to detect signals from space that could be coming from other intelligences: aliens. They focus (haha) mostly on radio signals, since it’s very easy to send radio waves across the vast light years separating stars, it’s easy to detect radio waves (so primitive life like us can pick up the call), and it’s easy to encode information that way. Heck, we’ve been broadcasting coded radio waves for over a century now!

Currently, no unambiguous alien "Hello there!" has been detected. The sky is big, there are a lot of stars out there, and the radio spectrum is really wide, too. Think of how many radio stations there ...

Stop antivaxxers. Now.

Phil Plait — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 14:00:26 +0000

There are times when reality is so obvious, so clear, so rock-solid 100% amazingly in-your-face incontrovertible, that it is beyond belief that anyone could deny it.

And yet, antivaccination groups exist.

Let me be very, very clear: they are wrong. Vaccines save lives. Vaccines save millions of lives. And not just directly, like they did by wiping out smallpox, a scourge that killed hundreds of millions of people. But also, through herd immunity, vaccines save infants too young to be vaccinated, the elderly with weak immune systems, and people whose immune systems are compromised due to chemotherapy, genetic issues, or because they are taking immunosuppressants for other illnesses (like arthritis).

Vaccines don’t cause autism. Vaccines don’t contain dangerous levels of mercury. Vaccines don’t contain fetal tissue. Each of these – and many, many more — is misinformation spread by antivaxxers, statements that are easily proven wrong (like, in order, here, here, and here). But many antivaxxers continue to use them.

What does that say about their willingness to tell the truth?

Yesterday, in Australia, one of the most vocal antivaxxers alive, Meryl ...

The $37.6 Million Dollar Fine HE Doesn’t Want You To Know About

Phil Plait — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 14:00:56 +0000

If schadenfreude made a noise, then you’d be hearing it pretty loudly from me right now: Kevin Trudeau — a convicted credit card fraud, and a man who made tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars by telling people he could cure their cancer using, get this, coral calcium — has lost his appeal to the federal court, and must pay $37.6 million dollars in fines.

Trudeau, who shilled this false cancer cure as a diet supplement, was ordered by a federal judge in 2008 to stop making and airing infomercials about it. I wrote about this at the time, but I kept seeing those evil infomercials on TV. I wondered about this, but now I understand: Trudeau was trying to sidestep the order by selling books about this false cure, not the supplements directly. And, he kept buying up those ad spots while appealing the order. But on November 29th of this year, the appeals court said "nope".

As the court papers say:

The protections, unfortunately, were too weak: Trudeau aired infomercials in violation of the order at least 32,000 times. He should not now be surprised that he ...

Colbert on Tyson

Phil Plait — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 14:14:43 +0000

Neil deGrasse Tyson may be the most recognizable astronomer on Earth these days, in part due to his frequent appearances on The Colbert Report. Earlier this year In 2010, Colbert sat down with Neil at the Kimberley Academy in Montclair, New Jersey and chatted with him about life, the Universe, and everything. Colbert did this out of his TV character — well, mostly — and even though it’s over an hour, it’s well worth your time. The original video is on the Hayden Planetarium site, but it’s also all over the place, including YouTube. I’ve embedded it here for your enjoyment, too.

Neil and I agree on a wide variety of topics, and he’s doing a great job inspiring people to look beyond their own immediate surroundings.

Related posts:

- Our Future in Space – panel at TAM 9
- In which I disagree with cartoon Neil Tyson
- SMBC on the brain
- Neil Tyson and I talk time travel

Christopher Hitchens, 1949 – 2011

Phil Plait — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 17:21:24 +0000

Christopher Hitchens has died.

You’ve probably heard; the web is lighting up with obituaries and stories about him. I didn’t know him personally — having only met him on two occasions, both times at skeptic conferences — and I didn’t come into his writings until relatively recently, so nothing I can say here would add substantively to what already exists. Instead, many people have written eloquent thoughts upon his death, so you should read those:

At Noisy Astronomer, Nicole Gugliucci recounts watching Hitchens in a debate with a theist, a situation that occurred often.

Steve Novella of course sums things up with his usual insight and sharp aim.

Kevin Murphy simply put up an interesting video of Hitchens acerbically and artfully dissecting, and then rewriting, the Ten Commandments.

And, as usual, it’s impossible to beat the amazing ability of The Onion to distill away impurities and make me smile ruefully with one simple headline.

… though of course, Zach Weiner manages to do so pretty well in both a web comic as well as a short tribute and imploration for us to do more.

Holiday fundraisers

Phil Plait — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:00:45 +0000

Winter is always a big season for charities. Christmastime is traditionally a time to give, but that means competition among charities increases, and it’s hard to separate out which ones you want to give to. And some "traditional" charities seem like they do good work, but have some pretty intolerant and bigoted beliefs they keep relatively quiet. So deciding to whom to give can be difficult.

So if you have a few bucks, here are a handful of charities I like.

Recipe4Hope is campaign to raise money for the Autism Science Foundation. I am very wary of groups claiming to research autism, since so many of them are fronts for anti-vaccination promoters. ASF, though, understands that vaccines do not cause autism, and is looking into actual scientific research. Here’s their video for this year:

100% of the donations will fund ASF’s pre- and post-doctoral autism research fellowships, helping young scientists start their career researching autism. They have a donation page set up, and the campaign runs through the end of 2011.

The James Randi Educational Foundation has an annual Season of Reason campaign which raises funds to keep JREF operating. Donate $100 (or ...

Congressional funding disaster

Phil Plait — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 18:00:33 +0000

I recently posted a lengthy analysis of the fiscal year 2012 budget Congress and the President approved for NASA. I didn’t mention it then because it was off-topic, but in the press release for the funding bill, they list bullet points of "Important Policy Items". I took a screen grab of the last item listed, and the note below it:

Perhaps I’m the only one who sees irony in a bullet point saying Congress won’t appropriate $322M for an NOAA climate change service, while then immediately below it noting how the natural disasters that have befallen this country have required " historic levels of relief and recovery assistance", necessitating $2.3 billion in relief funds. Hmmm.

[Note: While it can be hard to pin any one natural disaster like a hurricane, heat wave, or snow storm on climate change, as we warm up we will see more things like those. I want my tax dollars to go to more scientific investigation by NOAA and other agencies. But then, I'm not funded in any way by the oil industry, and ...

“Alternative” cancer clinic threatens to sue high school blogger

Phil Plait — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 20:57:59 +0000

Everyone has been touched by cancer in one way or another. If you haven’t had it yourself, the odds are extremely high you know someone who has, and who has died from it. I’ve lost loved ones to cancer, and it’s awful; it can take years filled with tests, hope, lack of hope, expensive therapy… and in the end the odds are what they are. It all makes for desperate times for those involved, with an emotional distress level that is beyond my ability to describe.

There are people out there who claim they can cure cancer, or have therapies that can mediate it. Some of these people are simply con artists, ready to swoop in as soon as they smell blood in the water, vermin that they are. Others are honest but wrong, thinking they have stumbled on some therapy that no one else has found. However, time and again, when these alternative methods are tested rigorously using controlled, properly done studies, they are shown not to work. In general this does not stop people from making the claims, however.

In Houston, Texas, is a man named Stanislaw Burzynski. He claims he has a method for treating cancer. He calls it ...

Climategate 2: More ado about nothing. Again.

Phil Plait — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 19:30:33 +0000

Geez, this again? Seriously?

Two years ago, someone hacked into a University of East Anglia server and anonymously posted thousands of emails from climate scientists. Quickly dubbed "Climategate", global warming deniers jumped on this, trying to show that these scientists were engaging in fraudulent activities. However, it was clear to anyone familiar with how research is done that this was complete and utter bilge; the scientists were not trying to hide anything, were not trying to trick anyone, and were not trying to falsely exaggerate the dangers of climate change.

I wrote about this when it happened and then again quickly thereafter, showing this was just noise. Accusations of fraud were leveled at climate scientist Michael Mann, but time and again he was exonerated: like this time, and then this time, and then this time, and of course this time, and then my favorite, this time.

Climategate was widely denounced as a manufactured controversy, except, of course, by denialists. Because they denied it. That’s axiomatic.

However, like a bacterium festering away someplace dank and fetid, Climategate is poised ...

New experiment neither proves nor refutes FTL neutrinos

Phil Plait — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 14:00:28 +0000

On Friday, a news story came out that a second experiment seems to support the results of an earlier experiment which showed neutrinos might be moving faster than light. I commented about this on Google+ at the time, but I want to post about it here as well. Let me be clear: this new result does not confirm FTL neutrinos! What it did was essentially eliminate one possible source of error. A big one still remains.

Let me recap: In September, a team of scientists at CERN working with the OPERA detector in Italy found that beams of neutrinos — subatomic particles that can travel straight through matter — seemed to get from the source in Geneva to the target in Italy 60 nanoseconds faster than a beam of light would make the trip. If true, it means they were moving faster than light (what scifi geeks like me call FTL) which, according to all the physics we understand, is impossible.

There was a lot of criticism of the experiment, as was expected and as it should be! It fell into two broad categories: a problem with ...

In which I disagree with cartoon Neil Tyson

Phil Plait — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 18:59:39 +0000

Last week, I was checking my feed reader, catching up on all my favorite web comics. One of them is sci-ence, a comic you really should be reading. It’s drawn (in part) by artist and science afficianado Maki Naro, and (like xkcd and Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal) it’s both funny and scilicious.

I got a snicker out of the comic he had just posted, dealing with my pal Neil Tyson and the Moon. Go read it!

Back yet? OK.

Now, I know that just last night I was praising Neil, and today I have no cause to bury him. But I will nitpick a wee bit…

First, of course, who hasn’t wanted to chase Neil Tyson down the street while yelling incoherently at him? But that aside, I must point out that this explanation of the Moon Illusion, while very common, is not actually correct.

The Moon Illusion is when the rising (or setting) Moon looks huge and fat, squatting on the horizon, but appears far smaller when up high in the sky. But it’s not because you’re comparing it with foreground objects! I’ve seen this illusion ...

Updated movie of asteroid YU55, plus bonus SCIENCE

Phil Plait — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 14:00:21 +0000

Last week, the asteroid 2005 YU55 passed by the Earth. Lots of observations were made, including using the Goldstone radio telescope in California. I wrote about how this works last week. NASA just released a new video showing an updated animation containing 28 frames, showing YU55 rotating as it swung past us:

That’s pretty nifty. Mind you, this isn’t an image like an optical telescope would make, but instead is a constructed 2D representation using what’s called the Doppler Delay technique; that’s why it looks like it’s illuminated from the top. That’s not real; read Emily Lakdawalla’s excellent writeup to get more info on how that works.

However, from looking at the animation you can see several features, including some broad depressions (YU55 is about 400 meters across, so some of those dips are the size of football fields). There are also several bright spots which I find interesting. Those are areas which are particularly reflective of radar pulses from the telescope; you can see them brighten and fade as the rock spins. These may be boulders on the surface, which change brightness as the angle between them and the telescope changes. There’s also an ...

Mea culpa: About studying science to get a job

Phil Plait — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 00:39:33 +0000

This morning, I posted an article where, looking at a database from the 2010 Census, I concluded that your chances of getting a job are a lot better if you major in a science field. Four of the ten college majors with the lowest unemployment rates were science-related.

It turns out I made some errors in the post. One is a logical fallacy, the other in my structure and wording, implying something I didn’t mean to. These were pointed out to me by a reader who makes several valid points, but then falls into errors of his own. This is worth sorting out, so I want to take a moment to show what’s what.

I was taken to task about my post on Twitter by Noahpinion, who pointed out (in tweets here and here) that many fields of science had higher unemployment rates. I replied that the numbers he quoted (6-7%) were still below the national average.

That was a mistake on my part. Noah pointed out that I was using 9% for the national unemployment average, but that’s overall unemployment. A better figure to use would have been 5%, which is the unemployment rate just for ...

You could use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true

Phil Plait — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 13:00:49 +0000

Here at BA Central, I have my hands full trying to battle the Forces of Darkness: those who would spin, fold, and mutilate reality for their own gain. They may be motivated by greed, or power, or ignorance, or ideology, but the thing they all have in common is, they’re wrong. They come in many flavors: homeopaths, psychics, creationists, antivaxxers… and yes, sadly, far too many politicians.

And I can rail against them time and again, my arsenal filled with the facts from an entire Universe at my disposal, yet make hardly a dent in their armor.

Sometimes, though, a small dose of satire penetrates right through that shielding and pierces the very heart of antiscience. Thank you, The Daily Show, for fighting this good fight:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c Weathering Fights – Science: What’s It Up To? www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

Related posts:

- You can’t explain Bill O’Reilly
-

Great Tyson’s ghost!

Phil Plait — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 17:10:53 +0000

If you’re looking for some spooky listening for your Halloween, then aim your ectoplasmic resonator at astronomer Neil Tyson’s Star Talk radio show, because last night he hunted ghosts… or at least, talked to some folks who know about ghosts. He chats with author Mary Roach, skeptic ghost investigator Joe Nickell, and… me!

Yeah, I’m not really an expert on ghosts — still being alive and all — but I’ve seen a few ghost movies in my time, so we chat about those, and why I don’t personally think dead people are floating around, knocking on walls and hoping some "ghost hunter" will notice us and anxiously whisper, "Did you hear that?"

As always, talking with Neil is a lot of fun, and you’ll enjoy the whole show. You can also download the MP3 directly, too. [UPDATE: you can subscribe to Star Talk using iTunes, as well!]

My interview is broken up into several segments; the first starts around 11:30, the second at 24:50, the third at 36:15, and the fourth at 41:00. But of course you should listen to the whole show; it’s pretty ...

Psychics leave me in shambles

Phil Plait — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 18:00:05 +0000

You know what really eats me up? People who claim they can talk to the dead, when it is far, far more likely they are simply using psychological tricks (like cold reading) and random guesses, making it seem like they have some supernatural power.

A while back, the James Randi Educational Foundation publicly challenged so-called "psychic" James van Praagh to take their Million Dollar Challenge and prove he can do what he claims. It’s been weeks, and he hasn’t replied. I can’t imagine why, can you? It’s almost as if he’s afraid of being tested in a controlled environment.

The JREF decided to follow up on their challenge to van Praagh, to see if they could make sure he got the message. And this time, they brought some friends…

Man, I would’ve given an arm and a leg to be there for that. But c’mon, do you really think van Praagh will ever respond?

Gnaw.

Related posts:

- Cold guessing
- D.J. Grothe: skepticism and humanism
- A: Ghouls. Q: What do you call psychic mediums?
- Blastr: I was a zombie for science

New independent climate study confirms global warming is real

Phil Plait — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 12:00:46 +0000

Before I say anything else in this post, I will start off right away and say that the results I’ll be discussing here have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal. Because of that, the results need to be taken with a grain of salt. However, due to the nature of the study’s foundation and funders, which I will get to in a moment, the results are most definitely news-worthy.

The study is called the Berkeley Earth Project (BEP), and what they found was stated simply and beautifully in their own two-page summary:

Global warming is real, according to a major study released today. Despite issues raised by climate change skeptics, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study finds reliable evidence of a rise in the average world land temperature of approximately 1° C since the mid-1950s.

Wow. Of course, I would change one word in there. Can you guess what it is? The answer is below.

Big deal

Now, we’ve known this for a while. Study after study has shown that the Earth is warming, that the past decade has been the hottest on record, and that the rise in ...

Our Future in Space – panel at TAM 9

Phil Plait — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 18:26:49 +0000

In July 2011, at the JREF’s TAM 9 meeting in Las Vegas, I moderated a panel discussing the future of space exploration. On that panel were some familiar faces: Bill Nye (the Science Guy), astronomers Neil Tyson and Pamela Gay, and theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss. All of us have, ah, some experience talking to the public about matters spacey, so I knew it would be a fun panel to moderate.

I had no idea. The video of the panel has been made available by the JREF, so you can see it for yourself! I’ve embedded it below. It’s an hour long, but I think you’ll find it absolutely worth your time to watch all the way through. A lot of people came up to me afterwards and said it was the best panel at the meeting, and one of the best we’ve ever had at TAM! As a participant, modesty forbids me from saying more, but then, who am I to disagree?

It was a rollicking discussion, and very interesting. Neil was in rare form, and I think my favorite moment was when Pamela was making a point, and Neil jumped ...