denialism

Climate Change and National Security

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Scientific Data and Freedom of Information

So last week I was given a bit of a roasting by guest blogger Sarah over a remark I made on Twitter, where I said that I couldn't see why academic data should be covered by the Freedom of Information Act. Unfortunately, Twitter is not a good place to put things in context, so here's a post clarifying my views.

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The Big Mist Take

Peter Sinclairs's brilliant Youtube videos on climate change denialism are now syndicated on layscience.net. See the rest of his collection at http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610

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The Consequences of Climate Gate

In 1921, Rorschach wrote the book Psychodiagnostik, in which he set out his theory that you could explore somebody’s personality by studying their interpretations of an ambiguous set of ink-blots on a page. Had Rorschach been alive today, he wouldn’t have needed ink-blots; he could have relied on the various documents leaked from the hacking attack on the East Anglian Climate Research Unit, a set of ambiguous documents that ultimately reveal more about the person reading them than they do about climate science itself.

Continue reading listening on this week's Pod Delusion!

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Climate Truthers Spend Weekend Looking at Boring E-mails

It's amazing what you can find if you have a bit of imagination, and access to somebody's personal e-mail account. Careful scrutiny of my mails, for example, could reveal many interesting things; that I cycle to work every day, that I am Belle de Jour, and that my Grandfather made up Antarctica for a bet. Much like, say, the Bible, or a tabloid headline ending in a question-mark, given a suitably ambiguous piece of text you can read from it pretty much whatever you like.

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All Wet on Sea Level

I'm delighted to announce that from today Peter Sinclair's brilliant Youtube videos debunking climate denialism will be syndicated on layscience.net. See the rest of his collection at http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610 .

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Karri Stokely: The New Christine Maggiore of AIDS Denialism

This is a guest post by British doctor DeeTee. See more by DeeTee here.

The Myspace picture albums seem to capture a wonderful moment in time. The scene is idyllic. Sun-kissed palm trees are set against an azure Caribbean sky, and a happy couple delight in their holiday trip to the Florida Keys. Elsewhere, we can see photos of them with their children, a wholesome, all-American family enjoying everything life has to offer and dreaming of good times yet to come. But despite the glowing vitality that is projected in the photos, things are not what they seem. The woman you see is Karri Stokely, a 43 year old who was diagnosed with HIV infection when she was 29 years old. She is keen to share her story, and does so on several other websites and blogs. It should be a story of courage and hope, but I fear it will not turn out that way. For Karri has decided to completely ignore medical advice and forgo her HIV medication.

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When Skeptics Go Bad: From Climate Skeptics to 9/11 Truthers

Skepticism is generally considered to be a Good Thing, especially in the science blogosphere, but taking it too far can be detrimental, and lead to a position indistinguishable from denialism. So just for a change, I thought I'd turn the spotlight on skeptics. For those of you for whom every numbered list needs to have a cute and catchy name, here are the "Eight Signs of Bad Skepticism". Just for laughs, I'll relate these to so-called "Climate Skeptics" and "9/11 Truthers" because... well just because... and it's good for the hit counts.

Excessive/Narrow Pedantry:

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On David Bellamy's Climate Myth, and the Tenacity of Memes

BPSDBI want to take you on a journey through time and space. Specifically, I want to take you along the long and convoluted trail of citations that leads from David Bellamy's surprising 2005 assertion, in a letter to New Scientist, that the vast majority of glaciers under observation were in fact increasing in size; and the 1988 paper from which this "fact" was ultimately taken. It's a fascinating story, that I think acts as a kind of exemplar for everything that can go wrong in using sources on the internet (HT: Deltoid).

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Climate Denial at The Register, I - Strange Characters

BPSDBSomebody at British I.T. organ "The Register" seems to have it in for climate scientists (as commenters at Deltoid have mentioned). Whether there's a genuine agenda, or whether it's just a cheap attempt to get attention and generate page views is impossible to say, but in recent months a whole swathe of articles on climate change denial have appeared on the site. I'll be posting a rebuttal on the science later, but in this first post I want to concentrate on the writers.

Here are three of the articles - and notice the pattern.

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