Seeking local classmate(s) -- "Open Climate 101" course from U. of Chicago for nonmajors, online

Folks, I'm still looking for someone to take this climate course with me - it's online, it's free, it has lectures and labs and quizzes, we can work at our own pace, and we get a certificate of completion when we finish.

Advice from Gelman & Fung, in AmSci piece on Freakonomics shortcomings

Good advice for all of us (yes, including me) -

"It is easy to be preemptively defensive of one’s own work, or of researchers whose work one has covered. Viewing alternative points of view as useful rather than threatening can help take the sting out of critiques. And if you’re covering subject matter outside your expertise, it pays to get second—and third and fourth—opinions."

- from Freakonomics: What Went Wrong? Examination of a very popular popular-statistics series reveals avoidable errors

Isaac Asimov - the Relativity of Wrong (or, why science is useful)

Read or watch - and have an answer for your English Lit. friend who says scientists always think they know & yet always turn out to be wrong, so why listen to what they're saying today.

Lost in Deep Time

This little 2+ minute clip of Richard Alley talking about ways of looking at the Grand Canyon is wonderful.



h/t Planet 3.0

Sticking points in accepting human-caused global warming; from a Republican, Mormon former skeptic

Utah geophysicist and former doubter Barry Bickmore had doubted human-caused climate change, since his understanding was that:

• There was lots of scientific controversy about human contributions;
• Climate projections were based solely on complex computer models of physical systems, which (having worked on them, he knows) are easy to screw up;
• There’s always uncertainty involved in science.
  

In this recorded presentation, Barry says, "I briefly talked about how I had made the transition from being a climate change “skeptic” to being an outspoken advocate of mainstream climate science. I then discussed how it is that people like me can so effectively avoid the truth about climate change."

The talk is well worth watching for anyone who still harbors doubts; its conclusion, which is quite strong, also serves as a guide to what's covered:

These contrarian objections almost always have a kernel of truth:

* Liberals do sometimes spin environmental issues;
* There are some legitimate climate scientists who object to the consensus;
* There might be a climate Galileo on the horizon;
* Non-experts should try to figure out climate science as much as we can;

There’s always room for doubt, especially in science. But when we are:

* turning veterinarians & metallurgists into climate experts;
* pointing to articles in dog astrology journals;
* putting forward potential Galileos who can’t put together any decent evidence;
* and relying on a fake member of parliament who claims to have developed a miracle cure-all;

- then we’re trying too hard to avoid the truth.

(It's 40 minutes long, so if you're short on time, you can read the notes.)


For more detail (on climate physics, etc), see Barry's previous talk, Climate Change: What We Know and How We Know It.

Belaboring what should be (but to some, is not) obvious

I really wish that one of our major parties was better able to grasp this.

Anyone who has a child has a stake in the future.

How to assess whether a commentator is credible? One simple way

If the communication is about science, listen and see if it's sprinkled with these misleading terms. And, if you can, ask the commentator: do you feel you'd be better at assessing the evidence than 97% of the experts in the field?

Bridging the chasm between two cultures (New Age and science-aligned)

This May 2004 article (link) by Karla McLaren came up in conversation recently, and is still well worth reading.

"Brain vs bluster" climate video, testimony

Dr. Richard Alley and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher in action: Brain vs Bluster
(h/t Peter Sinclair)

As you watch it, remember: this official got more votes than any other contender in his district.



Alley is wonderful, as always. Money quote, circa 8:20: "If humans weren't here and we didn't care about anything that lives here, if this were a video game, I'd push the button and see what happens, because it'd be really exciting; but it's not a video game."

(The fellow who speaks after him is Pat Michaels.)

Congratulations to CA Science Fair Product Science winner Samantha Beckett

Congratulations Samantha!
(After the recent Castillo hoax, when I saw the Union story Young scientist wins second state science fair prize I went to the science fair site to verify; and indeed, here she is. Well done, Samantha!)

Compare and contrast: journalism vs. science

Journalism's got a lot in common with scientific research - in both endeavors you're trying to understand and convey the nature of reality. But there are differences too, that you may not grasp if you're coming at it from the "science" end - it's not just that "journalism's peer review is a good deal easier to sneak through."

The good Dr. Heisenberg plays a much larger role in journalism, because your forays into gathering data involve the efforts of, in effect, lab techs who may have a strong desire to skew or otherwise obscure the results. And you won't necessarily know whether they're trying to do so, since you barely know them - with each story, you're working with a different group of techs.

So you need to put a fair amount of effort into controlling for any bias introduced by the techs - which means running the same experiment using different techs, or - if you realize you've left some "wiggle room" in an experiment - rerunning it more rigorously, using the same tech.

(Stripping out the metaphors, what this means is that you'll want to ask multiple people the same question, and you may ask the same person multiple variants of the same question. Which, I have found, makes the lab techs take umbrage...)

The journal Nature endorses Obama - from values of scientific enquiry

For you nonscience folks - Nature is the most important journal in science.

The values of scientific enquiry, rather than any particular policy positions on science, suggest a preference for one US presidential candidate over the other.
...
[S]cience is bound by, and committed to, a set of normative values — ... [such as] placing a disinterested view of the world as it is ahead of our views of how it should be; recognizing that ideas should be tested in as systematic a way as possible; appreciating that there are experts whose views and criticisms need to be taken seriously: these are all attributes of good science that can be usefully applied when making decisions about the world...
On a range of topics, science included, Obama has surrounded himself with a wider and more able cadre of advisers than McCain...tends to seek a range of opinions and analyses ... also exhibits pragmatism...
[McCain] fails to educate himself on crucial matters ... frequently makes decisions that seem capricious or erratic. ...
[A] commitment to seeking good advice and taking seriously the findings of disinterested enquiry seems an attractive attribute for a chief executive. ...
[If this journal had a vote] ... it would cast its vote for Barack Obama.

Here's the link (pdf)

Elsewhere: science, global warming,and Gore

Excellent: stages of scientific progress

Short video in which our favorite science teacher takes an updated look at global warming (a.k.a. global climate destabilization) in terms of risk analysis:

http://view.break.com/381084

And please watch this (considerably longer) Jan 2006 Gore speech to the American Constitution Society.

A failure to communicate: Scientists, journalists, reality

A very nice explanation of why journalists - and scientists - have failed for so long to inform the public about global warming*, in Pants On Fire, part 1 over at Little Blog in the Big Woods - it's the very forseeable, and very unfortunate, outcome of their different cultural strictures and conventions, regarding communicating about reality:

...we [in our society] rely on scientific opinion, as reported; by reporters.
...
...[It is remarkably common] for humans to speak to each other, hold what passes for a conversation, and leave the conversation reasonably satisfied; but with no information having changed hands.
Scientists, journalists, "policy makers", and the general public, are doing this now, big time...[They] do not, in fact, speak the same languages; and they do not know it. We need interpreters, and have none...
[Consequence, re global warming:]
...The real equation, in 1988, was that 85% of the scientists who studied the problem were 85% sure we were heading for horrifyingly serious problems, and the majority of their opposition were known fools.
...[But] what [journalists] reported was: no one is sure, and Dr. Billy, a colorful contrarian, says "BULL!".

Not unrelated: xarker on Science and Media, and their practioners' respective failures to communicate and to adapt.

...a New Yorker cartoon of two aging scientists in a quiet, darkened lab office. One says to the other, "Well, at least we never stooped to popularizing science." There's a lot of dark humor implied in that subject, and it's not related solely to scientists.

And (Wed update) The Truth About Denial - Newsweek on the deniers' funding machine

Quotes on pseudoscience and other pseudoinformation

Einstein on real science:

If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research.

Feinman on Cargo Cult Science:

there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science....[namely] a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty...
the idea [in real science] is to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgement in one particular direction or another.

The easiest way to explain this idea is to contrast it, for example, with advertising.

BDL on payola punditry:

Say...that there are
(i) people who write what they believe;
(ii) people who write what they are paid to write; and
(iii) people who write what they are paid to write but who want you to think they write what they believe.
People in category (iii) are--by their own actions--less credible and less trustworthy than people in categories (i) and (ii). Evaluating their arguments is difficult, time consuming, and requires constant research and fact checking.

Given that there are many too many good people working hard in categories (i) and (ii) to read, is there ever any reason to ever read anybody in category (iii)?
...[and] is there ever any reason to read anybody...who tells us that it doesn't matter which category--(i), (ii), or (iii)--people are in?