Translation...

...Into a Foreign Language

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 ~ "A loud noise at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other."

Leave alone those that bandy 'bout a megaphone...

What Shall We Teach Our Children?

Science? Or Belief?

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 ~ Hardly a week goes by without someone decrying the atrophy of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) instruction in the US, yet we do nothing about the teaching of ignorance in schools throughout the country. We desperately need to have more scientifically capable graduates for our global competitiveness as a nation, but we condone indoctrination in dogma instead.

Climate Change Peer Consensus

Thorough Review of the Literature

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 ~ It's not unanimous, but it's more of a consensus than one typically sees on anything.

When was science ever unanimous anyway? It is the nature of scientific inquiry for there always to be skeptics.

Well, How Did We Get Here?

Same As It Ever Was

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Defending Ourselves

Should We Fear Terrorists?

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 ~ The last two years on this Day of Remembrance I have written of fear, and of courage. Rereading those posts, the words still ring true to me.

Yet I am fearful now.

I won't call them terrorists, but our country is still under great threat, not so much from outside our borders, as from within, and by one of our institutions. The Republican Party has become so unhinged, so delusional, that it poses a threat to itself and to others—to all of us. If it were a person, society would have it committed.

Constituent Service

But, Which Constituents Are Being Served?

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 ~ Amazing how people vote against their own interests, and accept whatever baloney they're fed.

Weasels and Their Words

Who Said That, Exactly?

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 ~ Probably talking heads talking to other talking heads:



It's similar to an argumentum ad populum. Why do some people say that? Here's one NSFW explanation.

h/t Upworthy

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Update:

Alien Redux

Probing Thoughts

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 ~ We might be embarrassed if aliens showed up.

We should be embarrassed anyway:

So Just Build It Already

It's Not Who, It's Where

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 ~ Actually, you did build it.

But you didn't just do it in the abstract; you actually built something specific, and more importantly, you built it somewhere specific. You built it in America, which, as every flag-waving patriot will insist, is the best place in the world to build a business.

Why? Just like in real estate: location, location, location.

Bread and Circuses

Broadcast Daily

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 ~ Too many voters obsess on the trivial and the unimportant. We are regaled with endless sideshows that distract from the serious policy issues on which the upcoming election ought really to turn. The news media is thoroughly and shamefully complicit, concentrated as they are, and driven by profit, leading to an emphasis not on news, but on entertainment of an increasingly uninformed and uncritical audience.

Climate Change Conversion

Skepticism Pursued

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 ~ Richard Muller, climate change skeptic, writes:

It’s a scientist’s duty to be properly skeptical. I still find that much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong. I’ve analyzed some of the most alarmist claims, and my skepticism about them hasn’t changed.

Muller is a scientist, and thus, a skeptic. He's still a climate change skeptic, but has turned his deeply skeptical faculties to the question, and come to a definite conclusion:

Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.

Four observations:

Voting Fraud

Don't Congress With Texas

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 ~ Many states have recently passed laws making it much harder for people to register and vote, ostensibly because of concerns about "voter fraud."

The real fraud, however, is using this bogus concern to disenfranchise millions of legitimate voters. These laws will do little or nothing to correct a negligible problem, but instead create a much larger and more serious one.

Why Are We So Dumb?

Because We Choose To Be

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 ~ To be competitive, whether as nation, as a business, or as an individual, today requires relentless innovation and unflagging drive. These are core traits of the successful entrepreneur and the use of which are widely touted as key to resolving our economic woes.

There is a growing recognition that our educational system is largely failing to graduate workers who are competitive in the global economy, or even in the prevailing gig economy here at home. To succeed, we must all be entrepreneurs now, at least in mindset and approach, and be able to deftly, creatively adapt to rapidly changing economic circumstance and opportunity.

That requires an inquisitive mind and critical thinking faculties, and that's what education should instill. But look who doesn't get it—the Texas Republican Party:

Climate Change Math

Is Our Number Up?

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 ~ Bill McKibben has written the definitive piece on the three key numbers that summarize our impending, self-made, and slow-motion global catastrophe. Simply:

1. 2°C--The maximum rise in average global temperature we can sustain without cataclysmic consequences. We're already 0.8°C there, and may have another 0.8°C yet to be reflected but already baked into the global warming cake.
2. 565 Gigatons--The limit on the amount of atmospheric CO2 we can yet emit and stay under 2°C.
3. 2,795 Gigatons--The amount of carbon in the proven gas, oil and coal reserves of companies and countries. These reserves are what those entities intend to extract for humanity's collective burning.

The economics of the fossil fuel industry, their capitalization, and their shareholders' wealth depend on extracting and burning almost 5 times more CO2 than the absorbing ability of the Earth can sustain.

McKibben argues, convincingly, that we need to start thinking of the Fossil Industry in a different way:

Climate Change Evidence

The Future is Now

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 ~ Recent years have seen increasing numbers of what we used to call freak weather events. This year has seen even more.

Horrendous wildfires. Oppressive heat waves. Devastating droughts. Flooding from giant deluges. And a powerful freak wind storm called a derecho.

This is what global warming looks like, and we will likely see more of these kinds of things in the months and years ahead.

Since at least 1988, climate scientists have warned that climate change would bring, in general, increased heat waves, more droughts, more sudden downpours, more widespread wildfires and worsening storms. In the United States, those extremes are happening here and now.

Compare and Contrast—II

The Nuance of Billboard Messaging

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 ~ I don't think of billboards as nuanced, but frankly I don't understand the fine points of what makes content acceptable to their owners.

This was refused:

While this, and others of similarly revolting ilk, were displayed:

Sure, the Heartland ones were taken down after an outcry, but doubtless more people saw them than learned of their retraction, or the reasons for it.

The media chooses the message. We must careful in choosing the media.

Deficit Reduction

Wallowing in Wishful Thinking

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 ~ I expect the over-long political season to perseverate on the debt and the deficit, and there's no doubt that many voters identify this as an important issue. (Voters still identify jobs and the economy as more important, however.)

Slate has published revealing polling results that highlight the yawning gap between the embrace of political slogans and the willingness to make the tough decisions necessary:

Magical thinking will not solve real-world problems. Nor will a doctrinaire austerity. There are many good, fact-based overviews of the problem and what might form the basis of real solutions. For example, see here and here. One can object to various aspects of such analyses, but in broad brush they paint a realistic portrait that cannot be credibly dismissed by a broad ideological retort.

Bottom line: vote for solutions, not solipsisms.

WMD—We're Mighty Dumb

"A Hall of Ideological Mirrors"

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 ~ Remember WMD? Weapons of Mass Distraction Destruction? They're still a distraction from rational analysis, and still destructive to our public policy discourse.

This is a poll from last month, not 10 years ago.

Ignorance and democracy cannot long coexist. Which shall we give up?

Making Good Choices

Who Decides?

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 ~ One broad side of political argument today is based on the unshakable belief that, left alone, people will make good choices that benefit themselves and in turn, benefit society as a whole. Does experience support that belief?

There are numerous examples of this magical thinking. For example:

The True Cause of What Isn't Happening

Is It Reality or Parody?

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 ~ The other day a friend posted a link to an article about how wind farms in Texas are "warming the Earth." The implication: wind farms are exacerbating global warming! Really?

Surprising and a bit puzzling. He first thought it must be from the Onion, but turns out it was from Fox News, which was quickly joined by the usual suspects in the uncritical right-wing echo chamber.

Ha ha. But then what happens? A bit later almost all the same information is reprinted in—where else?—The Onion! The funny bit, of course, is that The Onion didn't change the top line at all; they merely added 3 person-on-the-street comments that would be typical of their "dumb readers":

"Well, you get a bunch of turbines waving their arms about suggestively, things are bound to heat up."

"This is so counterintuitive. It just doesn't make any sense. Why would Texas have renewable energy sources?"

Ironic too that an organization that incessantly claims climate change/global warming is not happening would also claim that it is caused by green energy technology. Another reason to despise cleantech! It's causing heads to explode!

For the (sadly necessary) serious rebuttal, you can go here or here or here.