An Old Global Warming Skeptic Is New Again

On BFD, resident warming denier J. Murray posts links and and summary to a WSJ editorial by Dr. Patrick Michaels from the University of Virginia. Murray titled his BFD piece "Another Prominent Scientists Challenges Global Warming," implying that Michaels is someone we haven't heard from before on the issue. After the summary J says, "For those with an open mind and a desire to learn, it’s worth a full read."

Well I have an open mind and a desire to learn, so I actually clicked through and read it. In fact my mind was so open I questioned whether this was, as implied by the title, a new scientist wandering into denier camp. As it happens I was at U.Va. in the nineties as the climate debate began heating up, so to speak, and recall Dr. Michaels as a prominent denier then.

Indeed, a few moments with Google churned up plenty of info on the good doctor. Like the fact that his work is generously underwritten by the petroleum industry and electric utilities. And that he has been accused of sloppy science.

So, no, climate deniers. You haven't gotten a new convert. Just a well-funded crank who has been at this for twenty years.

Expelled Update: More PZ Myers, More Sub Rosa Spin and a Promise

First off, thanks to the commenter who linked to my first Expelled post, and welcome FDLers. It's my intention to continue monitoring the story on the science blogs and offer a conduit between that blogosphere and the Ohio left.

The big development this week was a PZ Myers' questionable participation in a conference call presser the Expelled producers put on to let journos talk to Ben Stein. Because of course, the person journalists should speak to about evolutionary science is a finance expert with a droll speaking

The good part of the story is 1) we know the main thrust of both the movie and the PR campaign -- that Darwin is responsible for the Holocaust, and 2) that Myers offered the journos an opposing view and a source when odds are they would have simply stenographed the story.

The bad part of the story is Myers learning how to unmute his phone and interrupting the call.
The ethics of all this have been a hot topic on the Panda's Thumb thread. The ethical arguments are essentially in equipoise. Certainly what Dr. Myers did was not nice, but it doesn't somehow make up for the problem on the other side that they are pretty much making up the case that Darwin is responsible for Nazi horrors.

(There's a broader question about whether one can be an activist atheist without simultaneous being an obnoxious dick. It seems too often one goes with the other, though Village Green has partially restored my faith in the faithless. Still, it's not always easy finding oneself on the same side with the Myers/Dawkins/Hitchens axis.)

Back to Expelled and the Nazi argument. Much of the scientific argument against the film's premises is beyond the knowledge of this blogger. The arguments about the interaction of science and policy, that's social science, an area where your blogger finds himself on somewhat firmer ground. As noted in my previous post, the film draws battle lines. While it postures itself as an argument for intellectual freedom, it is in fact a broadside by religion against science. Consider for example this quote from auteur Stein, courtesy of Stranger Fruit:

I believe God created the heavens and the earth, and it doesn’t scare me when scientists say that can’t be proved. I couldn’t give a [profanity] whether a person calls himself a scientist. Science has covered itself with glory, morally, in my time. Scientists were the people in Germany telling Hitler that it was a good idea to kill all the Jews. Scientists told Stalin it was a good idea to wipe out the middle-class peasants. Scientists told Mao Tse-Tung it was fine to kill 50,000,000 people in order to further the revolution.

At times, the IDers behind and in front of this film will argue that they aren't against science, they are only for equal time. Imagine if they really believe the above. They certainly wouldn't be for equal time. They would be working feverishly to purge that evil science from the American landscape. And it appears they are.

In the meantime, I'll be working on the historical arguments against Stein & Co.'s thesis. Remember that the movie erupts into the mainstream on April 18. You can find out where on their theater locator page.

Intro to Expelled

Folks, there's a new weapon in the Creationism/Intelligent Design arsenal, Ben Stein's new movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. The movie purports to champion academic freedom on behalf of those who have been, in the words of the press kit, "persecuted" for believing in Intelligent Design. And the ground work is being laid now, out of public view.

The company marketing the film also marketed Mel Gibson's How the Jews Killed Jesus The Passion of the Christ, and are going about it the same way. They are offering free screenings throughout the country to conservative Christian audiences to generate buzz and keeping both critics and mainstream reviewers out. And anyone not a Real True Christian gets in, they launch a defamatory PR campaign to discredit the critic.

The most amusing and celebrated of these incidents occurred in Minnesota where producers expelled (yes, they really did) biologist, blogger and activist PZ Myers, but overlooked another member of his party, Richard Dawkins.

All of that helped make Gibson's pestilent passion play critic proof, though it's a harder sell when the premise of the movie is intellectual freedom. If, as Stein insists, the argument is about allowing access to all points of view, he and the producers can't justify keeping the points of view against the film out of the theater.

So far the best resource on all things Expelled is "Expelled Exposed" a website maintained by the radical, leftwing National Center for Science Education.

The story thus far raises some concerns in addition to those raised above. Among them:

• There is considerable evidence that the producers misrepresented themselves to scientists who agreed to be interviewed on camera.
• The movie as a whole recasts the intelligent design debate as one between people of faith versus atheists. This is a change of tactic for ID proponents, and one that attempts to divide people of science from people of faith, despite the fact that many people embrace both.
• Stein heavily plays the Nazi card -- claiming that Darwinism is responsible for the Holocaust.
  
• Meanwhile, on the science side, some are questioning the utility of PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins as spokepeople against the film, given that both are atheist activists, playing into the "religion vs. atheist scientists" frame the film producers want.
• Oh, and let's not forget that the whole ID project is a bunch of crypto-fundie hooey.
  

Each of these is worth at least a post in its own right, but who knows what I will be able to get to.

In April the movie opens to mainstream premiere. People who care about maintaining the integrity of science education would do well to keep abreast of what happens between now and then. Right now the debate is happening, but only one side is invited.

Cuyahoga River Flood Warning

Ohio dot com carries the Weather Service's flood warning for the Cuyahoga River:

for the Cuyahoga River at Old Portage in Akron's Merriman Valley from this evening until further notice.

Minor flooding is forecast.

The river is expected to rise above flood stage by the evening and crest near 10 feet Thursday morning.

At 7 a.m. today, the river was at 7.3 feet and rising. Flood stage is 9 feet.

At 11 feet, floodwaters begin to affect areas along the Cuyahoga River in Cuyahoga Falls and Munroe Falls near Kennedy Park.

You can keep up with developments on Weather dot com.

I took these around 1:00 p.m.

The water looks to be four feet or so below this truss. The towpath is already underwater.

This generally doesn't happen in the Valley. We get flash floods from water screaming down the sides during a summer gulley washer (recall this), but generally the Cuyahoga behaves around here.

Let's be careful out there.

Are You Watching? Last Chance Until 2010

Here at the House of Pho, we are watching tonights total lunar eclipse tonight. The next total eclipse will be in 2010.

What? You thought I was talking elections? Why would you think that?

The image comes from NASA's Lunar Eclipse page which has plenty of other science geek goodies.

Introducing No Trash Guy

NPR ran a piece on yesterday’s Day to Day about one Dave Chameides, who resolves to throw nothing away for a year and, of course, blog the experience. It has the ring of being the No Impact Man of 2008 (tho NIM’s experiment is still in progress.)

While it’s easy to be cynical about the green bandwagon, this one isn’t rubbing me wrong. For one thing, it’s a good way of demonstrating the practical effects of living in our current consumer culture. At the end of it all, Dave will tote up everything reused, recycled and composted, plus the stuff “in the basement.”

It also seems somehow more plausible than NiM. By that I may mean simply that it’s less guilt-inducing than NiM, I haven’t decided. No Impact Man set such an impossibly high bar my defenses fly up every time I try to read it. Thus far 365 Trash seems more like set of practical steps everyone could take, though maybe not to Dave’s extreme.

Akron-Based Video on Evolution on Current TV Website

Some friends cut a video regarding Intelligent Design for current TV:

Lisa and Steve pulled serious volunteer weight in Tom Sawyer's campaign for State Board of Ed., a campaign I worked on for a time. This after they recruited Tom to run. Lisa and I have kept in touch and Steve and I were friends from church long before the campaign adventure. Both are smart folks who explain the science side of the ID tilt well.

The way Current works, apparently, is that people view and vote and the videos that do best in some combination of the above make it to air. Otherwise the vid will live on the website. You can click above to view (it counts) and surf here to vote (registration required.)

Krauss and Dawkins Discuss Science and Religion

The July issue of Scientific American runs a dialog between Oxford biologist and uber-Atheist Richard Dawkins and physicist Lawrence Krauss from Cleveland's Case Western about how science should respond to religion. The online edition has an extended version of the conversation. Given the two scientists' contrasting temperaments, the conversation is surprisingly low-key.

On the other hand, it is unsurprisingly frustrating. Dawkin's response to the question -- how science should respond to religion -- is to call religion "bad science" and argue against it at every turn as he would any other bad science. Dawkins' method of persuasion consiste of reminding people he is smarter than they are and calling those who disagree with him ignorant. While his argument is popular among fellow nonbelievers, he has unsurprisingly failed to inspire mass exodus from houses of worship.

Krauss's approach is better, though it would hard to get much worse. Krauss is more an evangelist for science than against religion. He will argue against religious beliefs that conflict with scientific evidence but not against faith itself. And when he does argue against such beliefs he tries to do so in a less-dickish way than Dawkins.

While I liked Krauss's passages much better than Dawkins's I have two quarrels. First, Krauss unfortunately describes his method of persuasion as "seduction," which he should stop doing pretty much now unless it is his ambition to be quoted in every Answers in Genesis fundraising letter for the next ten years.

More fundamentally, Krauss's approach at best might get people interested in studying science. What he does not offer is an effective strategy for persuading people to find constructive means of resolving disagreements between religion and science.

Just as the press "doesn't get religion," neither do an awful lot of scientists. However much contemporary theologians put a rational gloss on faith or however much outfits like the Discovery Institute try to put build an empirical case for God, fact is religion is a non-rational enterprise. I don't try to justify my faith with much more than the belief at the core of my being that God exists. Whatever people do to rationalize spiritual beliefs, I suspect most if not all start in a similarly nonrational place.

Krauss acknowledges this:

As long as the tenets of faith go beyond reason, i.e. go beyond issues that can be settled by evidence or lack of evidence, faith lies in the realm of human activity that has little to do with reason. Going back to my earlier point, if this realm was restricted to religion alone one might have a good argument for trying to squelch religion. But, like it or not, it is a central facet of much of what it means to be a human. All of us share some characteristics with Lewis Carroll’s Queen, who believed six impossible things before breakfast each day. For most people religion is one way of making sense of an irrational world, a world that is not fair, in which human justice is an afterthought.

Which is fine as far as it goes, but Krauss doesn't come to grips with the implications for his project. If believers in scientific method want to win converts, they need to begin by acknowledging that people of faith need their faith. To evangelize or seduce or, hell, persuade people to respect scientific rationalism, they need to work help people reconcile that rationalism with their faith rather than force them into a choice between the two.

As for Dawkins, he will have no truck with the non-rational side of human nature. At first blush, one might ascribe this to the hyper-rational Vulcan like personality Dawkins tries to cultivate. But in fact, when he moves from arguing for scientifc fact to arguing that religion is evil, Dawkins begins to sound as emotional and post-rational as Rod Parsley.

Personally, I've journeyed from Christian to atheist to theistic Unitarian and at every step of the way, I've had a strong emotional reaction to people with different beliefs. I don't know why this is so, but suspect that it drives much of the vitriol the current crop of atheist writers have toward religion. In any event, with over ninety percent of Americans professing a belief in God, Dawkins is unlikely to make much headway simply by telling such an overwhelming bulk of the population that they are deluded.

Over Two-Thirds of Republicans Reject Evolution

According to a new Gallup poll, while the country is essentially split 49/48 on evolution vs. creationism, 68% of Republicans do not believe in evolution. When three candidates raised their hands in a debate indicating that they do not believe in evolution, Jon Stewart snarked, "It was good knowing you." In fact it's a pretty solid position to holds

Even among people who believe in evolution, a significant number nonetheless believe that God created humans in essentially their present form about 10,000 years ago. Overall, 63% of Americans agreed with that statement versus 49% who answered that they believe generally in evolution.

While the Intelligent Design crowd and for that matter the young-earthers at Answers in Genesis put a sciency gloss on their arguments, the fact remains that this is all about religion. When creationists were asked for the most important reason they hold their beliefs, only 14% said because the scientific evidence is lacking. The bulk of the responses went to reasons like "Because I am a Christian" or "Because I believe what's in the Bible."

All in all, good information for opposing ID or "Scientific" Creationism as science, but a distressing set of findings overall.

H/t to Faith in Public Life which led me to a poorly-written story in Christian Post which led in turn to the article on Gallup.

Brownback Reads Blackwell

Really, hard to interpret this any other way. Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback raised his hand along with two other candidates when asked in the first primary debate who does not believe in evolution. Last week Blackwell's Townhall column purported to offer an escape for conservatives from the "evolution trap." Here's his advice on how a candidate should answer the question, "Do you believe in evolution?"

“Well, if you mean microevolution, where an organism adapts to its environment with the flexibility inherent in its DNA, then yes I believe in that; we see it every day in nature. But if you mean macroevolution, where mutations stack on one another to create entirely new organ systems and transform one species into a totally different species, then I, along with many scientists, have serious issues with that theory.”

Today's New York Times runs an op-ed from Brownback in which he clarifies his position. Here's his main point:

The question of evolution goes to the heart of this issue. If belief in evolution means simply assenting to microevolution, small changes over time within a species, I am happy to say, as I have in the past, that I believe it to be true. If, on the other hand, it means assenting to an exclusively materialistic, deterministic vision of the world that holds no place for a guiding intelligence, then I reject it. [h/t Faith in Public Life which reproduces the piece getting you around TimesSelect issues]

This is a better refinement in that it doesn't even reject macroevolution, avoids a lot of jargon and invokes mushy intelligent design style language that happens to be the majority position of American voters.

Nothing yet on RAB, but Matthew should be proud of his boy. Don't say I never did anything for ya, Matt.

By the way, Brownback does not invoke the eye lie. Is he reading Pho as well?

Ken Blackwell Flogs the Eye Lie

Matt at RAB put me on to an article J. Ken wrote on TownHall about evolution and the Republican Prez Debate. Blackwell's strategy is to distinguish between "microevolution" and "macroevolution." You can read the piece to understand what he means by the difference. It's a standard tenet of the Creationism Lite favored by wingnuts who nonetheless want to be taken seriously.

It's also based on a bunch of arguments that aren't true. One statement he makes that is argurably false is that many scientists have doubts about macroevolution. It's true that people exist that do science for a living and question macroevolution. They tend to do their main work in other disciplines and visit the biology lab only to criticize evolutionary theory.

It's not true, though implied in his piece, that macroevolution is controversial among biologists and other scientists who study living things systematically. This does lead down the road to both "what is a real biologist" and the Troothish stories anti-evolutionists tell about discrimination against critics of evolution. Generally you can skip over having that debate and wait for the speaker or writer to say something truly outlandishly false. Usually it has to do with eyes.

Oh, look, in the next paragraph:

There are scientists who echo the concerns of a vast number of Americans. Models like the doctrine of irreducible complexity explain that certain organs, such as the eye, require dozens of different components, each made of billions of cells, all working together to function as a whole. It argues such organs cannot evolve over time, they only benefit the creature at one hundred percent capacity. A 99% evolved eye is useless. This model suggests organs must be entirely present and perfectly fit together or they do not work. Modern theories of macroevolution have no explanation for how such organs came about.[Emphasis mine.]

He could have said that he doesn't believe the current theories about the evolution of the eye, but no. Blackwell repeats the oft-made charge that evolutionary biology simply has no explanation for the eye. They say this time and again and time and again it's shown that there does exist an explanation for the evolution of the eye and still they say it. This has happened enough that saying it is a lie. It's happened enough that my only theory for why they persist in saying it is the hope that saying a lie often enough will make it true.

For evolutionary biology does have an explanation for the eye. Short form: eyes evolved in stages from light-sensitive cells to the complex eyes of vertebrates. Talk Orgins elaborates:

All of these steps are known to be viable because all exist in animals living today. The increments between these steps are slight and may be broken down into even smaller increments. Natural selection should, under many circumstances, favor the increments. Since eyes do not fossilize well, we do not know that the development of the eye followed exactly that path, but we certainly cannot claim that no path exists.

Again, one can accept theories of eye evolution or not. But to say no theory exists is a lie. That Blackwell repeats the lie is not surprising but nonetheless sad.

Kansas Intelligent Design Supporter Poised for President of National State Boards Association

H/t Panda's Thumb for first alerting me to the story. The New York Times reported Saturday that Kenneth Willard of Kansas is running unopposed for President of the National Association of State Boards of Education.

Let's pause and take note of the fact that there is an umbrella organization for umbrella agencies. There.

Back to it. Kenneth Willard is identified as having "voted with the conservative majority in 2005" when the Kansas State Board of Education voted to include in the science curriculum the critiques of evolutionary theory flying under the banner of intelligent design. In fact, he is apparently more than just a guy who went along, but is a true believer.

Pro-science activists are trying to mount a write-in campaign for Sam Schloemer Cincinnati-area member of the Ohio State Board of Ed who is a scientist and a Republican. According to the NYT story, it's not clear that the bylaws of the organization allow for write-in candidates.

Meanwhile, the Ohio SBOE last week declined to take action on a proposed resolution supporting the slate of candidates for the national organization, based on Willard's position on science standards. (To find that in the article, scroll down to the SBOE summary, then scroll down to a list of items on which the Board took action. The decision on the resolution is discussed in the paragraph introducing that list.)

Farms and Food Prices

L.A. Times fronts an article today about food price inflation in Southern California. (h/t Today's Papers) While SoCal is getting hit hardest, the country generally is seeing a spike in food prices:

Nationally, food prices rose 3.9% in April compared with the same month in 2006, and the outlook is equally chilling wherever you shop. It is happening for many reasons: inflation, drought, freezing weather, even the rising cost of corn — highly sought after not only as ingredients for thousands of food products but also to make ethanol.

Food prices in 2007 are increasing at their highest rate in years.

"We are going to see grocery store prices show one of the most rapid increases in the last 15 years or so," said Patrick Jackman, an economist at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The price spikes are attributed to a number of factors, most notably higher fuel prices and much higher prices for corn as the biofuels industry competes with the food sector. Not mentioned in the article is that the prices increases are happening despite the Wal-Mart effect – people on either side of the Wal-Mart debate agree that the company’s economic heft measurably depresses prices for groceries.

Given that I’m not an economist, agricultural or otherwise, I’m way out on a limb here, but this Means Something. For years we’ve been hearing concerns about losing farmland to sprawl and the diminishing returns of agribiz megafarms. We’ve been hearing simultaneously about peak oil and peak farmland. Now we are seeing what the economic effects of each look like. At the same time, a story like this gives, um, fuel to critics of the biofuels industry.

Prices will surely fall again once the summer gas guzzling again wanes, but we need to keep an eye on the long-term trend. In any event, it makes paying to preserve farmland look a little wiser.

Akron Rally for National Climate Action Day

Next Saturay is National Climate Action Day. Rallies are scheduled all around the country, coordinated by a new (to me anyway) group called Step It Up.

Some folks in Akron, including some friends of mine, have organized an Akron rally that looks pretty interesting. They will show An Inconvenient Truth at the Main Library at 10. The meat of the rally happens on Buchtel Common at UA, starting at noon. Rally time includes music by Alex Bevan and Rachel Roberts, speakers including Rep. Betty Sutton and displays of emissions-cutting technologies.

If you are not in the Akron area, you can check out the event finder at Step It Up, which by the way is doing most of the state-of-the-art online organizing things. For instance, organizers can set up pages for local events, so we have a pretty good Akron page with details

They've also made code for banner ads available. For at least the week, I'll have the ad up on sidebar. I've tweaked the html so it takes you directly to the Akron action site.

Unfortunately, I'll be out of town for work that day so once again something cool is happening here and I'll miss it.

Observe the Snow

Columnist Cecil Adams, author of The Straight Dope, once wrote a column about the Inuit language in which he said he was working on a sentence that would translate to, “Look at all this fucking snow.” At that point he had, “Observe the snow, it fornicates.” My initial observation was that the Blizzard of Valentines Day 2007 fornicates.

We had just shy of 14 inches in the driveway. It makes me crazy how a storm likes this takes me out of my life. I had two meetings lined up yesterday – cancelled. I planned a bunch of stuff around the house today – had to shovel. Tomorrow I have to cover a meeting for someone else that got rescheduled because of the snow.

But keeping an open mind about it, a day like today can serve as a reminder that the ToDo list isn’t the sum total of my life. So I just junked the day and enjoyed some time with my family – both kids and Prof. W were off. And I watched for the detail of the storm – the uninterrupted slope that was my back steps, the geological strata on the roof of the van, the gravity and wind defying snow filling the kids swings.

So tomorrow life will start again. I’ll fight the good fight about the budget, fret about what to do about the GIRFOF and work on a couple of projects that may be my next steps. Today was something else.

ADDENDUM. Shortly after composing the above, I learned that APS is closed again tomorrow, this time because of a wind chill warning. The snow is pretty, the wind fornicates.