#The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism

[wausaupilot]

Your letters: Writer finds conservative attitude on global warming 'objectionable'

"Many conservatives dismiss evidence of climate risk because they fear that acceptance of this evidence will lead to greater government intrusion in our lives." - Terry Hansen of Milwaukee

Dear editor, Former President Donald Trump mocks the threat posed by human-induced climate change. He once declared, “Global warming is an expensive hoax!” And Trump can find support for his views among Republican members of Congress, including Rep. Tom Tiffany.   To counter this misinformation, I encourage reading “The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism.” It’s available online and…

[savedfromsalvation]

The thinking error at the root of science denial

Author:  Jeremy P. Shapiro

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychological Sciences, Case Western Reserve University

Currently, there are three important issues on which there is scientific consensus but controversy among laypeople: climate change, biological evolution and childhood vaccination. On all three issues, prominent members of the Trump administration, including the president, have lined up against the conclusions of research.

This widespread rejection of scientific findings presents a perplexing puzzle to those of us who value an evidence-based approach to knowledge and policy.

Yet many science deniers do cite empirical evidence. The problem is that they do so in invalid, misleading ways. Psychological research illuminates these ways.

No shades of gray

As a psychotherapist, I see a striking parallel between a type of thinking involved in many mental health disturbances and the reasoning behind science denial. As I explain in my book “Psychotherapeutic Diagrams,” dichotomous thinking, also called black-and-white and all-or-none thinking, is a factor in depression, anxiety, aggression and, especially, borderline personality disorder.

In this type of cognition, a spectrum of possibilities is divided into two parts, with a blurring of distinctions within those categories. Shades of gray are missed; everything is considered either black or white. Dichotomous thinking is not always or inevitably wrong, but it is a poor tool for understanding complicated realities because these usually involve spectrums of possibilities, not binaries.

Spectrums are sometimes split in very asymmetric ways, with one-half of the binary much larger than the other. For example, perfectionists categorize their work as either perfect or unsatisfactory; good and very good outcomes are lumped together with poor ones in the unsatisfactory category. In borderline personality disorder, relationship partners are perceived as either all good or all bad, so one hurtful behavior catapults the partner from the good to the bad category. It’s like a pass/fail grading system in which 100 percent correct earns a P and everything else gets an F.

In my observations, I see science deniers engage in dichotomous thinking about truth claims. In evaluating the evidence for a hypothesis or theory, they divide the spectrum of possibilities into two unequal parts: perfect certainty and inconclusive controversy. Any bit of data that does not support a theory is misunderstood to mean that the formulation is fundamentally in doubt, regardless of the amount of supportive evidence.

Similarly, deniers perceive the spectrum of scientific agreement as divided into two unequal parts: perfect consensus and no consensus at all. Any departure from 100 percent agreement is categorized as a lack of agreement, which is misinterpreted as indicating fundamental controversy in the field.

There is no ‘proof’ in science

In my view, science deniers misapply the concept of “proof.”

Proof exists in mathematics and logic but not in science. Research builds knowledge in progressive increments. As empirical evidence accumulates, there are more and more accurate approximations of ultimate truth but no final end point to the process. Deniers exploit the distinction between proof and compelling evidence by categorizing empirically well-supported ideas as “unproven.” Such statements are technically correct but extremely misleading, because there are no proven ideas in science, and evidence-based ideas are the best guides for action we have.

I have observed deniers use a three-step strategy to mislead the scientifically unsophisticated. First, they cite areas of uncertainty or controversy, no matter how minor, within the body of research that invalidates their desired course of action. Second, they categorize the overall scientific status of that body of research as uncertain and controversial. Finally, deniers advocate proceeding as if the research did not exist.

For example, climate change skeptics jump from the realization that we do not completely understand all climate-related variables to the inference that we have no reliable knowledge at all. Similarly, they give equal weight to the 97 percent of climate scientists who believe in human-caused global warming and the 3 percent who do not, even though many of the latter receive support from the fossil fuels industry.

This same type of thinking can be seen among creationists. They seem to misinterpret any limitation or flux in evolutionary theory to mean that the validity of this body of research is fundamentally in doubt. For example, the biologist James Shapiro (no relation) discovered a cellular mechanism  of genomic change that Darwin did not know about. Shapiro views his research as adding to evolutionary theory, not upending it. Nonetheless, his discovery and others like it, refracted through the lens of dichotomous thinking, result in articles with titles like, “Scientists Confirm: Darwinism Is Broken” by Paul Nelson and David Klinghoffer of the Discovery Institute, which promotes the theory of “intelligent design.” Shapiro insists that his research provides no support for intelligent design, but proponents of this pseudoscience repeatedly cite his work as if it does.

For his part, Trump engages in dichotomous thinking about the possibility of a link between childhood vaccinations and autism. Despite exhaustive research and the consensus of all major medical organizations that no link exists, Trump has often cited a link between vaccines and autism and he advocates changing the standard vaccination protocol to protect against this nonexistent danger.

There is a vast gulf between perfect knowledge and total ignorance, and we live most of our lives in this gulf. Informed decision-making in the real world can never be perfectly informed, but responding to the inevitable uncertainties by ignoring the best available evidence is no substitute for the imperfect approach to knowledge called science.

[orbemnews]

Scientists Support an Idea Long Thought Outlandish: Reflecting the Sun’s Rays WASHINGTON — The idea of artificially cooling the planet to blunt climate change — in effect, blocking sunlight before it can warm the atmosphere — got a boost on Thursday when an influential scientific body urged the United States government to spend at least $100 million to research the technology. That technology, often called solar geoengineering, entails reflecting more of the sun’s energy back into space through techniques that include injecting aerosols into the atmosphere. In a new report, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine said that governments urgently need to know whether solar geoengineering could work and what the side effects might be. “Solar geoengineering is not a substitute for decarbonizing,” said Chris Field, director of the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University and head of the committee that produced the report, referring to the need to emit less carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Still, he said, technology to reflect sunlight “deserves substantial funding, and it should be researched as rapidly and effectively as possible.” The report acknowledged the risks that have made geoengineering one of the most contentious issues in climate policy. Those risks include upsetting regional weather patterns in potentially devastating ways, for example by changing the behavior of the monsoon in South Asia; relaxing public pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; and even creating an “unacceptable risk of catastrophically rapid warming” if governments started reflecting sunlight for a period of time, and then later stopped. But the authors argue that greenhouse gas emissions are not falling quickly enough to avoid dangerous levels of global warming, which means the world must begin to examine other options. Evidence for or against solar geoengineering, they found, “could have profound value” in guiding decisions about whether to deploy it. That includes evidence about what the authors called the social risks: For example, if research showed that the side effects would be concentrated in poorer nations, Dr. Field said, it could be grounds not to pursue the technology, even if it benefited the world as a whole. The report also argued that by publicly funding geoengineering research, the United States could ensure that the work is transparent and accountable to the public, with clear rules about when and how to test the technology. Some critics said those safeguards weren’t enough. The steps urged in the report to protect the interests of poorer countries — for example, accounting for farmers in South Asia whose lives could be upended by changes in rain patterns — could fall away once the research begins, according to Prakash Kashwan, a professor of political science at the University of Connecticut. “Once these kinds of projects get into the political process, the scientists who are adding all of these qualities, and all of these cautionary notes, aren’t in control,” Dr. Kashwan said. Jennie Stephens, director of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University, said that geoengineering research takes money and attention from the core problem, which is cutting emissions and helping vulnerable communities cope with the climate disruptions that are already happening. “We need to double down on bigger transformative changes,” Dr. Stephens said. “That’s where the investment needs to be.” Solar geoengineering has bipartisan support in Congress, which in late 2019 gave the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration $4 million to research the technology. Let Us Help You Understand Climate Change “America needs to be on the cutting edge of climate research,” Representative John Curtis, Republican of Utah, said in a statement. “More knowledge is always better.” The calculation could be more difficult for President Biden, who has tried to gain the support of the party’s progressive wing, some of whom are skeptical about geoengineering. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has called it a “false solution,” grouping it with nuclear power or capturing carbon dioxide and burying it underground. A White House spokesman, Vedant Patel, referred a request for comment on the report to the three federal science agencies that funded the report. Tylar Greene, a spokeswoman for NASA, which helped fund the report, said in a statement that “we look forward to reviewing the report, examining recommendations, and exploring how NASA and its research community can support this effort.” Ko Barrett, deputy assistant administrator at NOAA, which also helped fund the report, said in a statement that the agency looked forward to “carefully reviewing” it. The Department of Energy, another funder, didn’t respond to a request for comment. The endorsement by the National Academies might make some lawmakers feel more comfortable supporting the technology, according to Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at the Columbia Law School and editor of a book on solar geoengineering. And rather than causing people to care less about curbing greenhouse gas emissions, he said, a large new federal research program into geoengineering might have the opposite effect: Jolting the public into taking climate change seriously by demonstrating that more extreme and dangerous options may soon be necessary. “It could be so scary that people will be even more motivated to reduce emissions,” Mr. Gerrard said. Source link Orbem News #idea #Long #Outlandish #rays #Reflecting #Scientists #Suns #Support #thought

[montclarelab]

A day in the life of a scientist....

Alara Tuncer

https://pl.pinterest.com/pin/36451078205754885/

Beep Beep Beep. I woke up punching my alarm from a vivid dream of me in the fifth-grade science fair—sheepishly presenting about tungsten lamps. This is when I should’ve known that I was going to become a scientist. What kind of 10-year-old tries to build a light bulb with tungsten filaments?

It’s 9:20 am. I rub my eyes and pull the curtain reluctantly—yet—firmly and the light begins to illuminate my room. Hoping the sun does a better job at waking me than my alarm, I yawn. I feel sleepier than usual. It’s unavoidable for me really, to go about my day without dividing the total amount of sleep I’ve got the previous night with a single sleep cycle (roughly one and a half hours) to evaluate if I’ve gotten enough sleep. 

I walk into the bathroom and turn on the tap to wash my face. I hear the faucet dripping, while I’m keen on avoiding scientific explanations for this, when I turn to observe the water sneakily escaping between my fingers from the hand I’ve been holding out—I’m caught in the flow of my thoughts just like the water, liquidious. I wonder why? Still, I carry on about my day, walking around on my tippy-toes so that my roommate doesn’t wake up to my creaking footsteps. Still, I hear noises caused by the unwilling force I’m exerting on the floor that is defiantly causing a surge of vibrations to travel along the floor, sharply cutting through the silence of the air. 

I brush my hair and my teeth. You would’ve thought that my mind wandering into nothingness—thoughtless and lacking the natural scientific inferences and inquiries that would normally be generated—would cherish the emptiness of my mind but instead, when I don’t make scientific assumptions about my surroundings everything I do feels a lot louder. While slipping into my clothes, the zipper of my pants and the button above gets tangled in my hand and I’m only more aware of the constant sounds of my surroundings. Regardless, the rest of my morning ritual becomes increasingly easier as I get into the rhythm of something I’ve been doing for days, and then I’m finally caught in my natural tendencies and am reminded that this is some sort of muscle memory. Aha! It’s like how I can play Amelie Comptine d'Un Autre Été on the piano even if I don’t have the notes in front of me or haven’t played in a while. 

I’ve always been naturally curious about the world I live in—searching for meaning and reasoning behind everything—which is what made becoming a scientist like second nature to me. It makes sense to become something that’s always in search of answers if you’ve got a lot of questions to ask about the world. Additionally, the weird approximation questions discussed regularly among my parents over breakfast were a kind of a Sunday ritual. One week it was estimating “how many water molecules there were in a standard glass of water” and another week it was “the total surface area of all the leaves in the world” which aided my becoming. Inherently questioning the big and small questions in my life surrounding me I became increasingly curious about the world we live in. 

We are only limited to living in a world we can truly understand. What makes us “superior” to any other species is consciousness and consciousness manifests itself by compiling knowledge and information about our surroundings in our minds. I don’t want to be defined by the limitations of my knowledge and understanding. The world might feel small when you’re travelling but there are still questions waiting to be asked and solutions waiting to be sought. 

So, as I walk down from my apartment located on the 6th floor, when you know the scientific reasoning behind certain things, it’s tough to avoid thinking about the energy that is added to my body with gravity as I step every step down the stairs—which makes going down the stairs faster and easier unlike going up the stairs. 

Luckily, when I put on my headphones and deafen the notoriously clinging scientific thoughts circulating my mind, the rest of the day slowly unfolds. I step onto Thompson street and walk down along the grey concrete until Washington Square Arch becomes visible before my eyes. I decide to grab my daily cup of coffee with an extra shot of espresso today, I’m craving the extra caffeine. The coffee is warm between my palms, energy transfer...I breathe and take a sip and start walking.

There’s a man holding a sign that reads “the virus is a hoax, take off your mask.” He is also screaming at the top of his lungs “the vaccine is made to track us.” “Lady” he calls me “take off your mask,” he says, spitting out his words spitefully as it seems. He follows up with “the government is controlled by evil Democrats and China, they’re going to track you if you get the vaccine!” to another stranger persistently arguing with him on the side. Aha! So, it’s not about science, it’s about politicizing science. 

There are several problems with politicizing science. Firstly, the science presented by politicians is merely controlled by scientists and experts. Often, it’s the people who know how to talk and present themselves in a certain way that becomes politicians and consequently support those with similar characteristics. It’s like a cycle feeding itself based on presentational merits! When this is the case, it’s unlikely for scientists who’re busy dealing with long experiments and complex datasets to get out and advocate for science to the general public while being convincing. And when science and politics combine with the intrinsic fears of certain individuals—somehow—the scientific research that’s created to help guide us through our hard times creates fear in scientific public policy.

Trying to avoid the spit that is flying out of his mouth and COVID-19 simultaneously—obviously—I walk away from the increasingly intensified man and make my way to the subway to go to work. I think about how the rest of my day looks like with experiments when I’m disturbed by the sound the train makes as  it arrives—an amalgamation of surface tension and air resistance. 

When I get out of the subway I find myself amidst New York’s first snow. I take a video and post it on my Instagram story like a typical millennial. It’s barely snowing, the flakes can be easily mistaken for rain by the camera lens. I’ve always liked snow, growing up in Poland, moving to California for college, and now having lived in New York just a few months—this is my first snow in awhile—I’ve missed it! Also, a weather condition with an intricately beautiful scientific cause involving pressure and condensation, but let’s not get into that now…

At work, once I set up E. coli to express the proteins we desire, I sit by my computer when I get an ad pop-up for one of those websites skeptical of science and climate change. Before I click, fearing that the algorithms on my computer will re-write me as a science skeptic for the future, I go incognito. I note down the feeling of uncertainty when I’m confronted with the possibilities of science and technology. I come across a blog that’s named “Watts Up With That?” —masked with scientifically misrepresented data—a blog dedicated to promoting climate change denial. Advertised as “the world’s most viewed site on global warming and climate change,” I read through the headlines and tabs of aggravating and false claims.

Just as I’m going down a rabbit hole of false claims with the contents of my readings getting increasingly political—Bing! I get an Instagram notification. A friend of mine working for Rainforest Foundation US has sent me a picture of New York under a pile of snow in 1948 in response to the Story I posted earlier. Below her message reads “it doesn’t snow like this anymore, climate change. ” 

Later in the day, I leave work exasperated with my mind circulating with thoughts of climate change deniers and coronavirus disbelievers. Why are there so many deniers of climate change? What about anti-maskers? All the snow from earlier has melted and the lights coming from lampposts and buildings smear as reflections. The overwhelming set of colors and the alarming noises echo as the cars pass. That’s when I notice the light bulbs of the lampposts taking my thoughts back to my dream from the night before about tungsten lamps. 

Clarity. I have a vague memory of myself when I was 10 years old, knocking on my dad’s office door with a too-bright-of-an-idea about what I should be doing for the upcoming science fair. I remember telling him “I want to build a TV.” Despite being a successful engineer himself he can’t contain his amusement and laughs. “How about you try starting with something simpler this time and we can build a TV another time?” his amusement still lighting up his face. I can almost imagine mini-me searching the room for something that would be simpler yet satisfying for the little Marie Curie inside of me. And all of a sudden, my light-bulb-of-an idea becomes building a light-bulb. 

In the upcoming weeks, I studied everything there is to know about tungsten light bulbs. Although I can vaguely recall some parts of my juvenile research, what I remember extremely vividly is winning that science fair having constructed a tungsten light bulb. There was an essence of clarity I felt in that moment when the two sizzling tungsten filaments surging with electricity met with each other rejoicing in a faint light that I wouldn’t change for the world. Thinking back to this moment it is more clear what the science naysayers are missing. The knowing.

As a consequence of the increasing polarization and politicization, science has gained an increasingly bad reputation. Radical protestors, Twitter accounts, and blog posts casting doubt on vaccines, climate change, and even coronavirus all have something in common. The fear of uncertainty and confusion. But the only solution to this problem is knowing. And science is the gateway to knowing more.

We have to constantly investigate and rebuild on our previous findings to let go of this cloud of judgment and slowly achieve clarity. Although you might be aggravated by the constant surge of stimulus you are experiencing—the only way you can make sense of it all—is if you inquire and investigate the reasons behind what’s happening. The dripping faucet, the loud footsteps, the stairs, snow, etc.

An apple fell on Newton’s head, he didn’t get angry at the apple, he looked at the reason behind this event and called it “gravity.” Later came Einstein and defined this as a curvature of time and space caused by energy and mass.

Neural networks in the brain are created through rebuilding on previous neurons. Similarly, cities expand outwards from a point of origin or by connecting with other nearby cities. Science also develops gradually this way. Rebuilding on what we already know and collaborating with others about the realities of our world, we can find the answers to our big questions. But to do this, we have to advocate for science and make scientific education more accessible.

I challenge you to investigate the realities revealed by science surrounding you. You can see the evidence of simple science in your daily life when heating your food in the microwave or turning your light on at night. What makes these simple tasks possible is science used for technological advancement. But you can also be observant of the complexities of the science surrounding you. Its remarkable evidence can be hidden on your child’s face that is combining your and your spouse’s own facial features. It might be harder to visualize the evidence of microscopic molecules such as coronavirus or harder to fathom the glaciers that are melting in places you’ve never been to before. But in this case, you have to trust the experts because they are trying to clarify the realities that surround and shape you. Trust science and believe in science because everything you do has science at its core. 

[rulystuff]

https://servicemeltdown.com/climate-change-science-or-propaganda/

New Post has been published on https://servicemeltdown.com/climate-change-science-or-propaganda/

CLIMATE CHANGE: SCIENCE OR PROPAGANDA?

The fear being stoked by the power elites in academia, business, government, and the media that climate change poses, as the current cliché has it, an “existential” threat to the planet is a threat alright but one that seeks to undermine a sovereign nation’s interests and priorities.

The self-absorbed elites around the world and in the United States now believe that they have found the boogeyman they have long sought to scare the public into accepting a construct of governance that would supplant the will of individual citizens with the whims of unelected, globalist technocrats accountable to no one but themselves. That boogeyman, of course, is climate change and it renders the mission of climate change proponents – presumably to save the world from extinction – little more than an anti-democratic power grab.

No more prominent a supranational organization than the United Nations, through its International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has sounded the alarm that unless urgent measures are enacted to limit global-warming we will have been responsible for a planetary crisis that will likely trigger severe storms, wildfires, pestilence, droughts, flooding, starvation, and death. The IPCC’s position is clear: the carbon dioxide emitted by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas, and oil is the principal cause behind the Earth’s rise in temperature.

As evidence mounts, however, that there is no global-warming calamity in the offing or that global-warming has its roots in mostly anthropogenic causes, climate change advocates have become more and more reliant on propaganda and disinformation to deliver their message of fear. Major media outlets, for their part, are complicit in parroting the latest shrill accounts of impending climate disaster without pushback or a critical analysis of the facts. One journalist in a Midwest newspaper, for example, recently stated that “The weather machine… is starting to act erratically…”, and that “The flood of immigrants around the world has been set in motion…principally by unbearable temperatures and loss of water and arable land.” No mention is made in the writer’s column of the fact that millions of people have been displaced by war, persecution and overpopulation. Not to be outdone, Nobel Laureate in Economics, Joseph Stiglitz, tells the New York Times that ��Wall Street could be underwater by the year 2100.”

But what could top the Associated Press story of June 29, 1989, when it reported that a senior U.N. environmental official had stated that “entire nations could be wiped out off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if global warming trends are not reversed by the year 2000.” We are now near the end of the year 2020 and as far as we know no nations have been wiped off the face of the Earth!

THE THEOLOGY OF CLIMATE CHANGE BLINDS OBJECTIVITY

The IPCC, which should stand as a paragon of scientific objectivity, and impartiality, is far from it. Emblematic of the agency’s bias, the IPCC has published a “manifesto” to guide authors in writing reports. Members of the IPCC are obligated to uphold the strictures contained in the manifesto. As such, authors are urged to parse their otherwise negative findings and to state questionable points of view without qualification. Certain word choices are prohibited and expressions which would cast doubt on an author’s expertise in a certain area are to be avoided. Members are in effect censored as they must not express opinions beyond the scope of published reports. Finally, minority opinions expressed in the body of an IPCC report rarely get mentioned in the Policymakers Summary. Journalists, and other non-experts unable or unwilling to wade through several hundred pages of technical data presumably read only the Summary. So much for scientific objectivity and impartiality.

The Earth’s temperature has been exceptionally stable for a very long time. For five thousand years global temperatures have been within the range of plus or minus one-half of one degree Celsius from average. And, according to astrophysicist S. Fred Singer “While it is true that global temperatures have risen about one-half of one degree Celsius in the last century, most of this warming occurred before 1940, while most of the human-caused carbon dioxide emissions occurred after 1940.” Recent global temperature readings come as a surprise to many.For example, scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space report that the average global temperature for 2019 was unchanged from 2016 with two dips – global cooling, in effect – in 2017 and 2018.

The connection between carbon dioxide emissions and global temperature remains flimsy at best. A study in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate shows computer models exaggerated global warming temperatures from carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 45%. Professor of Geosystem Science at Oxford University, Myles Allen, explains that “…we haven’t seen the rapid acceleration in warming after the year 2000 that we see in models.”

And, while there has been much said in the media about how global-warminghas been responsible for a surge in major hurricane activity the facts prove otherwise.The fact is thatthe number of severe storms has not measurably increased during the last fifty years. According to the Stormfax Weather Almanac, the average annual number of category 3,4, or 5 hurricanes in the Atlantic from the year 1970 to 2017 is 2.5. If we look at more recent data say from the year 2000 to 2017, the average annual number of major hurricanes shows a slight and inconsequential uptick to 3.2.Scant notice of any of these findings have been seen in media reports. All of which goes to say that the apocalyptic data usually reported by the media is anti-empirical as it is not backed up by actual observation.

Climate change has been found to be the result of hugely complex phenomena such as oceanic tides, solar radiation, volcanic activity, tectonic plate movements, magnetic field variations, winds, and ocean current fluctuations that are far beyond the scope of existing computer models to accurately simulate. It is no wonder then that computer modeling predictions fail to line up with observable data and for any government to rely on them as a guide in reordering a nation’s economic priorities is sheer folly and does a serious disservice to its citizenry.

The United Nations Paris Climate Accord, as a case in point, would have required the United States to reduce its greenhouse emissions by the year 2025 to between 26 and 28 percent below its 2005 levels. Compliance with the dictates of the accord would have cost the nation 2.7 million jobs, by 2025, according to the National Economic Research Associates and caused a sizeable contraction in GDP.  Our arch-enemy Communist China, the world’s biggest polluter, was given a pass in the Paris Accord and by the terms of the agreement was allowed to continue increasing its carbon emissions until 2030. Still, according to an article published in the Global Policy Journal on November 2015, Danish Statistician, Dr. Bjorn Lomborg wrote, “Even if all nations keep their promises under the agreement, temperatures will be cut by just one-half of one degree Celsius by 2100.” In the end, the Paris Climate Accord amounted to a huge redistribution of wealth at the expense of the United States. Seeing the writing on the wall, the United States wisely withdrew from the accord in 2019.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

Climate change proponents are undeterred by the facts. As Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park, once said, “Increasingly, it seems facts aren’t necessary because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief.” In other words, belief trumps facts.

Generally, it is not possible to disprove an ideological construct simply with facts. More to the point, no amount of evidence can ever be brought to bear to counter the theology of those who believe in the urgent crisis that is posed by climate change. Environmental historian, William Cronon, calls environmentalism a new religion because it offers “a complex series of moral imperatives for ethical action and judges human conduct accordingly.”

A counter narrative to deal with the potentially destructive economic and political consequences of an unbridled and imperialist climate change agenda must therefore go beyond a reliance on scientific arguments alone. Deep-seated doctrinaire beliefs cannot be overcome through logic and reason. A more effective counter narrative must have citizens demand of their government officials that the potentially coercive practices of supranational organizations like the United Nation’s IPCC will not be tolerated.

If we cherish the freedoms we have come to enjoy as citizens of an independent sovereign state we have little choice but to forcefully resist institutional intimidation whether foreign or domestic. When it comes to climate science, free-thinking citizens must remain skeptical and engage in greater self-study and research. Citizens must also take to the public square and hold policymakers accountable if they seek to embark on hastily thought out harsh economic policies. Keep in mind that the Left in the United States is proposing a net-zero emissions standard by the year 2050 which would cost the nation on the order of $5 trillion per year. In the end, citizens must demand more science and less propaganda.

[iamthelowercase]

[First image: a screenshot of a tweet by Leo Hickman (@LeoHickman). The tweet reads: "+BREAKING+ / The Guardian's editor has just issued this new guidance to all staff on language to use when writing about climate change and the environment..."

Second image: multiple paragraphs of text. A screenshot of the new guidance referred to in the first image. Reads as follows:

We've recently been reviewing the language we use in our coverage of the environment, and whether the terms we use accurately reflect the phenomena they describe. We want to ensure that we are being scientifically precise and rooted in facts, while also communicating clearly with readers on this very important issue. The phrase 'climate change', for example, sounds rather passive and gentle when what scientists are talking about is a catastrophy for humanity. Increasingly, climat scientists and organisations from the UN to the Met Office are changing their terminology, and using stronger language to describe the situation.

Therefore we would like to change the terms we use as follows:

Use *climate emergency*, *crisis* or *breakdown* instead of *climate change*

Use *global heating* instead of *global warming*

Use *wildlife* instead of *biodiversity* (when appropriate)

Use *fish populations* instead of *fish stocks*

Use *climate science denier* or *climate denier* instead of *climate skeptic*

The original terms are not banned, but do think twice before using them. If you think a specific term is needed to help people find your story online, then please check with the audience team.

The updates will apear in the style guide from today. Please do let me know if you have any furthe suggestions.

Many thanks.

Kathrine Viner

Editor-in-chief

Guardian News & Media

]

I like "global heating", but "climate emergency" and "climate science denier" are particularly important changes. These make the matters quite a bit clearer.

It is necessary to modify the terminologies, in order to portray the actual scenario, to the naysayers for whom climate change is a regular phenomenon or non-existent. Hopefully it will be followed by more online/offline outlets.

[lodelcar]

LIFE IS FAR AWAY FROM FAIR

Brussels - Manneken Pis museum

[1]Perception rules the present world

For centuries, authorities have been struggling to put their opponents in a bad light. The function of "agent provocateur" was refined in the early 19th century by Eugène François Vidocq, a French criminal turned criminalist. His role was to entice another person to commit an illegal or rash act or falsely involved in partaking in an illegal act, so as to ruin the reputation or entice legal action against the target or a group they belong to.[2] The book Merchants of Doubt, a ten-year-old bestseller by two American historians, described how some top scientists have for years sowed doubts about the damaging effects of tobacco and acid rain and about global warming. They worked closely with a number of large companies. They created uncertainty, while there was scientific consensus. In this way they managed to block political regulation.[3]

But thanks to the dominating internet and social media, the phenomenon of fake news has become a general trend. The current internet has become the perfect way to harm people, institutions and countries by releasing internet trolls that act as agents provocateurs and undermine their reputation with impunity.

Newspapers have to make tremendous efforts to distinguish truth from fiction. What calls itself a quality newspaper, such as the Guardian, De Standaard, the Frankfurter Algemeine, have specialized fact finders to distinguish the reality from fiction. And they too are sometimes tempted to use titles that do not cover loads, in order to be able to sell more newspapers. The framing technique consists of choosing words and images in such a way that implicitly highlights a number of aspects of what is described. These highlighted aspects help to propagate a certain reading of the described or an opinion about it. Framing is used consciously (and unconsciously) in politics, journalism and advertising.[4]

In many areas there are forces at work to undermine or question opinions that are accepted by a larger population. The Economist recently wrote a long article about scientific research into inequality. "Inequality illusions," it said on the cover. By framing, certain interest groups try to create doubt.[5]

But in addition to truth and fiction, there is also perception. Social media influencers earn a nice living with it: what is trendy these days, what should I do to not stand out or to stand out? Everyone agrees that the British economy will end up in heavy weather because of the Brexit and certainly if it ends in a hard Brexit. But the energy and optimism displayed by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson may well have the effect of getting the perception of his countrymen and of continental Europeans as if he and his country emerged as big winners. Even if a few years later three-quarters of his bridges are not built, that is a concern for later: he has the perception, and that counts nowadays. [6]

The same thing happens with China, led by a Party that has been masters of controlling perception for many years. The coronavirus has put the party's credibility to the test: first the pot was kept covered, then they were congratulated by the WHO for their efficient approach, now it is claimed that they hermetically seal off the rest of the city where everything started, of the country because the situation there would be much worse than generally accepted. So what is going to happen: in the future, China will try to take such an important position in the WHO that it can control the 'objective' standards imposed by the World Health Organization. Because the perception must prevail.[7]

Is Europe a follower?

In the entire technological and digital development story there is a perception that Europe only plays a second-rate role. This has to do with the lack of rules in the US, the will of Russia to technologically harm the Western world, and the will of China to establish its global influence through technology. This allows greater commercial successes on the American side and unbridled state intervention and financial resources on the Russian and Chinese side.

But does Europe just watch and let it go? Certainly not. The GDPR is a first set of measures that were taken to curb the excrescences of the American techno superpowers. And the rest of the world follows with timidity and graduality, but it follows. And then there are of course IT people who say that this attitude is detrimental to innovation prematurely, but scientists simply cannot be accused of much moral awareness. If they can only earn money, they will be satisfied for a long time.

A second step will be to guide the European countries in setting up a 5G network. Europe is not lagging behind. More than half of the 5G patents are in European hands. The continent has suppliers who can meet our needs. When we talk about 5G, we are not talking about sending text messages. It's about managing hospitals, energy networks, cities, you name it. The heart of the network is crucial. That is why it is important to protect it.

A third step is the regulation of artificial intelligence (AI), which the new European Commission is currently working on and on which the new Commissioner Thierry Breton will very soon be publishing a white paper.[8]

Europe's influence on the world is not enforced by its military apparatus. For that, it has depended too much on the NATO alliance in the past, the strength of which was largely guaranteed by the efforts of the US and the UK.

The European model stands for a model of more social justice, of rule of law and of respect for the diversity of its residents. It is a vulnerable model that is also under pressure internally. Right and left hardliners preach the elimination of all aspects of that model. Social equality requires a lot of resources and therefore high taxes. The rule of law requires an independent judiciary that cannot be muzzled by leading parties. Respect for the diversity of its residents requires freedom of religion, freedom of speech, gender equality and respect for human rights. In many countries these concepts are questioned by political opponents who wish to abolish them.

To this must now also be added dealing with environmental constraints and climate change. Because here too, the new European commission, led by Ursula Von der Leyen, intends to play a pioneering role. The Commission presented to the European Parliament in Strasbourg its financing plan for the "Green deal", which aims to bring the Union to carbon neutrality in 2050. A fair transition mechanism must accompany the adaptation of the most economically European regions dependent on fossil fuels. It is made up of three components, including in particular a Just Transition Mechanism,[9] and mobilising investment of €1 trillion over 10 years.[10]

Which is the role of the regions in all this?

We have taken the theme of perception as the subject of our article because we want to show that the regional approach is not all that can be achieved either. Here we grind against the limits of utility. A supranational authority is urgently needed here to radiate sufficient authority in the world.

Countries with authoritarian rule such as Hungary and Poland (and in a close past Italy) are still opposed to strong regional and local governments. They still state the sovereign state as the most responsible body. And we understand why: he allows to control and dominate, often from an ideology. While lower levels are confronted too much with the well-being of their citizens, they do not look for ideological but practical solutions.

Nevertheless, we notice that the new European Commission is focusing more on supranational obligations and that this is at the expense of regional resources. The new budget proposal from the von der Leyen Commission naturally shows a general decline compared to the Juncker budget, for the simple reason that no more contributions from the UK can be expected. In addition, we mainly see an increase in supranational initiatives such as Digital Europe, European Space Plan as well the Green Deal.

In addition, we see a significant growth of the Erasmus budget, which should allow young people from all EU, Turkey and neighboring countries to obtain education within a European framework, across the entire continent. That will certainly benefit the European spirit in the long run. Supranational budgets that are being strengthened are also the budget instrument for convergence and competitiveness for the euro area (BICC) and the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (CRI) budget.

The latter at the expense of the traditional cohesion fund budgets in favor of local and regional development, which fall from € 367 billion to € 323 billion.[11] During his speech on the EAR-AER New Year’s reception, former President of Romania, Traian Băşescu, now a Member of the European Parliament, gave some reflections on the plans of the new European Commission led by Ursula Von der Leyen. On the one hand, he was skeptical about Europe's ambitious climate plans, warning of an economic massacre in countries with old industries and warning that European economies could not limit themselves to the service sector alone. On the other hand, he had reservations about the announced reduction in cohesion funds. He warned that the rural areas in his country in particular had not yet had the opportunity and the time to adapt to European reality and that they would be the first victims of this cutback. He saw cohesion funds much more needed than the climate efforts that the Commission advocated.[12]

Do we have to complain about this decision to reduce the cohesion funds? Since 1992 the European Union works with the subsidiarity principle. The EU focused on local initiatives in its Barroso Commission and in Juncker Commission with the Cohesion Funds as crucial incentive. I am convinced that regions must be given sufficient resources and powers by national governments, but that they themselves must also be responsible for all their creativity in finding solutions to revitalize their region without waiting for third-party initiatives.

It will mainly be in ecological and energy investments that the regions and cities will have to play their role. In previous articles[13] I stated that cities and even municipalities have started to play a pioneering role in establishing wind turbines on the mainland in the form of cooperatives, both in Belgium and in France. In other countries such as Romania, they have made efforts to better insulate public buildings. Local initiatives are especially desirable and even necessary in green energy. They can function stand-alone and are therefore no longer so dependent on energy multinationals. Hopefully, innovative regions - bearing in mind the new green deal - can come up with proposals that can turn the energy world upside down.

It is clear that the European Commission is making choices that are supranational and should strengthen Europe as a continent, in a new context in which the Anglo-Saxon countries are withdrawing into splendid isolation, in which Russia is doing everything it can to keep the Eastern Partnership countries away from an affiliation with Europe and where China presents itself as an alternative to the world with a very colonialist behavior and a disregard for the rights of local populations. The fact that the EU Commission therefore greatly increases the budgets for security and defense and for migration and border management is perhaps surprising to many, but understandable.

Bring the soul back into the economy

We accept most of the ambitious plans of the new European Commission. But we also argue that it should also ensure that it does not further coordinate European economic development with the American and - what is to be feared - with the deregulating British. Many become European economists who argue that the economy should be geared back to ordinary people and not let them dominate by mathematical models. Kate Raworth does not necessarily view economic growth as a positive fact. Growth is needed, but too much growth has negative consequences, she says in the book "Donut economy". The Frenchman Serge Latouche goes one step further and argues for a cultural revolution that answers how we should live. He strives for “décroissance”, in which we reject our consumer addiction and place more value on non-material achievements. Some economists excuse themselves, such as Michael Jensen. He was at the basis of the practice of paying CEOs in stock options, which is now generally implemented, but came back to that later in part. The Brussels professor Johan Lambrechts argues for a return to the soul of the economy, which is multidisciplinary, critical, practice-oriented and pragmatic.[14]

Voting against self-interest

We are nine months before the most important elections on our planet: the US presidential election. More and more votes are being raised that President Trump is going to win it without a problem. Because democratic politicians are focused on his personality and fail to come up with alternatives in terms of style, content and behavior.

The American Nobel Prize winner in Economics Paul Krugman says it plainly: "You see all too often that people are voting against their own economic interests. They are being lured with ideological issues such as abortion or same-sex marriage to go against their own economic interests. (…) If you tell people that the government needs to allocate more money for people in need, quite a few Americans think that more money will be distributed to people with a dark skin .... People who are even lower on the social ladder than they are. That is the motivation and frustration of so many people who sail against their own interests"[15]

Unfortunately, this reproach comes back regularly, also in Europe. Voters let themselves be carried away by emotional themes that are often disproportionately inflated. The extremist parties that are working with it have an economic program that is phasing out social security or proposing a priceless social security. In the first case this only benefits the multinationals and the super-rich, on the other hand to the gauche-caviar party bobos who have contempt for the people they represent.

The role of quality newspapers that still control politicians' sayings in a democracy and who call them to account in the event of errors cannot be underlined enough. Numerous today are the interventions that they have to do to reprove politicians who hear in a pub the figures they use.[16] In most cases, the harm has usually been done already and the lies have penetrated to those that make them angry and eagerly follow them in their hustle and bustle.

Louis Delcart, European Academy of the Regions, www.ear-aer.eu

[1] I should have known, I’d leave alone/Just goes to show, that the blood you bleed/Is just the blood you owe

We were a pair, but I saw you there/Too much to bear, you were my life/But life is far away from fair

Billie Eilish – No time to die

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur retrieved on 15-2-2020

[3] Ruud Goossens, Een wereld zonder miljardairs zou een betere wereld zijn (A world without billionaires would be a better world), Interview met Gabriel Zucman, De Standaard Weekblad , 29 februari 2020         

[4] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing retrieved on 15-2-2020

[5] Erik M.Conway & Naomi Oreskes, Merchants of Doubt, Bloombury Press, 2010

[6] Bart Beirlant, De kater na de Brexit, (The hangover after the Brexit) in: De Standaard - 15 februari 2020

[7] Luuk van Middelaar en Frans-Paul van der Putten, De draak versus de vleermuis (The dragon versus the bath), in: De Standaard - 15 februari 2020

[8] Annelien De Greef, ‘We hebben nog geen enkele strijd verloren’(We haven't lost a single battle yet), INTERVIEW Thierry Breton European Commissioner for the Internal Market, in: De Standaard - 15 februari 2020

[9] Maria Udrescu, Pacte vert européen: la Belgique devrait obtenir 68 millions d'euros du fonds de transition juste,(European Green Deal: Belgium should get 68 million euros from the Just Transition Mechanism) in : La Libre Belgique, 15-1-2020

[10] https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/eu-to-unveil-trillion-euro-green-deal-financial-plan/ retrieved on 17-02-52020

[11] Tweed #EUCO - retrieved 15-02-2020

[12] http://ear-aer.eu/2020/01/20/ear-aer-celebrates-start-of-2020-in-style/  - retrieved on 15-02-2020

[13] Louis Delcart, THE IMPACT OF THE REGIONAL APPROACH ON THE WELFARE AND THE WELL BEING OF CITIZENS, in https://lodelcar.tumblr.com/ 22-12-2019

[14]  Ruben Mooijman: ���Breng de ziel terug in de economie’(Bring the soul back into the economy), in De Standaard - 1 Februari 2020

[15] Bjorn Soenens - Interview met econoom Paul Krugman: "Neem ontslag, president Trump, u heeft problemen die groter zijn dan de economie" (Interview with economist Paul Krugman: "Get out of office, President Trump, you have problems bigger than the economy") – in: VRT,  26-11-2019 retrieved on 30-11-2019

[16] André Decoster & Willem Sas, Waar blijft het echte cijferwerk, N-VA? (Where is the real numeral work, N-VA?) in De Standaard, 14-01-2020. A Professor of Public Finance (KULeuven) & lecturer in Public Economics at the University of Stirling have calculated the program points of a right-wing party and blame the author for the numerical work being based on false premisses. But as right-wing parties are always against something, and never say what they stand for, the news has already been picked up by the tabloid press.

[volk-morya]

Climate Change Skeptic Group Seeks to Influence 200,000 Teachers

Twenty-five thousand science teachers opened their mailboxes this month and found a package from the Heartland Institute, a libertarian think tank that rejects the scientific consensus on climate change.

It contained the organization’s book “Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming,” as well as a DVD rejecting the human role in climate change and arguing instead that rising temperatures have been caused primarily by natural phenomena. The material will be sent to an additional 25,000 teachers every two weeks until every public-school science teacher in the nation has a copy, Heartland president and CEO Joseph Bast said in an interview last week. If so, the campaign would reach more than 200,000 K-12 science teachers.

Accompanying the materials is a cover letter from Lennie Jarratt, project manager of Heartland’s Center for Transforming Education. He asks teachers to “consider the possibility” that the science is not settled. “If that’s the case, then students would be better served by letting them know a vibrant debate is taking place among scientists,” he writes. The letter also points teachers to an online guide to using the DVD in their classrooms.

The Heartland initiative dismisses multiple studies showing scientists are in near unanimous agreement that humans are changing the climate. Even if human activity is contributing to climate change, the book argues, it “would probably not be harmful, because many areas of the world would benefit from or adjust to climate change.”

The campaign elicited immediate derision from the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), a nonprofit in Oakland, California that monitors climate change education in classrooms.

“It’s not science, but it’s dressed up to look like science,” said NCSE executive director Ann Reid. “It’s clearly intended to confuse teachers.”

Read more here.

Written by Katie Worth

Photo by Brenna Verre

[egnblogs]

Thinking Like a Scientist and Skeptic - Honing Your BS Detector

Richard Feynman said that the fundamental principle of science is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. Scientists like Feynman understand the value of good reasoning, skepticism, logic and rationality. Yet as Carl Sagan argued the benefits of such traits and tools aren’t merely benefits to science, they apply just as necessarily and just as effectively to everyday life.

The intention of this post is to be a guide to encouraging scientific thinking and skepticism within your normal life, to inducting the tools into your mental toolkit. In the previous post I argued that while the most intellectually responsible thing to do is to vet each piece of information you encounter, in practical terms this is not possible. It is simply not feasible to look up every last claim that passes your way. There is a real, tangible benefit to having good heuristics, to having a finely honed BS detector.

This post will be broken into three parts - The first portion is Carl Sagan’s Nine Principles for scientific and skeptical reasoning, from The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. The second is a list of common logical or rhetorical fallacies, these are in no particular order, but they are what I have found to be the most common. The final part is 12 questions that you can ask of a claim to help determine how likely it is to be viable (its chance of being BS), adapted from work done by Skeptic magazine.

 Part 1 – Principles for Scientific and Skeptical Reasoning

 Here are Sagan's Principles for sound reasoning and scientific thinking:

1. Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”

(Try to see if a source other than the source making the claim has verified/reported the facts in question. The more sources you can find independently verifying these facts the better, as a single source might be biased .)

2. Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.

3. Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.

(No doubt we can all think of authority figure who is wrong about something. Though I should note that this does not mean that experts should just be dismissed out of hand, they are more reliable than not as they have spent their lives investigating a topic, just be sure not to take expert opinions are set in stone fact.)

4. Spin more than one hypothesis. If there’s something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among “multiple working hypotheses,” has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.

5. Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.

(Acknowledge the bias you have for ideas that are yours or that you hold dear. If you leave it up to others, you will be expose… and then laughed at.)

6. Quantify. If whatever it is you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course there are truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging.

7. If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them. A single weak link in the logical chain can doom the entire theory.

8. Occam’s Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler.

(Only use Occam’s Razor when two hypothesis explain the data equally well, don’t be tempted to fall for a simpler sounding solution if it explains less.)

9. Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle — an electron, say — in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof? You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.

Part 2 - Common rhetorical or logical fallacies

No doubt you have heard of one of the many logical fallacies observed in the tragic landscape that is internet arguments. There are many logical/rhetorical fallacies out there but the following are (in my perception) some of the most common.

Ad hominem – The ad hominem attack is an attack on the person making the argument, it does not respond to the argument at all. - Ex. Insults and attacks on the person’s character.

Argument form authority – This is the reliance on the fact that the claim came from a perceived authority figure, rather than on good evidence or reasoning. - Ex. “My dad works at Microsoft and he says they are putting chips in all their products that steal your soul!”

(This is something you will often see in claims made by alternative medicine. They will frequently have proposed experts touting the effectiveness of their products but frequently those PhDs were earned in something completely unrelated to any medical or biological fields.)

Appeal to anecdotal evidence – Relying on personal anecdotes as evidence. The argument is often made by someone who believes that their personal experiences reflect the nature of the entire world, not realizing they are not statically representative of the world. - Ex. “My neighbor hates road noise and still would never vote for a city noise ordinance.”

Appeal to ignorance – An argument that if something is not known to be false, it must be true. - Ex. “There is no compelling evidence that UFOs are not visiting the Earth; therefore UFOs exist.”

Argument from adverse consequences - Saying that because the implications of a statement being true would create negative results, it must not be true. - Ex. “Legislation to reduce greenhouse gases would negatively impact certain companies, therefore greenhouse gases do not negatively impact the environment.”

Weasel Words - The usage of vague, non-specific terminology or references. "They don't want you to know about this…" "Some people have gained massive benfits from our products..." Who’s “They”? Which people, specifically?

(Frequently used to make outrageous claims without having to provide a specific example, especially if it would seem dubious or improbable if a concrete example were offered.)

Special pleading – When the maker of the claim argues for special considerations for a particular premise of theirs. Usually this is because in order for the argument to work, they need to provide some way to get out of a logical inconsistency. Very frequently the sign that an argument is logically foundering. – Ex. “People who drive drunk should receive prison time, but you should overlook it in my case since I am usually such a good person.”

Observational selection - Focusing on evidence that supports your case while ignoring evidence that disproves it. This is a form of selection bias, where you count the hits and forgetting the misses. – Ex. When a person notices something they never noticed before and wrongly assume that the frequency has increased.

Misunderstanding the nature of statistics – Simply not understanding how statistics work. - Ex. Being surprised that half of all Americans have an IQ that is below average of 100 when 100 was set as the average score in the first place.

Confusion of correlation and causation – Simply put, correlation does not imply causation. Two things can be correlated without having any causal relationship between them. - Ex. If a friend of yours came to you telling you about this awesome new hydra repellant they bought, and they know it works because they haven’t seen a single hydra since buying it, they are confusing correlation and causation… you should also probably stop talking to them.

(Related is the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, which is thinking that something caused something else simply because one thing came first chronologically.)

Excluded middle or False dichotomy – Asserting that there can be no middle ground between two options, that you can only pick one option or the other. – Ex. “Buy our product and live, or don’t buy it and die horribly.” And most famously, “You are either with us or against us.”

Suppressed evidence and half-truths – Suppressing or leaving out relevant information when making a claim. Frequently seen in the debate surrounding global climate change. Climate change deniers like to argue that there is still debate amongst scientists over whether anthropogenic global warming is real. This may be true but it is 99% of scientists debating that last 1%. What was ignored is that the overwhelming consensus on the issue is that global climate change is a very real phenomenon.

Slippery slope – Condemning something that is loosely related to something that is morally wrong via asserting that negative consequences will necessarily result from allowing the first thing. – Ex. “If we continue to allow legalized abortion, soon we will be euthanizing people under 18 years of age.”

Tu quoque – “You do it too!” Claiming that since the source of an argument has acted in ways inconsistent with the argument it must be wrong. This focuses on the hypocrisy of an individual rather than dealing with the argument the individual made. A person may have sincere beliefs and good reasoning/evidence to back up their position, but still not be able to follow through on it due to lack of willpower.

Strawman – Making a dishonest characterization of somebody’s argument, misrepresenting their argument to make it easier to defeat.

(The internet’s favorite person to argue against.)

As a final note, keep in mind while that an argument may use a logical fallacy this does not mean the conclusion of that argument is wrong. It is possible to get to the correct conclusion of an argument by incorrect means, so don’t completely toss out an argument simply because of the presence of a logical fallacy. However, it does mean that you should pay very close attention if a fallacy is spotted.

Part 3 - Skeptical questions to ask about a claim:

Does it align with the way the world usually functions:

Is someone offering you something extraordinary for little to nothing in return? Has someone contacted you offering to give you 100,000 dollars if only you’ll pay them 500 to help them get across the country? There’s very rarely such a thing as a free lunch, and if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. Beyond that remember that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

 Approximately how reliable is the source of the claim?:

Learn about the source of the claim. If they show you a bunch of data and there are errors in the data or claim (and there often is), the errors shouldn't skew in one particular direction or another. They should not be making incorrect claims but only on one side of the argument for example. Keep an eye out for potential bias and potential conflicts of interest.

 Have claims been independently verified by someone else?:

Remember that scientific claims should be, if at all possible, testable and repeatable. Likewise facts and reports should be independently confirmed by others unrelated to the person or group making the claim, to eliminate possible biases and confabulation amongst like-minded group members. If there’s a hot new item out on the market making really bold claims, but nobody else seems to have tested or reviewed it yet, you should be suspicious and you probably want to hold onto your money for a while.

 Have people tried to disprove the claim?:

What are the counterarguments to the claim? Remember that scientific claims should be, if at all possible, testable and repeatable. If other people have managed to replicate an experiment, you can be more assured of its veracity. Remember that science works by trying to disprove a claim, the more people have tried to disprove it but it survives, the more likely it is to be true. There are countless tests of the theory of gravity everyday, and nobody goes on about it being “just a theory”.

 Is there a preponderance of evidence?:

There should be many multiple pieces of evidence, not just one. Look for concordance between varying fields of study. One of the reasons the theory of evolution is so compelling is because it is supported by multiple fields of investigation. It isn’t backed up by only the fossil record, it’s backed up by DNA research and morphology. The more evidence you can find coming from more places, the better off you are.

 Are the people making the claim providing positive evidence?:

“My inability to disprove your theory is not at all the same thing as you having proved it true.”

The people making the claim need to have actual positive evidence of their own. If they are simply just dismissing evidence presented to them and unwilling or unable to present evidence of their own, that should raise serious questions about the validity of their claim. Consider how hard it is to prove a negative. I can’t prove that the interior of Neptune is not filled with mole-like robots, but that does not mean you should suppose that claim to be true. The burden of proof is on the one making the claim.

Do personal beliefs influence the claim being made?: People have biases, including scientists. (And me.) But science tries to do all it can to help account for those biases. This is the reason for anonymous peer review boards and  double blind studies. Watch out for claims being made that seem to be pushed forward by personal agendas.

 Does the source often make claims of a similar sort?:

Very often people who make extraordinary claims tend to believe in other extraordinary things. A Bigfoot hunter may not only believe in Bigfoot, but also Nessie and hundreds of other cryptids as well, all of which have a low likelihood of actually existing. In addition they may believe in UFOs and alien abductions. This suggests they are unlikely to be following a trail of evidence to a conclusion, but are instead cherry-picking data which supports favored and similar phenomena to support a particular worldview.

 Are the individuals making the claim behaving in a scientific manner?:

Are those behind the claim behaving like scientists? Are they testing their claim, trying to falsify it? Is it falsifiable? One of the hallmarks of a conspiracy theory is that it is, by its nature, not falsifiable. Any evidence levied against it can always be waved away as part of the conspiracy. Someone who is behaving in a scientific manner is always open to reviewing evidence that might contradict or falsify their claim. Scientists are always trying to find alternative explanations for a phenomenon. Pseudoscience often looks for evidence then fits the evidence into the theory they want to support.

 Does the new theory being proposed account for as much phenomena as the old theory?:

In any theory there may be a few things that are mysteries or unexplained phenomena. Science will continue to try and improve on the theory to account for these discrepancies. Yet often a new theory that may one phenomena at the expense of all the other currently explained phenomena, which means it is not as good of a theory.

 Is there a reliance on jargon or obfuscation?

If something has many unfamiliar words or phrases, or else seems to contain a lot of scientific sounding terms in inappropriate contexts you ought to be suspicious. One of the hallmarks of pseudoscience is that it often has scientific trappings. As an example, in physics the term “energy” only means an  objects ability to “do work” – to move something or affect a change. Yet a lot of, shall we say, new age-y types tend to use the term energy to refer to some form of mystical vitality or lifeforce. There is similar abuse of the word “quantum”. To be clear this does not mean whenever there is a term you do not understand that you should be suspicious, merely that you should exercise caution if terms are misused or else a passage seems to be constructed with a deliberate attempt to confuse/mislead.

 Is it too simple?

Let’s propose that somebody came to you selling a mysterious black box that claimed to fix everything wrong with your car. Would you but it? No, you wouldn’t because you understand that the various things wrong with your car each have their own unique cause and need to be addressed individually. Similarly, it would not be a good idea to buy a cure-all potion that promises to fix all your health problems. The world is a complex place, there are no cure-alls. Once again, if it seems too good be true, it probably is.

 ---

There you go, there’s your BS detection kit. These nine principles, a handful of logical fallacies, and twelve questions will help you be a more skeptical, rational individual. If you learn them and employ them you will be well on your way to shining light on so much of the misinformation and falsehoods that pervade life. We can’t all be perfect skeptics and rational people every moment of everyday, but this is a good first step.

[orbemnews]

Paul Crutzen, Nobel Laureate Who Fought Climate Change, Dies at 87 Paul J. Crutzen, a Dutch scientist who earned a Nobel Prize for work that warned the world about the threat of certain chemicals to the planet’s ozone layer, and who went on to push for action against global warming, died on Jan. 28 in Mainz, Germany. He was 87. The Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz announced the death, in a hospital, but did not state the cause. Susanne Benner, a spokeswoman for the institute, said Dr. Crutzen had suffered from Parkinson’s disease. “Paul Crutzen was a pioneer in many ways,” Martin Stratmann, the president of the Max Planck Society, said in a statement. Dr. Crutzen’s work, he noted, led to the ban on ozone-depleting chemicals, “a hitherto unique example of how Nobel Prize-winning basic research can directly lead to a global political decision.” The term “continues to teach us that our collective human activities are now the most powerful geological force on Earth,” Al Gore, the climate activist and former vice president, said by email, “and his life’s work continues to inspire us to take responsibility for how that force affects our planet’s ecological integrity.” Dr. Crutzen shared the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with F. Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina. He had found in 1970 that certain chemicals could break down ozone, a molecule that, high up in the stratosphere, absorbs dangerous ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Four years later, Dr. Rowland and Dr. Molina were able to show that gases known as chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, could break down in the upper atmosphere and attack the ozone layer. After years of skepticism and pushback from industry, British scientists in 1985 discovered a hole in the ozone layer, leading to the landmark international treaty known as the 1987 Montreal Protocol and a ban on production of CFCs. (As a bonus, those chemicals would later be shown to contribute powerfully to global warming, and the ban kept climate change from being even worse than it is today.) The 1995 Nobel citation said the three scientists “have contributed to our salvation from a global environmental problem that could have catastrophic consequences.” A 1995 article in The New York Times said Dr. Crutzen was “known among his colleagues as a nonconformist who shows up in an open shirt and sandals at conferences where everyone else is in formal attire.” “Instead of delivering formal papers at scientific meetings,” the article continued, “he fumbles a few handwritten notes, then ends up mesmerizing his audiences.” Paul Jozef Crutzen was born on Dec. 3, 1933, in Amsterdam to Jozef and Anna (Gurk) Crutzen. His father was a waiter, and his mother worked in the kitchen of a hospital. In an autobiographical essay on the Nobel website, Dr. Crutzen recalled profound privation during the Nazi occupation and the “hongerwinter,” or winter of famine, in 1944-45. “Many died of hunger and disease,” he wrote, “including several of my schoolmates.” Dr. Crutzen’s path to atmospheric chemistry was indirect; he first set out, in 1951, to train as a civil engineer in a three-year program at a technical school so he could save his parents the expense of college programs that might take four years or more. His father, he said, was frequently unemployed. From 1954 until 1958, in addition to serving in the military, he worked in Amsterdam’s bridge construction bureau. During that time, as he recalled, he also met “a sweet girl,” Terttu Soininen. “A few years later I was able to entice her to marry me,” he wrote. “What a great choice I made!” His wife survives him, as do their two daughters, Sylvia and Ilona Crutzen, and three grandchildren. In 1958, he saw an advertisement in a Swedish newspaper for a job programming computers in the department of meteorology at what is now Stockholm University. “Although I had not the slightest experience in this subject,” he wrote, “I applied for the job and had the great luck to be chosen from among many candidates.” At the meteorology institute, he began studies that would lead to his receiving, in 1963, the equivalent of a Master of Science degree from the university that combined mathematics, statistics and meteorology, followed by a Ph.D. in meteorology in 1968 and a doctorate of philosophy, the most advanced degree in the Swedish system, in 1973. In choosing a specific topic of research, he said, “I picked stratospheric ozone as my subject, without the slightest anticipation of what lay ahead.” He would later serve as director of research at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., from 1977 to 1980, and at the Max Planck Institute from 1980 until 2000. In a 2002 article in the journal Nature, Dr. Crutzen wrote of the increasing threat of climate change. A “daunting task,” he said, “lies ahead for scientists and engineers to guide society towards environmentally sustainable management during the era of the Anthropocene.” In that essay and elsewhere, he raised the prospect of employing geoengineering, the field that looks for ways to combat climate change through interventions like spreading sulfur in the atmosphere to help cool the planet. The idea of geoengineering remains controversial, not only because of potential unanticipated side effects but also because of the suspicion that the technologies could be used to postpone action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Later, in an interview for a 2014 virtual exhibition on the Anthropocene, Dr. Crutzen said, “I share that fear,” adding that using the technology to avoid acting on emissions “would be totally wrong,” and that he doubted it would ever be used. In that same interview, the journalist Christian Schwägerl asked, “Have you remained an optimist?” Dr. Crutzen replied, “Did I say I am an optimist?” Mr. Schwägerl then asked what made him feel optimistic, and the reply was less curt. There were the “beautiful things around us like arts and literature,” Dr. Crutzen said. “There are so many beautiful things humankind is creating that I wonder when we will make Earth more beautiful again instead of depleting everything.” Source link Orbem News #Change #Climate #Crutzen #Dies #Fought #Laureate #Nobel #Paul

[graciedroweuk]

Pillar beyond exercise and dietVulnerability

Wim Hof, that also holds a Guinness world record for the longest time swimming beneath ice, immerses himself in ice hockey during a 2010 event to increase public awareness of global warming. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

The majority of us understand it to be healthy, exercise and we need to eat well.

But focusing on just those 2 items may be inadequate, according to a theory investigated (and seasoned) by journalist and anthropologist Scott Carney in his recent book “What Does Not Kill Us: The Way Freezing Water, Extreme Altitude, along with Environmental Conditioning Will Renew Our Lost Evolutionary Strength.”

This theory implies that along with exercise and diet, our bodies may need stress — like exposure to temperatures — if we’re to reach our entire potential. People had no air conditioning or heat to help shield us from extreme conditions for most of our existence, after all.

The explanation for this idea is comparable to explanations for why we need to eat food and work out. Nature is brutal, and we’ve evolved to live in a world that is harsh, but modern technology protects us from those challenges.

We are built to move and operate; being conducive leads to greater incidences of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes most of the most common causes of death in today’s world.

And our bodies flourish when we eat natural foods similar to what we would be able to raise and find in the wild; they experience negative effects when we consume a lot of processed materials. We seek out fat and sugar because of their high carbohydrate content, however, those foods have become so accessible that we’re eating in more ways that are unhealthy.

The idea behind conditioning is the same, as Carney explains it:

“Anatomically modern humans have lived on the planet for almost 200,000 years. Meaning your office-mate who sits on a seat behind fluorescent lighting all day has pretty much the exact human anatomy as the caveman who made spear points from flint to hunt antelope. To get from there to this humans faced challenges because we fled predators, even froze in snowstorms, sought shelter from the rain and continued breathing despite suffocating heat. Until recently there was never time a when comfort could be taken for granted — there was a balance between the downtime we all got and the effort we assessed. Without even a question of what anybody today would consider technology we managed these feats for the bulk of the time. Instead, we had to be strong to endure.”

And though our newfound ability to reside in comfort is pleasurable, Carney thinks it may not be healthful.

“Without a challenge to conquer, frontier to press, or danger to flee, the people of this century are overstuffed, overheated, and understimulated,” he said.

There are some caveats to that opinion. Modern technology lets us remain productive during the hottest days of summer and helps us prevent freezing.

But there are others who believe that many of our struggles with mental and physical health have to do with all the ease of modern life. Anxiety, as an instance, is among the most common mental-health problems people face today, but some researchers think that it can be an evolutionary adaptation which has gone out of control. Anxiety may be part of the “fight or flight” reaction, that helps keep us living in dangerous situations, but since we no longer panic predators and other dangers, it may kick in when we have to give a speech or ask somebody out.

Rodale

In his publication, Carney explores the idea that incorporating some ecological challenges back to our lives could lead to health benefits. He also embarks on a trip to determine whether “ecological conditioning” — guided by Wim Hof, a Dutchman who goes by the nickname “Iceman” — will help him unlock new levels of fitness.

Hof advocates (and practices) a procedure of bodily transformation which unites environmental exposure, mostly in the chilly, with conscious breathing techniques to try and acquire more control over naturally involuntary bodily responses. He asserts that the entire body can not be only strengthened by doing this in ways that go beyond that which exercise can achieve, but also help people heal from injuries and ailments.

It’s hard to understand how much to buy into the theory of Hof. One the one hand, it is appealing to those of us who consider that an almost-always comfy life is not physically hard. And it does appear to have some health benefits — Carney relates a collection of anecdotes in which relief is experienced by students of the Wim Hof method from symptoms or injuries of Parkinson’s and Crohn’s disease. Some scientific studies have even independently verified a couple of asserts that Hof creates, such as that a process of cold immersion and conscious breathing may give people some ability to voluntarily activate or suppress their immune system.

It’s possible that some or all of the pain and symptom relief which Hof’s Trainers have experienced is due to the placebo effect, something Carney acknowledges.

The disclaimer in Carney’s book. Kevin Loria/Business Insider

In addition, it is worth noting that a number of the items Hof has done (swimming in icy water, as an instance) have almost murdered him and have murdered other folks who attempted to replicate his feats. Carney’s book starts with a severe disclaimer that warns readers to not try these methods without the approval of a physician and without training and prep. Even then, it states “readers must bear in mind that these practices are inherently hazardous and might result in grave injury or death”

Risk aside, athletes enjoy legendary big wave surfer Laird Hamilton, that Carney trains with while focusing on his analysis, cite Hof’s techniques as influential. And there’s promising data that indicates cold exposure could play a role in weight reduction and assist counteract the effects of diabetes.

The idea that it is possible to acquire control over apparently involuntary bodily responses isn’t confined to Hof’s function — folks such as open water swimmer Lewis Pugh along with particular monks have also been found to exercise some control over their internal body temperature, also a seemingly excellent capacity.

Whether those skills learned and can be taught is your question. Hof thinks so, although Carney leaves space for skepticism, he appears convinced, also.

“If you have been wrapped in a thermogenic cocoon to your entire lifetime, then your own nervous system is aching for entersignal,” he writes. “All you need to do is get a little bit out the comfort zone and try something from the normal. Try finding comfort in the cold”

from network 4 http://www.church-papers.com/pillar-beyond-exercise-and-dietvulnerability/

[pamphletstoinspire]

Catholic Physics - Reflections of a Catholic Scientist - Part 42

Galileo redux: When should the Church meddle in science?

“Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

"Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish." St. John Paul II, Letter to Rev. George Coyne, S.J., Director of the Vatican Observatory.

The spur for this post is, of course, the rumor that Pope Francis is about to issue an encyclical proposing that we in the Church get on the AGW bandwagon (Anthropic Global Warming).  My views on AGW are given in a post on this blog, Scientific Integrity: Lessons from Climategate), so I don't propose to debate that issue extensively here.  Rather, I should like to put a more general question: what science should the Church pronounce as correct, and which should be left to the scientists.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

Let me state at the beginning that I'm with Fr. Stanley Jaki and Stacy Trasancos, that science is the child of Medieval Christianity, that belief in a rational universe ordered by God and the devotion of Catholic religious and lay scholars (Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Jean Buridan, Copernicus...) laid the foundations for Galileo and Newton, who each believed in a Divine order that man could understand.

The split began in the Renaissance, with the condemnation of Galileo and his house arrest. The issue nominally involved in his arrest, whether his support of the heliocentric hypothesis contradicted Scripture, was complicated by the politics of Church leaders in the Holy See and by attempts to counter the effects of the Reformation.  I've discussed this in another post, in which links and references are given to the historical context of Galileo's condemnation.

SAINT JOHN PAUL II'S INTERACTION WITH SCIENCE

The Church's error in condemning Galileo was recognized by St. John Paul II, who made an apology and an explanation of the error. (This was just one of St John Paul II's efforts to effect a rapprochement of the Church with science. )  A lesson to be learned here is that there need be no conflict between the teachings of the Church and science even though the Church should be knowledgeable about science that relates to ethical and moral issues intrinsic to Church teaching.

The ideal of Church/Science interaction is illustrated by St. John Paul II's message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on evolution:

"...some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than an hypothesis....What is the significance of a theory such as this one? To open this question is to enter into the field of epistemology. A theory is a meta-scientific elaboration, which is distinct from, but in harmony with, the results of observation. With the help of such a theory a group of data and independent facts can be related to one another and interpreted in one comprehensive explanation. The theory proves its validity by the measure to which it can be verified. It is constantly being tested against the facts; when it can no longer explain these facts, it shows its limits and its lack of usefulness, and it must be revised [emphasis added]

...And to tell the truth, rather than speaking about the theory of evolution, it is more accurate to speak of the theories of evolution. [emphasis added] The use of the plural is required here—in part because of the diversity of explanations regarding the mechanism of evolution, and in part because of the diversity of philosophies involved. There are materialist and reductionist theories, as well as spiritualist theories. Here the final judgment is within the competence of philosophy and, beyond that, of theology.

The magisterium of the Church takes a direct interest in the question of evolution, because it touches on the conception of man, whom Revelation tells us is created in the image and likeness of God. [emphasis added]... In other words, the human person cannot be subordinated as a means to an end, or as an instrument of either the species or the society; he has a value of his own. He is a person. By this intelligence and his will, he is capable of entering into relationship, of communion, of solidarity, of the gift of himself to others like himself... if the origin of the human body comes through living matter which existed previously, the spiritual soul is created directly by God ("animas enim a Deo immediate creari catholica fides non retimere iubet"). (Humani Generis)

As a result, the theories of evolution which, because of the philosophies which inspire them, regard the spirit either as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a simple epiphenomenon of that matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. They are therefore unable to serve as the basis for the dignity of the human person. [emphasis added].  St. John Paul II, Message to Pontifical Academy of Science, 22 Oct. 1996.

What a fine example!  St. John Paul II shows that he knows what science is about, that it requires empirical confirmation of hypotheses.  Unlike many scientists, he distinguishes the scientific fact of evolution, the descent of species, from theories/mechanisms used to explain evolution (e.g. the neo-Darwinian model).  And most important, he shows why and how the Church should be concerned with theories that impinge on its teachings.  We cannot accept theories which "regard the spirit either as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a simple epiphenomenon of that matter".

WHEN THE CHURCH SHOULD NOT PRONOUNCE ON SCIENCE

When should the Church not make judgments on scientific matters?  Clearly if the science itself is not settled, Church dignitaries should carefully consider whether it is necessary that they support one of contending interpretations.   Cardinal Schonbrun caused much controversy by publishing an essay in the New York Times, "Finding Design in Nature", that seemed to support the theory of Intelligent Design as opposed to the neo-Darwinian mechanism of evolution.  The essay was criticized by a number of Catholic scientists, including the then director of the Vatican Observatory, and Stephen Barr in an article in First Things.  (By the way, in his article I'm not sure that Barr makes the same distinction that Pope John Paul II did, between the facts of evolution, and the theories proposed for the mechanism of evolution.)  Cardinal Schonbrun enlarged on his position in a later article in First Things to explain that he was not necessarily supporting Intelligent Design theory, but that God guided all events, including evolution, and that our universe is not the product of chance.   And we all certainly agree with that opinion.

I'm very much afraid that Pope Francis is about to repeat the mistake made by Cardinal Schonbrun by taking an official Church position for the truth and perils of Anthropic Global Warming.  I don't know what will be in the proposed Encyclical, but if it is based on statements in his interviews and from the article from the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, there will be judgments and statements that are contentious, that are not held by all scientists.  For example, it is not the case that polar ice and Himalayan snow are decreasing (they melt, as ice does, but the net amount is not decreasing due to global warming--see evidence from satellite images.)  (For a harsh critique, see the PowerLine post by John Hinderaker; for a more charitable and hopeful view of the upcoming encyclical see the post by Matt Briggs.)

As I said above, I don't propose in this article to debate extensively the merits of AGW.  On the other hand, it is essential that two points be made.

First, it is not true that a "97% consensus" of scientists support the AGW / Climate Change proposition.  See, for example the 97% myth.  And in any case, scientific theories and propositions are not judged by majority vote, but by empirical confirmation.  Before the Michelson-Morley experiment a majority of scientists believed in the ether as the medium for propagation of electromagnetic waves; afterwards, not many.

Second, the extent of data massaging ("fudging") revealed in the Climategate excerpts and (more recently) of fiddled temperature data from Paraguayan weather stations  should cause one to regard reported temperature increases with more than usual skepticism.

Accordingly, unlike evolution, global warming caused by human production of CO2 is by no means a settled scientific issue.

I'll not discuss at length the unintended consequences for the poor of measures taken by governments to combat the threat of AGW, but only mention a few:

rising food costs for third world populations due to diversion to biofuels;

replacement of rain forest by palm tree groves for biofuels;

the loss of jobs by coal miners and utility plant workers;

the risk of pollution by elements used in wind turbines and hybrid automobile batteries (there is a greater carbon footprint from mining lithium and shipping batteries than in the corresponding use of gas fuels);

the despoilation of landscapes and loss in property values due to wind turbines;

the decimation of migrant bird and bat populations by wind turbines;

For a fuller account see Andrew Montford's "The Unintended Consequences of Climate Change Policy".  The Danish statistician/economist, Bjorn Lomberg, believes in AGW but also believes that resources used to deal with it would be better expended for the Third World poor by improving water supplies, agricultural resources and dealing with disease.

HOW THE CHURCH SHOULD DEAL WITH SCIENCE

The ideal is illustrated by St. John Paul II's efforts (see above) and the Church's stance on questions dealing with bioethics.  In bioethical issues, it is the Church's position on the sanctity of life and the uniqueness of the human person created in the image of God that determines Her position on abortion, euthanasia and the use of human embryos for stem cell research.  The biomedical science is settled;  the point is whether the technology arising from the science should be used.  An area in which confusion might arise is that of genetic modification of humans:  the position of the Church is that genetic modification for therapy--to cure a genetically induced disease--is permissible but not for enhancement, not to create the "supermensch"; see "Human or Superhuman?"

How the Church deals with bioethical questions is a different thing from whether the Church should pronounce a scientific theory true.  The Church has not said that one of the 17 or more interpretations of quantum mechanics is correct.  She has not said that the Big Bang hypothesis is correct, even though it was suggested by LeMaitre, a Belgian Abbe and is consistent with the Church's teaching of Creatio ex Nihilo.

If it is indeed necessary that the Church, in the person of the Holy Father or other ecclesiastical authority, gives an edict on the truth or falsity of a scientific theory, it should employ the same standards of rigor as it does in the canonization process, when it employs a Devil's advocate to decide whether miracles due to the intervention of a saint have occurred.

REFERENCES

Climate Change: The Facts. A collection of articles by various authors including Delingpole, Lindzen, Watts.

BioMedicine and Beatitude; an Introduction to Catholic Bioethics. Nicanor Austriaco, OP

From a series of articles written by: Bob Kurland - a Catholic Scientist

[makingscipub]

Climate alarmism and climate realism

In 2013 I wrote a blog post on climate alarmism and a year later one on its conceptual and ideological twin climate realism.

A week ago, a comment by Jeffrey Levine appeared underneath my second post on climate realism which said: “We’re now three years out from the original date of this post. The usage of climate realist was beginning to show an upturn toward the end of 2014. I’d be interested to see what the numbers say, but I’d guess it’s continued to increase, as I feel the label has ‘stuck’, especially when used in contrast with alarmist.”

Updating graphs

That got me thinking – or rather, counting. So, I first updated the graph on climate realism.

As before I used the news database Lexis Nexis, using the search terms ‘climate realism’ or ‘climate realist’ AND ‘climate change’ OR ‘global warming’ and added the years 2014 to 207 (but, of course, 2017 is incomplete; I stopped on 17 November). As numbers are quite small, I did yearly counts not monthly ones.

I found that, indeed, talk about realism in the context of climate change hadn’t waned; it might in fact be on the rise again. There was a peak in 2015 around struggles regarding Obama’s clean power plan and also the COP21 conference in Paris. Another one is emerging now for various political reasons relating to the new Trump administration.

In 2015 one headline proclaimed for example: “Heartland Institute Leads Contingent of Climate Realists to Paris for UN#s COP 21 Conference” (Global English, Middle East and North Africa Financial Network, 2 December) One blog post published on The Moral Liberal on 21 October 2017 refers to the release of the Climate Science Special Report and points out: “It would be ironic indeed if the skeptical Trump Administration were to simply issue this alarmist report as federal policy on climate change science. In fact it would be tragic, a major defeat for climate realism and sound science.”

I then also updated the graph on alarmism, this time using monthly figures, as the numbers are larger; this also allowed me to search until October 2017. In my 2013 post I had used Major World Newspapers to search for ‘alarmism’ OR ‘alarmist’ AND ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming. However, as I had used All English Language News in my search for ‘realism’, I did that again for ‘alarmism’/’alarmist’. I expected the results to be quite similar, but they weren’t.

The main difference between the old graph based on Major World Newspapers (2005 to 2012) and the new one based on All English Language News (2005 to October 2017) is that ‘alarmism/alarmist’ in All English Language News peaked once before climategate (2009), namely in 2007 around the release of Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth, while it didn’t do that in Major World Newspapers. The rest of the graph is more or less similar. I am not totally sure why there is such a difference, but it might be that All English Language News captures more small-scale and online news outlets and some blogs.

Another, and even more interesting, finding was that alarmism discourse did not wane after 2013, as I had expected in 2013/14, but peaked several times more, albeit with slightly smaller peaks than in 2007 and in 2009. It’s certainly not dead as a talking point; it has staying power.

Alarmism

As hinted at in the old blog post, the description of climate science as ‘alarmist’ and ‘alarmism’ began as soon as scientists alerted politicians to the greenhouse effect at the end of the 1980s. The rhetorical use of ‘alaarmism’ began to take off more prominently at the turn of the millennium, after the Kyoto protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on 11 December 1997, and entered into force on 16 February 2005.

In 2003, for example, Senator James Inhofe gave a long speech on the Senate floor entitled “Global Warming: The worst of all environmental scares”, published in two parts in Human Events Online (partially republished in The Independent). The ‘highlight’ for part 1 said: “With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, all of the phoney science, could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it.” The ‘highlight’ for part 2 said: “No wonder the late political scientist Aaron Wildavsky called global warming alarmism the ‘mother of all environmental scares.”

This quote, not the word ‘alarmism’ though, is, it seems, taken from the 1995 book But Is It True? A Citizen’s Guide to Environmental Health and Safety Issues by sociologist and political scientist Wildawsky. The quote seems to have been in circulation in climate contrarian circles since around 1998, and is still being used to day when accusing climate scientists of alarmism and when contesting the scientific consensus (for example in a 2017 article published in The Scotsman).

These quotes set the tone for ‘alarmism’ discourse for years to come and many of the talking points were repeated over and over again.

Peaks and troughs

Let us now look at the peaks and troughs in alarmism discourse over time from 2006 onwards, that is to say, discourse that frames mainstream climate science as ‘alarmist’.

There is a first peak in the spring of 2006, when Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth was released and publicised (in February the documentary won an Oscar). There is also peak in October 2006 when the Stern review was released. In 2007 the year begins with various publications around the fourth IPCC report which triggered talk of alarmism. In addition, March 2007 sees an increase in attention to alarmism around the release of the Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle. In October 2007, the IPCC and Al Gore received the Nobel Peace prize, and of course, that made people talk about alarmism again.

2008 was a relatively quiet year. Even the publication of the UK Climate Act at the end of the year didn’t really cause a stir. Things changed, obviously, at the end of 2009 with climategate and COP15 in Copenhagen. Alarmism discourse continued into 2010 with glaciergate fuelling it, as well as more discussion around climategate.

Then things were quiet again until around 2014 when the results of another IPCC report were announced in March. The end of 2015 is dominated by COP21 in Paris which was signed in April 2016. In November 2016 Trump was elected President of the United States and in January 2017 he was sworn in. In June 2016 he withdrew from the Paris agreement and the second half of 2017 is dominated by various hurricanes, from Harvey to Maria, as well as changing energy politics, the election of Scott Pruitt as EPA administrator etc. This is reflected by further small peaks in alarmism discourse.

I can’t go through all the news items around alarmism for this post in any detail. However, I just want to close with one or two quotes. When Trump announced that the United States wouldn’t sign up to the Paris climate agreement, which surprised many observers, the Irish Independent published an article (6 June) saying “it’s hard to escape the impression that much of the outrage is as manufactured and fake as the claims so routinely made by the climate change alarmists.” On 22 June 2017 ClimateWire reported the selection of Mario Loyola as the new associate director of regulatory reform at the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality and quoted him as saying that ‘alarmists’ have “utterly failed (though they refuse to admit it) to establish sufficient certainty for a conclusive policy analysis”.

Some tentative conclusions

What may this mean for climate change discourse? It seems (but more research is needed) that those framing climate change science and scientists as alarmism and alarmists respectively push this message quite systematically on occasions when mainstream climate science comes to the fore in public and political life. This involves contrasting alleged alarmism (also associated with authoritarianism) with climate realism, rationality and sound science, or hot-headedness (alarmists are also called warmists) with cool-headedness. The two discourses, that of attributing alarmism to mainstream science and that of attributing realism to its opponents support each other rhetorically and politically.

  Proviso: Lexis Nexis is a convenient source for the analysis of news. However, a significant drawback is that this data source is frequently reconfigured, leading to slightly different results obtained when consulting at different dates.

Image: Pixabay

The post Climate alarmism and climate realism appeared first on Making Science Public.

via Making Science Public http://ift.tt/2iN9HSH

[llilly15]

The day the earth stood still

Two years ago, representatives from almost every nation around the world came together to tackle global warming at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The United States and China led the negotiations. Both bore the brunt of responsibility for the convention’s success. The United States is second only to China as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

And the convention was a success. The 195 countries attending signed the 2015 Climate Change Agreement and negotiated by consensus its follow-up. Representatives of the signatories agreed to meet again in Paris that same year to reach an international plan of action. The preamble to the Paris climate agreement went something like this:

Whereas the earth’s atmosphere, oceans, land surfaces and ice are changing rapidly; whereas global warming is the cause; whereas human activity is a major driver of climate change and its effects on the planet; and whereas we, as world leaders, do hereby acknowledge these truths are abundantly self-evident, we do jointly agree the time has come to act.

Therefore, let it be known, we, the undersigned nations, do hereby pledge to reduce together and separately the greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change, abate other known causes of global warming, and promulgate alternative sources of green energy.  

By our due diligence, we will avoid and/or reduce the catastrophic effects on the world of global warming. Let none say we chose to twiddle our thumbs and do nothing. Long live Mother Earth!

This could be a plot line straight out of Marvel Comics.

Courageous humans rally to protect the world from disaster. Time is running out. The pace of change is escalating. Dominoes cascade, triggering environmental consequences 100 years into the future. Calamities are foretold. Brave scientists sound the alarm. World leaders respond with urgency. Historical and political differences must be overcome to unite as one world to battle the foe.    

Miraculously, they do. The lion lays down by the lamb, the leopard by the goat. Barriers to the self-sacrifice of sovereign nations are overcome, for humanity—and the earth’s—greater good.  This act of selflessness becomes celebrated worldwide as the day the earth stood still.    

It will be remembered as an enlightened moment in all human history though it may not fully succeed. Still, despite profligate deniers and skeptics, the world acknowledged climate change is happening; global warming is its cause, and human activity is its main driver.

The climate agreement is the global genesis of humans as stewards of the planet. Its purpose is noble and ennobling.  Light prevailed over dark descending. And it was good. So sayeth President Obama.

The 2014 White House Assessment on Climate Change gave warning to Americans of the hazards of soiling our own and others’ nests. More than 300 scientific experts, guided by a 60-member Federal Advisory Committee issued the report. Public and experts vetted the publication, including federal agencies and the National Academy of Sciences.

It bore witness to the climate change already at hand: “Residents of some coastal cities see their streets flood more regularly during storms and high tides. Inland cities near large rivers also experience more flooding, especially in the Midwest and Northeast…Hotter and drier weather and earlier snow melt mean that wildfires in the West start earlier in the spring, last later into the fall, and burn more acreage. In Arctic Alaska, the summer sea ice that once protected the coasts has receded, and autumn storms now cause more erosion, threatening many communities with relocation.” This is only the tip of the proverbial-but-now-melting iceberg.

Florida is in the crosshairs of climate change. It will suffer severe, environmental consequences if it fails to adequately anticipate and prepare for what’s coming. But this is the trajectory we are on.

The day after President Trump walked from the Paris deal, Patricia Mazzei of The Miami Herald reported that of the three top Republicans in Florida’s state government—Gov. Scott, Senate President Joe Negron, and House Speaker Richard Corcoran—only Negron is willing to “grudgingly” admit human activity contributes to climate change.

The professed ignorance of out state’s leaders comes at a high price to the state’s future.  Job losses feared because of efforts to mitigate against climate change pale in comparison to the economic devastation awaiting places highly vulnerable to rising seas because of it—like Florida.

Scott, Corcoran, and Negron are playing the short game. They and lawmakers like them have been playing it a long time at the state’s expense. They’ve allowed Florida to be bulldozed, flattened, drained, dredged, polluted, flooded, and otherwise abused with astonishing rapaciousness. The damage done, they just move on, to perpetuate it someplace else. But they are running out of rope.  

Climate change is the long game. It won’t be won by those who can’t see beyond the short term and who serve only their own self-interests.

Play the short game on a global scale and take it to its conclusion. Then be warned: There is no planet “b.”  

Leslie Lilly

#climatechange #FloridaWeekly #sealevelrise #Florida #environment #weather #climatedeniers

[nancygduarteus]

The Ice Guru in Brooklyn

The Cortex Is the Enemy

Greenpoint is a historically working-class Brooklyn neighborhood full of industrial buildings. In the last two decades these have been turned into lofts with skyline views, and skyscrapers are going up, and there are waterfront parks and coffee shops adjacent to other coffee shops. The old pencil factory is condos. The old rope factory is an event space. Along with adjacent Williamsburg—which now has an Apple Store, a Whole Foods, and an Equinox all on the same block—Greenpoint has become New York’s most rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.

In the heart of it is a 60,000-square-foot, glass-walled building called the Brooklyn Expo Center, which opened in 2014. It’s a single story with 24-foot ceilings. Inside on a Friday in May, roughly 400 people sat on the floor facing a makeshift stage. Above it was a screen that read, “We can do more than we think we can.”

On the stage stood a Dutch man in black shorts and a synthetic blue shirt. His grayish hair flopped as he paced. He looked somehow robust despite an absence of prominent musculature and a sort of convex abdomen. This was Wim Hof.

He is The Iceman.

“Depression, fear, pain, anxiety—you name it,” Hof’s voice boomed through the speakers. “We are able to get into any cell and change the chemistry. We are able to get into the DNA.”

Hof claims that people can address, prevent, and treat most any malady by focusing the mind to control the metabolic processes in their cells. For example, we can will our bodies to heat up in cold situations. He told the audience “we can beat cancer” by shutting down malignant cells. “I challenge any university in the world to test this out,” he roared.

For a four-hour seminar in The Wim Hof Method, attendees paid around $200. The ticket offered an opportunity to hear Hof speak and to perform his famous breathing exercises, and then to take a brief dip in an inflatable pool of ice water.

Almost the entire first half was Hof speaking extemporaneously, shoelessly. “You are the alchemist,” he said, gesturing out to the people, who sat rapt, mostly silent. “Nature is so merciless—but so righteous.”

This isn’t the exact sequence in which the aphorisms flowed. I wrote them down as quickly as I could, trying to follow. I wanted to know more about exactly how to focus one’s mind—to use “mind control,” in a way that would alter the metabolism of cells. We never entirely got there.

“It’s scientifically endorsed. It’s all in the books,” Hof said.

I barely had time to process one claim before he moved to the next, but if these claims are all in the books, that seems at odds with the challenge to the universities to study them.

“The cortex is the enemy,” he said. “That evil cortex needs to SHUT THE FUCK UP.”

Hof was energized, and his mouth was too close to the mic there. I worried about hearing damage for the audience. The people mostly just nodded or laughed. They were roughly 99 percent light-skinned and 90 percent men, 90 percent fit-looking, and 90 percent under 40.

They regard Wim with something not less than love. The program included a 45 minute break, and when it finally arrived, a crowd flocked to The Iceman. A line formed. At least one person was in tears as he hugged him. Most wanted a photo, and many wanted to pour out their personal stories to the man. Hof’s litany of meandering and sometimes fantastical claims seemed to have done nothing to alienate anyone.

That may be because Hof is irrefutably exceptional. And his refusal of physical and logical limits is itself the source of his appeal.

Hof during a performance to raise awareness of global warming in 2010 (Kin Cheung / AP)

The Iceman

Wim Hof’s curriculum vitae includes holding his breath for six minutes, running a marathon above the Arctic circle in only shorts, and achieving a Guinness world record for the longest ice bath (nearly two hours). Hence the name.  

His book Becoming The Iceman describes Hof’s initial transformation from civilian to daredevil as, at least in part, a reaction to his wife’s 1995 suicide. Looking for control, he turned to his body. In ensuing years, a second transformation seems to have taken place, the journey of self-discovery turning into an ice-based lifestyle brand. Hof, based in Amsterdam, now travels the world spreading the word, peddling medicinal claims at seminars and guided cold-weather excursions.

The Hof family has built a business around packaging and distributing Wim’s ideas, and the idea of Wim. It’s called Innerfire, and it controls intellectual property for the Wim Hof Method, which is still primarily sold by way of an online video course that leads students through exercises in breathing and cold exposure.

The method has indeed been the subject of some scientific study. In Brooklyn, Hof referred multiple times to findings published in 2014 in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences. Twenty-four people were injected with E. coli endotoxin, and researchers tracked their immune responses. Half the people had previously spent 10 days going through Hof’s training, and the other half had not. The former fared better once injected with the toxin, showing more effective immune responses than the control group. This led the researchers to conclude that “through practicing techniques learned in a short-term training program, the sympathetic nervous system and immune system can indeed be voluntarily influenced.”

In other words, mind control.

In a related study, tests of Hof’s blood found exceptionally high levels of the stress hormone cortisol. This is generally not desirable in the long term, but researchers have theorized that it could be related to Hof’s ability to fight infections. Still the mechanisms and basis for many of Hof’s claims remain unstudied and even implausible, based primarily on anecdotes and extrapolations of The Iceman and his many followers.

Many among the Brooklyn event staff were volunteers, motivated by devotion to Hof and free attendance at the seminar. One told me he started the method because he’s training for the Navy SEALs, and that involves enduring cold temperatures. Another was ex-military and dealing with chronic pain and PTSD. Sometimes the breathing techniques make him lose consciousness. (This is listed as a side effect on Hof’s site, in bold, underlined font: “Never practice it before or during diving, driving, swimming, taking a bath or any other environment/place where it might be dangerous to faint.” There have been reported deaths among practitioners of the method while swimming.) The fainting happens when a person’s oxygen levels get low, and the system shuts down. This sometimes does the trick of clearing one’s mind.

Among the paying attendees was Brian Van Duyne, a 25-year-old from Long Island. He doesn’t consider himself an athlete. He got into Hof after he watched a Vice documentary. It started with an innocent curiosity: “Who’s this crazy guy running in boxers along glaciers?” But Van Duyne’s interest got real after a family member of his was diagnosed with cancer. He started doing the breathing exercises—mostly long, conscious exhales—and taking cold showers. As he put it to me, speaking of cancer, “Anything that can limit my chances.”

Several hundred people sat on the Brooklyn Expo Center’s floor to listen to Hof speak. (James Hamblin)

The Power of Conscious Breathing

After the lecture at the Brooklyn seminar, everyone was invited to lie down. This was the first of two interactive portions of the afternoon. The breathing was about to begin.

Hof explained, “Breathing exercises produce brain waves.”

He asked for music to be turned on, a song he loved. Through the speakers came a cut from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, “Breathe.”

Breathe, breathe in the air, Don't be afraid to care, Leave but don't leave me, Look around, choose your own ground

“If you’re depressed, go breathing,” Hof said. “Make some dopamine. You don’t have to go to a doctor.”

People lay down and closed their eyes. Hof directed: “In. Out. In. Out.” The commands accelerated and descended into guttural yells. When the song ended, other tracks from Dark Side played, which made less sense lyrically. At some point someone put it back to “Breathe.” The intensity of the leader’s calls and the psychedelic rock and the people lying prone, their chests rising in unison, was a lot to take in. There was about a half hour of breathing. By the end most people looked dazed, and everyone told me they felt amazing. I saw no one lose consciousness.  

A less intense DIY version of the breathing regimen goes something like this: Inhale deeply from the diaphragm, then exhale slowly and fully. Repeat. After 30 or so breaths, hold on exhalation until you experience a clear need to breathe. Then inhale deeply and hold that breath as well, but only for about 10 seconds.

Many high-performing athletes swear by this and similar methods both to boost performance and focus attention. Non-athletes use it as a tool in the quest for calm and mental clarity. Still others use it to ameliorate specific symptoms, or in an attempt to curb outbreaks of oral herpes.

A Skeptic Becomes a Disciple

Among the latter is Scott Carney, a journalist who has made a career of debunking bad science. He met Hof several years ago, expecting the story of a charlatan in need of exposure. Carney put it to me straight: “When I went to meet him, I thought he was full of shit and that he was going to get people killed.”

But then Hof and Carney ended up summiting Kilimanjaro together topless.

Carney went on to write a whole book about the experience: What Doesn’t Kill Us: How Freezing Water, Extreme Altitude and Environmental Conditioning Will Renew Our Lost Evolutionary Strength. It tells readers, “Exposure to cold helps reconfigure the cardiovascular system, combat autoimmune malfunctions, and is a pretty darned good method to simply lose weight.” Hof even wrote the foreword.

I was curious to hear from Carney how that metamorphosis happened. Was he won over by a charismatic leader?

“Well, first, I separate Wim from Wim’s organization,” said Carney, “because Innerfire is — it’s become more about the money than about, you know, breaking into your body and finding something really cool.” He describes commercial pressures on Hof as external—the man himself owns little more than a handful of t-shirts and would be fine to remain that way. I didn’t get to speak with Hof directly at the event and he was unavailable afterward, but Carney gave vivid accounts of spending prolonged periods with The Iceman: “Wim is nuts. You know this, right? He’s disorganized, he smells bad, and he talks nonsense about half the time. So, he’s a flawed individual. This is how I deal with it in the book. Despite all his flaws, he imparts a bit of knowledge that’s really special. And I think only a crazy person could have started doing that.”

But how do you reconcile faith in a person who’s saying things that are only partly true, even plainly not true?

“The hype comes from Wim glomming more and more claims onto what his method can do,” said Carney. “We don’t know it can cure cancer or kill bacteria. But for autoimmune disease, and with regard to metabolism, there’s a tremendous amount of evidence. That’s something I completely believe.”

Carney has experienced very real benefits. He’s convinced that after 20 minutes of breathing, he can do twice as many push-ups. He used to get canker sores “like constantly,” but not since starting the Wim Hof Method. He still does the breathing exercises every morning, as well as cold showers, and has no plans to stop.

This gets to the point that the Wim Hof Method isn’t really a method in any traditional sense. Method implies a systematic study with an end goal, whereas this is more a set of principles—basic concepts and a couple techniques—to be continued throughout life. Cold exposure is supposed to help people train themselves to suppress a fight-or-flight response, and holding one’s breath teaches an ability to suppress a reflex to gasp. Through these exercises, you’re meant to gain a sense of control over the body’s autonomic processes.

“You could probably train yourself, using these concepts, to stop your heart,” Carney said, not lightly. “But I don’t know if you’d want to. You could train yourself to hold your pee indefinitely.”

You really think that’s possible?

“Yeah, I do. You could maintain an erection as long as you wanted to. Anything where there’s an autonomic response that you have some control over, you can train yourself to take it to an extreme,” he said. “But just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.”

“You Should Talk to Laird”

Hof isn’t the only living extremophile who harnesses this sort of focus. Nor is he the only evangelist of the effects of deliberate breathing and cold exposure.

Laird Hamilton is a legendary big-wave surfer known for death-defying rides. As the site Surfline put it, “There is no bigger set of balls in the universe than the pair in Laird Hamilton’s shorts. He continues to amaze humanity by putting himself in the most harrowing situations imaginable and emerging unscathed.”

Hamilton and Hof met several years ago, and the surfer became a vocal advocate of The Iceman—a self-described “warrior for his cause.” In 2016 Hamilton effused about the Wim Hof Method, “There’s not a person alive who wouldn’t benefit from this. Not only does it bring calmness to the spirit, but it has enhanced my performance, and I believe this is a tool I’ll be able to use in the future to combat sickness and disease.”

He still does regular ice baths year round and he believes in the health benefits. But the surfer and The Iceman have had a bit of a falling out, according to Carney, and it’s not unrelated to the fact that Hamilton is now doing his own workshops that involve ice baths and breathing exercises.  

“The Making of the Iceman had a profound effect on me in my quest for, I would say, enlightenment,” Hamilton told me by phone. He has, like Hof, become a lifestyle brand—a sort of celebrity who practices medicine through media appearances, writing, videos, etc. If you live long enough, it seems, you become a lifestyle brand. While we spoke he was backstage at The View.

“I think a majority of people in the world have no conscious relationship to their breath,” he told me. I asked him if he would still consider himself a warrior for the Wim Hof cause, and he danced around that. “I think in that moment in time, I was enjoying that, and, I’m a warrior of any breath work, any type of consciousness brought to breath.”

Hamilton also said his own interest in ice pre-dates meeting Hof. “I always naturally craved ice,” he said. “Whenever I was near frozen lakes or rivers, I always went in them, since I was a kid it was an instinct. The cold is a teacher we’re drawn to. It may be because of an unconscious understanding that it benefits our health.”

There is sound science behind the idea that living in climate-controlled environments year-round affects human health, in ways good and bad. I’ve written about this before, including an adventure in wearing an ice vest and enduring a “cryotherapy” chamber, ultimately concluding that a healthy thermal environment doesn’t necessarily involve either of these things, but probably does mean spending a little more time away from the 70-ish-degree perfection so many of us have been trained to think we need in the office and at home.

There is some overlap between that idea and Hof’s more extreme message. But Hamilton plays down the uniqueness of the Wim Hof Method. He’s now more into tummo, a type of meditation that involves breathing exercises. “Wim’s technique is really a derivative of that,” said Hamilton. “I don’t know if Wim will ever say that. I would like him to say that.”

The unoriginality criticism has been raised before. Innerfire’s marketing sidesteps the matter, describing The Wim Hof Method as “similar to tummo meditation and pranayama. Yet it is something else entirely.”

Meanwhile Hamilton said his own seminars are not derived from Hof’s. His method is called XPT. A beautiful Instagram profile describes XPT as “a lifestyle system focused on breath, movement, and recovery methods.” As he clarified it to me, “XPT really is a lifestyle, and a holistic approach to health and wellness. Obviously breathing is a critical component of that. But so is diet. So are relationships. So is sport. Breath work and ice baths isn’t enough. There are all these spokes in the wheel. I spent time with Wim, but I think in the holistic approach to wellness, we’re way down the road from that.”

A crew readies the pools. (James Hamblin)

The Ongoing Quest for Adversity

The Brooklyn seminar was notably missing spokes in the health wheel. Any mention of nutrition was fleeting, and lunch was Mediterranean fare (hummus, falafel, a pile of pita bread, etc), nothing uniquely healthy. Attendees also sat the entire time—on the floor, no less. (I wasn’t sure if this was intentional. The website for the Brooklyn Expo Center doesn’t list the cost of renting 400 chairs.)

The only physical activity apart from the breathing was when everyone rose at the end and meandered out the glass doors onto the back patio. There were a handful of blue inflatable pools filled with ice. Everyone stripped down to the bathing suits they had been asked to wear. Some changed in the bathroom stalls. In groups of six or seven, they got into the pool for about a minute. Wim led his pool in singing, or sort of chanting, the chorus of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” on repeat. Other pools joined in at different times, so the overall effect was discord.

People emerged from the pools, their pale white skin blotched with red. Everyone I talked to told me some variation on “it wasn’t that bad.” All said they felt somewhere on the spectrum of good to great. It was hard to get much insight, though conversation was difficult over the singing.

At points, Hof led the crowd into the chorus of “Who Let the Dogs Out.” The who-who-who’s were chest-rumbling grunts. And then back into “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” No one rolled their eyes, or even really even hesitated to get into the pool. Many seemed to be more accepting of Hof not despite his absurdity, but because of it. A more cogent speaker may have drawn more scrutiny. More cohesive thought processes may have precluded all that he has been able to accomplish in the physical realm.

I didn’t get into the pool. I’ve been in ice water. It’s an experience that’s easy to replicate, cheaply. I don’t think all the excitement and euphoria on the patio was about that. It also wasn’t about physiological facts or research data everyone had just taken in. It seemed to be about getting close to this man who seems to have something figured out, and who makes everyone believe they can do more than they think they can. As Carney put it, “The way I deal with Wim is, I’m honest. I say there are some fucked up things about this. He makes claims that are nonsense. But if you squint your eyes, you can see the truth. It’s not quite as grand as he claims, but it’s pretty awesome.”

At 4 p.m, people dried off and looked around and realized that the program had concluded. They put their clothes back on and wandered back into the empty hall of the expo center and then out onto the street, mostly alone or in pairs, maybe a little more conscious of their breath, to find some way to experience adversity.

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/06/brooklyn-ice-guru/529293/?utm_source=feed

[rapporteur-africa]

Health And Climate Change: An Urgent Need For Action Reproduction of; Michelle A. Williams,  Dean of the Faculty, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Ashish K. Jha,  Director, Harvard Global Health Institute; K.T. Li Professor of Health Policy, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

The human face of climate change is its impact on our health. Higher temperatures intensify air pollution and respiratory illness. Changing weather patterns lead to drought and then famine, while increasing rains in other areas will create the breeding ground for disease and pandemics. While the policy changes needed to blunt climate change are surely substantial, the cost of ignoring the science behind climate change will be felt through its harmful effects on our health. Recently, the CDC cancelled its Climate and Health Summit out of fear of retribution from the Trump administration. Working with Al Gore and others, Harvard worked to revive the meeting, which was held in Atlanta on February 16.  This meeting reminded us that universities have a unique responsibility that we ensure a platform for key scientific issues that have a meaningful effect on people’s health.  Climate change is one such critical issue.

A century ago, one in three children died before age five. That number has been cut by 90 percent because of global investments in public health. Climate change, unchecked, puts these gains, and lives, at risk. Weather shifts from climate change will change the availability and reduce the nutritional content of food. The levels of protein and crucial micronutrients in key staple crops will drop, exposing billions of the world’s poorest people to worsening malnutrition. The gains we have made in saving the lives of children are fragile – and unlikely to withstand the challenges created by climate change unless we act now.

The effects of climate change on health will not stop with agriculture. Burning fossil fuels release a wide array of air pollutants that are a leading cause of asthma, heart disease, and strokes in our country and around the globe. Children are particularly vulnerable, and so are the elderly. The increasing number of heat waves  is dangerous, but the interaction between high temperatures and air pollution becomes especially deadly.

The changing climate will likely shift the geographical range of insects that carry disease, including ticks carrying Lyme disease and mosquitos which carry malaria. The increasing number of infectious disease outbreaks such as Ebola and Zika appear to be linked, at least in part, to ongoing environmental shifts that exacerbate climate change. It is not hard to imagine that if we alter an ecosystem where we and other species live in equilibrium, there will be meaningful consequences.

Transitioning to energy sources that reduce carbon pollution will help the U.S. meet its commitments under the recent Paris Agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and, importantly, will also benefit the health of all Americans. In a nation where our government already pays for the health care of our elderly and many of our children, reducing health burdens not only saves lives, but it can also be fiscally responsible. Our colleagues at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health recently found that the health savings to the American people from the Environmental Protection Agency’s new carbon standards will far outweigh the cost to industry within five years.

As these changes unfold, universities have a unique obligation, through research, education, and better communication, to understand and explain the impact of climate change on health and find ways to mitigate it. This research, at Harvard and at universities across our country, is dependent on a long-standing agreement between universities and the American people:  universities will work on the most pressing issues facing our nation, and our citizens, through their government, will support that research. That agreement faces a serious challenge today from politicians skeptical about the science of climate change and the value of scientific investment. Yet it is more important than ever to renew our commitment to funding research on climate change and especially, its impact on health. Universities must commit to producing unbiased, high-quality data to guide decision- and policy-making, and the government should keep its commitment to supporting that work.

Finally, it is essential that universities engage more effectively with the public regarding what the science tells us about the impact of climate change on health. Sharing data openly and transparently is crucial to helping policy-makers  reach / agree on the best decisions.

This is a critical moment for our nation. Climate change is upon us. We can no longer think of  it as an issue of temperature changes or sea level rises alone. We must remember that we will feel the effects of climate change most acutely on our health. We still have the time to mitigate these effects by focusing on reducing carbon pollution and slowing the warming of the planet. If we do, we will reap the benefits in terms of longer and healthier lives.  And our children will be the biggest beneficiaries.