#sometimes the flat earth and climate denial

[jonny-b-meowborn]

Hbomberguy's videos have me in such a chokehold like I literally keep rewatching the same few essays over and over and every now and then adding a new one to the rotation his video essays live in my head rent free and I love him

[zibanii]

I am so sick and tired of the falsely politicized science denialism that I see day in and day out.

If you disagree with any of the following statements, your opinion has no correlation to reality. The following are not opinions. They're statements of fact. Politics are irrelevant. If you disagree with any of them, you are objectively, measurably, factually wrong and you can go fuck yourself.

•Climate change is real and it is being caused by the fossil fuel industry.

•Vaccines don't cause autism. They save lives. (Also screw you if you think the autism is worse than smallpox or measles.)

•Covid is not a hoax. It is not overexaggerated. It is a deadly disease that has resulted in more deaths than the entirety of the Napoleonic wars, and would have resulted in more if not for the vaccine developers that science deniers insist on ignoring

•Trans women are women and trans men are men. And just so were crystal clear, that means that sometimes women have a y chromosome, and sometimes men only have X chromosomes. Science is not transphobic.

•Homosexuality has been found in 1500 different species. It is extremely natural.

•Humanity came about as a result of evolution.

•Bonus round: the Earth is not flat. Humanity figured this out over 2,000 years ago. Catch up. If you've ever worked for the government, you know that it couldn't keep a secret like this for longer than a week

[ritunn]

A Very Short "Essay" On Why They Should Teach Philosophy in School (and Why You Should Learn It Anyway)

Something I've realized formally studying philosophy now is that holy mother of all gods, this stuff would be super useful to teach in school. Why? What are Plato, Aristotle, and even modern philosophers going to teach us that's useful for adulting as many people are concerned about now when it comes to high school? Philosophy boils down to how to live a good life, a civic one at that in many cases! It's how to be a good person and how to have direction in life. Honestly, that's something I think a lot of people need right now. There's no one philosophy either, there's so many schools of thought, so you can find the one that fits for your life.

Other than this though, philosophy also helps deal with a few other surprising things: misinformation and being a fudging a**hole. Misinformation is rampant in online spaces, HBomberguy even highlighted how misinformation from James Somerton led to it being accepted as fact by some people. Philosophy is a counter to this. It asks to think critically of life, of the things we encounter in it, and how we accept it. Misinformation thrives on either willful ignorance, or a simple laziness to not fact check what you're hearing. Sometimes that's understandable, like with the case with James, people trusted him and the information he shared. However, spreading something like that like fact yourself requires you to first confirm the information, often from an additional source (always have multiple sources for information, it's a life saver). Philosophy itself as a subject is the art of critical thinking, and this is exactly what critical thinking teaches us, to never trust the words of just one person. Get different views, look into it yourself! Teaching philosophy can reinforce this idea and help folks avoid falling down rabbit holed that lead to social isolation in the cases of things like flat earth and climate change denial.

I also mentioned preventing a**holes. A**holes are a pretty common problem. Just look at Elon Musk, Trump, or rich guy YouTubers like Logan Paul. Why does this happen? It can be a mix of social pressure, how they were raised, and even the very institutions of our world that can lead to it. A**holes: A Theory, by Aaron James, is a great way to learn more about this, but to put it plainly, a**holes often exist because they feel an entrenched and high sense of entitlement. They won't apologize for their actions in a meaningful way, and they certainly don't see you as having the same moral standing to them. They're a bane to a cooperative society. So, how do we deal with this? James suggested a few ways, landing on that there's an understanding that life kind of sucks. However, if we, as cooperative people, unite, we can life a little less sucky, and by virtue, better. Philosophy comes into play here yet again. It teaches social values, how to be a good person, how to be a civil person. Being a civil person means we can meet that call, we can make society less sucky, and make it better. If we understand our civic duties to one another, learn critical thought, and have meaning in this turbulent boat of world, we can be better people, we can live better lives! Teaching philosophy does that.

In the end, life sucks, but it doesn't have to. In fact, I'd say there's hope. I know some schools (especially in the States, I'm Canadian myself) already teach philosophy. Does it help? I can't quite say. I can tell you it's helped me when I learned it just as an interest by myself, but my peers who did go to schools with it often share that they were the better for it when I ask them about it. So, give it a try. Explore philosophy a bit! It can truly be a delight.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Abstract Members of the public can disagree with scientists in at least two ways: people can reject well-established scientific theories and they can believe fabricated, deceptive claims about science to be true. Scholars examining the reasons for these disagreements find that some individuals are more likely than others to diverge from scientists because of individual factors such as their science literacy, political ideology, and religiosity. This study builds on this literature by examining the role of conspiracy mentality in these two phenomena. Participants were recruited from a national online panel (N = 513) and in person from the first annual Flat Earth International Conference (N = 21). We found that conspiracy mentality and science literacy both play important roles in believing viral and deceptive claims about science, but evidence for the importance of conspiracy mentality in the rejection of science is much more mixed.

Science denialism permeates society. Though adamant anti-vaxxers and resolute flat Earthers may be small in numbers, many more people in the United States deny climate change and/or evolution (at least 50% and 33%, respectively). And while scientists face public denial of well-supported theories, popular culture celebrates pseudoscience: Olympic athletes engage in cupping, “gluten-free” is trending (even among those without disorders like celiac disease), and unsubstantiated alternative medicine methods flourish with support from cultural icons like Oprah. Governments face furious opposition to fluoridated water (when it was added to prevent tooth decay5), and popular restaurant chains, like Chipotle, proudly tout their opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) (see https://www.chipotle.com/gmo; scientists stress that the focus should be on the risks and benefits of each specific product and not globally accepted or rejected based on the processes used to make them).

Moreover, the emergence of social media has provided a broad forum for the famous, not famous, and infamous alike to share and crowdsource opinions and even target misinformation to those who are most vulnerable. This allows so-called fake news to go viral. Yet who is most susceptible to denying science and/or believing misinformation? In the current study, we consider the extent to which conspiracy mentality leads people to (a) reject well-supported scientific theories and (b) accept viral and deceptive claims (commonly referred to as fake news) about science, two ways in which publics disagree with scientists.

[...]

Conclusion The proliferation of deceptive claims on social media has done a lot to normalize conspiracy, and to some extent conspiratorial worldviews. We can try to dismiss conspiracy theorizing as something undertaken only by a foil-hat-wearing fringe, however when our friends and neighbors (and sometimes ourselves) begin to believe and share conspiracies on social media, we must acknowledge that conspiracy theorizing is much more widespread. And when it becomes commonplace to project conspiratorial motives onto scientific institutions (and not just corporate or governmental ones) merely because information disagrees with our worldviews, we are in danger of entering into a space where knowledge becomes almost completely relative, we cannot engage in rational discussion with those with whom we disagree, and we completely break down the division of cognitive labor on which our society relies. Although we should not be gullible—after all, there are real conspiracies—we must learn how to balance skepticism with trust.

[she-is-ovarit]

@canonicallydaft, I hear you regarding there being a feminist perspective that emphasizes us encouraging girls and women that we're just as good as men and boys at the things we can achieve and accomplish. Sometimes this is a really good perspective to have, but other times this argument point does more harm than good when applied to other things. This perspective shouldn't necessarily be applied to men and women when it comes to sports. A much better approach to take could be equity as opposed to equality, and this is what having separate sports divisions based on sex is meant to do:

The idea that men and women's bodies are the same just isn't true, and much like claiming that climate change doesn't exist, evolution isn't real, or that the earth is really flat, it's science denialism to argue male and female bodies are the same and can actually really undermine feminism and women's rights if this perspective is adopted on a widespread scale. Our bodies are incredibly different due to biological sex and the recognition of this is actually one of the core foundations in feminism (and in biology, which is the field of science that's probably attempted to be most suppressed/attacked).

Because of our sex, women are sexually exploited on a massive scale. We are also much easier for men to physically take advantage of and overpower in comparison to other men. On average, women are about 52-66% as strong as men, and so it takes women much more time, work, and energy to achieve the strength of just an average man. Can you see why it might be important to recognize this? Do you think it's right or feminist to hold women to a male default standard of physical strength and/or endurance?

Inclusivity can be a really good thing when applied to many scenarios. People who argue for inclusivity often draw from their understanding of forms of racism in the US that came into being during the Jim Crow laws. Activists fought hard for Black people's rights to be included in white spaces/white infrastructure, and this was supremely important.

But we can't and shouldn't apply the same arguments or goals of one oppressed/marginalized group to another, because oppression exists in different axis (sex, race, class, ability, sexual orientation, etc.), and one argument or goal that helps one group can actually in turn seriously be harmful when applied to another group. In this instance, inclusivity when applied on the axis of sex instead of race actually really hurts women.

Inclusivity can hurt women not just in terms of us being more physically overpowered by men due to our sex and this risk increasing when men are included into our spaces, but also because one of the things women struggle globally as a group with is female socialization. This socialization boils down to us putting other people's needs before our own, to the point where we psychologically lack boundaries or having a really, really difficult time enforcing them (this is why "fawning" is such a common trauma response for women).

When all of these things come together (the inclusion of men into women's spaces/activities, the biological fact that male people are on average stronger and more prone to committing sexual violence, and female socialization), what do you think the effect would be? Who would this benefit most?

i love it when so called feminists are like "yeah they have to keep men and womens sports separate men are way better at everything and would crush the feeble women" and girls just have to be like. ok with that.

[chappell-roans]

I feel like a lot of people try to ignore climate change either out of ignorance or cause it’s too terrifying for them to process

Oh, absolutely. Being faced with mortality and feeling out of control is like the most basic realization of life but that doesn't mean it isn't also the most terrifying one. That's why people opt to ignore it, whether it's climate change or church or whatever. There's no simple, clean fix, it's an ongoing and complete change in theory to the way we live our lives. Humans are generally bad at long-term thinking, especially outside of their own lifetimes. An easier alternative for a lot of people is flat-out denial: hence, climate change deniers on one side of the aisle. No climate change means we don't have to change! Or, somewhat more insidiously somehow: the world is already beyond saving so why bother? It's untrue and it's unhelpful and I get the feeling, I get awash in hopelessness as much as anyone, but we've gotta push through it or we're declaring the earth lost way before it's ready to kill us all. Like there's always going to be doubt and lack of clarity but if climate scientists can work everyday and know that we can make the world better for ourselves, I'm going to fucking believe them and support them and yes I'll wallow sometimes because I have a bunch of disorders that make my brain hate me and life sometimes but you know what, we can still make life better.

[dukeofriven]

‘The AfD declares autistic climate activist to be “mentally challenged” and firms-up its campaign platform around the idea of publicly ridiculing a teenager.’ Throw their pathetic fear of a teen back in their faces. Mock them at every opportunity. Smear their faces in their own shit until they can’t breathe without opening their mouths to swallow it. Remind them always that they are small and weak and frightened by a 15 year old - jeer them, giggle in their presence them, howl with laughter every time they try and pass their crayon scrawl as policy.  Make their every waking second a taunting Mean Girls hell in which they can never be free of the knowledge that everyone knows they’re nothing but a pathetic joke. And every time they try and draw strength from that, to try and don the mantle of the oppressed underdog, punch them in the nose and remind them that their bodies are as fragile as their egos and their ideas. Push them down again and again and again. Whisper in their ear that their Nazis forebears used to get treated like this - until one day they found the courage to stand up for themselves and their beliefs and fight. And then they lost. And then we killed them. And then we displayed their bloated corpses for all the world to jeer. And then we destroyed everything they had built and they were powerless to stop us because these failed, pathetic losers put their faith in beliefs that were wrong. Demonstrably false. Literally untrue. The Reich to last a thousand years never grew old enough to get a driver’s license. The Nazis who were humiliated in the Beer Hall Putsch vowed that from that day forward no one would ever treat them like that again. But we did. Because they’re losers who fail. These are people whose ideology gives them cover for advocating some of the most heinous acts this earth has ever seen. The alt-right, whether they openly identify as Nazis or not, are Nazis, and are in accord with the exact same belief system that advocated for genocide, racial supremacy, patriarchy, antiquated conservatism, and other such debunked delusions even if they distance themselves from the Nazi label. When someone’s ideology gives them cover for being a piece of shit like that then you should oblige and treat them as such. Drag them into the nearest restroom and give them a couple swirlies -shit belongs in the toilet, after all. Alright. Despite my bellicose rhetoric above I am a pacifist at heart - violence ultimately begets more violence. So don’t let them drown. Don’t break any bones. Don’t go pulling off fingers the way you might the wings of a tiny, helpless, pathetic, utterly incapable-of-fighting-back mosquito before carelessly squashing it with the tip of the nail on your pinkie finger. Even though you could. Easily. It would not be hard.

But there’s a difference between perpetuating a cycle of violence by starting a blood feud or spending decades abusing someone emotionally and physically and dragging someone who said “you’re a weak effeminate pansy degenerate who wouldn't exist in our pure society and its not hate speech to want a country for white straight men and women with shared moral values” into a park bathroom and demonstrating certain inaccuracies of that argument by clamming their heads into the urinal and forcing them to eat a urinal cake. It’s not the most intellectually robust rebuttal, but you could rephrase “you’re a weak effeminate pansy degenerate who wouldn't exist in our pure society” as “you’re a stinky doo doo head who sucks and when I grow up I’m gonna be strong enough to throw you into space.” They’re functionally identical in terms of tone, content, self-aggrandizement, and mental acuity. There is no intellectually appropriate response to that kind of infantile argument - these are not intelligent people. I don’t mean ‘lacking in formal education.’ I mean they’re stupid. ‘Burn the blankets to warm the bed’ stupid. Leibowitzian ‘Proud To Be A Cretin’ stupid. ‘Smart Men Stay Ignorant; Leaning’s For Libs’ stupid. Their positions should not be treated as intellectually valid out of a misguided belief that a good intellectual should be open-minded to every idea every time it’s proposed. Sure, absolute-free-speech defenders always willing to normalize Nazi “discourse”, I’ll concede that the world-is-flat guy might have had a right to explain what his beliefs were. In 5000 BC, When nobody had heard them before and we didn’t know what he was going to say. Eight thousand years later, though, indulging his ancestor who’s just going to repeat the same points that were wrong eight millennia ago is lunacy.

A good intellectual knowns when something isn’t worth their time and acts accordingly. Sometimes this means not letting someone fill the air with hate speech out of slavish obligation to letter of freedom of expression instead of its spirit (when someone is granted the freedom to debate the idea that everyone who disagrees with them should be purged, you only harm freedom, not celebrate it.) Sometimes this means force-feeding an advocate of genocide a tasty lunchtime treat of urine and quaternary ammonium compounds while cheerfully wondering aloud what might happen if there’s still unswallowed cake in their mouth and you need to resolve certain biological necessities.

The first mistake we ever made with the alt-right was to leave the whoopee cushion at home, when we should have attended their every rally with an armful and play them constantly every time they tried to speak. “There’s nothing wrong with saying I’m pr-THPPTPHTPHPHHPH proud to be THPPTPHTPHPHHPH be white and to stand up for THPPTPHTPHPHHPH the achieveTHPPTPHTPHPHHPHments of the whitTHPPTPHTPHPHHPH of the whTHPPTPHTPHPHHPH white THPPTPHTPHPHHPH white raTPHRRURURURPHH-P-P-P- whiP-P-P-P whP-P-P whiteP-P-P-P WHITE RACTRRHPRPRP-P-P ... ... ... *cough* ... ... WHITE POWFFFFWWWPWPPRPRPRPRPRPRSQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAKTRRRHHPPPP-PPP-RPPP-PPP-P-P-P-PLIPPPP-THRP plip! We should attend their rallies and events with boxes of red noses, rainbow wigs, and buckets of greasepaint and throw ourselves upon them until we’ve forced them into wearing their true colours. Remember: every SS officer who looked so forbidding in their tailored uniform stank of their own disgusting sweat because all that blackened leather couldn’t breathe and every SS trooper standing in that imposing formation was broiling in their own filth. Nothing but bozos in fetish gear. The vaunted Wehrmacht had their uniforms rot off their bodies in the snows of Stalingrad as they had to strip the dead for scraps and rags, freezing to death, starving to death, because Hitler - the great genius who personally involved himself with the running of his forces almost to a tactical level - he didn’t think they needed to be resupplied. The Nazis lost. The Nazis lost so badly their monuments were ground into dust, their leaders bodies destroyed or abandoned in the mud, the dreams of Germania proven nothing but a dusty model in a museum devoted to cursing the Nazi’s memory. Nothing but a shrine to hubris and grossly over-estimating your own abilities. The legacy of the Nazis is humiliation, shame, and utter fucking failure. Neo-Nazis, this ‘new’ alt-right whose philosophies are all old, have as their heroes men who did nothing but fail, who achieved nothing but to have their life’s work expunged, debased, destroyed, and condemned by the world not just in their time but for generations after. Not misunderstood geniuses but understood buffoons. Never, ever, let them forget this - and never, ever let them try to turn it into a virtue. No ‘we shall rise again’ narratives. No abyss-to-transformation in some bullshit Cambellian hero’s journey. Their past was not a defeat to inspire them to future victory. They are not the underprivileged hurdle jumper who against all odds and obstacles wins gold at the Olympics, they’re the guy on your track team who once pushed so hard on a door marked pull that he fell through the glass and had to get ten stitches, the guy who got so drunk at an out-of-town meet that he shat his bed at the hotel and tried to hide the dirty sheets in his bags and stunk-up the bus ride home until Coach found out and chewed him out in front of the entire team for being the biggest fucking tool in the whole wide world. Not the guy who was a loner in high school but who found like-minded friends in college, started a cool band where they sang about their sucky pasts, and wound-up a rich and famous with legions of adoring fans. Nah, they’re the guy who was a loner in high school, and in college, and in the job at the napkin distribution company, the guy who retired without a party, spent weeks at a time with no one to talk to, and ultimately died alone - not because he was socially awkward or shy or struggled to communicate, but because he was really unpleasant to be around and even those virtuous folk who try and make sure that nobody is lonely gave up on him because he was such a nasty, loathsome, turd of a human being whose only impact on the world was that he improved it by leaving it. That’s the past of the Nazis. That, too, is their future. Never let them forget this. Their past should embarrass them. Mortify them. There’s is the ideology of pathetic losers. When you march against them, raise high above your heads images of Nazi Germany - not rigid columns of well-armed soldiers or shining tanks rolling off the lines, but the images of their ineptitude. The shuffling columns of defeated, broken men. Their burnt tanks, their downed planes, their sunken ships, their pulverized cities, and all the equipment abandoned in panicked withdrawals or through sheer bureaucratic incompetence. Show images of Jews defiant, the simple act of their still drawing breath spit in the eye of those who thought to see them erased. Humiliate the Nazis again and again and again. They. Failed. The Jews endured, survived, flourished - won. The conquered nations of Europe rebuilt their cultural wonders and their ruined homes and brought back their stolen treasures. They won. The disposed Roma preserved their ways of life despite the will of an entire conquering empire set against them. They won too. The queer communities persecuted for their ‘deviancy’ not only survived they reshaped the post-war world into a place that could no longer sideline them in history. Another victory. The Nazis lost. The Nazi’s failed so completely that they lost not only the territory they had tried to gain but their own nation lay shattered at their feet - politically, socially, economically, spiritually. The Great and Powerful Nazi Party so failed its own people that Germany was sundered into West Germany, East Germany, and Eastern Prussia, promptly swallowed whole by the Societs - the trauma from that lingers generations on. The Nazis not only failed to achieve any of their goals - they failed in the promise made by any such ideology: in joining us we will protect you. They did not just fail to make Germany greater, they literally destroyed it, and left it in pieces. So when you march against the alt-right, these neo-Nazis, Hoist photos of the bloated corpses of the hanged at Nuremberg - their swollen faces distorted in death. Chant the cry “Morons, Not Martyrs!” Remind every alt-right shit-eating soul that they were nothing, are nothing, will always be nothing but failures, losers, and followers of stupid, incompetent, incapable fools. They were, are, shall always, can only ever be wrong. “These are your role models? This is your dream? Failures! Failures! Failures!” “Be A Nazi To Lose It All” Do not, for a single solitary second, treat their ideas as grown-up. Do not, for a moment, give them the cover of adulthood, maturity, or sober discourse. Do not, for one second of time, treat them with respect so long as they seek to hold power over you, to be feared by you, to be thought of as an enemy and not something foul but forgettable to be scrapped off your shoe. Never give them an inch of fear to feed their starving egos. The man who said that rocks were soft as butter and as edible as custard would be given no weight as a person of substantive ideas - Nazis deserve the same derision.  And do not allow them a moment of privacy to brood on the indignities you heap upon them, to be like a teen sulking in their bedroom crafting fantasies about how one day they’ll be proven right and everyone will be sorry. Drag them out into the light again and again and again, give them no moment of peace, allow no instant of time to pass when you are not holding images of their ideology’s worthlessness and failure above their heads. No hiding. No sulking. No second to plot or brood or dream. Stake them to the earth, keep them forever in the light, and pummel them with pie until even they can not deny that they are nothing but clowns worthy only of mockery, ridicule, and endless savage laughter.

[scifigeneration]

Why won't scientific evidence change the minds of Loch Ness monster true believers?

by Artūrs Logins

If you’re convinced Nessie’s real, would science unconvince you? AP Photo/Norm Goldstein

You may have noticed a curious recent announcement: An international research team plans to use state-of-the-art DNA testing to establish once and for all whether the Loch Ness monster exists.

Regardless of the results, it’s unlikely the test will change the mind of anyone who firmly believes in Nessie’s existence. As a philosopher working on the notion of evidence and knowledge, I still consider the scientists’ efforts to be valuable. Moreover, this episode can illustrate something important about how people think more generally about evidence and science.

Discounting discomfiting evidence

Genomicist Neil Gemmell, who will lead the international research team in Scotland, says he looks forward to “(demonstrating) the scientific process.” The team plans to collect and identify free-floating DNA from creatures living in the waters of Loch Ness. But whatever the eDNA sampling finds, Gemmell is well aware the testing results will most likely not convince everyone.

A long-standing theory in social psychology helps explain why. According to cognitive dissonance theory, first developed by Leon Festinger in the 1950s, people seek to avoid the internal discomfort that arises when their beliefs, attitudes or behavior come into conflict with each other or with new information. In other words, it doesn’t feel good to do something you don’t value or that contradicts your deeply held convictions. To deal with this kind of discomfort, people sometimes attempt to rationalize their beliefs and behavior.

It’s hard to stop waiting for an expected UFO. Joseph Sohm/Shutterstock.com

In a classic study, Festinger and colleagues observed a small doomsday cult in Chicago who were waiting for a UFO to save them from impending massive destruction of Earth. When the prophecy didn’t come true, instead of rejecting their original belief, members of the sect came to believe that the God of Earth changed plans and no longer wanted to destroy the planet.

Cult members so closely identified with the idea that a UFO was coming to rescue them that they couldn’t just let the idea go when it was proven wrong. Rather than give up on the original belief, they preferred to lessen the cognitive dissonance they were experiencing internally.

Loch Ness monster true believers may be just like the doomsday believers. Giving up their favorite theory could be too challenging. And yet, they’ll be sensitive to any evidence they hear about that contradicts their conviction, which creates a feeling of cognitive discomfort. To overcome the dissonance, it’s human nature to try to explain away the scientific evidence. So rather than accepting that researchers’ inability to find Nessie DNA in Loch Ness means the monster doesn’t exist, believers may rationalize that the scientists didn’t sample from the right area, or didn’t know how to identify this unknown DNA, for instance.

Cognitive dissonance may also provide an explanation for other science-related conspiracy theories, such as flat Earth beliefs, climate change denial and so on. It may help account for reckless descriptions of reliable media sources as “fake news.” If one’s deeply held convictions don’t fit well with what media say, it’s easier to deal with any inner discomfort by discrediting the source of the new information rather than revising one’s own convictions.

Philosophy of knowledge

If psychology may explain why Loch Ness Monster fans believe what they do, philosophy can explain what’s wrong with such beliefs.

The error here comes from an implicit assumption that to prove a claim, one has to rule out all of the conceivable alternatives – instead of all the plausible alternatives. Of course scientists haven’t and cannot deductively rule out all of the conceivable possibilities here. If to prove something you have to show that there is no conceivable alternative to your theory, then you can’t really prove much. Maybe the Loch Ness monster is an alien whose biology doesn’t include DNA.

So the problem is not that believers in the existence of the Loch Ness monster or climate change deniers are sloppy thinkers. Rather, they are too demanding thinkers, at least with respect to some selected claims. They adopt too-high standards for what counts as evidence, and for what is needed to prove a claim.

Philosophers have long known that too-high standards for knowledge and rational belief lead to skepticism. Famously, 17th century French philosopher René Descartes suggested that only “clear and distinct perceptions” should function as the required markers for knowledge. So if only some special inner feeling can guarantee knowledge and we can be wrong about that feeling – say, due to some brain damage – then what can be known?

This line of thought has been taken to its extreme in contemporary philosophy by Peter Unger. He asserted that knowledge requires certainty; since we are not really certain of much, if anything at all, we don’t know much, if anything at all.

One promising way to resist a skeptic is simply not to engage in trying to prove that the thing whose existence is doubted exists. A better approach might be to start with basic knowledge: assume we know some things and can draw further consequences from them.

A knowledge-first approach that attempts to do exactly this has recently gained popularity in epistemology, the philosophical theory of knowledge. British philosopher Timothy Williamson and others including me have proposed that evidence, rationality, belief, assertion, cognitive aspects of action and so on can be explained in terms of knowledge.

This idea is in contrast to an approach popular in the 20th century, that knowledge is true justified belief. But counterexamples abound that show one can have true justified belief without knowledge.

Say, you check your Swiss watch and it reads 11:40. You believe on this basis that it is 11:40. However, what you haven’t noticed is that your typically super reliable watch has stopped exactly 12 hours ago. And by incredible chance it happens that, now, when you check your watch, it is in fact 11:40. In this case you have a true and justified or rational belief but still, it doesn’t seem that you know that it is 11:40 – it is just by pure luck that your belief that it’s 11:40 happens to be true.

Our newer knowledge-first approach avoids defining knowledge altogether and rather posits knowledge as fundamental. It’s its own fundamental entity – which allows it to undercut the skeptical argument. One may not need to feel certain or have a sensation of clarity and distinctness in order to know things. The skeptical argument doesn’t get off the ground in the first place.

When it comes to science versus skeptic, evidence doesn’t always matter. AP Photo, File

Knowledge and the skeptic

The eDNA analysis of Loch Ness may not be enough to change the minds of those who are strongly committed to the existence of the lake’s monster. Psychology may help explain why. And lessons from philosophy suggest this kind of investigation may not even provide good arguments against conspiracy theorists and skeptics.

A different and, arguably, better argument against skepticism questions the skeptic’s own state of knowledge and rationality. Do you really know that we know nothing? If not, then there may be something we know. If yes, then we can know something and, again, you are wrong in claiming that knowledge is not attainable.

A strategy of this kind would challenge the evidential and psychological bases for true believers’ positive conviction in the existence of Nessie. That’s quite different from attempting to respond with scientific evidence to each possible skeptical challenge.

But the rejection of a few true believers doesn’t detract from the value of this kind of scientific research. First and foremost, this research is expected to produce much more precise and fine-grained knowledge of biodiversity in Loch Ness than what we have without it. Science is at its best when it avoids engaging with the skeptic directly and simply provides new knowledge and evidence. Science can be successful without ruling out all of the possibilities and without convincing everyone.

Artūrs Logins is a Visiting Postdoctoral Researcher in Philosophy at the University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

This article was originally published on The Conversation, a content partner of Sci Fi Generation.

[jkottke]

Flat Earthers and the double-edged sword of American magical thinking

Alan Burdick recently wrote a piece for The New Yorker about the "burgeoning" flat Earth movement, a group of people who believe, against simple & overwhelming evidence, that the Earth is not spherical1 but flat.

If you are only just waking up to the twenty-first century, you should know that, according to a growing number of people, much of what you've been taught about our planet is a lie: Earth really is flat. We know this because dozens, if not hundreds, of YouTube videos describe the coverup. We've listened to podcasts -- Flat Earth Conspiracy, The Flat Earth Podcast -- that parse the minutiae of various flat-Earth models, and the very wonkiness of the discussion indicates that the over-all theory is as sound and valid as any other scientific theory. We know because on a clear, cool day it is sometimes possible, from southwestern Michigan, to see the Chicago skyline, more than fifty miles away -- an impossibility were Earth actually curved. We know because, last February, Kyrie Irving, the Boston Celtics point guard, told us so. "The Earth is flat," he said. "It's right in front of our faces. I'm telling you, it's right in front of our faces. They lie to us."

John Gruber remarked on Burdick's piece by saying:

In recent years I've begun to feel conflicted about the internet. On the one hand, it's been wonderful in so many ways. I've personally built my entire career on the fact that the internet enables me to publish as a one-person operation. But on the other hand, before the internet, kooks were forced to exist on the fringe. There've always been flat-earther-types denying science and John Birch Society political fringers, but they had no means to amplify their message or bond into large movements.

Another way to put this is that all the people who bought those News of the World-style magazines from the grocery checkout -- UFO sightings! Elvis lives! NASA faked the Moon landing! new treatment lets you live 200 years! etc.! -- were able to find each other, organize, and mobilize because of the internet. And then they decided to elect one of themselves President.

I recently downloaded the audiobook of Kurt Andersen's Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History and am looking forward to listening to it on my summer roadtrip. Here's part of the synopsis:

In this sweeping, eloquent history of America, Kurt Andersen shows that what's happening in our country today -- this post-factual, "fake news" moment we're all living through -- is not something new, but rather the ultimate expression of our national character. America was founded by wishful dreamers, magical thinkers, and true believers, by hucksters and their suckers. Fantasy is deeply embedded in our DNA.

Over the course of five centuries -- from the Salem witch trials to Scientology to the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, from P. T. Barnum to Hollywood and the anything-goes, wild-and-crazy sixties, from conspiracy theories to our fetish for guns and obsession with extraterrestrials -- our love of the fantastic has made America exceptional in a way that we've never fully acknowledged. From the start, our ultra-individualism was attached to epic dreams and epic fantasies -- every citizen was free to believe absolutely anything, or to pretend to be absolutely anybody.

Gruber's point about the internet being a double-edged sword appears to be echoed here by Andersen about American individualism. Sure, this "if people disagree with you, you must be doing something right" spirit is responsible for the anti-vaxxer movement, conspiracy theories that 9/11 was an inside job & Newtown didn't happen, climate change denialism, and anti-evolutionism, but it also gets you things like rock & roll, putting men on the Moon, and countless discoveries & inventions, including the internet.

More properly, the Earth is an oblate spheroid.↩

[lawrencedienerthings]

Littwin: Donald Trump visits California, apparently to remind people he’s a climate change denier

#makessense🗽 🏊 🏛 🔭

get headlines https://thecherrycreeknews.com

Donald Trump brought yet another battle in the American culture wars to California, which makes sense. I believe most of our culture battles have been fought on that sometimes less than sacred ground.

This time, it wasn’t medical science, or a dependence on miracles, up for debate. It wasn’t guns. Or racial injustice. Or athletes and the American flag. Or immigrants as rapists. Or children in cages. Or dead soldiers as losers and suckers. Or what Trump knew about COVID and when he knew it. Or of Trump advisers — one of whom just predicted a left-wing armed insurrection — emasculating the CDC. Or even — and this has been the most unexpected entry — the role of the United States Post Office in, well, delivering the mail.

No, this time, it was climate science, and while Trump had, of course, withdrawn us from the Paris accords — because he could — and while he had put an end to a long series of regulations protecting the environment— because he could — this was Trump face to face with a climate-related disaster, taking a stance that no president other than Trump would have the nerve/ignorance to take on today in the face of so many non-Biblical burning bushes. It’s almost as if Trump were trying to push away any moderate voters.

Mike Littwin

It wasn’t that long ago that climate change was still arguable, although not among the overwhelming majority of climate scientists. These days, even the oil companies want you to think they are on board. If you watch their TV ads, you’ll see them present themselves as friends to the environment. 

I can remember six years ago when Cory Gardner first ran for the Senate against Mark Udall, a major environmentalist, and challenged him on carbon capture, around the same time he was saying Udall was stuck on abortion rights, which, Gardner insisted, would not be under threat. Now Gardner says he’s a national champion in fighting climate change. I believe the correct assessment would be national straggler. And as for abortion rights, well, he’s straggling there, too.

But Trump, Gardner’s much-embraced candidate in the presidential race, went so much further, straight into flat-earth territory. Even as wildfires rage up and down the West Coast, moving now to Idaho, as we in Colorado still have fires to fight, Donald Trump debated science with Wade Crowfoot, California’s natural resources secretary.

“That science is going to be key,” Crowfoot told Trump, “because if we ignore that science and sort of put our head in the sand and think it’s all about vegetation management, we’re not going to succeed together protecting Californians.”

To which Trump replied, with a Trump-like smirk, “It’ll start getting cooler. You just watch.”

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When Crowfoot said, “I wish science agreed with you,” Trump went all on in climate denial, saying, “Well, I don’t think science knows, actually.” 

That got a laugh in the room, swear to God, even as six of the 20 largest fires — three of the top five according to record keeping that began in the 1930s — have hit California this year. Not to mention record temperatures. According to an August paper in Environmental Research Letters (h/t Axios), the number of autumn days with “extreme fire weather” in California has doubled since the 1980s. In Colorado, 16 of the state’s largest fires have come in the past 20 years.

Biden jumped on Trump’s take on climate science, of course, and brought it back to the suburbs, where Trump argues, somehow, that a combination of Biden, AOC and, Black Lives Matter and antifa will destroy them.

Calling Trump a “climate arsonist,” Biden said, “Donald Trump’s climate denial may not have caused these fires and record floods and record hurricanes, but if he gets a second term, these hellish events will continue to become more common, more devastating, and more deadly.

“Meanwhile, Donald Trump warns that integration is threatening our suburbs. That’s ridiculous. You know what is actually threatening our suburbs? Wildfires are burning the suburbs of the West. Floods are wiping out suburban neighborhoods in the Midwest. Hurricanes are imperiling suburban life along our coast.”

READ: More columns by Mike Littwin.

It would seem to be a good issue for Biden. According to recent polling from Pew Research Center, nearly two-thirds (65%) of Americans say the federal government needs to do more to reduce effects of climate change. And 79% say developing alternative energy should be a priority while only 20% say that oil, coal and natural gas resources should be expanded. There’s more. You can check it out here. 

I’m not a scientist, but I know enough to give credence to the scientists who study this stuff. 

If you spend any time at all as a reporter in Colorado, you become far too knowledgeable in the ways of wildfires. You don’t have to be a reporter, of course. You just have to live in Colorado. You may remember when then-Gov. Bill Owens said it looked as if all of Colorado was burning, and everyone — including at least one long-haired columnist — made fun of him for panicking would-be tourists. That was the infamous Hayman fire from 2002. All of Colorado wasn’t burning, but a hell of a lot of it was. And a hell of a lot of Colorado has been burning every fire season since.

I ventured into that fire a few times. I wasn’t a rookie. When I moved to LA from the East Coast in the 70s, the only thing I knew about wildfires was what I’d learned from Smokey Bear. Until that day my wife, Susie, woke at 3 a.m. to a fire, driven by 60 mile-an-hour Santa Ana winds, in the hills behind our house. The fire came within a few hundred yards. One hill would turn into an inferno, the wind would pick up, and then the fire would jump to the next, as if someone had dropped a tank of lighter fluid on it. We had to evacuate, but our neighborhood came through unscathed. 

When I moved to Colorado, the story was much the same. During the Hayman fire, I was on a press tour surveying the damage. We were in our protective gear, walking among the burned trees and vegetation, with the fire still burning along the ground, when we were told to get back on the bus. NOW!!!

It was a rickety old school bus, fit for reporters and not much else. The wind had picked up, the fire had turned and now it was chasing us. It seems we journalists were the last to know to clear the area. It was like a bad movie. In fact, I kept thinking about that terrible movie Twister when people were trying to outrun a tornado.

The driver knew the drill. That bus hit speeds I’m guessing it had never reached before. It also hit fences. And behind us, we could hear, like gunfire, exploding treetops, one after the other. Because we’re reporters, and we’re supposed to be fearless, we made our jokes, but it was really only funny when it was all over.

We reached a place where firefighters were resting, assuming that would be a safe spot. But just as I was interviewing one weary firefighter, I heard a shout to get back on the bus. NOW!!! The firefighters got on their buses. We got on ours. Trees were exploding again. The bus was hitting fences again. We somehow got out safely. Others haven’t been so fortunate, of course. In Colorado, we know all about loss, the loss of life and property. We know it has already been another terrible year, for fires, for smoke, and for all of it to come in the midst of a pandemic. 

And you don’t have to be a scientist to know the only sound we should all be hearing is, do something NOW!!!

Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow.

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from Straight News https://ift.tt/3c0HQsG

[boneless-mika]

The hbomberguy Video Rotation

Those of you who know me may also know that when I need something chill in the background (I pretty much stop operating without background noise so that’s 99% of the time) I put on an hbomberguy video and quite controversially listen to it while doing another chill activity such as playing video games or doing sudoku or even sometimes when I’m caring for my pets. However, not just any hbomberguy video will do (I enjoyed the Transformers Midlife Crisis one but I’ve never returned to it) so I have a group of homberguy videos I watch when I’m bored. These are them. I guess they could also serve as recommendations.

Sherlock is Garbage and Here’s Why

This is an interesting video essay about how BBC’s Sherlock is bad. It’s very weirdly calming and also interesting therefore it’s great to listen to when you don’t have the energy to pay attention but are also painstakingly bored. Of course hbomberguy is absolutely correct about everything because opinions on media are objective //sarcasm.

Fallout 3 is Garbage and Here’s Why

Maybe I just like when hbomberguy says things are bad. This is a really interesting video about Fallout 3 and morality in video games (that’s the thing from the video that stuck with me the most, most likely bc I was more focused at that time). It’s just a good time.

Climate Denial: A Measured Response

I enjoy when people debunk absurd claims. I like when hbomberguy’s like “these people are wrong”. Maybe that’s just how I experience schadenfreude given I don’t feel it the normal way. No other way to put it. Also the visuals are very engaging, I have actively watched this video with my eyeballs more than twice.

Flat Earthers: A Measured Response

Pretty much the same as Climate Denial but this one is more chill bc believing the earth is flat does less harm than believing global warming isn’t happening/isn’t caused by humans. Quite frankly I find this hilarious and you must watch it with your eyeballs at least once.

2017 Doctor Who Special Analysis

Yeah, that episode sucked and it’s quite cathartic to listen to someone else telling me it sucked. It’s the worst modern Doctor Who episode.

Woke Brands

This video is low-key hilarious. I have always been a bit out of it when watching this video so all I remember is the gorilla playing drums and not what it was an ad for.

Pick-Up Artistry: A Measured Response

I just enjoy it.

The Golden One: A Measured Response

It’s so nice to just listen to someone say “this person is bad” when said person is a nazi. I don’t think hbomberguy ever calls The Golden One a nazi but he fits the definition.

Pathologic is Genius, and Here’s Why

:o Maybe I didn’t only like negativity all along. Maybe I have a happy bone in my body. Psych! This is a video essay about a game that makes you suffer, and suffer you shall. However, I would watch the video just to hear about the story of the game. Pathologic’s story is a beautiful thing. It will make you suffer though because it wants you to understand the reality of the situation. Do not play Pathologic.

[el-smacko]

As the author and submitter of this post I’d like to add something I wish I’d included when I drafted this submission: sometimes, probably more often than either side would like, conservatism really is “common sense.” If it’s considered a fact that scarcity exists, if unions really did just take your money because they’re the mafia, if being trans was a mental disorder, if climate change is a debate, if taxation was theft, if people are “illegal” they commit more crime, if bureaucracy was always worse than privatization, if the constitution is a biblical document, then yeah, conservatism is just common sense. But it takes curiosity and effort to see beneath the surface, to see that scarcity is artificial and leveraged for profit instead of the equitable distribution of our surplus of resources; that unions protect the rights of workers because right now we don’t live in a meritocracy with high-wage jobs available to anyone who bothers to get them and a robust social safety net for those that can’t; that being trans isn’t a disorder, but dysphoria is, and healthy outcomes are born out of living according to your trans identity, not suppressing it (the exact rationale against conversion therapy we fail to see because we really suck at learning); that climate change denial is exactly—without hyperbole—as irrational and deliberately ignorant as belief in a flat-earth; that taxes are payment for literally all the benefits of living a public life—roads, education, defense, etc.—if you have wealth enough to be taxed; that in the vast majority of cases, being “illegal” is their only crime because immigrants actually commit less crime; that making anything necessary to life for profit always leads to price-gouging and cost-cutting while people go without or die; and that the US is alone among its peer nations in having such an antique constitution with a new, aggressive reluctance to amending it. Conservatism takes less critical thinking, research, empathy—just less THINKING in general. Conspiracy theories like QAnon come from the right because the facts support the left. Conservative think-tanks were established in the US after the non-partisan research institutions of the mid-20th century determined that socialistic policies benefitted society. Colleges and universities are being maligned as left-wing indoctrination centers, but it’s pretty convenient that places of research and learning don’t seem to produce very much evidence for conservatism in general. Their arguments are, in a word, FACILE. They’re easy to make and easy to remember, they require no critical thinking or research. Conservatives push “voter ID” laws and purge voter rolls because “shouldn’t you be able to prove who you are?” or “shouldn’t an informed citizen know if they’ve registered to vote?” Except we know even from research that conservatives did themselves that people of color who are more likely to vote liberal are less likely to have the required IDs. We know that voter fraud is incredibly rare and that non-citizens don’t vote because an easily-identifiable felony would get them deported. Puerto Rico and D.C. aren’t states because their high minority populations would vote Democrat. Republicans do everything they can to keep non-whites from voting or to make non-white votes matter less. They appeal to base nationalist instincts among poor whites to make them vote against their own interests and try to narrow access to public education, the quality of which they do everything they can to undermine. College is kept expensive to deny poorer people access to the information that would undermine their arguments and because the protracted poverty of attendance stifles social activism.

TL;DR: education is a threat to the facile positions of Republicans and conservatives, so they prevent, pollute, and suppress it at every level.

2020 is shaping up to be the Worst Year Ever (the title of a podcast about primarily US politics you should follow for November) for political reasons and I’ve heard a lot of folks say “being ‘apolitical’ is political” or “not choosing is a choice” and they’re right, but I rarely hear exactly WHY they’re right so if you’ll pardon me for a moment:

For LGBTQ+ people, the consistent rolling back of our rights by Republicans and their conservative justices (many of whom including a SCOTUS justice Mitch McConnell deliberately delayed letting Obama fill) isn’t “just political,” it’s our lives, our ability to function in our communities on every level from using the appropriate bathroom to serving in the military (which if you’re LGBTQ+ I strongly advise against for reasons I’ll get to).

For people of color, an increasingly militarized police force, thoroughly infiltrated by white nationalists and abusers (domestic abuse is between 200-400% more prevalent among families of police), is a threat to the safety and security owed to all citizens by their government and, if you’re a bleeding-heart liberal like me, to all residents regardless of “lawfulness.” But there’s also that one of his first pardons was Joe Arpaio, who reinstituted chain gangs (prison industrial slavery is the latest in the US’s long lineage of enslaving and literally disenfranchising Americans of color) and targeted Mexican Americans.

For women, when DJT says regularly at his rallies that “he won the women” but the majority of only white women voted for him, it should be enough for all women to understand that as a self-admitted nationalist, his conception of women is narrow and excludes many of our sisters of color.

For our Jewish and Muslim siblings, his close ties to white evangelicals should be especially troubling since their churches are deeply rooted in white nationalism and antisemitism. Within a week of calling himself a nationalist the worst antisemitic attack in US history was committed. He proposed, regardless of its narrower ultimate product, a ban of “all Muslims” from entering the US. Having a Jewish son-in-law and supporting the government of Israel are screens to hide the ugly nationalism of his supporters.

But even ignoring all that, which you shouldn’t, isn’t it a little convenient that the parts of our identity under constant attack are all “political” if we speak up about them? Conservatives get to be aloof and call us hyper-partisan because they’ve succeeded in pushing the narrative that we’re the only ones being political and that centrism and apathy are somehow intellectual instead of uninformed. It’s the fatal flaw, a myopia really, in the Democratic Party: they’ve bought into the narrative that conservatism in any other country is “common sense” in the US, while any degree of leftism is radical, so they stick closer to the center and, by extension, closer to conservatism. The data rather clearly shows that, as Republicans become more and more conservative, sprinting toward the fascism at their end of the spectrum, Democrats either center themselves or don’t dare go left toward the basic welfare of their people to avoid being called “socialist,” though they’re far short of that extreme, communism. It’s why the ahistorical “fascism is of the left” fantasy is popular among conservatives, because to them they can’t be fascists because they can’t be extremists. It’s why Republicans get to elect DJT but the Democratic establishment is getting all worked up about “electability.” It’s why Republicans get to send two TV personalities to the White House but Democrats are just “Hollywood elites.” They get to be extreme, but we have to settle for moderates. The narrative that the right is “traditional” and “rational” and “common sense” and “facts over feelings” has made it impossible for them to look political even as they buttress a fascist regime, but we’re whiny socialists for resisting, for existing in spheres they’ve labeled extreme. As we look toward 2020, we need to call out bullshit, come out of our various closets, and resist. If DJT gets elected again because we choose a moderate or one of his worshipers kills his opponent because they think the US is at stake, we need to be prepared to not hide anymore, or, at the very least, to PLEASE learn something.

[tritoincol]

ON CLIMATE CHANGE

I'm not exactly a big YouTube watcher. Any time I open YouTube, all I watch is either Kurtzgesagt or Ted-Ed. But last day, I went to YouTube just so as to subscribe to a YouTuber whose videos I have never watched. And I have solid reasons why.

The world is changing. It always has. Since the time of the advent of the first human, change has occured and it was inevitable. Sometimes it was objected (eg: the Gutenberg Press. People thought the end was near when Gutenberg printed the first Bible) or sometimes it was completely disproven (eg: Lamarckism, Geocentric theory) or at other times, the discoverer was killed (eg: Nikola Tesla, Galileo Galilei). But with change, there comes problems. When industrialization took place, there was no turning back. The air was filled with all kinds of particles, completely unwanted and destroying lives and cities (eg: Great Smog of London). It's become so bad now, that the average life span of a person living in Delhi is 22 years. 

Dante Alighieri once wrote, "The darkest places in Hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality at times of moral crisis". And, boy, was he right. It took 13 days before the Amazon forest fire was revealed to be public. The Brazilian Government said that they did not extinguish the fire because of "political reasons". French president Emmanuel Macron said that the lives of billions of people were at stake and Brazil was being ignorant. Brazil agreed to set out the fire if Macron issued a public statement apologising for humiliating Brazil. Like a mentally ill loner once said "You get what you fucking deserve", now half the kids in Brazil have asthma.

Climate change is taking a big toll on the planet. More than eleven thousand scientists from many different countries came together to make one public statement: "Please panic. Climate change will kill us all." The are still millions out there who do not believe climate change exists, let alone that it's happening. Most world leaders deny climate change and promote denialism so as to acquire public support. Trump is a denialist and fired every single climate change activist from his senate. He also issued a denialist in the environment preservation office. Modi denies climate change and that goes unnoticed since he doesn't educate his people to understand what's climate change and he has had education only till third grade or something (eg: When he wanted to bomb Pakistan, the Army Commander informed him how the planes could be spotted through Pak radars. Modi said that it was a cloudy day and the planes could fly through the clouds to avoid detection). 

Partial thanks to the internet. Anybody could post anything on the internet. It could be true, it could be false, it could be funny, it could be poetic. By the end, it was hard to determine what was true and what was not. Then came false news warnings, telling people not to trust everything on the internet. Now, people are confused what's true, and what's not. They also end up believing the wrong things {eg: Flat Earth Society(Not that it's wrong, just that it was never right), Anti Vaxxers(Took 15 minutes of research from one report from one quack in the 1990s. In one way Anti Vaxxers are good. Decreases the population and it's survival of the fittest.)}. So now, large part of the population actually believe climate change is a big government setup so as to reduce the waste they have to treat in plants or something. So they just don't give a fuck about the planet.

But then again, it's not all bad. The majority still do believe in climate change and do take the best actions possible by them to slow it down if not stop it. The internet wanted Mr Beast, the YouTuber I mentioned, to plant 20 million trees so as to save the planet. Though it was supposed to be a joke (though all of us wished it was true), Mr Beast responded with a video announcing his biggest project yet. Planting 20 million trees. And it wasn't a joke. The Internet went crazy. Donations poured in from around the world. Everyone could donate. 1$ a tree. But 20 million was too big a number to be achieved even by the masses. So they turned to the memelord, the philanthropist, the Messiah, Elon Musk. Everyone tried to make Elon support the motion by sending tweets and messages. And he responded. He agreed to donate 1 million trees, a move enough for the future of Tesla to be made firm. He just won the internet and everyone would be with him. The internet broke. Everyone was so very happy. The only country to support was Ukraine, who's effort was not gone unnoticed. Ecosia, a search engine for Android, has helped plant more than 70 million trees in 2 years or so. Help arrives from the weirdest of places. Pornhub vowed to plant one tree for every 100 videos watched. There's no statistics about their tree planting though. 

Currently, 17 million trees have been planted and everyone hopes to plant 20 million by Dec 31. If we fail, the earth is doomed. The world's richest countries came together and donated 17 million dollars against climate change. For comparison, The Emoji Movie too 20 million to make. Joker took 65 million. And the world's "richest" countries took only 17 million. So it wouldn't be worrisome if it flops in the box office.

[sethjacob]

Interview with an Astrobiologist Part 5

Here’s Part 5 of my conversation with Graham Lau, an astrobiologist and science communicator who I interviewed to promote Astrobiology #1. Astrobiology is a sci-fi comic that was just successfully funded on Kickstarter, but you still have a little under 24 hours to back the book and get onboard. Our entire interview will be in the behind the scenes edition of the comic.

https://kickstarter.com/projects/sethjacob/astrobiology-1

Do you think that evidence of extra-terrestrial life will be found in our lifetimes?

Hmm. Yes. I personally do. It's weird, right? Because that's no longer science. I'm not judging that on science, I'm judging it more on what I would consider probability. I would consider that the fact that during our lifetimes, that number of exoplanets that we know of is going to start skyrocketing...I mean, we already know of thousands, who knows how long before we have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of worlds around other stars that we know that they're there...

I mean, the James Webb one that you mentioned, if we find an atmosphere, that's like, “Look, it's oxygen, nitrogen, all the major gases.” It seems like you could say, just based on that, right?

Well, there's a lot of possible gas combinations. Vickey Meadows, at University of Washington, and her team from the Virtual Planets Laboratory, have done a lot of really great work on looking at oxygen as a biosignature, as both a positive, but also as a potential false positive biosignature.

So oxygen could be a sign of life. Or it might not be. Really, it comes down to looking at the chemistry of an atmosphere of a world. Seeing everything that we can see, and then seeing if it changes and how it changes over time. Those will be really huge things for us to have happen.

And so yeah, it just seems more likely that if there is life out there, that we're gonna find it soon. And it comes down to that if. Maybe we're alone. Maybe for some staggering, unfathomable reason, we're the only show in town. And all these other stars and worlds are just out there and waiting for us to go and have it. It seems unlikely, but it's possible.

I personally favor the other side of the coin. The side where life is fairly common in the cosmos. Maybe intelligent life is fairly common. And I feel like it's just a matter of time now before we discover that we do have some neighbors, other biospheres on worlds nearby.

And whether or not we discover intelligent life in our lifetimes, is another question. That one, I don't know how far I lean, one way or the other. But as far as just finding life in general, I think it just feels like it going to happen.

Well, it does seem like just besides humans, there are a fair amount of intelligent species on Earth, you know? Like dolphins, whales, some of the greater apes...so it seems like there are multiple intelligent species on Earth. I mean, not as advanced as us, but it seems like if there could be multiple, just on one planet, then the idea that intelligence is likely to emerge seems like a pretty strong possibility, I guess?

Yeah, it feels that way, right? And we have so many intelligent organisms on Earth. Birds using tools. We have these other apes and monkeys who obviously show a lot of social interaction, and have learned to use tools in various ways. We listen to the languages of whales and dolphins, even though we can't speak it and we don't know exactly what they're saying, it seems that they're communicating with a fairly well structured language.

So yeah, intelligence seems like it is an imperative of life itself, at some point, is to start creating intelligent life. But you know, we don't know, I mean, if the formation of intelligence is common on other worlds or not. It would be cool though, if there are alien worlds out there, there are more than one dominant intelligent life form that's created a civilization.

And here on Earth, I think on Earth we just got a little unlucky that we humans got there so fast that nothing else had the chance. Because there are so many other smart organisms out there that, for all we know, could create their own civilizations in the coming millenia and eons. But we're here now, dominating the planet, so when we see something getting intelligent, we then take it, and study it, and put it in a zoo. And we're also just obliterating the climate on our planet and changing things in a way that it's hard for other intelligent species to really create civilizations.

But wouldn't it be cool though, to find some alien world out there where there's more than one, maybe even two or three intelligent civilizations of organisms on the same planet?

It kind of is interesting that there was a point, in our ancient past, where there were multiple hominid species on Earth. So it really could have gone down that way. Neanderthals could've just been an existing species of human on Earth, coexisting with us into the present, if the dice had just rolled a different way.

That's true. That also would depend on whether or not we would allow them to live. Given our war-like nature, the feeling of tribal-ness and of the need to fight the other, to banish the other, has been strong for human populations to through time. And it has been with us. We haven't lost that sense of tribal-ness.

But it would be interesting, if other hominid species, along with us, over a million years ago, and then tens of thousands of years ago, had been also able to create their own civilizations. And work side by side, while not necessarily interbreeding with ours.

Which sci-fi series, or is there a particular story, gets astrobiology and space exploration really right?

Oh man. Great question. There's been so many awesome sci-fi movies and shows out there through time. I absolutely love Star Trek: The Next Generation as a kid. But in the modern time? It's a little bit harder.

I love The Expanse right now. Just an incredible show. Reminds me of a horror video game, kind of intermixed with a really good space-flight science. And a very fun sci-fi story in the background of how humans are interacting with each other in these various places in our Solar System. Because it's possible, it might actually go down that way that we actually find some alien life form, but then whichever government finds it doesn't choose to share it right away with other governments. For whatever reason.

It would be saddening. When I watch that show, I'm so saddened that this protomolecule in the show was find by these terrible people who use it for a bad purpose, for warfare. Rather than sharing it immediately and saying, “Look, we're not alone. Let's study this, but also be very cautious of it.” That's what we would hope for, that scientists and explorers are the ones who find it first and have a chance to share that. As opposed to corporate interests, or military interests.

How do you feel about what seems like the resurgence of a conspiracy theory contingent? These kind of people who deny the moon landing, or are just extremely suspicious of anything NASA does? For instance, Flat Earthers. How does that kind of thing feel to you?

Well, I wouldn't call it a resurgence.

Hmm. Just the internet, now, that makes it seem--

Yeah. I think it's been the growth of the internet itself actually.

Right.

Because before, you had that crazy uncle who would ramble on about some weird thing, like the chem-trails. “Oh yeah, all those particles coming out of the airplane are chemicals that the government uses to control our minds.” And it used to be that that person didn't have anyone else to talk to about these weird ideas they had.

And now with the internet, these people are finding each other and discovering that there's a lot of them that have these opinions. These weird beliefs. One of my biggest problems with a lot of what we call these conspiracy theorists...which, I hate theorist with that, it's conspiracy believers...my biggest problem is that there actually are reasons to to think that there is a conspiracy sometimes.

I mean, there are real conspiracies.

There have been real conspiracies.

Yeah, of course.

There's been some shady stuff. The CIA was giving LSD to people to see how they reacted to it. We have record of that. We know have been things in the past where the government has lied. And we're just getting to a better time where we're admitting that.

And so I wish that these conspiracy believers were more willing to use skepticism and rationalism in trying to find out what's a conspiracy and what's not. Because they make it hard then for anyone else to actually believe there are real conspiracies. You know, when they're talking about all these fake conspiracies, like the moon landing hoax and chem-trails and flat Earth, they're taking away from the possibility for us to really have important, skeptical conversations about whether or not people in our world are doing things and then hiding them from us.

That said, I also feel like a lot of the current movement towards flat Earth and climate denial and chem-trails, I feel like a lot of that, there's a thing going on in our society where people don't trust authority. It used to be that, when you went to school, you trusted your teacher to give you good information. Now, a lot of children are being told by their parents that they can't trust what the teachers say.

And a lot of people don't feel like they can trust what the government says. They don't feel they can trust what scientists and engineers are saying. And the weird thing is, it's very much a movement against credibility, against authority. And even though I kind of understand it to a certain degree, I also find it saddening and very frustrating. Because teachers in school, they want the children to get the best education possible by learning about their place in the world, and then being able to make critical, rational decisions about their place in the world.

And when we have people then learning to distrust teachers, distrust the government, distrust the police, distrust scientists, it really makes it harder then for us to have a more rational society which can look at things critically together. So yeah, there's a much larger thing going on there.

Obviously, it affects us astrobiologists, but it affects everyone. Again, I think a lot of it has to do with internet.

It seems like, in particular, there is a suspicion about anything space-related.

Yes and no. It's weird, amongst some of those believers, you who people who think that aliens are here right now, that our civilization has been influenced by aliens. You have people who think that space exploration is the next big thing. So there's a lot of those people who really want to go to space, who think that we're evolving into this cosmic consciousness.

And then you have others who are like, “NASA lies, NASA's fake. They're not telling us the truth.” All that kind of stuff. You have the whole gambit of different kind of ideas when it comes to that.

If we found evidence of extra-terrestrial life, on Mars or Titan or one of the moons, like Enceladus...what do you think that would mean for people on Earth? How would that impact us?

That's been a great question that a lot of us have asked in astrobiology. How will people react? How will governments react, how will religions react? How will people with different beliefs about their place on the planet and in the cosmos, how will they react?

And sometimes, we present it in our science fiction and in our movies of everyone becoming very antagonistic to it, becoming afraid of them, causing problems for our entire species because of their fear. However, I think a lot of people would hear about this news that we find signs of life, and I think that it would really open up their minds, open up their eyes to the possibilities for life in the cosmos.

I think a lot of people would be very positive in their reception of that discovery. Though I also worry, given our current mindset, that there's too many people out there who would hear about it who would talk about it for a day...and then just kind of let it fade into the ether with the rest of the news. Because our news cycle now, this 24 hour news cycle where we can't talk about an idea for more than a day, is very troubling. I do fear that there would be a lot of people who would just have no reaction, or very little response.

But I think in general, the human response would be very positive.

If we were to be in contact with another intelligence race, do astrobiologists think about how we would even communicate? You think back on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the whole musical tone idea. I guess, mathematically would be the way to do it?

Yeah so, mathematics, as my friend Sarah Welker said recently, is the way in which we interpret the universe. We look at the phenomenon in the universe and use mathematics to understand it. In very many ways, that makes a lot of sense. And so we've talked a lot about how aliens, most likely, would also have discovered mathematics.

But a big question comes down to how will they create the language of their mathematics? Will it be in a way that we can then also share?

Right, like what if they use hexadecimal, what if they use a different mathematics system?

Yeah, they could use different base systems for numbering systems. But there's also potential that maybe just the actual language itself is so radically different in how they understand mathematics that, even though, maybe we'll meet them out in some neighborhood of the cosmos out here in our galaxy...and we'll have two spaceships facing each other, shining lights at each other and lasers at each other. And maybe we'll both be sending out messages in prime numbers or something like that.

But we won't be able to understand each other because we don't have a basis of a basic system for that understanding. We just don't know, but it seems like that mathematics should be the one thing we can share to at least get the ball rolling.

I did love the recent film Arrival. This idea that the aliens had based their language on how their moved time in a nonlinear sense. I found that very intriguing, because of this idea that maybe our perception of the world around us...I mean we use our senses to perceive the world, and our language in very many ways came from our ways of expressing what we're perceiving of the world to other humans.

But maybe, our alien neighbors have very different ways of perceiving the world. And so maybe, their languages would just be very radically different and very difficult for us to discern. So I think it could both be very simple...maybe we'll meet each other and just start talking math, it'll come across very simply. Or, maybe we'll meet and our languages will just be radically different, and we'll just be sitting there jabbering at each other for a very long time. Until someone can figure out some little thing that connects us that we can then actually create a shared language from.

https://kickstarter.com/projects/sethjacob/astrobiology-1

[skeptaiwan]

iLearn.TW Magazine: A Response from Taichung Skeptics in the Pub

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted. -  Ralph Waldo Emerson A new English magazine can be found on the racks around Taichung. It’s a magazine that is concerning to Taichung Skeptics in the Pub. Yes, for some of it’s content, but more so for the style of thinking it represents.

The magazine, ilearn.tw Magazine, makes claims like the Earth being flat and 9-11 being an inside job. They are claims which have been addressed elsewhere, so we won’t go into them here. If you’d like to learn more, please follow these links.

More important than addressing the claims made is to address the underlying thought process behind the magazine. Before I do though, let me take a second to explain who skeptics are and why we do what we do.

Scientific skepticism is not a set of beliefs, like ghosts aren’t real or that Elvis is dead, for example. Skepticism is a process that uses critical thinking and scientific evidence to evaluate whether something is true or not. Many who engage in skepticism are motivated by a compassion to help people think better and avoid scams, frauds and cons. Skeptics also believe in changing one’s mind when they are provided evidence of them being in error.

You might say that skeptics will believe in anything, given the right evidence. But skeptics will subject that evidence to reliable, repeatable methods of verification, a robust kicking of the tires, so to speak. If the evidence holds up, the skeptic will accept it as true, at least tentatively, as there is always the chance that even newer evidence could overturn it.

In many ways, skepticism is a great unifying and democratizing force. Who you are, regardless of race, nationality, age, gender, level of education, or special qualifications, is irrelevant to the skeptic. All that matters is the evidence and arguments you bring to support your claims.

Compare this line of thinking with that on display in the iLearn.tw Magazine, which one could describe as conspiratorial. That label is not meant to be dismissive, as stated before skeptics will consider any and all evidence, Instead, we use the term to be descriptive. Critical freethinkers, or truthers are also common names used by people who subscribe to these ideas and far be it from us to tell people which labels they should use for themselves. For ease though, we’ll continue to use the term conspiratorial thinking, but again, we do not use it do deride, dismiss, or degrade, merely to describe.

Conspiratorial thinking is characterized by several things; (Lewandosky 1-6 https://youtu.be/0TELiwR0Olk 7-8)

1) The suspicion of nefarious intent, real or perceived. 2) Perceived victimization, either of oneself or of a community. 3) A denial or refusal to believe any facts that do not agree with one’s beliefs. Sometimes called confirmation bias. 4) A denial of things occurring by coincidence. 5) Holding or switching between beliefs that are contradictory or mutually exclusive, but are perceived to refute an official or generally accepted version of events. 6) Reasoning that holds any evidence against the conspiracy to be in fact evidence of a conspiracy 7) An unwillingness to revise or update one’s beliefs 8) Attaching one’s identity to the position one holds and a definition of an in-group and out-group based on who does or does not hold certain beliefs.

While reading the magazine, and we do suggest you read it if you are interested, pay attention and see if you notice any of these lines of thinking on display. We believe you’ll find most, if not all of them.

Now, we are happy to discuss the facts in the magazine, or just agree to disagree with them as suggested by the magazine, at least for the sake of this article. However, we must take a stand against the kind of thinking used to reach the conclusion in the magazine.

Some people have talked about living in a post-truth society, and claims of fake news used to dismiss any and all facts that do not agree with one’s beliefs are rampant. The problem with this, and the conspiratorial mindset, is that once you accept it as a valid way of thinking, there is literally nothing you can’t believe. You can believe that the world is both flat and hollow, or that globe spanning conspiracies are both highly adept at what they do and are constantly making mistakes that show what they are up to. Not only does this way of thinking make it possible to hold any number of mutually exclusive beliefs, it offers no way to correct any errors that were made in the process of reaching those beliefs.

The old saying, “if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything,” comes to mind. In this case, perhaps the saying should be adjusted to, “if you don’t anchor your ideas to something, then you will be able to believe in anything.” When the only anchor one holds to is being contrary to the “official story,” there is no end to the kind of things you can believe and the actions you will be willing to take and justify based on those beliefs.

The greatest factor leading to people engaging in conspiratorial thinking, is exposure to conspiracy theories. In a time of looming health and climate crises, clear, evidence-based thinking is needed more than ever. Unfortunately, magazines like this one have the chance of creating more people who are willing to dismiss these and other important issues as hoaxes or conspiracies.

Of course, a short aside concerning the publisher of this magazine is warranted. Skepticism should not be about directing ill-will toward people for their ideas, and we do not hold any ill-will towards the publisher of this magazine. In fact, many people have spoken of his good nature. He has a right to his ideas, and the right to publish them. If you get a chance to speak with him,  go and talk to him about his ideas and what his motivations are. See what he thinks and why he thinks it. For our own part, we have extended an invitation to him to come and speak at a future Skeptics in the Pub event so that we can understand him and his ideas better.

Still we must behoove the Taichung public to not take part in the kind of thinking to be found on display in the magazine. If you find yourself engaging in this kind of think or notice any of the characteristic listed above present in your own thought processes, we would suggest you take steps to find a more reliable method of coming to knowledge.

What you believe, should not become who you are. You should be able to admit when you are wrong, revise your beliefs, and be happy to know fewer and fewer wrong things as you learn more and more. Skepticism is a path that leads in that direction. It doesn’t mean you have to accept each and every part of an official story. It doesn’t mean that you can’t have suspicions about people in power. What it does offer, though, is a set of tools that individuals of goodwill can use together to consistently and reliably reach the truth. Thank you, Taichung Skeptics in the Pub

[urfullmonte-blog]

Global Warming “science” discovered to be founded on glaring math error that renders thousands of news reports false

New Post has been published on https://www.thefullmonte.com/global-warming-science-discovered-to-be-founded-on-glaring-math-error-that-renders-thousands-of-news-reports-false/

Global Warming “science” discovered to be founded on glaring math error that renders thousands of news reports false

When the NY Times, Washington Post, CNN and other fact-challenged news outlets reported a few months ago that the oceans were warming at a catastrophic rate due to climate change, they all missed a glaring math error in the original science paper.

The paper, co-authored by Ralph Keeling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, was published in the science journal Nature. It erroneously claimed that ocean temperatures were skyrocketing at a rate that was 60 percent higher than the IPCC’s known rate of ocean temperature trends. But the paper suffered from a glaring mathematical error that has since been exposed.

This erroneous conclusion was immediately seized upon by the left-wing media to claim that Trump was destroying the world by promoting fossil fuels which were causing so much warming that the world would soon come to an end.

“Independent climate scientist Nicholas Lewis has uncovered a major error in a recent scientific paper that was given blanket coverage in the English-speaking media,” reports WattsUpWithThat.com, a fact-checking website that exposes the quack science behind global warming and climate change. “The paper… claimed that the oceans have been warming faster than previously thought. It was announced, in news outlets including the BBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post and Scientific American that this meant that the Earth may warm even faster than currently estimated.”

But Nicholas Lewis, an independent mathematician who fact-checks the flawed science of the climate change propagandists, found a glaring error that renders the entire conclusion of the paper — and all subsequent media reports — to be completely false.

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As he writes on NicholasLewis.org (PDF):

The findings of the Resplandy et al paper were peer reviewed and published in the world’s premier scientific journal and were given wide coverage in the English-speaking media. Despite this, a quick review of the first page of the paper was sufficient to raise doubts as to the accuracy of its results.

Just a few hours of analysis and calculations, based only on published information, was sufficient to uncover apparently serious (but surely inadvertent) errors in the underlying calculations. Moreover, even if the paper’s results had been correct, they would not have justified its findings regarding an increase to 2.0°C in the lower bound of the equilibrium climate sensitivity range and a 25% reduction in the carbon budget for 2°C global warming.

Because of the wide dissemination of the paper’s results, it is extremely important that these errors are acknowledged by the authors without delay and then corrected. Of course, it is also very important that the media outlets that unquestioningly trumpeted the paper’s findings now correct the record too.

But perhaps that is too much to hope for.

“Climate change” science quacks deliberately used an incorrect data fit to mislead the public with fake science scare stories about catastrophic ocean warming

Although Nicholas Lewis publicly states that the glaring error in the original paper must have been inadvertent, most honest assessments of this junk science sorcery conclude that the “error” was deliberate deception.

Climate change scientists know full well that the dishonest media will gladly report fake science as factual and true as long as it promotes their climate change disinformation agenda. They don’t care if the facts check out. All they care about is whether President Trump can somehow be blamed (and Al Gore can be celebrated as a god, even though he knows nothing about real atmospheric science).

Scientific facts are of zero interest to the media, which is almost entirely run by “journalists” who are scientifically illiterate and wouldn’t know what a “least squares linear trend” is if their life depended on it.

In my analytical lab science work, we operate with multiple-point linear and non-linear fits all the time, dealing with quadratic curve fits, linear fits that exclude zero, linear fits with forced zero, fits with 1/x bias, etc. This is all basic science, yet every single journalist in the so-called “mainstream media” had zero interest in finding out whether this published science paper was actually true or not. In fact, left-wing media journalists are incapable of understand real science… or even numbers, for that matter.

As you can see in the chart below, the red line is the dishonest linear fit pushed by the quack science media. The blue line is the correct fit — using a least squares linear fit — and it shows no real change at all in the trend of ocean warming:

If you are a dishonest, scientifically illiterate left-wing journalist, you report the red line and scream about the end of human civilization caused by warming oceans. But if you’re a normal, intelligent person, you know the blue line is actually the best fit for these data.

Then again, climate alarmists aren’t interested in reporting any actual facts rooted in real science. They’re only interested in terrorizing the world population with fake science while demanding everybody pay a few trillion dollars to Al Gore and his climate skimmers, who all stand to earn insane profits by charging nations for the “right” to produce carbon dioxide.

Meanwhile, intellectually dishonest liberals flat-out refuse to examine real scientific facts on climate

Further demonstrating their own intellectual dishonesty, liberals absolutely refuse to examine any real facts on so-called “climate change.”

As famed physicist Freeman Dyson recently wrote:

To any unprejudiced person reading [Goklany’s] account, the facts should be obvious: that the non-climatic effects of carbon dioxide as a sustainer of wildlife and crop plants are enormously beneficial, that the possibly harmful climatic effects of carbon dioxide have been greatly exaggerated, and that the benefits clearly outweigh the possible damage.

I consider myself an unprejudiced person and to me these facts are obvious. But the same facts are not obvious to the majority of scientists and politicians who consider carbon dioxide to be evil and dangerous. The people who are supposed to be experts and who claim to understand the science are precisely the people who are blind to the evidence. Those of my scientific colleagues who believe the prevailing dogma about carbon dioxide will not find Goklany’s evidence convincing. I hope that a few of them will make the effort to examine the evidence in detail and see how it contradicts the prevailing dogma, but I know that the majority will remain blind. That is to me the central mystery of climate science. It is not a scientific mystery but a human mystery. How does it happen that a whole generation of scientific experts is blind to obvious facts? In this foreword I offer a tentative solution of the mystery.

The climate change delusion, in other words, is a kind of irrational denialism by the scientific establishment which has destroyed its own reputation by refusing to embrace real facts. Instead, the quack scientists of climate change are pushing a political agendaand dressing it up to look like science, when in reality it isn’t science at all.

Dyson goes on to explain:

There are many examples in the history of science of irrational beliefs promoted by famous thinkers and adopted by loyal disciples. Sometimes, as in the use of bleeding as a treatment for various diseases, irrational belief did harm to a large number of human victims. George Washington was one of the victims. Other irrational beliefs, such as the phlogiston theory of burning or the Aristotelian cosmology of circular celestial motions, only did harm by delaying the careful examination of nature. In all these cases, we see a community of people happily united in a false belief that brought leaders and followers together. Anyone who questioned the prevailing belief would upset the peace of the community.

Indur Goklany has assembled a massive collection of evidence to demonstrate two facts. First, the non-climatic effects of carbon dioxide are dominant over the climatic effects and are overwhelmingly beneficial. Second, the climatic effects observed in the real world are much less damaging than the effects predicted by the climate models, and have also been frequently beneficial. I am hoping that the scientists and politicians who have been blindly demonizing carbon dioxide for 37 years will one day open their eyes and look at the evidence.

Dyson is going to be waiting a very long time, of course, for scientists to open their eyes and look at the evidence. That’s because climate change has never been about the evidence. It remains solely about the political power to be found in condemning carbon dioxide as an atmospheric poison when it’s actually planet Earth’s most important life-giving nutrient for plants, forests and food crops.

The climate change cultists, in other words, are not scientists. They are propagandists posing as scientists, but since their conclusions support the quack science dogma of the globalists who seek to enslave humanity under a scientific dictatorship, they go along with it.

If you want to read the full report by Indur Goklany that’s being described here by Freeman Dyson, you can find it at this link (PDF) from the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

When scientists like Dyson find the courage to speak out against the climate change nonsense, it’s a sign that things are beginning to turn. It’s no longer just the Health Ranger and other independent scientists who are exposing the lunacy of the climate change narrative; it’s now some of the most celebrated personalities in the institutions of modern science.

Learn the truth about climate science at Climate.news or Science.news.

Originally posted: https://www.naturalnews.com/2018-11-19-global-warming-science-glaring-math-error.html Author: Mike Adams