Global warming is a hoax!

I take it all back*. Global warming is a Cuban revolutionary Islamic jihadi socialist communist plot (of doom)*:

On Friday, an essay signed by Castro namechecked the Kyoto Protocol and blasted as hypocritical George Bush's call, at the APEC summit in Australia last week, for countries to band together to fight global warming. Neither the U.S. nor Australia, Castro noted, had signed the Protocol.

In a suspicious display of climate change harmonic convergence, bin Laden also mentioned the Kyoto Protocol in his latest communique.

Yow. What does Osama have to say?

"In fact, the life of all of mankind is in danger because of the global warming resulting to a large degree from the emissions of the factories of the major corporations, yet despite that, the representative of these corporations in the White House insists on not observing the Kyoto accord, with the knowledge that the statistic speaks of the death and displacement of the millions of human beings because of that, especially in Africa. "

Well, how long do you suppose it will take for someone to use Osama to discredit the science of global warming?

Apparently not very long...

Or as Andrew Leonard says (ironically):

The fight to restrict greenhouse gas emissions cannot be simply labeled a Communist plot aimed at undermining the capitalist system of free enterprise.

It's more complicated than that. It's a revolutionary Islamic jihad socialist plot.

*ironic statement

Grand Conspiracy #2

A central feature to believing that global warming isn't happening is a conspiracy to hide the truth. You cannot hold the belief that global warming isn't happening without also believing that the scientists who study it are either incompetent or conspiring to defraud the public or a combination of both. I think many people who hold this belief aren't aware of the vast number of people involved. This isn't 12 pointy-headed scientists that have come up with this idea. Anthropogenic global warming is supported by data gathered by a vast array of people.

So how many people are involved in this Grand Conspiracy to defraud Americans?

Let's count them:

The scientists of the International Panel for Climate Change:

2500+ scientific expert reviewers
850+ Contributing authors
450+ lead authors

Panels of the National Academies of Science of the U.S.

250+ of America's most talented and honored scientists

American Meteorological Society:

11,000 professionals, professors, students, and weather enthusiasts

American Geophysical Union:

45,000 scientists from 140 countries

This is just the scientists. From the most honored members of the National Academies, down to graduate students who are members of the American Meteorological Society. Roughly 60,000+ scientists would need to be involved. 60,000+ scientists keeping a secret that is so massive that they are able to defraud the world.

Now keep in mind, to hold the position that global warming isn't occurring and isn't caused by manmade carbon emissions you must also hold that 60,000+ scientists are so conspiring to defraud Americans. (The most common accusation I have read is that they are merely in it for the grant dollars).

So either 60,000+ scientists are defrauding the world and Michael Crichton has managed to figure it out on his own, or 60,000+ scientists are actually doing their jobs, and have shown that global warming is happening and is caused my manmade carbon emissions.

Why teaching science properly is important

This is an old one, but a good one.

(click on cartoon to enlarge it)

Why do smart people say such stupid things?

How is it that such seemingly talented folks like Michael Egnor can say such blatantly ignorant and stupid things? For those who haven't been following this, Dr. Egnor is a neurosurgeon at SUNY Stonybrook. He's the chair of the neurosurgery department no less. To reach such a an esteemed position would require that he be talented and hardworking (and at least a little clever). So why is he spouting such absolute nonsense about evolution? It's not that it's just wrongheaded, it contains such obvious glaring errors regarding facts that were worked out over a hundred years ago (one of which I discuss here).

But he's not the first talented guy to fall into this trap. How about Nobel-prize winner Kary Mullis? Here's the guy who invented PCR, a technique that has revolutionized medicine, forensics, molecular biology and every element of biology. Oh, and he says that HIV doesn't cause AIDS. Huh?

And what about Michael Crichton? He's a Harvard-educated medical doctor. Award-winning author and moviemaker. Oh yeah, and he's said some pretty stupid things about global warming. How is it that these very talented, high-achieving folks can say such stupid things about issues that are way out of their field of expertise? I think it's (misplaced) confidence.

This American Life has an episode devoted to just such a thing (it's well worth listening to, skip to Act 3 if you only want to listen to the story I'll be talking about). In A Little Bit of Knowledge, we hear about an electrician who thinks he's disproven Einstein, if he could only tweak the math a bit. He's an intelligent guy who's managed to build his own business. He can take apart anything and put it back together. He's self-taught. In short, he's a success. And very confident in himself. Because of this, he feels he can understand the more difficult parts of Einstein's theories, and that any failure to understand on his part means that Einstein got it wrong. It turns out there's a lot of these type of guys out there, and that they're often e-mailing physics professors to tell them that they've proven Einstein wrong. One physicist even wrote a crackpot index to describe the phenomenon.

So does this describe our dear Michael Egnor? A smart guy, who fails to comprehend the subtleties of evolution, and blames those failings on Darwin rather than on his own education and/or intellect?