The Republican War on Science continues...

Reagan appointed, Texas born and educated judge bends to a religious argument. As we all know, the Republican party now owns God and as all good Republicans know, we can't have science interfering in our religious imperatives. BTW... does he look like a Republican or what?

Rawstory:

A US court on Monday issued a temporary halt to federal funding of embryonic stem cell research which President Barack Obama had authorized, saying it involved the destruction of human embryos.

US District Court Judge Royce Lamberth ruled in favor of a Christian group that opposes the research, issuing a temporary injunction that will allow plaintiffs to bring their lawsuit before the court.

"ESC (embryonic stem cell) research is clearly research in which an embryo is destroyed," the judge said.

"To conduct ESC research, ESCs must be derived from an embryo. The process of deriving ESCs from an embryo results in the destruction of the embryo. Thus ESC research necessarily depends upon the destruction of a human embryo," he added.

In March, Obama lifted a ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, lauding potential medical breakthroughs and a new era for US science

Climategate - a manufactured scandal

crossposted from TennesseeFree.com

It's inexplicable to me that conservatives seem to represent the vast majority of the science deniers. I guess it's a combination of low scientific literacy, lack of education, paranoid conspiracy theories, fixed persistent party-line thinking, and perhaps fundamentalist religion/creationism. I don't know. One thing for certain, conservatives seem to hate academia and higher education. On the subject of climate change, conservatives can not seem to separate science from political agenda. They see it as one in the same, a classical persistent response pattern.

Well, the science deniers' big scandal has fizzled.

Investigations clear scientists of impropriety and dishonesty

Newsweek:

British investigators clear the East Anglia scientist at the center of it all, Phil Jones, of scientific impropriety and dishonesty in April, an investigation at Penn State cleared PSU climatologist Michael Mann of “falsifying or suppressing data, intending to delete or conceal e-mails and information, and misusing privileged or confidential information” in February.

Newspapers around the world are retracting their claims of fraud and scientific dishonesty. The campaign of lies is now exposed. Of course the Faux News right wing media machine has already spread the lies. Doesn't matter. Limbaugh and Levin tell them what to think.

For the record, yes, I believe the climate is changing, as it always has. Yes, human activity is definitely a factor in recent warming. That is accepted scientific fact. Can humans effectively halt climate change? I doubt it, I am skeptical, at least in our lifetime. The trend has already been established, and perhaps a 'tipping point' has been reached. Even if it were possible, it would be logistically impractical and improbable, at least in the short term. If it means a cleaner planet, it may be worth a try. I recognize there have been huge climate change events in the past, some triggered by seismic and impact events that would dwarf any effect of human activity and the warming we are now experiencing.

The Religious Test for Public Office - AL Governors Race

In order to be a "real Republican" in AL - you must be a science denier and believe the Bible literally.

This is clear violation of the Article VI, section 3 of the US Constitution -no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

Don't tell them what you really think, tell them what they want you to think. AL Gov. candidate Bradley Byrne is attacked for supporting the teaching of evolution. Who would have thought .... in 2010? This should tell you something about the intellectual level of the average conservative voter in AL.

12 May, 2010 MSNBC:







The Republican War on Science is alive and well...

Palin pledges to continue the Republican War on Science

From the mouth of the ignorant and poorly educated Sarah Palin:

You've heard about some of these pet projects they really don't make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.

Wait a second, I thought Palin was interested in providing for 'special needs' kids?

Palin is obviously is ignorant of the fact that scientific research with fruit flies has led to valuable discoveries that have boosted autism research. A discovery, made in Drosophila fruit flies may lead to advances in understanding autism spectrum disorders. For example, human neurexins have been identified as a genetic risk factor for autism. The study of fruit flies has also been used for other autism research and revolutionized the study of birth defects.

But of course, what would a dumbass moose hunter ditz like Palin need with science? She has the holy spirit to guide her. Her slut daughter could have been helped by the sex-ed programs that she opposes. Her retarded baby could be helped by some of the very science she dismisses. What a stupid bitch.


A vote for McCain/Palin is a vote for ignorance.

HT: TP

Sarah Palin kills animals for fun - creates science to fit her policy

It's not sporting, it's not humane, it's not necessary... it's like shooting fish in a barrel ... and she calls herself pro-life

This aerial killing of wolves and other wildlife is BEING ENCOURAGED by Republican VP nominee, Sarah Palin. Palin's $150 bounty for wolves can be claimed by presenting the severed foreleg of the killed wolf. This brutal savagery shows ignorance and a complete disregard for wildlife and the environment. Sarah Palin kills animals for fun, not for subsistence or food. Because of her delight in killing, she has invented science to justify it. The Republican War on Science and the Environment continues.

Contrary to reports that there is no scientific basis for wolf control, Palin has encouraged the aerial killing of wolves by offering a $150 bounty, even dispatching her state employees last July to kill 14 wolf puppies by shooting them in the head, citing a control effort to save caribou. These wolves could have been relocated, shot with tranquilizers instead of bullets. But no, blow their brains out.

Estimates of moose populations, which this need to kill wolves was based on, have turned out to be wrong. Some wildlife biologists say predator control advocates like Palin don't even understand what wolves eat.

Alaskans say Palin's enthusiasm for predator control fits a method of operation - how she edits science to suit her personal views. In 2007, she approved $400,000 to "educate" the public about the ecological success of shooting wolves and bears from the air. Some of the money went to create a pamphlet distributed in local newspapers, three weeks before the public was to vote on an initiative that would have curtailed aerial killing of wolves by private citizens. "The timing of the state's propaganda on wolf control was terrible," wrote the Anchorage Daily News on its editorial page.

"Across the board, Sarah Palin puts on a masquerade, claiming she is using sound management and science," says Nick Jans, an Alaskan writer who co-sponsored the initiative. "In reality she uses ideology and ignores science when it is in her way." The initiative was defeated last month.

Gordon Haber is a wildlife scientist who has studied wolves in Alaska for 43 years. "On wildlife-related issues, whether it is polar bears or predator controls, she has shown no inclination to be objective," he says of Palin. "I cannot find credible scientific data to support their arguments," he adds about the state's rationale for gunning down wolves. "In most cases, there is evidence to the contrary."

[Source] [Source]

This is classic Republican manipulation of people by misinformation and propaganda.... sound familiar? Fixing facts around the policy... sound familiar as well?

Palin caught in a lie

[TP]

In her interview with ABC News’s Charlie Gibson last night, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin denied that she had ever said climate change isn’t caused by human activity, challenging Gibson to show her where she had made such claims. In a fact-check segment on Good Morning America today, Jake Tapper demonstrated that Palin was making a false claim, pointing to a December 4, 2007 Fairbanks Daily News-Miner article in which she was quoted as saying, “I’m not an Al Gore, doom-and-gloom environmentalist blaming the changes in our climate on human activity.”

The Republican War on Science and the Environment continues... as well as the gun and animal killing fetish.

UPDATE:

Palin caught in yet another lie

Palin Backs Off Bridge To Nowhere Lie, Admits She Supported ‘Infrastructure Being Built In The State’

Palin's church cult: terrorist attacks on Israelis are God's "judgment of unbelief" of Jews who haven't embraced Christianity

Hey GOP... so much for the Jewish vote.

2 weeks ago, Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin with her cult, the Wasilla Bible Church, listened to David Brickner, the executive director of Jews for Jesus tell the 'congregation' that "Judgment is very real" - refering to terrorist attacks on Israelis. Brickner’s mission has drawn wide criticism from the organized Jewish community, and the Anti-Defamation League accused them in a report of “targeting Jews for conversion with subterfuge and deception.”

And you thought theocrat Mike Huckabee was bad. Palin is an absolute nightmare. If she were president, the Republican War on Science and attacks on women's rights would flourish.

“She’s totally out of step with the American Jewish community. She is against reproductive freedom – even against abortion in the case of rape and incest. She has said that climate change is not man-made. She has said that she would favor teaching creationism in the schools. These are all way, way, way outside the mainstream.”

- Ira Forman, National Jewish Democratic Council Executive Director

We know that isolated sects of christian churches become extremist and cult-like in isolated parts of America, (like Alaska). Everything from Neo-Nazism to snake handling has occurred in these rural churches. And now, to imagine there is a person who could possibly take over the leadership of America that has this background is absolutely stunning. Sarah Palin is dangerous. The Republican party is dangerous.

Senate Environment Committee seeks truth on Bush Administration coverup of climate change data

It was interesting to see Dr. Kevin E. Trenberth, Head of the Climate Analysis Section, National Center for Atmospheric Research Climate and Global Dynamics Division debunk and tear apart the Global Warming skeptic testimony of *Dr. Roy Spencer:

The IPCC has extensively studied natural variability... natural variability has a cause, it's not magic, it doesn't come out of nowhere and we have the ability to track natural variability. For instance we can track variability on the sun and we know the sun isn't responsible for the changes that have occurred. We also know that it is not clouds. Einstein said we should "make things as simple as possible but not simpler." I think Roy's [Spencer] model is in the latter category. His simple model is fatally flawed, in my view. There are 2 figures in his written testimony, fig 3a and 3b, the radiation that's contrived there is about a factor of 10 too large, the ocean mix layer he uses is about a factor of 10 too large, and he starts the model off with an artificial starting point. Unlike the IPCC models that have been scrutinized by hundreds of scientists and many papers have been written about them, analyzing them, Roy's [Spencer] model has no standing whatsoever.
-- Dr. Kevin E. Trenberth, National Center for Atmospheric Research Climate and Global Dynamics Division

*(Roy Spencer is listed as an author for the Heartland Institute, a US think tank that has received $561,500 from ExxonMobil since 1998)

The Committee Chair, Barbara Boxer said it may be necessary to subpoena documents that the White House has censored on the health threats of global warming. Former EPA official Jason K. Burnett implicated the Office of the Vice President, Dick Cheney, as well as the White House Council on Environmental Quality for censoring “any discussion of the human health consequences of climate change” in testimony to Congress.

Truth is hard to come by in the Bush Administration's war on science.

Intelligent Design movie, "Expelled" - debuts as a miserable failure

Another failure in the Conservative Religious right wing War on Science.

The reviews are in ...the move Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed sucks. Called a "flunkout documentary," an "unprincipled propaganda piece that insults believers and nonbelievers alike," Expelled is a crusade by Ben Stein to show how believers of intelligent design are victims of persecution and that Darwinism is the root of all evil. As the Chicago Tribune put it:

"...a cynical attempt to sucker Christian conservatives into thinking they’re losing the “intelligent design” debate because of academic “prejudice.”

Typical of the religious right, Expelled is a loathsome and idiotic attempt to show scientific legitimacy for a creationist worldview while desperately trying to swiftboat science.

UPDATE: The National Center for Science Education has launched a website exposing the lies of the film "Exposed." Check out - Expelled Exposed.
Further exposing the films unprofessionalism, the producers of Expelled have been cited for copyright violations.

NYT

One of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” is a conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry.

Mixing physical apples and metaphysical oranges at every turn “Expelled” is an unprincipled propaganda piece that insults believers and nonbelievers alike. In its fudging, eliding and refusal to define terms, the movie proves that the only expulsion here is of reason itself.

New York Post:

After all of his efforts to unhook the ID caboose from the creationism train, Stein makes it clear that his beef with Darwinism is that it weakens religion.

In a long, greasy detour, Stein shows that the Nazis were Darwinists. So what? They also liked skiing. Having Nazi fans doesn’t make Darwin wrong.

Time:

It’s in the film’s final third that it runs entirely off the rails as Stein argues that there is a clear line from Darwinism to euthanasia, abortion, eugenics and–wait for it–Nazism. Theories of natural selection, it’s claimed, were a necessary if not sufficient condition for Hitler’s killing machine to get started. The truth, of course, is that the only necessary and sufficient condition for human beings to murder one another is the simple fact of being human. We’ve always been a lustily fratricidal species, one that needed no Charles Darwin to goad us into millenniums of self-slaughter.

Abstinence-only sex education: Teens who take "virginity pledges" 6 times more likely to engage in anal and oral sex

Conservative values in action

I heard Bill Maher say this in my previous post and had to fact check it. He's right.

"The conservatives don't really care about educating your children. What they care about is that teenagers don't fuck.... they've spent millions of your tax dollars to start abstinence clubs in the high schools."
-- Bill Maher

A spending bill before Congress for the Department of Health and Human Services would provide $141 million in assistance for abstinence-only sex education programs.

According to a study* published in the April issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health:

Those teens that take the "abstinence pledge:"

• were six times as likely to have engaged in oral sex as as those who did not pledge

• were four times as likely to have engaged in anal sex as those who did not pledge

• were much less likely to use contraception the first time they had sex

• were less likely to use condoms during their first sexual experience

• were less likely to get tested for STDs

• have similar rates of STDs as teens who have not made pledges.

Conclusions:

"Not only do virginity pledges not work to keep our young people safe, they are causing harm by undermining condom use, contraception and medical treatment," -- William Smith, policy director at the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States

Another Study concurs:

"At present there does not exist any strong evidence that any abstinence program delays the initiation of sex, hastens the return to abstinence or reduces the number of sexual partners" among teenagers, the study by the nonpartisan National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

The study found that while abstinence-only efforts appear to have little positive impact, more comprehensive sex education programs were having "positive outcomes" including teenagers "delaying the initiation of sex, reducing the frequency of sex, reducing the number of sexual partners and increasing condom or contraceptive use.

More here....

UPDATE:
via TP

Where else but Fox News would you hear something like this?

Fox News guest: sex education proponents want kids to get STDs for financial gain

During the Dec. 31 broadcast of Fox News’ Special Report, Concerned Women for America President Wendy Wright claimed that proponents of comprehensive sex education are trying to “encourage” sex because “they benefit when kids end up having sexually transmitted diseases, unintended pregnancies and then they lead them into having abortions.” She then added, “You have to look at the financial motives behind those who are promoting comprehensive sex ed.” Watch it

--------------------------------

*Study co-authors Peter Bearman, sociology department chair at Columbia University, and Hannah Bruckner of Yale University used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which is funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and CDC, the AP/Long Island Newsday reports. The national study surveyed students nationwide in grades seven through 12 and followed up with interviews one, two and six years later. The Yale and Columbia report looked at data from 12,000 teenagers.

Right wing authoritarians can't handle the truth - Terry Frank, Mark Albertini cowardly delete comments

Terry Frank on this post touts the global warming denialist, John Coleman. When I posted a comment stating the fact that Coleman is not a trained scientist nor has degrees in climatology and made his career as a "TV weather personality"... she deleted the comments. She also deleted my comment highlighting a Yale/Stanford study on the subject.

Mark Albertini from Chattanooga, TN State Senate Candidate completely disabled comments on his blog when reading comments I left despite the fact I allowed him the freedom to leave comments on my blog.

UPDATE: Albertini has resumed comments on his blog. He must have received my complaint or seen this post. (Site Meter shows a visit from his ISP/location Sun evening 11/11)
UPDATE II: Terry Frank has let my comment go through (after I called her on it). This is just one of several times she has deleted my comments, there is a long documented history of this - (see comments)


Question:
Why is it that conservative religious authoritarians can't handle the truth and delete comments? Why do you see so few liberal bloggers that similarly moderate and/or delete comments?

Answer:
Because ignorance is the ally of conservatives. Propaganda, spin, and half-truths are what they use to control people. What fuels authoritarians are their attacks and demonization of those who they deem as "the enemy" - often 'liberals.' Anyone who comes forward with inconvenient facts that dispute their tortured reality is an 'enemy.' They certainly wouldn't want people to know the truth, know the facts. So, they run from the truth.

You can see their tactic of manufacturing spin and division in society in everything from the Bush lies that brought us into war, the "Republican War on Science," the Fox News "War on Christmas," and the continued almost daily stoking of fear by the Bush Administration - a possible precursor to war with Iran.

Ever notice the fact than many conservatives these days "don't want to talk about politics?"

Why?

Because the truth remains uncomfortable for the supporters of the Bush regime, elected on a 'Christian moral values' platform that denies health care to kids, denies infrastructure repairs to US water projects, fosters an unprecedented culture of corruption, and starts a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people.

They call themselves 'conservatives' but support a president who has opened the floodgates to illegal aliens, and has fiscally ruined America. In just his first 4 years, the Bush Administration borrowed more money from foreign governments and banks than the previous 42 presidents combined, over a $TRILLION dollars - turning 4 years of Clinton surpluses into the largest national debt this country has ever seen and a dollar that is weaker than ever on the international market.

They don't want to hear the truth. It makes them uncomfortable so they choose their 'information sources' that tell them what they want to hear - Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and the like. You won't find many of their blogs linked to standard main stream media sources (AP, Reuters, etc..) - they get their 'information' through the filter of 'Christian conservative' news organizations like WorldNetDaily, CBN, Cybercast - where you'll see ads for Ann Coulter hate books.

No wonder the Republican party is falling apart.

Musician defeats Republican Conservative PhD Chemist in Global Warming debate - Chemist cowardly deletes rebuttal comment

It's amazing how in lock step some Christian conservative Republicans are. It even transcends their critical thinking skills - in this case, this person's own area of expertise.
----------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE IV:
"Doc" at The Autopsy identity is revealed
"Doc" is: Michael , Ph.D., Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin- Platteville

Apologies to "Tony" who was misidentified as "Doc"
---------------------------------------------------------------

Follow the discussion thread here where he condescends to the less informed musician and cites bogus data and Republican talking points (like the so-called "NASA error"), and uses arguments and non-peer reviewed studies by global warming denialist organizations like the European Science and Environment Forum , the Exxon-funded George C. Marshall Institute, and the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine.

After a lengthy post on the laws of thermodynamics that he 'dumbed down' for me to understand, I posted a response that he cowardly deleted or refused to allow to post.

-----------------

UPDATE: Thanks to a fellow blogger, my comment has been posted .
UPDATE II: comment finally posted 24 hrs after comments received
UPDATE III: Truce declared, Chemist blames akismet filter for post not going through (although identical post did get through from different IP)
New post and comment on the Global Warming debate at Doc's
-----------------

This is the post that he didn't want his readers to see:

Doc,
Thanks for dumbing down the science for me, I really appreciate it.
Welcome readers to this thread as well, I'm sure they will appreciate you dumbing the science down for them too.

Doc's essentially saying here that man-made CO2 production is too insignificant to alter global climate and that the CO2 greenhouse effect is a violation of the physical laws of thermodynamics.

Doc's science lesson is based almost verbatim on he non-peer reviewed report: "Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics,"- Gerhard Gerlich, principal investigator.

Before commenting on the science, let's examine the source. Gerhard Gerlich was quoted as saying in 1995, "the CO2-greenhouse effect of the earth atmosphere is pure fiction of people who like to use big computers, without physical fundamentals." An industry funded denialist from way back, Gerlich was a member of the European Science and Environment Forum. The agenda of this group was to discredit government safety regulations and reports on such things as genetically-engineered bovine growth hormone, pesticides, public smoking, and global warming. Gerlich's coalition fought to discredit the World Health Organisation, and attempted to rebuff the science used by the USA's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Gerlich also worked with the Weinberg Group which ran special conferences for the tobacco industry to fight regulations against second-hand smoke. Gerlich participated in the anti-global warming study co-produced by the Exxon-funded George C. Marshall Institute, "Climate Change and Policy: Making the Connection".

Gerlich's most recent article from July, again, non-peer reviewed, due to it's recent submission is just beginning to get debunked for it's misleading calculations by scientists on various blogs. Here's one:
http://atmoz.org/blog/2007/07/10/falsification-of-the-atmospheric-co2-greenhouse-effects/

Back to Doc's argument - man-made CO2 production is too insignificant to alter global climate .

The fact that CO2 levels have remained relatively steady, between 180 and 300 parts per million for the past half-a-million years, shows that natural emissions are usually balanced by natural absorptions. That is until very recently. Now slightly more CO2 must be entering the atmosphere than is being soaked up by carbon "sinks".

Human emissions of CO2 are now estimated to be 26.4 Gt per year, up from 23.5 Gt in the 1990s, according to an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in February 2007. Disturbances to the land – through deforestation and agriculture, for instance – also contribute roughly 5.9 Gt per year.

About 40% of the extra CO2 entering the atmosphere due to human activity is being absorbed by natural carbon sinks, mostly by the oceans. The rest is boosting levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

The smoking gun that shows the source of CO2 has resulted from fossil fuel burning and not the warming of the oceans and water vapor is found when determining the source of the increased carbon in the atmosphere. The studies are based on the ratio of the three different carbon isotopes in atmospheric CO2. Carbon has three possible isotopes: C-12, C-13 and C-14.

C-12, which has 6 neutrons, is by far the most prevalent carbon isotope and is a stable isotope. Carbon 13 is also a stable isotope, but plants prefer Carbon 12 and therefore photosynthetic CO2 (fossil fuel or wood fuels) is much lower in C-13 than CO2 that comes from other sources (ie.. animal respiration); and Carbon-14 is radioactive. Studies of carbon isotopes in CO2 has resulted in the following findings:

* There has been a decline in the 14C/12C ratio in CO2 that parallels the increase in CO2. In 1950 a scientist (Suess) discovered that fossils do not contain 14C because they are much older than 10 half lives of 14C.
* There has been a parallel decline in 13C/12C ratio of atmospheric CO2. This has been linked to the fact that fossil fuels, forests and soil carbon come from photosynthetic carbon which is low in 13C. If the increased CO2 was due to warming of the oceans, there should not be a reduction in the ratios of C-13 and C-14 to C-12.

There are other clues that suggest the source of increased CO2 is not related to the warming of the ocean and subsequent release of CO2 from the ocean.

* There has been a decline in the oxygen concentration of the atmosphere. If ocean warming was responsible for the CO2 increase, we should also observe an increase in atmospheric O2, because O2 is also released as the water is warmed.
* The ocean is a sink for atmospheric carbon, and the carbon content of the oceans has increased by 118±19 PgC in the last 200 years. If the atmospheric CO2 was the result of oceans releasing CO2 to the atmosphere, the CO2 in the ocean should not be rising as a result of ocean warming.

Shall I dumb this down for you doc? Oh... whoops, sorry, you're the Chemistry PhD, I'm the dumb musician. continuing....

Fossil fuels were formed millions of years ago. They therefore contain virtually no carbon-14, because this unstable carbon isotope, formed when cosmic rays hit the atmosphere, has a half-life of around 6000 years. So a dropping concentration of carbon-14 can be explained by the burning of fossil fuels. Studies of tree rings have shown that the proportion of carbon-14 in the atmosphere dropped by about 2% between 1850 and 1954. (After this time, atmospheric nuclear bomb tests altered these data sets by releasing large amounts of carbon-14.)

In addition, fossil fuels also contain more carbon-12 than carbon-13, compared with the atmosphere, because the fuels derive from plants, which preferentially take up the more common carbon-12. The ratio of carbon-13 to carbon-12 in the atmosphere and ocean surface waters is steadily falling, showing that more carbon-12 is entering the atmosphere.

Carbon-12 atoms dominate the chemical structure of all fossil fuels, since carbon-14 naturally decays into it over time. So....where plant tissues are loaded with lots of carbon-12 but little carbon-14, there is more fossil fuel burning. Likewise, where plants have the expected levels of cosmic ray and nuclear-created carbon-14, there is less fossil fuel burning diluting that global signal.

A study by the University of Colorado and Europe's Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Science at Saclay, France has used these measurements in corn plants to map out fossil fuel burning hotspots in the US - actually measuring how much of the carbon dioxide in a given region comes from fossil fuels.

Any questions?

Science deniers use Fox News and the WSJ to battle the world

Consider this news item reported on the Fox News website under the heading "Reality Check" from Professor Emeritus at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Daniel Botkin, global warming denialist:

Daniel Botkin writes on The Wall Street Journal's Web site ... while the United Nations suggests up to 30 percent of plant and animal life could become extinct because of climate change — the reality is that almost none of the millions of species have disappeared during the past 2.5 million years — with all of its various warming and cooling periods.

Now consider the following reports and you can see what I'm talking about. Thanks Brit Hume at Faux News for reporting "the truth." No wonder this country is living in an idiocracy. People actually believe this Faux News shit. Amazing. I guess they retired Botkin for a reason, but that doesn't stop Faux News and the WSJ from giving the old coot a platform - our so called 'Reality Check' from the front in the Republican War on Science. Ever notice that many of the big time global warming denialists are so elderly that they were educated before the advent of the personal computer?

UNITED NATIONS: HUMANS CAUSING GREATEST MASS EXTINCTION IN 65 MILLION YEARS (Reuters-- 2006)

American Museum of Natural History Official Statement on Current Mass Extinction

American Museum of Natural History Press Release on Current Mass Extinction

Fastest Mass Extinction in Earth's History (Worldwatch Report)

Earth Faces Catastrophic Loss of Species (U.K. Independent-- 2006)

SCIENTISTS AGREE WORLD FACES MASS EXTINCTION (CNN-- 2002)

Earth Faces Sixth Mass Extinction (New Scientist-- 2004)

THE SIXTH EXTINCTION by Richard Leakey

The Sixth Extinction (National Geographic Magazine)

The Sixth Extinction (American Museum of Natural History)

Wake-Up Call on Extinction Wave (British Royal Society-- 2003)

GLOBAL EXTINCTION CRISIS CONFIRMED-- 2000 IUCN Red List Released

Mass Extinction Pace Quickening: Red List 2000 Released (N.Y. Times)

Headlong Drive to Mass Extinction-- 2002 Red List Released (Toronto Globe and Mail)

12,000 Threatened Species: "Only Scratching the Surface"-- 2003 Red List Released (U.K. Guardian)

15,589 Threatened Species: "Greatly Underestimates True Number"-- 2004 Red List Released (MSNBC)

16,119 Threatened Species-- 40% of Evaluated Species Are Threatened-- 2006 Red List (IUCN-- 2006)

Life on Earth Disappearing-- Unprecedented Extinction Rate -- 2007 Red List (U.K. Telegraph-- 2007)

Global Warming Threatens Extinction of One Million Species (Nature-- 2004)

Huge Extinction Risks of Global Warming Confirmed (Reuters-- 2006)

By 2050 Global Warming Will Doom A Million Species (National Geographic-- 2004)

BRITISH STUDY CONFIRMS WORLDWIDE MASS EXTINCTION (Science-- 2004)

Two Thirds of World's Species May Be Threatened (EurekAlert/AAAS-- 2005)

What the Global Warming Denialists Don't Understand

If Global Warming is a matter of science, ever ask yourself why almost all Global Warming Denialists are conservative Republicans? The reason - a general lack of knowledge and an ingrained propaganda driven agenda.

Take, for example this quote by the lunatic Ann Coulter:

“The temperature of the planet has increased about one degree Fahrenheit in the last century. So imagine a summer afternoon when it’s 63 degrees and the next thing you know it’s . . . 64 degrees. Ahhhh!!!! Run for your lives, everybody! Women and children first!”

To the average uninformed person, a global increase of 1 degree doesn't seem much like a big deal. But when you consider that such global temperature changes are much more exaggerated in the arctic, we see that one global degree increase IS very significant, as we see today in the arctic:

CNN : Ice cover in the Arctic Ocean, long held to be an early warning of a changing climate, has shattered the all-time low record this summer, according to scientists from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder. Mark Serreze, senior research scientist at NSIDC, termed the decline "astounding." Most researchers had anticipated that the complete disappearance of the Arctic ice pack during summer months would happen after the year 2070, he said, but now, "losing summer sea ice cover by 2030 is not unreasonable."

Regarding the causes, it appears to the scientific community that there is a clear correlation between fossil fuel burning, atmospheric CO2 rise, and the increase in global temperatures as shown in the graphs in this previous post . Clearly, we are presently in the most drastic period of global climate change in human history.

Yes, there have been ice ages and climate changes in human history, but nothing like the warming event that occurred 55 million years ago that resulted in the melting of the arctic and mass impacts on species evolution. This event, called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), was the result of a 5 to 8°C sea surface temperature rise over a few thousand years, likely caused by massive volcanic activity. The present trend would clearly indicate an event like the PETM is a likely possibility, and despite what ignorant pundits say, a one degree global temperature rise over 100 years IS a big deal. We are already seeing global climate change impacts far more quickly than the models have predicted.

If saw CBS 60 minutes tonight, you saw one of these impacts - a new age of mega-fires in the western US -- the worst in recorded history. Climate change -- global warming -- has increased temperatures in the West about one degree and that has caused four times more fires. In the Southwest alone, nearly two million acres of forest are gone and won't come back for centuries. In 2006, the feds spent $2 billion on fire fighting, seven times more than just ten years ago.

The changes are coming fast and drastic. It may be too late to do anything about it. Look at the dramatic CO2 increase that exactly parallels the increase in human burning of fossil fuels (click to enlarge):




































Want to see a true-to-life global warming denialist? Check out Mark Rose who is also a creationist who thinks much of science is 'a pack of lies.' Forget about commenting on his blog. He's too much of a coward to allow comments that contain evidence that refute his close-minded beliefs. His level of denial is astounding - a typical characteristic of religious authoritarian conservatives.