Over the past few weeks, I have awakened to hear snippets of stories such as this one on NPR about “the obesity epidemic.”  The stories are all part of a series reporting on a recent poll undertaken by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health.  The poll looked at the attitudes and the self-reported actions of parents towards the ways their children ate and about their children’s activity levels.

Among the key findings of the survey highlighted in the NPR reports have been these two points:

• “Recent public opinion polls show that most American adults think obesity is a serious problem for society, but most parents in the poll here are not concerned their own children will become overweight as adults.”
• “In most cases, parents don’t seem to believe that the way their child ate on a given day is likely to make them gain unhealthy weight.”

The NPR story linked above blames a psychological factor known as “optimism bias,” and says that parents may think they are doing the right things, but really they are just poorly informed and/or deluding themselves.

Since this is an ongoing series on NPR, one can expect it to culminate with an interview with Michelle Obama or someone behind her “Let’s Move” campaign, or with a series of suggestions for more government action, or calls for more spending on government nutrition programs, or possibly with all of the above.

What hasn’t occurred to the geniuses at NPR, though, is that perhaps the parents really have been listening to the advice coming from the government and the media for the past twenty five years and they really do think they are doing the right things, but the advice is flawed.

Ronald Reagan famously remarked that “the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”   In recent years, Gary Taubes has become the best-known of those who have challenged the nutritional and dietary orthodoxy which has been promoting a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet.  Writing in Newsweek last spring, he explained that:  ”The problem is, the solutions this multi-level campaign promotes are the same ones that have been used to fight obesity for a century—and they just haven’t worked.”

(more…)

In the course of researching my dissertation, as I sought to show that Achilles’s rage represented an archetypal aspect of male behavior, I read many scientific studies on sexual difference as well as books considering those studies in the context of current cultural debates.   In their book Brain Sex: The Real Difference Between Men and Women, geneticist Anne Moir and journalist David Jessel articulate the essence of this tension between sound science and politically-correct attitudes:

Recent decades have witnessed two contradictory processes; the development of scientific research into the differences between the sexes, and the political denial that such differences exist.

They write that if the reality of these differences make women angry,

. . . it is not because science has set at naught their hard won struggle towards equality; their wrath should rather be directed at those who have sought to misdirect and deny them of their very essence.  Many women in the last thirty or forty years have been brought up to believe that they are, or should be, ‘as good as the next man’, and in the process they have endured acute and unnecessary pain, frustration and disappointment.

Those passages came to mind earlier today when I was reading Christina Hoff Sommers’s, The WAR AGAINST BOYS: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men.  That feminist scholar offered an argument similar to that put forward by Moir and Jessel:

I would argue that turning a blind eye to real differences and dogmatically insisting that masculinity and femininity are “created by culture” pose even more serious dangers of their own.

Science has shown that differences between men and women derive not from social construction, but our very biology.   (more…)

When global warmists tell me about their climate ideology that governments must take action immediately to reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses pumped into the atmosphere (lest catastrophe ensue), I ask them to predict for me the annual increase in temperature over the next few years.

Should the temperatures increase as they predict (based on the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere), then I will join their crusade them in calling for government action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  Unfortunately, they don’t dare to offer such predictions, saying that if we wait too long, it will be too late.

Well, as I learned last month, there are,  some “climate ‘scientists’ ” who have made predictions about global warming have have seen those predictions proven wrong (via Patterico).

Maybe their problem was that they were looking at the wrong data.  Instead of looking at the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, they may have better served themselves by looking at other factors, including solar radiation.  A new paper finds no correlation temperature change and CO2:

The absence of correlation between temperature changes and the immense and variable volume of CO2 waste by fuel burning is explained by the weak power of additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to reduce the outcoming window of long wave radiation.

Via Pirate’s Cove.

With science increasing our skepticism, don’t you think it’s time to start rescinding some of the environmental laws designed to avert a crisis now apparently non-existent.  Repealing the most draconian of those laws in the (once)-Golden State may help the state regain its luster.

FROM THE COMMENTS: Sonicfrog reminds us that

2010 will not be the hottest year on record. As expected, due to the mid year fade of the El Nino and the establishment of La Nina conditions, temps took a late year nose dive and 2010 failed to beat the 1998 mark. As of this moment, average world temp is back to the decade average, meaning there is still no temp rise evident for at least a decade. As was 1998, 2010 temp was abnormal due to a strong El Nino. It wasn’t as strong as 98, but it was strong enough. I expect, if the ENSO / temp correlations hold to the usual pattern, the first few months of 2011 will be below average temp wise.

Whenever a Republican wins a significant election, many on the left are quick to dismiss it is a fluke–or the result of some underhanded right-wing scheme.  Reagan wouldn’t have won in 1980 had his advisors not worked behind the scenes to prevent the release of the hostages held in Iran (a Sick theory lacking any substance whatsoever). Bush wouldn’t have won in 1988 had it not been for his “racist” Willie Horton ads.  White men threw a temper tantrum in 1994 and helped steal Florida six years later.  Martha Coakley was a lousy candidate; Massachusetts voters weren’t opposed to the Democrats’ big government initiatives.

And still despite polls in the Bay State, exit polls in New Jersey and Virginia and data from across the country, Democrats press forward on health care as if these elections didn’t happen.  To Nancy Pelosi and her allies, inconvenient electoral returns (so long as she remains Speaker) just don’t register.   Despite ever increasing numbers of Americans opposed to her health care plans, the San Francisco Democrat remains determined “to get health care done:”

“You go through the gate. If the gate’s closed, you go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we’ll pole-vault in. If that doesn’t work, we’ll parachute in. But we’re going to get health care reform passed for the American people.”

As it is with the Speaker on health care, so it is with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri on the “science” behind his dire warnings of global warming.  Despite errors found in 2007 IPCC report which helped win him the Nobel Prize, he won’t admit his mistakes because, as he puts it, “a lot of climate sceptics are after my blood, but I’m in no mood to oblige them”.  It’s not a matter of science for him, but of pride, not admitting that his critics got something right.

Why can’t he just admit he made a mistake and move on?  Why can’t Nancy Pelosi accept the fact that the American people don’t want the health care reform she’s offering and move on to other options more in line with the popular mood?  Why can’t liberals admit that the mood of the American people is shifting, while polls may have recently suggested people were more open to big government options, they now show growing opposition to statist initiatives.

* (more…)

“Trying to shut down criticism in the name of science is the real attack on science.”

–Clive Crook via Instapundit

Massachusetts Congressman Ed Markey, chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, is using a slur some AGW zealots love to describe those critical or skeptical of their views. I heard him on TV today on the news calling them “anti-science.”

So, we’ve got a career politician (Markey was first elected to the Massachusetts House in 1972 when he was 26) telling scientists who have spent their lives studying the earth and its climate “anti-science.”  That’s rich.

If Markey calls opponents of cap and trade are anti-science, I wonder what he calls scientists who try to force data into a theory without accounting for how some data often undermine said theory. Or what does he call scientists who won’t release their data and disguise their methodology.  About scientists who “subvert peer review and prevent publication of papers that didn’t completely agree with the favored theory“.  About scientists who try to hide an inconvenient decline? (more…)

In the wake of the publication of the East Anglia e-mails, information strengthening the case of global warming skeptics has been coming to light at such a rapid pace than even the most dedicated followers of this debate can barely keep track of the data coming to light.  Al Gore has cancelled his $1,200 a head reception in Copenhagen.  One of the chief advocates of the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) hypothesis (thanks for the correction, Dave!) got quite testy in confronting a critic.

And the UK’s Met Office (its National Weather Service)

. . . plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked e-mails.

The new analysis of the data will take three years, meaning that the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012.

In other words, as Sonicfrog (who alerted me to this article) notes, “those now examining the state of everything that went on have absolutely no confidence that things were done properly.”  Well, it seems they got cold feet about their reexamination and won’t be doing a do-over, but will be making “an effort to release more data to to public.”  Let’s hope they do more than just make an effort and actually release the data.

Just another sign how much global warming alarmists have been keeping us in the dark. (more…)

 . . . er, at the bottom of that dumpster.”  

So, sayeth Jim Treacher (via Instapundit).

(His trenchant commentary on this piece of news: “SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.“)

Clearly, this is the blogosphere-story-of-the-year (if not decade).  It matters not that the Mainstream Media is covering up this scandal, the free-wheeling democratized Internet is getting the information out.

Here’s another great summary from Robert Tracinski at RealClearPolitics:

For more than a decade, we’ve been told that there is a scientific “consensus” that humans are causing global warming, that “the debate is over” and all “legitimate” scientists acknowledge the truth of global warming. Now we know what this “consensus” really means. What it means is: the fix is in.

This is an enormous case of organized scientific fraud, but it is not just scientific fraud. It is also a criminal act. Suborned by billions of taxpayer dollars devoted to climate research, dozens of prominent scientists have established a criminal racket in which they seek government money-Phil Jones has raked in a total of £13.7 million in grants from the British government-which they then use to falsify data and defraud the taxpayers. It’s the most insidious kind of fraud: a fraud in which the culprits are lauded as public heroes. Judging from this cache of e-mails, they even manage to tell themselves that their manipulation of the data is intended to protect a bigger truth and prevent it from being “confused” by inconvenient facts and uncontrolled criticism.

The damage here goes far beyond the loss of a few billions of taxpayer dollars on bogus scientific research. The real cost of this fraud is the trillions of dollars of wealth that will be destroyed if a fraudulent theory is used to justify legislation that starves the global economy of its cheapest and most abundant sources of energy.

This is the scandal of the century. It needs to be thoroughly investigated-and the culprits need to be brought to justice.

As I stated on Twitter earlier today… “Can we at least all agree now that Global Warming is a political philosophy and not a scientific enterprise?”

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

While I have long counted myself as one of the skeptics of the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), I don’t believe advocates of the theory invented it out of whole cloth.  Aware of efforts to “seed clouds” and create rainfall, I know human activities can impact the environment  Indeed, the recent snowfall in Beijing was caused by Chinese meteorologists when they sought to end a drought in the Middle Kingdom

If chemicals deliberately released into the atmosphere could create rainfall, then chemicals released into the atmosphere as a byproduct of industrial activities could have similar effects.

But, much as I take the science seriously, I question the zealotry of some advocates of this theory, particularly Al Gore.  Many refuse to debate those who have come to different conclusions, dismissing the scientists offering such views as tools of corporate interests and otherwise insulting skeptics.  And the disclosure of the e-mails from the University of East Anglia reveals that this attitude extends to scientists as well as activists.

With the release of those e-mails, we find Dr. Kenneth Treberth befuddled that “we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment“.  He’s confused because the data don’t much the theory, leading Ed Morrissey to wonder if he’s not a scientist, but a believer:

Do scientists use data to test theories, or do they use theories to test data? Scientists will claim the former, but here we have scientists who cling to the theory so tightly that they reject the data.  That’s not science; it’s religious belief.

My skepticism of the theory of AGW arises as much for the zealotry of its followers as it does from the arguments of its critics (and skeptics).  The release of these e-mails only increases my skepticism.  Others believe it is evidence of fraud and have demanded an investigation.

Let’s have that investigation and do so by considering the facts and not calling each other names.

I’m glad Dan did a post on “Climategate” earlier this morning.  As usual, he took the words right out of my head.

I wanted to add my thoughts but then got my daily email from the Wall St. Journal Online.  James Taranto sums it up better than I:

What the [Washington] Post describes is not a vigorous debate but an attempt to suppress debate–to politicize the process of scientific inquiry so that it yields a predetermined result.  This does not, in itself, prove the global warmists wrong.  But it raises a glaring question:  If they have the facts on their side, why do they need to resort to tactics of suppression and intimidation?

It makes me think of the SEIU thugs at the Tea Parties this summer… and the Black Panthers in Philadelphia brandishing weapons and blocking voters in November 2008.

As the Joker might say, “Why the intimidation?”

UPDATE: Rand Simberg says this at PajamasMedia…

In fact, when scientists become politicians but continue to pretend to be doing science, that is the real crime. The theory being promoted by these men was being used to justify government actions that would result in greatly diminished future economic growth of the most powerful economy on earth (and the rest of the world as well). It would make it more difficult and less affordable to address any real problems that might be caused in the future by a change in climate, whether due to human activity or other causes. It could impoverish millions in the future, with little actual change in adverse climate effects. And when such a theory has the potential to do so much unjustified harm, and it has a fraudulent basis, who are the real criminals against humanity?

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Last week, I wrote two posts questioning Newsweek‘s cover story calling global warming crusader Al Gore “a thinking man’s thinking man.”  I held it was wrong to consider him a thinking man because the former Vice President refuses to debate those who contest his theory of anthropogenic global warming.  Not just that, he claims repeatedly that the debate is over, that scientists have reached a consensus in favor of his favorite theory when, in fact, they haven’t.

Wonder how that thinking man is reacting to the e-mails released on Friday showing that some of the leading advocates of his theory had been doctoring the data, perpetrating, in the words of one lawyer who has read those e-mails, “a knowing and deliberate hoax.”

But, if this guys were really such dispassionate fellows, thinking guys, you know, what did they harbor so much animus against scientists who reached different conclusions in studying the same phenomena?  According to the Washington Post, Al Gore’s allies in the scientific community, had “venomous feelings toward skeptics“:

And the newly disclosed private exchanges among climate scientists at Britain’s Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia reveal an intellectual circle that appears to feel very much under attack, and eager to punish its enemies.

In one e-mail, the center’s director, Phil Jones, writes Pennsylvania State University’s Michael E. Mann and questions whether the work of academics that question the link between human activities and global warming deserve to make it into the prestigious IPCC report, which represents the global consensus view on climate science.

“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report,” Jones writes. “Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

So, instead of putting the work out the questioning academics out there so it can be reviewed and dismissed (which they should easily be able to do if their science doesn’t hold up), they want to suppress it.

Interesting how the Post article, while revealing the tactics of intellectual intimidation practiced by advocates of anthropogenic global warming concludes not with what the revelation of these tactics means for the debate on global warming, but by reverting to norm (as if nothing had changed).  Post writer Juliet Eilperin even ends her article by quoting such advocates who continue to maintain evidence of such warming is “incontrovertible,” therefore, maintaining the only question is what to do.

Um, actually, no, the e-mails reveal that the evidence is not so incontrovertible, indeed, suggests it is very “controvertible.”   Whether Eilperin wants to accept it or not, the status of the debate has changed these past 72 hours.  There is more information available now to buttress the case of global warming skeptics, much of it in the very hand of those who seek to ignore their arguments.

One might better believe those critical of the skeptics if they expressed their criticism through scientific arguments rather than emotional outrbursts (or by attempts to suppress their findings). (more…)

I wrote my recent post on Al Gore primarily to contest the characterization of this crusading environmentalist as a thinking man.  He may have reached his conclusions about the threat of global warming based upon sound science, but in leading a movement to impose strict government controls on carbon emissions, he conducts himself not as a rational man of ideas, but as an emotional man of convictions.

I don’t claim to be an expert on the science of global warming.  I do claim, however, to be aware of the debate within the scientific community on anthropogenic global warming and to what extent it can be mitigated by government action.  Indeed, in that post, I cited a piece by Richard S. Lindzen, a professor of Meteorology at MIT, who has long contested the notion of a scientific consensus on global warming.

Our critics, however, are quick to dismiss his work and the other atmospheric scientists who have views similar to his own so they can make the case that the science is settled.  Far from it.

That Gore, no environmental scientist he, would so readily dismiss the work of serious scientists like Lindzen confirms my point that he is not a thinking man.  This ready dismissal makes me wonder why so many of Gore’s followers are so insistent than the science is settled?  To be sure, in many many disciplines of the natural and social sciences, many issues have long been settled.  This is not one of them.

One would think that thinking men would be eager to engage those who, through the scientific process, have reached conclusions at odds with their own.  And, if they are thinking men, confident in their arguments, wouldn’t they welcome the chance to debate those who have reached such conclusions?  If the science behind those conflicting conclusions is so shoddy, it should be easy to debunk.

A task a thinking man would welcome.

With Sarah Palin all over the news this week, we encounter yet again the power of the media, even in the twilight of their influence to shape popular opinion.  Despite her record of accomplishment as Governor of Alaska, including her regular bucking of the Republican establishment and cooperation with Democratic leaders and legislators, most Americans remain unaware of her executive abilities and bipartisan policy-making.  All too many see her as an ideologue unfit to lead.

Yet, Palin is not the only politician who receives coverage that leaves out considerable aspects of her biography and professional record.  When they find a liberal they want to lionize, they ignore facts about his life which conflict with the image they wish to create of him.  In a recent cover story, Newsweek billed one such liberal as “The Thinking Man’s Thinking Man,” yet neglected the emotional manner in which Al Gore attempts to discredit those who have not reached a conclusion different from his own.

He doesn’t argue with those critics, doesn’t consider the facts they introduce and arguments they have made to challenge his conclusions (as would a thinking man).  Instead, he tells us “the debate in the scientific community is over.”  Hardly.  The debate is far from over.  There is no consensus backing his theories.

Not just that, he “refuses to debate those who say global warming is not a crisis.”  Wouldn’t a thinking man welcome the chance to debate his ideas?

Newsweek may want to portray Al Gore as a “thinking man,” but the very way he has conducted his crusade for climate control legislation suggests not a thinker, but a zealot, one for whom promoting the cause is more important than addressing its critics.  And I mean, isn’t that what thinking men do, address their critics.

Wasn’t the quintessential thinking man famous for dialogues, not his diatribes monologues?

Well, that’s the way the headlines should read.

Once again, free-marked hating Republicans are to blame for another Obama profligation of our tax dollars. Yes, the House of Representatives passed today the largest tax increase in American history. It comes in the form of Cap-and-Trade, a taxing scheme whereby the government will be able to extort endless amounts of dollars from companies (wonder where they’ll get those dollars?) for, well, um…doing business, all in the name of their religion so-called “global warming”.

The bill was passed without time to read it (sound familiar?) and would cost Americans several times more than it suggests (sound familiar?) and its passage was characterized as vital by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Barack Obama (sound familiar?).

But as with the “stimulus” pork bill of his early presidency, we can’t lay complete blame at the feet of The One and his socialist minions in Congress. Once again, shameful Republicans made the difference in the passage of the bill.

The final vote was 218-212, with 3 not voting. The number of embarrassed embarrassing Republicans who voted aye? Eight. Had they voted no, or even sat it out, this disgusting piece of legislation would be dead right now.

As a public service, here are the names of those who should be beaten in 2010. Please, if you live in their districts, do all you can to find someone anybody to challenge them in their primaries:

Mary Bono Mack, CA-45
Michael Castle, DE-At Large
Mark Kirk, IL-10
Leonard Lance, NJ-7
Frank LoBiondo, NJ-2
John McHugh, NY-23
David Reichert, WA-8
Chris Smith, NJ-4

I encourage all who live in these districts to call their Representative and let them know that you’ll be waiting for them when they get back from DC for their Independence Day vacation.

Next this legislation moves to the Senate. And we remember how great Republicans there are at holding the line on anti-business legislation, right?

When these anti-growth, anti-business, anti-free-market policies start destroying what is left of our economy, and people start blaming Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi for driving the country into a ditch financially, let us not forget those in our own midst who literally were the difference in passing such disastrous legislation.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot), from HQ

The remains of what DNA analysis showed to be a boy found in the Dutch Medieval village Eindhoven, could prove to be revolutionary for both archaeology and modern research on HIV/AIDS:

This chance discovery of ancient DNA has led to one of the most ambitious archaeological projects ever to come out of the Netherlands–a massive excavation in the St. Catherine’s Church cemetery and the establishment of a major ancient human DNA databank. With $3.4 million in funding, Arts and a team of archaeologists and physical anthropologists have now unearthed the skeletons of more than 750 Eindhoven citizens. And over the next two years, University of Leiden geneticist Peter de Knijff will attempt to recover DNA from these remains. “We expect that at least 75 percent of all individuals will have ancient DNA and proteins,” says [Eindhoven Municipal Archaeologist, Nico] Arts.

For researchers, the Eindhoven DNA bank could prove a major windfall, paving the way for a host of new studies. To unravel the mysteries of human disease, researchers are increasingly studying genetic variations in human populations that increase the risk of illnesses, such as diabetes, or boost resistance to infections such as malaria. By studying the variants over time, researchers hope to advance knowledge of these diseases and gather clues to produce vaccines or new drug treatments. And such medical research is where the Eindhoven DNA bank, which spans 600 years of history, could really shine.

The Dutch team hopes, for example, that their project will reveal the origin and prevalence of a genetic variant that increases resistance to one of the world’s most lethal viruses–HIV. Today, nearly 10 percent of people of northern European descent possess this variant, known as the CCR5D32 allele, and the discovery is sparking the development of a new class of AIDS-fighting drugs. Evidence suggests that this mutation first arose 3,100 to 7,800 years ago, but how did it become so prevalent across Europe in an age before the AIDS epidemic? Could this mutation also have boosted resistance to an earlier epidemic, such as smallpox or the Black Death? In search of new data, Knijff and his team will search for this variant in the DNA of Eindhoven’s citizens. “There is no doubt that these studies are valuable,” says Susan Scott, a University of Liverpool historian who has written extensively on the Black Death and its possible connection to the HIV-resistance variant. “Whilst I don’t think [ancient DNA] studies will yield a vaccine for AIDS, they may assist molecular geneticists to develop some gene therapy.” (Archaeology magazine)

Investigations into “why so many residents of Eyam, England, survived the black death when it hit the remote village in 1665″, produced similar evidence for this genetic resistance. All in all, a fascinating blending of archaeology and modern medicine which has the potential of not only providing us more understanding of our ancestors, but possibly could assist in research for diseases like HIV/AIDS today.

For more on the excavation at Eindhoven, click here.

h/t Per Omnia Saecula

– John (Average Gay Joe)