Should I Get A Flu Shot?
Posted by Greg Laden on January 11, 2013 
It is Influenza Season in the Northern Hemisphere. So, this is a good time to talk about the flu. Three years ago we had an unusual flu season, with a nasty variant about that seemed to be threatening a pandemic, and that’s the year Huxley was born (in November) so we faced the problem of…
Like the tree that stands beside the water …
Posted by Greg Laden on January 10, 2013 
We shall not be moved. …” Fifty five of us jammed in a bus designed to hold fourty people plus a driver, rolling down Highway 90 from Upstate New York to Chicago. As a teenager (just turned 15), I was thrilled to be going to Chicago to attend the Fight Back Conference, a thinly disguised…
Very interesting things and a quiz.
Posted by Greg Laden on January 9, 2013 
The Best Argument to Eliminate the Tenure System comes from Atlantic University, Florida, where Professor James Tracy has asserted that the Sandy Hook shootings in Connecticut either did not happen or were staged. Asking if the deaths, if they happened, were part of a training session, he further asks “Was this to a certain degree…
Fighting Over Hobbit
Posted by Greg Laden on January 9, 2013 
The Hobbit is a book by JRR Tolkien, a just released blockbuster movie, and a hominid from Indonesia. Here, we are speaking about the hominid from Indonesia. A while back I wrote a review of a book by Dean Falk, for American Scientist. You can find that review here, and you can find a different…
NOAA: 2012 Warmest Year on Record for the US 48
Posted by Greg Laden on January 9, 2013 
Looking just at the contiguous 48 states of the US, NOAA has determined that 2012 was the warmest year on record. It was also ranked second in “extreme” weather events including fires, major storms, and drought. Tornado activity was less than average. The report came out yesterday and states: In 2012, the contiguous United States…
Debunking climate change denialism
Posted by Greg Laden on January 9, 2013 
Climate change science denialism has pretty much run its course. We’ve been experiencing a large number of climate change related events (see this list for a brief summary) lately. It may well be that the number per year of such alarming events will go down and up over time. It may be that we will…
Happy Birthday Alfred Russel Wallace
Posted by Greg Laden on January 8, 2013 
Alfred Russel Wallace was born on this day in 1823 (he died in 1913). You know of him as the other guy who invented a theory of Natural Selection which was very like Darwin’s; they published the theory together. He also spent considerable time traveling around on boats in the tropics, like Darwin did, and…
Australia’s BoM no AGW, Tasmanian Fire Video, and a Koala. #BigAussieHeat
Posted by Greg Laden on January 8, 2013 
First, a word about the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s position on climate change, heat, and fires. It has been suggested (by a commenter here) that the BoM is claiming that the current heat wave is not related to climate change, but rather, a matter of natural variability and a late arriving monsoon. But that is…
The Australian Heat Wave
Posted by Greg Laden on January 7, 2013 
Australia is experiencing a heat spell. The Climate Information Services of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has issued a special statement (I’ll provide some details below). This is not unexpected, since over the last few years global warming due to the human release of large amounts of fossil Carbon into the atmosphere has been heating…
What the heck is Vocal Fry?
Posted by Greg Laden on January 7, 2013 
Until a few minutes ago, I didn’t even know what the heck Vocal Fry is. Apparently some people have gotten really annoyed about it, as it is a speech mannerism that has emerged among young folks, who are always annoying, and especially females, who are always annoying. Apparently. (I also did not know that until…
Global Warming Moves South #BigAussieHeat
Posted by Greg Laden on January 7, 2013 
Summer is coming on strong south of the Equator, and in Australia this has meant unprecedented record high temperatures, and in the state of Tasmania, severe brush fires that have destroyed numerous homes, adding to the bad news from fires in the southeastern mainland. Prime Minister Julia Gillard said “And while you would not put…
Stories from the field: Jon Kalb’s Newest Book
Posted by Greg Laden on January 7, 2013 
People who do a lot of field work end up with interesting stories to tell, especially if the fieldwork is diverse and the conditions are adverse. Often, the sort of thing people want to know about is very different from the repertoire of available stories, but as long as the expectations of the audience is…
Is Greenland’s Ice Melting Way Fast, and Why? You can help.
Posted by Greg Laden on January 6, 2013 
You know about Albedo. No not Libido, Albedo. Sunlight is to varying degrees reflected off the surface of the earth more or less back into space. That is Albedo. The vast regions of snow and ice covered glacial surfaces in the northern and southern Polar regions contributes to a good amount of the Earth’s Albedo.…
Aquatic Ape Theory: Another nail in the coffin
Posted by Greg Laden on January 6, 2013 
I just want to say that Huxley is pretty bad at swimming. I quickly add, for a 3 year old human, he’s pretty darn good at it. Amanda’s family is very aquatic, as tends to happen when everyone spends several weeks per year (or longer) on the edge of a lake. They can all ski…
Palaeowomaen: Barbara Isaac, Women in The Field, and The Throwing Hypothesis
Posted by Greg Laden on January 5, 2013 
Following on discussion arising from this post, here is a revised discussion of throwing in human evolution. The question of diversity in science, and more specifically, success for women, is often discussed in relation to bench or lab oriented fields. If you read the blogs that cover this sort of topic, they are very often…
The Irony of the Projectile
Posted by Greg Laden on January 4, 2013 
The evidence from palaeoanthropology suggests that in the past humans were about the stature they are now, with more sexual dimporphism than now, with similar or larger brains than they have now, and used technology at the same level of sophistication as many later humans. Scientists argue over the degree to which modern day language…
Hurricane Sandy’s New Political Math
Posted by Greg Laden on January 2, 2013 If Earth was your mother, she’d hold you under water in one rocky hand until you no longer bubbled
Posted by Greg Laden on January 1, 2013 
A collection of videos … that you will enjoy. BBC Wonders of Life Trailer: Climate 2013: Perspectives of 8 Scientists: Chasing Ice movie reveals largest iceberg break-up ever filmed: Kathleen Dean Moore at Nobel Conference 48 on the greatest violation of human rights ever seen: With all due respect to the introducers, the talk actually…
Happy New Year, and A Year End Review of Blog Posts
Posted by Greg Laden on January 1, 2013 Happy new year. Did you know that this is the first year in many that all four digits of the year (in this case 2,0,1,3) are different from each other? Can you name the last year this was true? Can you name the next year in which this will be true? Had you been following…
What are the real top ten science stories of 2012?
Posted by Greg Laden on December 31, 2012 
This is the time of year when we list the “top ten” stories or events of the year. That we do this in late December is not totally arbitrary. A year, unfortunately (given it’s odd number of days and uncomfortable near-synchronization with lunar cycles), is not arbitrary, but rather, imposed on us by the realities…
Google+ vs Facebook vs Twitter vs Pinterest
Posted by Greg Laden on December 30, 2012 From What the Plus! Google+ for the Rest of Us:
Stuff for teachers
Posted by Greg Laden on December 30, 2012 I made a “page” on this blog, HERE, pointing to posts that teachers might find interesting or useful. So far most of the items linked to relate to Creationism and that sort of thing, but I’ll soon be adding subject area content posts as well. If you are a teacher, have fun. If you know…
Crowdfunding a Greenland expedition to gauge increasing wildfire impact on melt
Posted by Greg Laden on December 30, 2012 A colleague sent this to me, I’m passing it on to you. Looks important and interesting: Wildfire, increasing with climate change, deposits increasing amounts of light-absorbing black carbon [soot] on the cryosphere [snow and ice], multiplying the existing heat-driven ice-reflectivity feedback [a.k.a. albedo feedback]. The relative importance of increasing wildfire [and changing industrial soot pollution]…
The Downfall of Climate Change Denialism
Posted by Greg Laden on December 28, 2012 Apropos this, and this, we have this:
Marc Morano Wins Prestigious Award
Posted by Greg Laden on December 28, 2012 And by “Prestigious” I mean …. well, see for yourself in this story from Media Matters for America (Reposted with permission): Climate Change Misinformer Of The Year: Marc Morano ClimateDepot.com founder Marc Morano has been called “the Matt Drudge of climate denial,” the “king of the skeptics,” and “a central cell of the climate-denial machine,”…
Secular Humanist Display Damaged
Posted by Greg Laden on December 28, 2012 … Twice. The story is here. Basically, the sign was first spay painted, the burned. Run of the mill anti-atheist vandalism. But, if you are not already tapped out from the Happy Holiday Season of Buying Stuff, you might want to go to this web page and make a small donation to WASH, who originally…
Top (mostly climate change related) Science Denialist Books
Posted by Greg Laden on December 28, 2012 Top “Ten” Recent Books (focusing on 2012 but including the last few years) on Climate, Science denialism, Energy, and Science Policy are (including one Post Warming novel) are: Before the Lights Go Out: Conquering the Energy Crisis Before It Conquers Us by Maggie Koerth-Baker Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand by Haydn Washington and…
Top Climate Stories of 2012
Posted by Greg Laden on December 28, 2012 
A group of us, all interested in climate science, put together a list of the most notable, often, most worrying, climate-related stories of the year, along with a few links that will allow you to explore the stories in more detail. We did not try to make this a “top ten” list, because it is…
Atheist Billboards: Marketing Miracle Needed?
Posted by Greg Laden on December 28, 2012 Over the last couple of years, there seems to have been a higher rate of erecting billboards by atheists, humanists, and other secularists than previously. Hemant Mehta, the Friendly Atheist, selected among the large number of Big Missives a subset of 18 “finalists” in a contest. You get to vote for five among these, and…
Satan playing air guitar on his pitchfork in your local public school?
Posted by Greg Laden on December 27, 2012 
What about a picture of Charles Darwin burning in hell to teach kids about flames? I don’t think so. Although I personally am not like some of my fellow secularists in reacting viscerally to any and all stylistic or symbolic references to Judeo-Christian religious themes, I am aware that there are recognizable religious visual or…
, which is now available for the 