Looking ahead...Signs of change

The Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination at UCSD held "The Physics of Free Will" a panel discussion on August 6^th. Astrophysicists Brian Keating, Andrew Friedman and David Brin discussed what modern physics – including “entanglement” and the time-history of inflation and the Big Bang -- has to say about the concept of free will, including perspectives from the foundations of quantum mechanics, cosmology, and speculations about the role of of conscious observers in the cosmos.  Now the whole event is available on YouTube!

Stay tuned for a smorgasbord of cool items. But first...

Is Science Broken? No. But some science journalists are deeply dishonest

“Is Science Broken?” Certainly there are those who proclaim that from the rooftops, seizing on every anecdote of misbehavior by individual researchers as evidence that science itself cannot be trusted to keep its own house. Elsewhere, we discuss the varied reasons for a “war on science.” But certainly some problems originate within. Over at Five-Thirty-eight, a recent article by Christie Aschwanden describes why some of the very same statistical methods that were developed to separate cause-effect from mere coincidence make it very hard to prove particular conclusions – especially in social science. The essay is worthwhile and offers up some cool interactive demos of statistical tradeoffs… 

… and yet, the author unwittingly exemplifies her own complaint, to a stunning degree, in her very first example, an interactive that purportedly shows how the same data can be manipulated to show either democrats or republicans are better for the economy. Either or neither.  How interesting that she would have chosen that as her first case.  And how convenient, since that lesson is the one readers will take away.

In this case, the tendentious effect is easily exposed, as the “party effects on the economy” graphic only lets you compare raw, yearly figures for GDP or employment or inflation, when these all react sluggishly to changes in policy, especially if it takes six years to drag the nation out of a pit the previous administration created. It is the direction and rate of change of those metrics that actually reflect outcomes from policy moves. For example, if one party takes inherited surpluses and leaves the nation diving into steepening deficits, and the next one starts to pull us out of the dive, it is idiotic or else deeply dishonest to make Total Current Debt the metric.

Even more telling is the second derivative of economic factors like public debt. The rate of rate of change has much more immediate effects, far more blatantly attributable to a party’s policies during its span in power… as I show here. And when you use such metrics all ambiguity vanishes. One party is responsible and effective while the other is absolutely and always devastatingly harmful.  

Let’s give the author the benefit of the doubt.  Perhaps she is simply finger-wagging scientists, while falling for mistakes they’d catch as freshmen.  

== Looking ahead -- signs of change ==

See this: 13 ways that Science Fiction's Vision of the Future is Closer than You Think -- with innovations in space habitation, teleportation, touch screens, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, autonomous cars... and more!

The next candidate for “flying car”? The Terrafugia TF-X is – or maybe will be -- capable of vertical take-off, thus negating the need for a runway. Wings furled, it’ll squeeze into a standard single garage, thus negating the need for a hanger. Riiiiight. 

While the Tricorder X Prize tools along toward creating an inexpensive – Doctor (McCoy) in a Box… the Chinese firm Baidu hopes to provide a service letting folks anywhere interact with AI and assess 520 different diseases, representing upwards of 90 percent of the most common medical problems nationwide. 

Take a look at: Twenty-five fascinating mega projects taking place across the globe, including the Panama Canal expansion, the Three Gorges Dam, the underwater Marmaray Tunnel in Turkey, Jubail Industrial City in Saudi Arabia, Liuchonghe Bridge in China and other bold projects!

Six people shut themselves inside a dome in Hawaii and plan to stay for a year. It's a mission funded by NASA to explore what it's like to send manned missions into deep space.

Artificial photosynthesis could power homes in a few years, mimicking plant-based photosynthesis by using solar energy to convert water into hydrogen. If cheap nickel catalysts can be used… and 22% efficiency holds up… then toss it onto the pile of potential game-changers. Ah, but that pile had better be producing, big-time, soon. 

Because. The latest report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has determined that globally, July was the hottest month since record keeping began in 1880. And ocean acidity -- which CAN only have one cause -- is rising.  See the shrinking of Arctic ice through years of National Geographic maps. The Himalayan glaciers that slake the thirst of a third of the world’s population are rapidly retreating. And the denialist cult keeps getting more frantic.

Just a few years ago, one of the cult incantations was that solar and sustainables were “pipe dreams.” Now? The world now gets over 1% of its electricity from solar power! Currently, global solar capacity is 178 gigawatts Crossing the Threshold The world now gets over 1% of its electricity from solar power. Currently, global solar capacity is 178 gigawatts. The U.S. now ranks second worldwide in wind power…

One of the major talking points of opponents of sustainable energy is that if you include fixed manufacturing costs, solar and wind are not competitive with fossil fuels. These opponents used this rhetoric to stymie investments in sustainables R&D during the first decade of this century.  But rates of efficiency have been skyrocketing and costs plummeting.  One of the big solar module manufacturers, Trina Solar, said costs had fallen 19 per cent in the past year alone(!), and would continue to fall by at least 5 per cent to 6 per cent a year in coming years as efficiencies were improved.  This study shows that renewables turn out already to be cheaper than fossil fuels.

== and... ==

Researchers from MIT revealed they've produced a "better, cheaper, more user-friendly" printer that can print using 10 different materials at the same time. "Multifab" self corrects by watching its own actions. They claim it can scan case around an iPhone you place in the printer

Building materials from CO2? 

We keep reporting “possible game changing” technological breakthroughs. This one sounds a bit less plausible than some.  Yet potentially cool. Imagine that the trend toward using carbon fiber as a construction material – from planes and ships to cars and even buildings – creating a huge demand for the stuff.  Now envision that we get the carbon feedstock from Carbon Dioxide taken out of the air.  Hmm, well breaking oxygen bonds takes real energy. And a team at MIT thinks they have the problem licked, using lithium. Their novel electrochemical process sequesters carbon in the form of a versatile building material. 

Alas, even if this works, it would only put a dent in atmospheric CO2, as shown in this appraisal, which shows “that capping global warming at 2 degrees Celsius requires removing 1.8 billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere yearly from now until 2100—a tall order that exceeds the capabilities of current technology.” 

  

Boston Dynamics is at it again, creating robots that walk with creepy-amazing skill through natural obstacle courses… only this time it’s a biped!  

Batteries for a new age? MIT and Samsung researchers have developed a new approach to achieving long life and a 20 to 30 percent improvement in power density (the amount of power stored in a given space) in rechargeable batteries — using a solid electrolyte, rather than the liquid used in today’s most common rechargeables. The new materials could also greatly improve safety and last through “hundreds of thousands of cycles.”  

Researchers at CERN find that within about one part per million, antimatter and matter behave in the same way with respect to gravity. And have the same charge-to-mass ratios. Okay, check that off my list of worries.

Finally...a recent typhoon hit Taiwan with winds that lifted a 747 off the ground. 

Moving the Goalposts: Part II

Last time, I laid down seven fundamental points that you folks should arm yourselves with, and then sally forth to help save your planet. Rhetorical weapons that are far more confrontational and in-yer-face than the denialist cult is used to hearing from us science-loving egghead types.

And that's fine.  They are waging war against not only science, but our children's future. They think enlightenment types are wimps, with our "facts" and our "evidence" and "reason."

It's time, indeed, to prove that we aren't wimps, but just slow to anger. As our side has been slow to anger in every other phase of the American Civil War.  Slow, but ponderously determined, once roused.

And now... let's reiterate and expand upon the biggest and most important of the seven points. The paramount proof of insanity. Get up to them, nose-to-nose, and ask:

         WHY WON’T YOU NEGOTIATE? 

To you and your fellow denialist cultists, it is all-or-nothing!  Either you bravely hold the line and allow zero measures, even teensy ones, to increase energy efficiency… or else those dang smartypants libruls and sciencey types will shut down every power plant and deliberately ruin the economy, forcing us all to shiver in the dark and starve!   

Um.  Find me the librul or scientist who wants any of that? One. Just one. Even one? If you have spouted that poison, could you at least cite a single actual example?

Okay. I admit. There are a few crazy lefties who might push for more puritan measures than the average citizen or scientist would accept. But who is crazier? Them? Or guys like you who are comfy portraying all blue types and scientists as raving PETA-Greepeace-starve-in-darkness-EarthFirsters?

== TWODA ==

I’ve long spoken of Things We Ought to be Doing Anyway — measures that we could be negotiating, that will do us all good, even if 99% of scientists prove to be wrong and cretins like James Imhof prove to be right. 

Win-win investments in energy efficiency would save consumers billions, even if climate change is a ruse!  Measures that would also help a lot, if it isn’t.  

One example?  The new CAFE auto mileage standards that a briefly-democratic Congress passed in 2009, after 26 years of GOP delays, has resulted in far better cars, many billions more in consumers’ pockets, and healthy auto companies. Oh, and countless fewer barrels of oil sent up as smoke.

But you won’t think about TWODA.  You refuse to sit down and negotiate, because negotiation itself is declared to be a vile sin, by your cult. (I do not exaggerate: look up Tom DeLay and his GOP-must-never-negotiate rule. Newt Gingrich saw his political career destroyed because he dared to negotiate with Bill Clinton, in the miracle year, 1995.)

Let me make that point double-underlined for emphasis. You… and I mean you members of the denialist-ailesheimers cult… refuse to put anything on the table, not even capitalist-friendly measures that would promote energy efficiency and lower emissions through market forces, in ways that do no harm to the economy and that would be win-wins for all…

… well, they would be win-wins for all except just one group of folks. 
    Your masters. The coal barons and petro-sheiks who do not want efficiency or lower-emission energy -- for obvious reasons.  They are the only folks who would not benefit from such a win-win… and they just happen to co-own the very same “think tanks” and advertising agencies and cable propaganda outfits that furnish your daily fix of science-hating outrage.

Anyone with two neurons left to use in independent thought would look at that fact and go “Huh! That IS rather suspicious! The only beneficiaries of Doing Nothing and Denialist Delay just happen to be the guys feeding me the propaganda I suckle every day.”

But you won’t do that. Nor even glancingly consider the thought that maybe… just maybe… you have been the one who’s led astray.

== A perfect example ==

Ah... Keystone XL.  The Great Cause of Today's Right!  The one and only positive and assertive item on the Republican agenda.  Let me reiterate, it is the only positive thing on the GOP wish list. (Infrastructure repair? Putting half a million US men and women to work fixing failing bridges that will have to be repaired anyway? Absolutely not! That would make the economy look good under a democrat!)

Ah, but what is the real motive for Keystone XL?  To feed more oil into a glutted US market? Nope. Now, pay close attention --

Canadian shale oil already has plenty of pipelines to US refineries. There are seven already.  Seven.

The sole purpose of Keystone XL is to take the very worst type of nasty shale sludge-oil right over our most precious aquifer, then bypass our refineries, taking the stuff to gulf ports so that Canadian petro moguls can sell it to China. We will get not one drop, not a cent, and very few jobs. So... um.... What possible incentive do we have to do this? That is, other than that those petro moguls own Congress?

It's like asking questions about "climate grants" or George Soros toppling foreign governments. (See part one.) The worst thing about Keystone XL is how incurious are the GOP ground troops, who will nod at any mantra spun out by the puppeteers. 

Hey, go ahead and be conservative!  We need conservatives!  But lobotomization? Why would you put up with what's been done to you?

== The Keystone Irony ==

The final thought about Keystone.  Congressional Dems have made it clear, repeatedly. Keystone is NOT on our top priority list." In other words... although we hate it and think it's stupid and corrupt and dangerous, there are some ways that we can nvision stepping aside and letting it happen. If good safeguards are in place. And, above all, if you offer something, in return.

Pause and consider how far politics have fallen, that even the possibility of getting this pipeline -- again, the only positive-assertive thing on the Republican agenda -- by negotiation, compromise and horsetrading, absolutely never occurs to them. They don't even bring it up. The thought is alien.

And that is why I say politics -- the art of negotiating our way into the future as adults -- is dead in the U.S., as it is always killed, during each phase of our civil war.  And it is the deliberate assassination of politics that is the true treason of the re-ignited Confederacy.  And the reason Goldwater and buckley are spinning in their graves.

== Assigning blame? ==

Why has so much money and clever-cynical manipulation kept denialism active?  Remember those "threatened assets" in coal and oil that the Bank of England report called doomed?

The Kochs and their royal petro-sheik partners have to play out the clock, in order to unload those assets favorably. You'll know when they have finally succeeded in finding Greater Fools to buy their mines and oil wells etc., when suddenly, Fox pundits proclaim: "who, me?  I never denied human caused climate change! I was only keeping them durn' scientists honest!"

You denialists? That's what you'll claim, too. Just as you now claim you always knew tobacco was bad! And you never supported the insane Drug War. Only, this time it won't work.  

We'll remember. Because the tort lawsuits for this one will make the Big Tobacco judgements look like nothing.  And half a billion refugees will take their lawsuits waaaaay down the blame ladder. Below Rupert Murdoch (who will wind up pumping gas at a Shell station) and below James Imhofe and below Sean Hannity...


...all the way to you. And when that day comes, don't look at us neighbors to stand by you. We who tried for decades to wake you up. Those climate refugees will get your house.  And rightfully so.

== And finally... when is religion relevant in politics? ==

... let's turn to the dominionists who make up a majority of the prospective Republican candidates for presidency, in 2016. (See their stances on climate change.)  May I offer a thought?

Now, normally, our value system proclaims that a person's private religious beliefs should not be politically pertinent.  But there comes a point when that reflex is absurd, even stupid. And this is one area where liberals are the ones who are dead-asleep. So let's make the wake-up call explicit.

Anyone who openly admits that they pray for the Book of Revelation scenario to come true soon, is explicitly stating they want 90% of Americans to die in horrid agony, then be consigned to perpetual damnation-torment...

...followed by the permanent end of all democracy and human ambition, and abolishment of the United States of America. 

Those things are utterly explicit consequences of the events that such people openly proclaim praying for, and no softening or denial is even remotely possible.

 At which point we have to admit that religious beliefs become relevant, especially when such a candidate is asking to be given a button for nuclear weapons.

The War on Science... a War on Earth... and by Christmas?

The U.S. military leadership is in unified agreement that climate change is real, that it is human caused, and also that it poses a clear and present danger to the US and especially its armed forces. "The Pentagon's thinking is revealed plainly and publicly in its own 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review, which features no fewer than eight direct, specific, and unambiguous evaluations of climate change as it relates to geopolitics and military strategy."

See also: The Pentagon's Guide to Overcoming Climate Change Denial.  And note this: the U.S. military officer corps is the third best-educated clade in American life, after university professors and medical doctors. The senior ranks are filled with brilliant men and women... (plus about 20% blithering... but no comment about that.)

 Ah, but the U.S. Officer Corps is no longer respected in the heartland.  As of November 2013, 23 percent of Americans said they "didn't believe in" climate change.  Which will be about as effective as not believing in a bullet that's been fired at your nose.  No wonder a cult-like tenor has set in, waging war not just on science but every other clade or profession of knowledge and skill in American life. (Name one exception.)

(Multiple datasets have confirmed it was the warmest October on record for the globe, keeping the planet on a course toward its toastiest year.)

To be clear, the unequivocal position by the U.S. military has had some effects upon the Fox party line.  Facts like Russian bases erupting along the Arctic Ocean and the opening of the Northwest Passage to summer shipping are pretty undeniable… so Hannity and company have veered to changing the message: "All right, the climate is changing… but… but… climate has ALWAYS been changing and that don't mean we gotta do anything!"

In fact, that's a lie, top to bottom. The last 6000 years has been among the most stable, climate-wise, in the last 20 million… and even so, small perturbations like the 1500s Little Ice Age wrought horrible havoc on nations and peoples. Any astrophysicist will show you how closely Earth skates along the inner edge of our sun's "goldilocks" or habitable zone… and hence why we can afford only traces of greenhouse gas.

But the greatest sign of stunning low-IQ is how Fox-viewers never notice the change in catechism!  From "there's no warming!" over to "all right it's hotter: but prove that it's human generated!"  It's like the millions of Glenn Beck followers who never once asked "WHICH eight foreign governments did you say George Soros toppled?"

These and dozens of other, never asked questions show that this is the greatest know-nothing campaign against a sapient, scientific civilization in 150 years. Possibly since the Inquisition.  And you have to ask: what do Rupert and his partners hope to gain?

While the vast majority of scientists in climate, atmospheres and weather agree on the essentials of human induced climate change, there are some areas wherein intense argument and discussion rage.  Such as whether the steady and dramatic arctic warming trends (leading the U.S. Navy to plan how to counter 12 new navigable ports bring built by the Russian Navy) might reach a "tipping point," releasing megatonnes of methane from both permafrost and undersea hydrate ices.  If that happened, the burst of greenhouse gas would make Al Gore look like a pollyanna.  But can it happen?

Well, it will have to be investigated by Europeans and Asians, because Legislatures in the U.S., Canada and Australia have been deliberately sabotaging the research we need, in order to settle these matters.  There is no greater treason to humanity, of course, than banning objective research into a potential civilization failure mode.  And if the worst does happen, there won't be a human being on Earth who will admit to ever having been a republican.

== Skeptics vs Deniers ==

Let's drill down into one of the top denialist rationalizations... that they are doing science the service of Skeptical questioning.  That it is about "skeptical-free minds posing questions that science should answer." 

In fact, this is a lie based on a powerful truth -- that science does need to be incessantly poked by vigorous critics, in order to function well and evade many types of observer bias. In fact, that process continues, completely outside the denialist cult. And here is where I describe how to tell the difference.

Skepticism and questions? Sure. Berkeley's Richard Muller showed how to do that. Muller revealed how aggressively competitive science is, normally. Indeed, he shrugged off some intemperate reactions  and stuck to his guns, demanding answers... till finally the climate science was good enough to satisfy his pre-set criteria. At which point he said: "okay I'm convinced."  What he did NOT do was move the goal posts, in service of a dogma. 

(This story is typical among scientists, the most competitive and smartest and (generally) sanest members of our civilization, and the folks against whom Fox is most openly at-war.)

No, this is about dogmatic cultists refusing even to negotiate. How can they refuse even to discuss RandD efforts that would be economic win-wins? Arm-waving that any measures to improve energy efficiency  will mean "impoverishment" and "shivering in the dark," they ridicule even the possibility of "compromise" investments -- Things We Ought to be Doing Anyway (TWODA).  Masures that could increase efficiency and save consumers billions? (As the 2009 CAFE standards have done?) 

Measures we should take, out of simple, rational precaution... just in case the scientists who actually know stuff turn out to be right, after all.

Read that several times. Can anyone defend such a reflexive stance? Pushed by the exact same forces who proclaimed "cars don't cause smog" and "tobacco is good for you."

Ask this: Who on Earth benefits from continued energy inefficiency? That small group happens to perfectly overlap with the funders of the cult.

See a way to tell the two apart, here: Distinguishing Climate Deniers and Skeptics.

 == Historical Context ==

In Pope Francis and the GOP's Bad Science, Michael Specter (author of Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives) writes:

“The Church has, for decades, taken the position that faith and science need not be opposed to one another. As the Catechism states, “methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God.”

“Political leaders never used to care who scientists voted for or whether they believed in God. Scientists were not seen as Democrats or Republicans. (This change did not begin with Ted Cruz and his Luddite colleagues.) In 2006, I wrote a piece for The New Yorker on the Bush Administration’s war on science. It noted that “Vannevar Bush was a conservative who opposed the New Deal, and not quietly. Yet President Roosevelt didn’t hesitate to appoint him, or to take his advice. 

"In 1959, after Dwight Eisenhower created the position of science adviser, in the wake of Sputnik, the Harvard chemist George B. Kistiakowsky assumed the post. Jerome Wiesner, a Democrat who subsequently became president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, sat on the Science Advisory Committee—which met each month with Kistiakowsky and often with the President. When John F. Kennedy took office, Kistiakowsky and Wiesner simply switched roles.” None of that would be conceivable today.”

== And pertinent... ==

Lessons from history: Apparently extensive drought destroyed the indestructible Assyrian Empire. A lesson for those os us downstream who are facing similar problems. (Or in frantic-psychotic denial.)  

Wow, unpleasant to contemplate: “The global debris layer created by the end-Cretaceous impact at Chicxulub contained enough soot to indicate that the entire terrestrial biosphere had burned. Preliminary modeling showed that the reentry of ejecta would have caused a global infrared (IR) pulse sufficient to ignite global fires within a few hours of the Chicxulub impact. This heat pulse and subsequent fires explain the terrestrial survival patterns in the earliest Paleocene, because all the surviving species were plausibly able to take shelter from heat and fire underground or in water.” 

== And Science News From the Kurzweil Files ==

In radio terms, “full-duplex” refers to the ability to transmit and receive signals simultaneously, as in cell-phone conversations. Till now it required a magnetic-based “recirculator” the size of your palm. Now an advance may let itbe miniaturized, freeing bandwidth.

Either we grab this power for the people, or we meet Big Brother. University of Washington electrical engineers have developed a way to automatically track people across moving and still cameras by using an algorithm that trains the networked cameras to learn one another’s differences. The cameras first identify a person in a video frame, then follow that same person across multiple camera views.  – Seriously, read the first two pages of TheTransparent Society.

Nick Bostrom thinks three looming technologies might pose “existential risks” nanotech, synthetic biology and super artificial intelligence.  Notably in this talk at UC Berkeley, promoting his new book SUPERINTELLIGENCE: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, he downgrades “last week’s” obsessions — nuclear war and ecological degradation.  One interesting assertion is that   a key may be to get these things “in the right order.” Certainly if we get super intelligence first — and assuming we get a soft landing into a pleasant and accommodating kind of AI, then it might help us resolve all the other threats.

“It’s an open question” whether we’ll get super-intelligence via artificial (AI) systems or else by enhancing biological powers of thought.

== The War by Christmas ==

It would be one thing if the fanatics bent on expanding Christmas beyond all reason were all about proselytizing the messages of that bearded-beaded hippie, Jesus. At least that would be un-hypocritical. But why the all-out assault on the best and most-pure holiday in the American calendar... Thanksgiving?  The only one not ruined by commercialization or polarization.  That is, till this year ended every last pretense.

Like Halloween, Thanksgiving is spreading around the world purely on its merits, without any of the aggressive hype that is being used by the forces of Christmas... who are now blasting past Thanksgiving and Halloween with jingles and "black" door-buster days, determined to spread the "cheer" of fanatical greed and crass-manipulation past Columbus Day (now "Indigenous Peoples' Day" -- a topic for another time) and the equinox, with their gaze set upon the real objective...

...Independence Day.

That movie didn't lie.  We are under attack.  Ho-ho-ho.

Arguing With Your Crazy Uncle About Climate Change

Forget "left-versus-right." Or even arguments over taxes. The centerpiece of our current Phase Three of the American Civil War is the all-out campaign to discredit science.

Elsewhere I show that the War on Science is part of a much wider effort to destroy public trust in every "smartypants caste" -- from school teachers, journalists, medical doctors and attorneys to professors, civil servants and skilled labor. (Name a center of intellect that's exempt!) But nowhere is it more relentless than by savaging the one group in society that's unarguably among the smartest and best educated.

It's having the intended effects. Chew on this. Thirty years ago, in the era of Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley, 40% of U.S. scientists were Republicans. Today that fraction has plummeted to around 6%.  Can you blame them?

Why is this happening? I go into it elsewhere -- the underlying motive for a campaign that will leave only one elite standing. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that everybody has this thing backward.  Scientists are not being undermined in order to argue against Human Generated Climate Change (HGCC). Rather, the whole HGCC imbroglio serves as a central rallying point in the campaign against science.

== The latest salvo  ==

Trust the once-credible -- now murdochian -- mouthpiece called the Wall Street Journal to publish a sophistry-drenched festival of talking points. Five Truths about Climate Change by Robert Bryce.

Yep, call it "truth."  The Far Left spent years devaluing that once-proud word on a hundred university campuses, in their own version of a War on Science. Now the Entire Right -- not just the far-fringe -- completes the devaluation of "truth" down to Orwellian levels.  Take this sampler from Bryce.

"The science is not settled, not by a long shot. Last month, scientists at CERN, the prestigious high-energy physics lab in Switzerland, reported that neutrinos might—repeat, might—travel faster than the speed of light. If serious scientists can question Einstein's theory of relativity, then there must be room for debate about the workings and complexities of the Earth's atmosphere."

Urk!  Gurggle (*strangling sounds*) -- I must let someone else answer this.  This cartoon from Sci- ənce! will make you both laugh and sob for your civilization.

==  How can you help win this phase? ==

Trapped between the Far Left's own distaste for science and the Entire Right's lemming charge, lured by Rupert Murdoch over the cliffs of insanity, what are  all the pragmatic-moderate liberals ... plus those rare but admirable and deeply appreciated awakened paleo-conservatives and Smithian libertarians to do?

Why, what he have to do is fight this phase of the American Civil War, of course!  The "blue" forces were slow to rouse in the other phases, too, but finally got it together to rescue the Great American Experiment. Are we made of lesser stuff?

This fight won't be with muskets or civil rights marches, but by patiently prying open the skulls of our crazy uncles and neighbors out there who swallowed the anti-future, anti-progress, anti-science hype recreating the Know Nothing movement of the 1830s.  It is going to take all of us -- working on the smartest and most salvageable of these fever-racked neighbors, one by one. Getting them to calm down and re-join civilization.

It won't be easy! Rupert's fox-machinery supplies endless talking-point incantations to stoke trog fury. Go prepared.  Here's a pair of sites to arm you.

==  How to answer your crazy uncle re: Climate Change ==

1) I offer my own  handy guide to engage intelligent people who only half swallowed koolaid.  Smart guys who proclaim they aren't climate science "deniers"...  but "skeptics" instead. See Distinguishing Climate Deniers and Skeptics.

In fact, this distinction is very real! Moreover, science benefits from critical questioning by genuine Skeptics!

Still, given the pervasive villainy of fox-propelled denialism, a burden of proof falls on those who claim to be above the fray and not Rupert's hand puppets.  My article reveals half a dozen essential (if a bit intellectual) ways to test the claim. And if they pass? Then prove your own adaptability and lack of dogma! Engage and argue with such people, like adults.

2) Alas, most of those marching in Rupert's Lemming Army don't make such fine distinctions.  They're fine with anti-science denialism and my intellectual points will be meaningless.  But if you think your crazy uncle has a -- somewhere buried deep inside -- the remnant of an honest "paleocon" conservative, then your role -- your duty! -- is to gather stamina and wear him down, for the sake of civilization.

Each ostrich conservative who lifts his head is a victory for America. Worth hosannas and paeans of joy. When enough of them get angry at the real villians - the monsters who hijacked conservatism - we'll get back a conservatism folks can sanely argue with. Negotiate with. You can help, one crazy uncle at a time.

This site offers: simple rebuttals to denier talking points — with links to the full climate science. It's extended, exhausting and somewhat repetitious. Print it before your next crazy-uncle encounter.
But of course... I found some gaps!  So I went ahead and wrote a few more. Add these to the printout.

== Some additional rebuttals to Denialist talking points: ==

1. Practical minded people don't listen to Climate  Change chicken-littles:

The US Navy is spending a lot of time, money and effort planning for an ice-free Arctic.  The Russians are too, setting up sub-oceanic mining claims and outposts and reassigning a whole division of special forces.  Are the Russians and the US Navy and the Canadians and Norwegians all doing this for nothing? Because they are fools and chicken-littles?

2.  Climate scientists are clueless:

The supposedly stupid climate scientists are in many cases the very same people who improved the Weather Forecast from a 4 hour joke (remember those days?) to a ten day projection so useful that you plan vacations around it.  Sure, climate is more difficult, but it uses the same equations and same modeling systems. If they proved titanically competent in one area, don't they deserve some benefit of the doubt in a closely related field?  Perhaps more than TV shills who work for coal czars and Saudi princes?

But of course Glenn Beck knows more than they do.

3. Scientists just follow the herd:

Top scientists are the most competitive human beings of all time.  Put three in a room and there's blood on the floor. Below them, "young guns" are constantly looking for some giant to topple or "wrong corner" of  current theory to shine light into and make a reputation.  If you believe the meek, herd-following nerd image, enjoy!  It clearly makes you feel better to express superiority over people who are smarter and know a lot more than you do.  But... it... is... a... lie.

4. Scientists are pushing climate change for grant money:

Really? They'd lie for a $50,000 grant? All of them? Even the vast majority who have no such grants and work in other (related) fields?  Or who have grants that are secure forever due to their wondrously successful work in weather forecasting? Vastly more is spent on weather than climate: these tenured guys have no "skin" in Climate Change... yet they all believe it.

Oh, but Beck says they are all sucking up to the money gushers in Big Environmentalism. (Do you ever actually listen to your own words?)

How about the major prizes and grants offered by coal companies and petro moguls, for anti-Climate Change "research"?  Huge offers, often much bigger than those petty little grants from EPA, NASA, NOAA or private foundations.  Why don't those coal-co offers draw serious, top-rank climate scholars, if they are all such money grubbers?

And how does it feel parroting the exact same lines as the Tobacco Industry pushed, when they cried "the jury is still out" about the health effects of smoking, and Tobacco shills claimed that anti-smoking scientists were all in it to become millionaires off grants from the Heart Association? Have you no memory? No shame?

More to the point, if you are so sure about this slander - that all the scientists backing Climate Change are grubbing for grants - HOW ABOUT OFFERING IT AS A BET?  Wagers are on the table.  Free money, if you're sure! Follow the money, prove this and collect the bets. Only a coward would refuse. (Hint: when offered wagers, these folks always, always run away. Try it and watch them scurry for cover!)

5. Accepting the advice of 97% of the people who know about the climate would ruin the economy.

Wrong.  Accepting HGCC would only open us to finally arguing over the BEST methods to ease greenhouse warming.

Admitting that something needs to be done would not pre-judge the argument over what to do. It will just start that argument!  Many tools would be on the table and economic repercussions would certainly be a factor in negotiations and tradeoffs. We all want to keep the lights on.

Given a choice, we'd all prefer the solutions that kept a vibrant economy.

Stop portraying scientists - and those who respect science - as unreasonable people.  Stop portraying them as people like yourself.

6. Solving Climate Change would veer us in directions we shouldn't go.

Exactly the opposite of true. Most of the methods for reducing greenhouse gas emissions involve increasing our energy efficiency and stimulating new forms of energy.  In other words, exactly the same things we ought to be doing anyway! (TWODA)

Even if HGCC proved to be an utter myth, it would still be worthwhile to bend major efforts toward efficiency and new energy, if only to wean ourselves off dependence upon foreign oil and filthy coal.  An accomplishment that George W. Bush swore would be his top priority... and that he sabotaged at every turn. (Hmm... look at his family friends and guess why.)

Indeed, follow the money behind climate change denialism.  It leads directly to... foreign oil princes and big, filthy coal. Congrats. You are in good company.

7. The Earth isn't that delicate:

In many ways the planet is resilient. But here's a fact that you will hear nowhere else, though as an astronomer I'll vouch for it:

Our planet skates along the very inner edge of the sun's "Goldilocks Zone" (GZ).  The sun has been getting warmer gradually for 4 billion years. (This has NOTHING to do with the rate of warming re climate change. A separate, slow but inexorable shift over hundreds of millions of years.)  Now the inner edge of the GZ is right upon us.  That means we must expel almost all of the heat we get from the sun as infrared rays and cannot afford even the trace amounts of greenhouse gas increase that humans have caused.  It sounds unfair, and maybe it is, but them's the facts.

7. In the 1970s scientists were predicting an Ice Age.

An outright lie. There were a couple of very tentative papers, that's it.  But this lie is dealt with in the big list of rebuttals that I cite above. So why do I bring it up now?

Because of a big, popular movie that illustrates just how widely people were already talking about HGCC, even in the 1970s. Proving that science never swerved. Go watch Soylent Green.

8. I don't care, I hate science:

Yep, that is the fall-back refrain. Hatred of  people who know stuff.  Not just science, but also teachers, diplomats, journalists, lawyers, professors, medical doctors, civil servants, skilled union labor... you name a caste of knowledge and professional intellect -- of knowing stuff - and it's under attack.  Most vigorously by the foxed right (making Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley spin in their graves) but also by the loony far-left.

Pragmatic-moderate problem solving and negotiation were great American virtues. Culture War is betrayal.  Treason. And the chief purpose of denialism.

Again. Scientists aren't being dissed in order to detract from the theory of climate change.  Climate change denialism is being pushed in order to help know-nothing-ism win the War on Science. 

If our generation fails this test - if you refuse to do your part by rescuing some salvageable conservative, luring him or her back to the version of conservatism professed by real men like Buckley - then welcome to the Dark Ages.

==See also: Distinguishing Climate "Skeptics" and Climate "Deniers"

and The Real Struggle Behind Climate Change: A War on Expertise