Normally I’m not the type to defend Prince Charles thanks to him having some questionable views on science. For example his staunch support of homoeopathy as a viable medical treatment. Telling anyone that homoeopathy works is extremely dangerous and he’s been justly criticised for lobbying for it.
However, I have no trouble commending someone when they do get it right. One example being his recent statements about climate science deniers:
Continue reading Prince Charles And The Headless Chicken Brigade
That Alexa isn’t good at giving reliable statistics is well known in IT. Any website like Alexa that tries to estimate traffic to a website in a similar way via indirect measurements will encounter the same issues it has. Those that work in IT often know what those issues are and know what the consequences are for the data that’s gathered via those methods.
The main issue that Alexa has is that it gathers the data it uses via users that installed the Alexa toolbar (or a toolbar that passes information to Alexa). This has as a result that demographic, used browsers, and even the country visitors are from influence the statistics that Alexa gathers about a website. This can introduce serious artefacts and biases into the collected data and basically makes Alexa data worthless. At best it can give you an idea about how well a website is doing, but that doesn’t mean that what you’re seeing matches reality. I’ve already written a far more detailed blog post about how Alexa works and why you never should rely on the data it provides; it’s just too unreliable.
The blog post that I wrote about Alexa were all sparked by Anthony Watts using Alexa data to claim he’s doing better than his competition. His website is certainly big and it could very well be the case that he is outperforming his competitors. But Alexa is not the tool that you can use for determining if you are doing better than your competitor.
Continue reading This Is Why You Shouldn’t Use Alexa
The past couple of weeks my website wasn’t exactly stable with it often going offline for a couple of minutes. It wasn’t uncommon that my website wasn’t reachable for half an hour or more. To resolve these issues I had a chat today with my hosting company and my website was going down thanks to DDoS attacks. Although these weren’t…
Not everyone might be aware of this but Dr. Roy Spencer is someone who believes in Intelligent Design. He has often defended his support of Intelligent Design and his rejection of the Theory of Evolution quite vocally. Something I mentioned briefly in one of my blog posts.
That Spencer rejects the Theory of Evolution and replaces it with Intelligent Design brings into question his ability to assess evidence in a detached way. This because Intelligent Design is nothing else than the attempt of dressing up creationism (religion) in a lab coat to make it seem more legit. Which might sound harsh but it is an accurate description, anyone familiar with the book ‘Of pandas and people‘ will be well aware of that.
I’m writing about this as Ethan Epstein made the following remark in his article ‘What Catastrophe?‘ (on page 3):
Continue reading Dr. Roy Spencer, Please Keep Your Religion Out Of Science
One of the things that completely baffle me is how climate science deniers can reject evidence.
Of course I’m not referring to not taking something at face value or wanting to verify something before you accept it. What I’m talking about is that they reject evidence even when it’s very obvious that it shows that they are wrong. It also often doesn’t matter how small the mistake it, they will still reject it.
One of these examples is a quote from a recommendations document written by the KNMI IPCC delegation that contained advice for the IPCC on how it can improve its procedures. This included recommendations for improving their reports and how results are communicated. Something that the IPCC asked for and the resulting recommendations from the KNMI aren’t shocking.
However, one passage was a bit confusing as to what they meant by it:
I like the Daily Show. They combine good humour with a lot of facts that helps explain why some people are the target of their satire and jokes. what scores them even more points in my book is that they go after everyone with the same amount of gusto; no matter what your affiliations are.
This is something that makes a lot of people not like them, especially those that become the target of one of their segments. But every time the Daily Show touches on subjects I’m familiar with I’ve seen them criticise someone who deserves it. They are truly a breath of fresh air among what counts as journalism these days. It’s just a shame that it’s a comedy show that is this breath of fresh air.
Of course the climate change deniers using the cold weather to cast doubt became a segment on The Daily Show:
Continue reading The Daily Show Versus Breitbart.com
The cold in the United States had the climate science deniers going all out to cast doubt on the simple fact that our planet is warming and we are the main cause for that. With folks like Trump saying some interesting things:
Of course, a single weather event in one place cannot be used to show that our planet isn’t warming; after all it’s called global warming for a reason.
Continue reading Roy Spencer On Record Cold And Global Warming
It’s winter again for us in the Northern Hemisphere, which means the occasional cold spell and maybe even some snow. Though the weather you get depends on where you live in the Northern Hemisphere. But there’s one thing you can count on when it gets cold or snowy anywhere on our planet: climate science deniers will not be far behind to misrepresent what it means.
Which is understandable, after all most of the public doesn’t know how to make sense of extreme cold and heavy snow fall in a warming world. They look out of the window and wonder why this is happening. Climate science deniers then jump on this to cause further confusion and distort what experts say on this. But climate science deniers haven’t been jumping on cold weather events where I live (The Netherlands).
Continue reading Winter, Weather, And Climate Science Deniers
It’s not often that I fully agree with something that Anthony Watts says, but sometimes it does happen. This time it’s about how you approach those that you are critical about.
One of the things people notice about me is that I focus on the arguments that someone presents and not the person; also known as playing the ball not the man. Of course I’m not perfect but I do make an effort to stay civil in what I write and I expect the same from visitors on my website who leave a comment.
Experience has taught me that not being civil almost always derails any rational exchanges. It can easily result in polarizing both sides more, and can have real negative consequences for readers of your website accepting valid science. When communicating science language matters more than you think.
Lately there’s some strange claims doing the rounds on internet and in the media about students finding some adverse effects of Wi-Fi on plant development, cress in this case. It’s very strange that Wi-Fi affected the plants as studies show that Wi-Fi is safe as there’s just not enough energy available in the signal being sent. Which means that what the high school students observed isn’t due to the Wi-Fi signal.
Still this didn’t stop the media spending too much attention on this. And of course pseudo-science websites like Natural News used it (archived here) to bolster their unsupported claims that Wi-Fi is dangerous. Lets start with what Natural News says about the reason the student got interested in researching this:
Continue reading Wi-Fi Is Safe For You And Your Plants
Normally I’m not the type to defend Prince Charles thanks to him having some questionable views on science. For example his staunch support of homoeopathy as a viable medical treatment. Telling anyone that homoeopathy works is extremely dangerous and he’s been justly criticised for lobbying for it.
That Alexa isn’t good at giving reliable statistics is well known in IT. Any website like Alexa that tries to estimate traffic to a website in a similar way via indirect measurements will encounter the same issues it has. Those that work in IT often know what those issues are and know what the consequences are for the data that’s gathered via those methods.
Not everyone might be aware of this but Dr. Roy Spencer is someone who believes in Intelligent Design. He has often defended his support of Intelligent Design and his rejection of the Theory of Evolution quite vocally. Something I 
One of the things that completely baffle me is how climate science deniers can reject evidence.
I like the Daily Show. They combine good humour with a lot of facts that helps explain why some people are the target of their satire and jokes. what scores them even more points in my book is that they go after everyone with the same amount of gusto; no matter what your affiliations are.
It’s not often that I fully agree with something that Anthony Watts says, but sometimes it does happen. This time it’s about how you approach those that you are critical about.
Lately there’s some strange claims doing the rounds on internet and in the media about students finding some adverse effects of Wi-Fi on plant development, cress in this case. It’s very strange that Wi-Fi affected the plants as studies show that Wi-Fi is safe as there’s just not enough energy available in the signal being sent. Which means that what the high school students observed isn’t due to the Wi-Fi signal.