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
Technically migrating the content to Real Sceptic was already done on the 21st of last month. And on the 27th the domain settings for SkepticTV were changed so that skeptictv.net now points to this website. That day marked the official end of SkepticTV.
One step of the migration I didn’t execute, which was migrating email and WordPress subscribers to Real Sceptic. This turned out to be a bit of a hassle and I wouldn’t be able to migrate all the subscribers. Considering there were just a few subscribers I decided not to do this.
Continue reading SkepticTV Content Migration Is Complete
Anyone familiar with Watts Up With That will have noticed that anything published on it that mentions Skeptical Science often displays a rather obvious dislike for Skeptical Science. Both for the Skeptical Science website and the people who are involved with it.
It shows with the language used and all the attacks on the materials created or used by Skeptical Science. Often it doesn’t really matter if it’s valid criticism as long as it in some way critiques or undermines what was released. Especially when it’s something that is easy to understand and helps with communicating the science behind global warming. Which showed with the attacks towards the Cook et al. paper that measured the scientific consensus on global warming in the scientific literature.
I’ve always liked getting comments with feedback, criticism, or that give interesting commentary. It has helped me learn new things, hone my position, and helps me correct statements. It also acts as a great source for inspiration for new blog posts.
As long as you abide by some simple rules everyone is welcome to engage me on YouTube and my blog. It’s the reason why my comment sections are filled with critical comments and my responses and/or corrections to those comments. I especially appreciate feedback that points out a statement that isn’t correct, because they help me weed out incorrect positions and prevents me from inadvertently spreading incorrect information.
Several months ago Cook et al. released a paper in which they analysed the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.
What they did in that study is examine 11,944 abstracts from 1991 to 2011 that included the words “global climate change” or “global warming” in their abstract. What they found after analysing these abstracts is that among those that expressed a position on global warming, 97% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.
Not a surprising result at all as this was a bigger literature survey than the one done by Oreskes in 2004. It found that all the selected abstracts (928 in total) that stated a position on the cause of global warming said humanity is to blame.
Continue reading The 97% Climate Science Consensus Reality
For this blog I already have the Mail Call series for messages that I receive that I want to respond to publicly. Strangely enough I didn’t have anything similar for the comments I get on YouTube. Despite me already having reacted to those comments on this blog. There’s more than enough material in my comment sections that I can use as inspiration for blog posts.
So lets kick off this new blog post series with one comment that already starts with one of my pet peeves:
Continue reading YouTube Comments: The Scientific Consensus Rejected Heliocentrism
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.
Technically migrating the content to Real Sceptic was already done on the 21st of last month. And on the 27th the domain settings for SkepticTV were changed so that skeptictv.net now points to this website. That day marked the official end of SkepticTV.
Anyone familiar with Watts Up With That will have noticed that anything published on it that mentions Skeptical Science often displays a rather obvious dislike for Skeptical Science. Both for the Skeptical Science website and the people who are involved with it.
Several months ago 
For this blog I already have the