Wednesday, January 05, 2011

In Case You Missed Them: Best posts of 2010

Here are the best posts from this blog (according to the impartial opinion of our panel of judges consisting of me) from 2010:

1. Is Global warming caused by humans? (01/15/10) Remember that anyone who doesn't go along with the Omigosh The World Is Ending Because Of Human Induced Global Warming theory is anti-science. Problem is, not only is the correlation between human CO2 emission and a warming not very good, it looks even sillier when put on a graph ...

2. In defense of "traditional Western civilization WASP heterosexual culture." (01/17/10) In a previous post, I criticized the promotion for a movie called, "Straightlaced: How Gender's Got Us All Tied Up." In doing so, I managed to incur the wrath of feared the Gender Department of the Tolerance Police. I have therefore been issued several directives, dripping with tolerance and sensitivity, ordering me to zeaze und dezist from zese ekshpreshons of incorrect zought, und eksplaining zat such views vehr zimply verboten, although really the only danger I have felt during this controversy is the kind one would feel when in the presence of Colonel Klink ...

3. On further denying reality: Do sexual ambiguities support the distinction between sex and gender? (01/26/10) Our old friend Josh Rosenau of the National Center on Science Education (NCSE) exercises his idea of science (although perhaps 'exorcising' might have captured my meaning better) on the question of the meaning of the new political term "transgender." Normally, the NCSE occupies itself in going around the country giving finger-wagging lectures on how creationism isn't science. But Rosenau lives a double life, on one day condemning creationism for not being science, and on the next championing political ideas masquerading as science--and feeling very scientific as he does so. Someone really needs to keep him in his little laboratory so that he doesn't wander so far off in the logical wilderness that he can't find his way home ...

4. Did J. D. Salinger Go To Heaven? An Obituary. (02/01/10) I don't think I have ever heard anyone I knew say they actually liked the book. I didn't like it when I read it in high school, and I don't remember any of my classmates who did either. But it was a work which has taken its place in the canon of literature maintained by those who don't believe in canons of literature. In fact, the very idea that Holden Caulfield, a scourge of the adult establishment, should be idolized by the very adult establishment he railed against is an irony too delicious not to take notice of ...

5. The Annotated Richard Dawkins: Is the Christian response to the Hatian earthquake hypocritical? (02/02/10) I am now officially propounding Cothran's Rule of Moralistic Proportion: The less rational justification someone has for his moral beliefs, the more moralistic he becomes. One of it's corollaries (I'm sure there a many, I just haven't thought of them yet) is that the more someone rejects the Judeo-Christian moral system, the more likely he is to apply it himself, all the while denying that he is ...

6. Is weather the same as climate? It depends on whether it confirms the theory
(02/15/10) Several people have expressed their severe disapproval of 49 states having snow--or, more precisely, my mentioning it. A commenter on one of my posts writes, "Tell us Martin, are weather and climate the same thing." Here is my answer: Weather and climate are not the same thing in the case of reports of unusually cold weather, where we go into finger-wagging mode and give people who take note of it lectures about how just because we are freezing our booties off and considering the virtues of muktuk and Caribou jerky that this does not mean anything significant about the temperature of the planet; but weather and climate are the same thing when a newspaper reports that someone in Greenland notices a glacier starting to drip or someone in Alaska hasn't seen a polar bear in over a week, in which case we clam up and contract a bad case of amnesia about the relation of weather and climate ...

7. Logic envy. (02/17/10) It is fortunate that Josh Rosenau's blog is titled "Thoughts from Kansas," otherwise it would be hard to identify the exact nature of the verbal effusions emanating from it. But he assures us that the utterances he makes there are indeed "thoughts," and so we are bound to weigh them using the criteria one would normally apply to rational speech, although Rosenau's posts would probably fare better if we applied some other, much less demanding standard ... The hurling of epithets will undoubtedly subside as maturity sets in, although this process seems to be proceeding rather slowly for Rosenau. In has last post, immediately after the schoolboy name-calling, he turns around and accuses me of ad hominem attacks. It's one thing for your enemy to bend the barrel of your pistol back toward you, but it takes some ingenuity to do it to yourself ...

8. Tiger Woods and the Modern Ideology of Irresponsibility. (02/24/10) The guy cheated on his wife and she threw him out. There's nothing much to say in terms of what he should do about it other than to stop doing it, say you're sorry, and try to do better. This process was based on the traditional Christian idea--to put it in technical theological terms--of admitting that you're a dirtbag, asking for forgiveness for being a dirtbag, and changing your cheatin' dirtbag ways ... Among the newer ways of dealing with shame is the Therapeutic Method. This is the one more and more Americans seem to choose when faced with public shame, and it was the one utilized by Woods. Under the Therapeutic Method, you wait until you have no choice but to admit your guilt, admit it, and then announce you are going into rehab ...

9. Kill the Fish (03/09/10) Tilikum, the killer whale who caused the death of his trainer should be executed ... The animal psychologist community (yes, there really is such a thing) has given the incident a good going over. "What," they ask, "made Tilikum snap?" They have combed through the available evidence--which includes the fact that they are large, violent marine predators who run in packs and hunt down their prey in the ocean, systematically ripping them apart with their sharp teeth (starting, in the case of other whales, with their tongues)--and come to the conclusion that they are "complicated creatures." If I were a large bloodthirsty mammalian predator with a record (and the first name, "Killer"), I would want these people on my side ...

10. Are Malthusians destroying themselves? (04/05/10) Someone recently made the mistaken observation, "The world has too many Malthusians, and what’s worse, they are multiplying like rabbits..." Turns out that, being Malthusians, and being worried about overpopulation and all, they have gone about the business mostly of controlling themselves and so will soon render themselves an endangered species ... It is a strange irony that the strategy of the population control advocates would eliminate everyone except the ones who don't believe in population control.

11. Pope Benedict: Better than his critics. (04/05/10) The people who are always running down the Catholic Church and talking about the Inquisition have now erected a stake and are gathering kindling in order to set the Pope afire. At least during the Inquisition, they had, like, trials and evidence and stuff. But Benedict's detractors have given the Pope only a quick trial in a court no respectable kangaroo would set foot in ...

12. And in what way exactly are Republicans complicit in slavery? (04/12/10) Well, you see, when you are rewriting history, it is convenient to forget that it was Republicans primarily who opposed it. In fact, it seems to be forgotten in these discussions that Lincoln was the first Republican president and that the defenders of slavery were primarily Democrats--who continued their obstructionism well after the War in their involvement in organizations like the Ku Klux Klan ...

13. The chief cause of the Civil War was slavery, and other myths. (04/15/10) Lincoln said time and again that slavery was not the reason for the Union's invasion of the South. From his First Inaugural Address, before the War: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no right to do so..." Add that to his very clear and unambiguous comments to Horace Greeley that it was Union, not slavery, that was his chief concern ...

14. The Wrong Way to Teach Worldview. (05/04/10) In recent years, the word "worldview" has become increasingly popular among Christian educators. Indeed, not only has the word become common parlance, but there has now arisen a veritable worldview industry. There are books, programs, and curricula based on articulating and defending a Christian "worldview" and there are retreats and blogs and sermons devoted to furthering its study. The term "worldview" has now gained official status as a Christian buzzword ...

15. How Whiteliberaldemocrats voted on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (05/24/10) 37 percent of the House members in the Whiteliberal Party that is now piling on Rand Paul voted against the very measure that Paul himself says he would have voted for if he had been there. And 39 percent of the Senate members of the Whiteliberal Party--the Party of former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard Robert C. Byrd--voted against it. That's over a third of its members in both cases, whereas 20 percent or less of the party that nominated Rand Paul voted against it. Oh, the shame of it all. Such a record of racism and hate ...

16. P. Z. Myers does not exist. (06/27/10) You can say at least this for the Adam and Eve theory: it at least allows for the possibility that their descendants are the kind of beings who could rationally reject the Adam and Eve theory, whereas under the Populations and Pools of Genes Myth the beings that are its products cannot possibly rationally accept the Populations and Pools of Genes Myth--or anything else for that matter, since its materialist undergirding cannot account for rationality in the first place ...

17. Jake displays openly aggressive behavior on Rand Paul. (06/30/10) Jake, a member of the species homo petulans (in more ways than one), has raised his tail and lowered his head over my comments about the reaction to Rand Paul's refusal to address a question about creationism in a speech to a home school audience last Friday. Now I have been observing various liberal Darwinist societies for some time now, and can say with some authority that the subspecies inhabiting the Page One blog are among the loudest and most openly aggressive. This could possibly be the result of a vegetarian diet and their penchant for brie cheese and multi-grained bread ...

18. Reflections on American Idol possibly going off the air. (07/31/10) Well, according to some reports, the show "American Idol" may be coming to an end. This is unfortunate, since I have never seen the show that so many people talk about, and I was looking forward to continuing to be a non-viewer for years to come. So it comes as a hard blow to know that I now will be unable to continue to refrain from watching this great pop cultural spectacle ...

19. The Rhetoric of Amazement: What children's literature tells us about the world. (08/31/10) Dr. Seuss is my favorite modern philosopher. I say this because of the view of the world his poetry betrays. Dr. Seuss writes what has been called “nonsense” verse. Yet it may be the books like Dr. Seuss that, in the end, make the most sense ...

20. Darwinism of the Gaps: Is Hausergate evidence that bad science is heritable? (09/06/10) Darwinism of the Gaps is the tendency to try to explain any area of human behavior they think theism shouldn't be able to explain by supplying a Darwinian or genetic explanation that, no matter how unlikely or counter-intuitive, is to be preferred over the religious explanation--even if the religious explanation is perfectly reasonable ...

21. Is Stephen Hawking's argument against creation more valid in any of the other dimensions? (09/07/10) "The question 'Why is there something rather than nothing," says Sean Carroll, "has been answered." It has? How exactly do you answer the question of why there is something rather than nothing by simply pointing to the something? C. S. Lewis once asked how someone, simply on the basis of studying nature, can say anything about what is beyond nature ...

22. Don't know much about G. K. Chesterton. (09/24/10) The charge Bramwell brings against Chesterton is the oldest and most common charge against him: that his rhetorical prowess outstripped his intellectual capabilities. The problem with this charge is that it is always brought by those whose intellectual powers are not, shall we say, in the same league as the person they're criticizing. But the most common problem is that those who criticize Chesterton really don't understand much of what he said, and they build their whole critique on their misunderstandings ...

23. Teaching great literature vs. teaching pop teen literature in schools: Another indication of what's wrong with education. (10/05/10) I'm sorry, but any English teacher who thinks that focusing on the classics detracts from a child's love of literature needs to find another job. If you can't teach literature in a way that captures the minds and hearts of your students, then you don't belong in the profession. Go get a position as cashier at Wal-Mart or something, but stay away from the classroom ...

24. Jerry Coyne's Scientific Faith: Is science more rational than religion? (10/12/10) One of the recurrent themes in the rhetorical arsenal of the New Atheism is that science is rational and religion is not. This dogma is repeated by New Atheist writers as if it were a part of their creed, which, of course, it is. The dogma is articulated once again by one of its loudest advocates on the Internet, biologist Jerry Coyne in yesterday's article in USA Today. I say "articulated rather than "argued" because, like most dogmas, it is never never actually argued for, but only asserted. You will see this canard invoked repeatedly in their assertions that religion and science are mutually exclusive. It is utilized almost as if it were an incantation. If scientific rationalists had prayer wheels, this is the mantra they would chant ...

25. Sam Harris on Morality: More pronouncements from the Englishmen. (11/13/10) I have said before that there is a hierarchy of positions on the issue of how (and whether) moral beliefs can be justified. On the top of the scale is classical religious thought, a scheme of belief in which morality makes complete sense. On the next level down is existentialism, which rightly concludes that if you reject God, then you must also reject morality. And since they reject God, they realize they must reject morality too. It is a mistaken position, but it's at least intellectually consistent. On the bottom of this hierarchy is the New Atheism, which simply plays pretend and clings, despite no rational justification of its position, that, despite there being no God, there is still morality ...

26. Are reproductive organs for reproduction? (11/18/10) It seems strange to me that when we talk about general anatomy, or DNA, or animal behavior, we use blatantly teleological language to do it. But if we use that same language about human sexuality, all of a sudden the Tolerance Police show up and ask you for your identification papers. The purpose of the heart is to pump blood to the rest of the body; the purpose of a kidney is to filter the blood; the purpose of the intestines is to digest food. Say these things and everyone nods earnestly in agreement.
But then you say, "and the reproductive organs are for..." (and you pause at this point to put up your deflector shields) "...reproduction." As Mr. Bill was wont to say, "Nooooooooooooooooooo!"

27. What's wrong with the New International Version of the Bible. (11/29/10)
Anglican theologian N. T. Wright has called the NIV "appalling" for its simple inaccuracy in translating the Greek. But it seems to me that it is equally appalling, knowing what the correct rendering of the Greek is, to simply change the English after you have it correctly translated ...

28. Michael Shermer, Pretend Skeptic: Why scientific reductionism doesn't work.
(12/03/10) Michael Shermer, the founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine, seems to be skeptical of all things but one: science. Somehow, the power of the skeptical criteria he applies to everything else is strangely extinguished when he encounters his own preferred belief system ...

3 comments:

Singring said...

Martin, THANK YOU!

You just made my day.

Why?

Because you picked - as your number 1 post of the year - one of the most scientifically fallacious and embarassing posts I have ever read. I actually stumbled across it a while back while looking through your history of comments on GW and was just aching to point out why it is so incredibly wrong. Thanks for giving me a chance to do so now.

Now I will say this: I doubt you knew what you were posting was utter nonsense and a blatant lie. I think you just thought Watts was making a good point (and superficially he seems to be doing so) and decided to take on his point.

Big mistake.

Because it reveals just how credulous and easily misled you are.

Now in fairness I believe you are easily intelligent and educated enough to figure out why the graph Watts showed and its apparent lack of correlation is nonsense ands designed to mislead - so I'll give you another chance at correcting that post here and now.

Tomorrow I will point out why it is so epically misleading and wrong if you have not done so and corrected yourself already.

(Hint: Think about C02 and its presence in the atmosphere. Then look at the anthropogenic C02 emissions plotted in the graph.)

Singring said...

So I see the correction has not been made. Let me explain why that #best post of 2010# id one of the most scientifically appalling ever composed:

The graph in that post is from the climate denial site at climategate.com, where it hilariously is labeled as 'the one graph you need to convert a global warmer'.

As you will see in a moment, this fact alone demonstrates that denialists are only interested in distorting, lying and misleading others. Here's why:

The graph plots anthropogenic C02 emissions against central England temps for the past 350 years or so. Now, aside from teh facts that C02 is not the only anthropogenically released green house gas and that using local temperatures is not exactly what yous should do when attacking something called global warming, there is another massive problem with the graph - something the folks at climategate and actually even Martin here must know. So at least someone in teh chain is deliberately lying:

GW climate science is based on the prediction that increased C02 levels in the atmosphere lead to increases in global temperature.

So why did they not plot atmospheric C02 against temperature in that graph? Because that would have looked like this:

http://www.london.gov.uk/trccg/images/chart1.jpg

See, instead of plotting the two variables that GW science actually claims are linked, they plot temperature against a variable that goes from 0 to 40.000 tons and thus can make it look as if there is no connection between the two factors on the scales they chose to plot. In doing so, they omit the fact that C02 in the atmosphere was not '0' from 1660 to 1820, but around 250 to 290ppm.

Its a lie. A graph designed to mislead. A graph designed to dupe those who can't or don't want to critically evaluate what they are presented with.

Continued...

Singring said...

...continued from above.

Now let's look at that graph again that actually plots global temperature against atmospheric Co2 concentrations in ppm )(you know, the two varibales climate science actually predicts are linked).

http://www.london.gov.uk/trccg/images/chart1.jpg

Obviously, the scales of temp and C02 have been adjusted for the purpose of presenting the data (just as in the case of the climategate graph), but at leats in this case the data presented is global and is scientifically accurate.

Now it looks as if there is a strong connection between C02 in the atmosphere (which has been rising exponentially since the industrial revolution) and global average temps. Martin denies that this is so, based on his being duped by the climategate graph.

But is there really?

To test it, I estimated the C02 concentration from the correct graph for each of the time points (i.e. 290 for 1880, 293 for 1890 and so on) as a predictive variable and plotted it against the estimated global temperature at that same time point (i.e. 56.75 for 1880, 56.7 for 1890 and so on) as a response variable.

I put the data into MIniTab statistical software and ran a linear regrssion. The result were that there was a linear increase in temperature with an increase in C02. This result was highly significant (P<0.001). In layman's terms, this means that the probability that the correlation between C02 and temperature that was observed is due to chance is less than one in a thousand.

Admittedly, this is an incredibly crude way of looking at the data, but it gives an indication that there is a real connection and if Martin only had the motivation, I'm sure he could find plenty of research papaers ecplaining the connection in much more detail.

So there you have it:

Martin's favourite post of 2010 is one that is fundamentally unsound, is the result of shoddy, lazy and gullible action and another indication that Martin has either no capacity or no interest in critical thinking.

Now let's see if he at least has the gumption to correct his mistake and write a post about how misleading climategate.com is. Personally, I'd be fuming if someone took me for a fool like that.