Study shows fossil fuels, nukes unnecessary to provide the world with energy

PhysOrg: New research has shown that it is possible and affordable for the world to achieve 100 percent renewable energy by 2030, if there is the political will to strive for this goal.

Achieving 100 percent renewable energy would mean the building of about four million 5 MW wind turbines, 1.7 billion 3 kW roof-mounted solar photovoltaic systems, and around 90,000 300 MW solar power plants.

Mark Delucchi, one of the authors of the report, which was published in the journal Energy Policy, said the researchers had aimed to show enough renewable energy is available and could be harnessed to meet demand indefinitely by 2030.

Delucchi and colleague Mark Jacobson left all fossil fuel sources of energy out of their calculations and concentrated only on wind, solar, waves and geothermal sources. Fossil fuels currently provide over 80 percent of the world’s energy supply. They also left out biomass, currently the most widely used renewable energy source, because of concerns about pollution and land-use issues. Their calculations also left out nuclear power generation, which currently supplies around six percent of the world’s electricity.

I wasn’t extremely surprised that we could get by without fossil fuels. What got my attention was that nuclear power was left out of the equation as well. A lot of people have been trying to paint nuclear as a necessary evil, saying we’d have to use “clean” nuclear power to reduce carbon emissions. This study proves them wrong.

Turns out we can power the whole planet without using energy from an industry that produces what may be the most dangerous toxic waste known to humanity. Good to know.

[photo via Wikimedia Commons]

'Porn addiction' just another harmful lie told by religious fanatics

A new study shows that so-called “porn addiction” doesn’t actually exist. In fact, behavioral health expert David Ley, PhD, Executive Director of New Mexico Solutions in Albuquerque says that viewing porn is actually healthy and can be beneficial. “Ley and his team believe that the positive benefits attached to viewing such images do not make it problematic de facto,” the report tells us. “It can improve attitudes towards sexuality, increase the quality of life and variety of sexual behaviors and increase pleasure in long-term relationships. It provides a legal outlet for illegal sexual behaviors or desires, and its consumption or availability has been associated with a decrease in sex offenses, especially child molestation.”

And here’s where things get interesting. People who complain about having a “porn addiction” aren’t concerned about their interest in porn per se, but rather the type of porn that keeps bringing them back for more.

Clinicians should be aware that people reporting “addiction” are likely to be male, have a non-heterosexual orientation, have a high libido, tend towards sensation seeking and have religious values that conflict with their sexual behavior and desires. They may be using visually stimulating images to cope with negative emotional states or decreased life satisfaction.

“We need better methods to help people who struggle with the high frequency use of visual sexual stimuli, without pathologizing them or their use thereof,” writes Ley, who is critical about the pseudoscientific yet lucrative practices surrounding the treatment of so-called porn addiction. “Rather than helping patients who may struggle to control viewing images of a sexual nature, the ‘porn addiction’ concept instead seems to feed an industry with secondary gain from the acceptance of the idea.

Consider it a relative of “the more you hate gays, the more likely you are to be gay" scenario. This is also why homophobes often argue that homosexuality is a choice. Many are deep in denial and they’re hoping like hell that it is a choice — so they can choose not to be. And it doesn’t take much looking to find people who claim to be straight looking for help to “cure” them of their “gay porn addiction.”

That’s what Ley and team seem to mean by an “industry with secondary gain from the acceptance of the idea”; the homophobia industry, the ex-gay scam, and religious right in general. It’s just another way that rightwing anti-science isn’t just pointing people in the wrong direction, but is actively harming people by telling them their healthy desires are a disorder that needs a cure. When it turns out that there is no “cure,” people get depressed and hopeless — and tragedy is the predictable consequence.

These people have no interest in helping anyone. In fact, to a large degree, they’re the ones with an unhealthy obsession. They’re obsessed with eliminating their own homosexual desires — and they don’t care who they hurt with their mad scientist experiments and quack pursuit of a “cure.”

[photo via Wikimedia Commons]

Dems propose Darwin Day bill

The Hill: Three House Democrats have proposed a resolution that criticizes the teaching of creationism and the denial of man-made global warming as anti-science.

The resolution from Reps. Rush Holt (D-N.J.), Jim Himes (D-Conn.) and Mike Honda (D-Calif.), H.Res. 467, proposes the designation of Feb. 12 as “Darwin Day” to recognize Charles Darwin’s contributions to science.The resolution says Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection “provides humanity with a logical and intellectually compelling explanation for the diversity of life on Earth.” It also says teachings to the contrary go against established science.

“[T]he teaching of creationism in some public schools compromises the scientific and academic integrity of the United States education systems,” it reads. It adds that the validity of Darwin’s theory of natural selection is “strongly supported by the modern understanding of the science of genetics.”

The resolution also takes a shot at global warming skeptics, by saying the advancement of science “must be protected from those unconcerned with the adverse impacts of global warming and climate change.”

Bottom line, evolutionary biology is an applied science. Arguing against it is like standing next to a nuclear power plant and saying, “Oh yeah? Well if this so-called ‘nuclear power’ is so real, then why is it called the ‘theory of special relativity’?”

Of course, this bill is never going anywhere and it’s really just a way to tweak Republican anti-science, but if you can’t troll flatearthers on Darwin Day, where are you going to get your fun?

Creationist offers bad reason to deny reality

Raw Story: Creationist author Terry Mortenson doesn’t understand how an atheist like Bill Nye “the Science Guy” can find joy in scientific discoveries.

Following the debate between Nye and Creation Museum founder Ken Ham on Tuesday night, Mortenson sat down with Creation Today co-hosts Eric Hovind and Paul Taylor to discuss the event.

“I was kind of intrigued by one of Bill’s last comments about the joy of discovery, but I thought, what is the joy of realizing that I came from pond scum as a result of an explosion and that eventually I’m going to die and I won’t be here, I won’t remember that I ever lived, nobody else will ever remember,” Mortenson said. “What is the joy of that? It is purposeless, as Richard Dawkins and William Provine and others have said.”

“There is no purpose,” he continued. “There is no morality. All you have in evolution in is what is is. It’s the survival of the fittest and if I’m stronger than you and I’m a lion and you’re a gazelle, sorry, you’re my lunch. And if I’m Hitler and you’re a Jew, sorry, you’re lunch. And if I am outside the body and you’re in the mother’s womb, and I don’t want you, sorry, you’re lunch.”

“There is no basis of morality or purpose, and Bill is stealing from the Christian worldview to find joy in discovery when there is no purpose or meaning to it.”

We can dismiss a lot of this as non-argument. Just because I’m aware of my mortality doesn’t mean I’m incapable of joy. And how does the knowledge that you’re descended from less complex life forms somehow give you free reign to abandon morality and eat babies? It makes no logical sense.

But put aside all the hyperbole and consider the actual, underlying argument: that Mortensen finds evolution unsettling, so he chooses not to believe it. Further, since evolutionary theory is so disturbing, Mortensen argues that it cannot be true. I find the existence of things like Two and a Half Men and Lite Beer a nightmarish indictment of American tastes — but that doesn’t mean it’s logical to conclude that they don’t exist. It just means that there are facts out there that I’d rather not be true. Sucks to be me, but I have to accept it.

And this comes up so often that we can easily say it’s a cornerstone of the creationist pseudo-science; “I find it too disturbing, therefore it can’t exist.” This isn’t logic, this is wishful thinking. In fact, this is the very definition of wishful thinking. The fact that they think this is a compelling argument shows that logic is a completely foreign concept to creationists.

When your reasoning is this flawed, the odds that your argument is solid are slim to none.

"Cold owt. Climitt chang not reel!"

Mike Luckovich.

Climate ‘skeptics’ fail to understand that ‘global’ and ‘local’ have very different meanings

AlJazeera America: Meteorologists predict record-low temperatures for large swaths of the United States on Sunday and Monday.

The cold snap, which comes after snow blanketed much of the northeastern United States last week, has also led to confusion surrounding how weather relates to global warming.

[…]

That skepticism could be seen in full force recently as snow covered the New York City headquarters of Fox News, from where the station broadcast several reports suggesting that recent cold weather conflicted with scientists’ assessments of climate change, or even suggested the globe may be cooling.

Fox News hosts weren’t the only ones taken aback by the cool weather. Donald Trump tweeted that the ship of scientists that was until recently trapped in antarctic ice was proof that climate change is a lie. And U.S. Rep. John Fleming, R-La., wrapped up the confusion between weather and climate succinctly when he tweeted, “‘Global warming’ isn’t so warm these days.”

Here’s the thing: the US isn’t the world. Global warming means global warming — not just warming in your neck of the woods. And when did any climate scientist ever argue that climate change meant it there would never be ice, cold, or snow again? If they didn’t, then the appearance of ice, cold, or snow proves jack.

Right now, Australia and New Zealand are experiencing a heat wave and drought, driving wildfires. And it’s not even the entire US that’s freezing right now; the west coast is experiencing an abnormally warm winter. Further, snow and cold was late to Scandinavia.

But if you really want to fully grasp how little sense these statements make, consider them in the context of another common climate flatearther argument. For years, they’ve argued that a long term warming trend is just natural variation in global temperature. But then they turn around and insist that every heavy snow or exceptionally cold few days is supposed to be proof positive that global warming is a hoax. So big changes over time are just fluctuations — while fluctuations are PROOF THAT THIS ‘CLIMATE CHANGE’ HOAX IS A COMMUNIST PLOT TO DESTROY AMERICA!! GAH!! PANIC!!!

In order to be a climate denier, you either have to have no idea what you’re talking about or pretending to be that ignorant. So the question, as it so often is when dealing with wingnut extremists, is whether they're lying or stupid.

Either way, there’s no reason to give them the time of day.

White supremacist learns of his African ancestry

Raw Story: A white supremacist who’s trying to set up a racist enclave in North Dakota received a shock during the taping of an upcoming daytime talk show.

Craig Cobb submitted to a DNA test as part of an ongoing Race in America series on the syndicated “Trisha Show,” and host Trisha Goddard delivered some surprising test results to the 62-year-old hate crimes fugitive from Canada in an episode that will air Nov. 18.

As her studio audience laughed with delight, Goddard, who is black, told Cobb that test results revealed his genetic ancestry was 86 European and 14 percent sub-Saharan African.

Cobb — predictably — denied accepted science and explained away the result as “statistical noise.” “I’ll tell you this,” he said. “Oil and water don’t mix.” For the record, 14% is way outside the range of statistical noise — Cobb’s oil definitely mixed with someone’s water.

Of course, the idea of racial purity has always been a complete fantasy — especially for people of European ancestry. Centuries of conquest and empire and slavery guarantee plenty of “race mixing.” It is simply inevitable. It’s as ridiculous to assume that your family is decended entirely from people occupying one tiny area on a map as it is to assume that your language is “pure” and without any influence from other languages.

The truth, which nutjobs like Cobb undoubtedly find nightmarish, is that if you’re interested in preventing “race mixing,” you’d better invent a damned time machine and head back to some point in prehistory. It is now far, far too late to do it any other way.

Christie bans ‘ex-gay’ therapy for minors, world comes to an end

In the United States, the “ex-gay” movement is collapsing under the weight of its own bullshit. In case you’re unfamiliar, the ex-gay “conversion therapy” is snake oil BS that claims to be able to turn gay people straight. It’s so dangerous and so completely ineffective that the largest ex-gay group in the country, Exodus International, has folded up shop and officially denounced the practice they’d previously pushed.

The problem with “conversion therapy” is the tremendous psychological and emotional harm it inflicts on the subjects. First, they convince patients that homosexuality is a disease, that it’s not normal, and that it’s terribly immoral — on the scale of pedophilia. Then, it promises to “cure” them. Since the initial argument that homosexuality is a disease is false, the cure fails. And, since they believe they still have this horrible disease that makes them sinful monsters, the patients become despondent and even suicidal.

The good news is that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is signed a bill that will make forcing minors into “conversion therapy” illegal. The bad news is that the religious right is still stupid and hostile to scientific evidence. Check out this reaction from the rightwing news website Rightscoop:

You’ve got to be kidding. How can someone who claims to be a Christian sign a piece of legislation like this? Does he not believe that Christ has the power to heal? Well apparently not…at least in regard to this. He is expected to announce when signing this bill that he doesn’t believe homosexuality is a sin.

Yes, Chris Christie hates Jesus because he doesn’t believe in Christ’s ability to cure something that was never a disease in the first place. And all the evidence that this “ex-gay” crap is all hogwash? They don’t want to hear it, which means they won’t believe it — no matter how convincing the evidence against it is.

That’s the problem with religious conservatives, they think “faith” means “I get to believe whatever crazy shit I want to believe and ignore all consequences.” Actually, that seem to be the problem with all conservatives. From global warming to evolution to ex-gay therapy, they only believe what they want to believe — facts and evidence be damned.

[photo via Wikimedia Commons]

Science shows that gun control works

University of California, Irvine: Aiming to quell heated national debate about gun control with factual answers, two UC Irvine mathematicians have designed parameters to measure how to best prevent both one-on-one killings and mass shootings in the United States. Their paper appears Friday in the journal PLOS ONE.

“It’s time to bring a scientific framework to this problem,” said lead author Dominik Wodarz, a mathematical biologist who works on disease and evolutionary dynamics. His co-author and wife, Natalia Komarova, a mathematician who studies biomedical and social trends, added: “Can we design a rational way to argue about guns?”

Both were appalled not just by the December shooting deaths of 20 youngsters and eight adults in Newtown, Conn., but also by the bitterly emotional dispute over weapons that erupted anew. They decided to put their professional expertise to work.

“This debate cannot be settled satisfactorily by verbal arguments alone, since these are often driven by opinion and lack a solid scientific backing,” the authors write. “What is under debate is essentially an epidemiological problem: How do different gun control strategies affect the rate at which people become killed by attackers, and how can this rate be minimized?”

Basically, the researchers looked at data going back as far as WI, crunched the numbers, compared total gun bans, an “everyone armed" scenario, and everything in between, and came up with a result. “After running the numbers, they found that in more common domestic and one-on-one crimes, reduced legal gun availability – if properly enforced – is likelier to lower deaths," the report tells us. “But in rare mass shootings, armed citizens might save lives if sufficiently trained to avoid accidentally shooting fleeing bystanders."

Gun control opponents will glom onto that last bit as proof that arming everyone is advisable, but look at all those qualifiers: “rare mass shootings," “might," “if." Also note that the researchers believe that the “armed hero" scenario could potentially add to the carnage. In any case, the total gun death toll from mass shootings compared to all other gun deaths is tiny. The fact is that gun control reduces the rate of gun deaths.

According to the report, the researchers say that more study with more complete numbers “could strengthen their results." But that data is missing, because “federal funding for gun control research was essentially nonexistent for nearly two decades."

And before you dismiss the study as biased somehow, consider that it was heavily reviewed. “A large number of peer reviews – 11 in total – were solicited by journal editors; two or three are the norm," we’re told. “A wide array of opinions were expressed, ranging from enthusiastically positive and constructive to a critic who stated that scientific methods would never be useful in this area."

"If the current discussion could be steered toward science, rather than having a heated debate without much of a logical foundation, a big step forward toward saving lives would be achieved," the researchers said.

Somehow, I doubt the gun lobby has much interest in a fact-based, logical approach to firearm policy.

[photo by Patrick Feller]

Supreme Court slaps back insane corporate overreach

Washington Post: The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday that human genes cannot be patented, a decision that could shape the future of medical and genetic research and have profound effects on pharmaceuticals and agriculture.

The ruling was a split decision for Myriad Genetics Inc., which holds patents on genes that have been linked to breast and ovarian cancer.

Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the court, said that merely isolating those specific genes — called BRCA1 and BRCA2 — was not worthy of a patent.

“Myriad found the location of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, but that discovery, by itself, does not render the BRCA genes … patent eligible,” Thomas wrote.

On the other hand, Thomas wrote, Myriad’s creation of a synthetic form of DNA — called cDNA — based on its discovery does deserve patent protection.

That you can just go out and find something that already exists and patent it is crazy. How about I take out a patent on iron ore — and then whenever someone makes so much as a tiny steel cotter pin, I get a little something?

But the claim was actually worse than that and would’ve given the company a practical monopoly on work involving these genes, slowing medical research tremendously.

“Today, the court struck down a major barrier to patient care and medical innovation,” said the ACLU, which represented the challenegers to Myriad’s claims . “Because of this ruling, patients will have greater access to genetic testing, and scientists can engage in research on these genes without fear of being sued.”

[image via Caroline Davis2010]

Suicidal: Ice thaw leads to Arctic drilling rush

Brian Merchant: Today, federal scientists confirmed that for the first time in millions of years, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had reached 400 parts per million. The pre-industrial level was 280 ppm, and the amount that top climatologists say is advisable for maintaining a stable environment is 350 ppm. The new carbon concentration signals that planetary warming will continue to accelerate—and that the rapidly melting Arctic will continue to thaw.

“It symbolizes that so far we have failed miserably in tackling this problem,” Pieter P. Tans, who runs the chief carbon-monitoring program for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told The New York Times, in a front-page story headlined “Carbon Dioxide Level Is at Highest in Human History.”

At about the same time that NOAA released its numbers, the White House—which has thus far not commented on the carbon milestone—published a press release called “Protecting Our Interests in the Arctic.” The release heralds the administration’s newly forged National Strategy for the Arctic Region, a document that contains the recommendations of military advisers, scientists, and policy analysts on how to cope with and exploit a slushier Arctic.

[…]

The strategy document notes that “dense, multi-year ice is giving way to thin layers of seasonal ice, making more of the region navigable year-round. Scientific estimates of technically recoverable conventional oil and gas resources north of the Arctic Circle total approximately 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30 percent of the world’s undiscovered gas deposits, as well as vast quantities of mineral resources, including rare earth elements, iron ore, and nickel. These estimates have inspired fresh ideas for commercial initiatives and infrastructure development in the region.”

Sometimes I worry we’re too stupid not to go extinct.

States with weakest gun laws have highest rates of gun violence. Duh.

MSNBC:

The math seems simple enough: weaker state gun laws equal more gun violence, so says a report released by the Center for American Progress.

According to the report, states with easier access to legal guns rank higher on an aggregated scale of indicators that includes gun-related homicides, suicides and the shooting deaths of women and children.

“Across the key indicators of gun violence that we analyzed, the 10 states with the weakest gun laws collectively have an aggregate level of gun violence that is more than twice as high—104% higher, in fact—than the 10 states with the strongest gun laws,” the report, America Under the Gun, reads.

“I think the report confirms what I experienced during my 25 years as a federal agent — firearms laws work,” David Chipman, a former official with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, told MSNBC.com. “What also struck me is that the release of such a report is news.

“It is a sad state that through pressure from the gun lobby, attempts to prevent the CDC and the Department of Justice from publishing similar annual reports has been largely successful,” he added.

When your argument is so weak that you literally work to ban knowledge from entering the conversation, you’ve got to wonder what it is that you’re protecting.  When the truth is an impediment to your position, then your position is bullshit. And when that bullshit is about how many people your position is killing every year, your position is just plain evil.

The NRA are not good people. They’re no different than tobacco lobbyists who knew they were killing people, but lied and said their product was harmless, because there was no money saving lives.

Conservatives resort to junk science in marriage equality debate

Nelson Lund, Wall Street Journal:

The Supreme Court is hearing two cases this week that represent a challenge to one of the oldest and most fundamental institutions of our civilization. In Hollingsworth v. Perry and United States v. Windsor, the court is being asked to rule that constitutional equal protection requires the government to open marriage to same-sex couples.

The claimed right to same-sex marriage is not in the Constitution or in the court’s precedents, so the court must decide whether to impose a new law making marriage into a new and different institution. The justices are unlikely to take so momentous a step unless they are persuaded that granting this new right to same-sex couples will not harm children or ultimately undermine the health of our society.

A significant number of organizations representing social and behavioral scientists have filed briefs promising the court that there is nothing to worry about. These assurances have no scientific foundation. Same-sex marriage is brand new, and child rearing by same-sex couples remains rare. Even if both phenomena were far more common, large amounts of data collected over decades would be required before any responsible researcher could make meaningful scientific estimates of the long-term effects of redefining marriage.

First off, what would Lund’s argument be if science showed that same-sex parents did a better job of raising children than mixed gender parents? Would he be advocating that mixed gender marriage be abolished? I kind of think he wouldn’t, for the same reason that he’s not advocating that marriage rights be reserved only for the very rich — obviously, children in that circumstance have all the advantages, which means everyone else’s kid is at a disadvantage. So the argument that the Supreme Court needs to consider social science is pretty much dead right there. If they were to decide who was allowed to marry based on outcomes, very few people would be allowed the privilege.

But he’s not content to leave it at sloppy logic. He goes on to cite a controversial study that showed that same-sex relationships were bad for children:

There has been only one study using a large randomized sample, objective measures of well-being, and reports of grown children rather than their parents. This research, by Mark Regnerus, a sociologist at the University of Texas Austin, found that children raised in a household where a parent was involved in a same-sex romantic relationship were at a significant disadvantage with respect to a number of indicators of well being—such as depression, educational attainment and criminal behavior—compared with children of intact biological families.

One might expect this work at least to raise a caution flag, but it has been vociferously attacked on methodological grounds by the same organizations that tout the value of politically congenial research that suffers from more severe methodological shortcomings. This is what one expects from activists, not scientists.

To say it’s been “attacked” isn't quite right. The Regnerus study has been thoroughly debunked. Even the author of the study admits it’s flawed — although it would be more accurate to say it was rigged. It basically compared all sorts of different households to stable married families. It doesn’t actually study the parenting of same-sex couples at all.

“He doesn’t have an actual category of gay parents in the project that you can isolate and say the most important thing in this kid’s childhood is that they were raised by gay parents,” Judith Stacey, a sociologist at New York University, said of the study. “These are kids whose parents, maybe they divorced, maybe they separated, maybe they had a scandalous affair, we just don’t know.”

Of course, Lund’s “science” is burning up the rightwing blogosphere, because it’s so much more comforting to hate when it’s justified somehow — even if that justification is bullshit.

[photo by MiiiSH]

Report: fracking causes earthquakes

Raw Story:

A study published Tuesday in the scientific journal Geology links the magnitude 5.6 earthquake that hit Oklahoma in November 2011 to natural gas drilling operations nearby that were using an extraction technique called fracking, which requires massive quantities of wastewater be injected into underground reservoirs.

The quake struck between Tulsa and Oklahoma City just before 11 p.m. on Sunday, November 6, 2011, causing serious damage to homes and even buckling a highway. Tremors were reportedly felt in 17 states — as far away as Illinois — and dozens of subsequent aftershocks kept Oklahomans up all night.

Researchers at the University of Oklahoma and Columbia University noticed that the quake was one of five greater than magnitude 5.0 that occurred in the continental interior of the U.S. in 2011. Studying the aftershocks of the Oklahoma quake, they discovered that the rupture plane of the quake, or the site where the tension built up and then violently shifted, was within 200 meters of fracking injection sites and nearly one meter from the surface.

Interestingly, the study’s findings show that while most seismic activity linked to newly installed fracking wells is minor, tension between fault planes can build for years, resulting in unexpected interactions with wastewater sites.

In this case, researchers said 18 years worth of fluid injection in sealed oil wells “lowered effective stress on reservoir-bounding faults,” causing several fault planes to give way in sequence after the initial quake hit, which is why the quake was so substantial.

“Massive earthquake” is a tad bit hyperbolic, but “dangerous” would definitely have fit. Global warming, flammable tapwater, earthquakes… Are we really this desperate for natural gas? After all, there isn’t actually a shortage. Basically, the reason that the fracking industry exists is so that the fracking industry can exist. It’s not something we actually need to do. It’s just a form of specialized drilling to avoid competition with the standard method.

I say we just knock it off altogether. Seriously, when you’re causing earthquakes, it’s just a stupid thing to do.

2012 a record-breaker for solar power

ThinkProgress:

According to a new report, America broke records in terms of installed solar capacity last year, jumping to 11 percent of total global installations. [Greentech Media]

It may not compare to the German solar market. But the U.S. is definitely becoming a major force globally when it comes to new installations.

According to the 2012 Solar Market Insight report from GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association, America installed 3,313 megawatts of solar capacity last year — accounting for 11 percent of total global installations. That’s up from 7 percent in 2011.

“From 2004 until 2010, America’s global share had been stuck in a tight band. The U.S. significantly broke that in 2012,” said Shayle Kann, vice president at GTM Research. “Our forecasts put us at 13 percent in 2013.”

While there’s obviously a long way to go yet to get to where we should be, I’ll point out what I always point out when stories like this are reported: you didn’t notice a thing.

It didn’t cause roaming brownouts, it didn’t crash the American economy, it didn’t result in hardships for families. It’s just a different way of generating power — one that’s clean, renewable, and cheap. More photovoltaic generation is both a natural advancement in technology and a response to actual conditions in the reality.

Lo and behold, contrary to what you’ll hear from the right, green tech is not the end of the world. It’s just progress.

Climate warming faster than any time in human history

NBC News:

Temperatures are rising faster today than they have at any point since at least the end of the last ice age, about 11,000 years ago, according to a new study.

The finding is based on a global reconstruction of temperature records inferred from ice cores, fossils in ocean sediments and other sources. While previous studies reached similar conclusions, they covered only about 2,000 years. The new reconstruction extends the global record through the Holocene, the most recent geologic epoch.

“Another way to think of it is the period where human civilization was born, created, and developed and then progressed to where we are now,” Shuan Marcott, a climate scientist at Oregon State University who led the study, told NBC News.

If you’re one of those who still think global warming is hooey, let me ask you a question: do you really believe we can literally spend a century pumping tons of chemicals into the atmosphere and have nothing happen? Poof! It all just disappears like crap down a toilet because… Well, because why, exactly? Does that really make any sense at all to you? As always, conservative positions seem reasonable — until you fucking think about them for a fraction of a second.

This is it, people. We’re standing at the edge of the cliff without a lot of room left between us and the open air. We can turn back or we can jump.
Think we’re spending money now? Wait until you see how much we have to spend to hold the seas back, to irrigate deserts, to fight wars over water. That’s spending money. In comparison, stopping the warming trend would be chump change.

Republican politicians assume everyone’s as crazy as they are

Huffington Post:

Politicians, especially conservative ones, massively overestimate the conservatism of their constituents on the issues of gay marriage and universal health care, an academic paper published Sunday has found.

David E. Broockman of the University of California at Berkeley and Christopher Skovron of the University of Michigan surveyed nearly 2,000 state legislative candidates in the 2012 election and asked them what percentage of their constituents they thought supported same-sex marriage, a universal health care system and abolishing all welfare programs.

The result was a vast conservative misperception. Constituents, on average, supported gay marriage and universal health care by 10 percentage points more than their politicians had estimated. For conservative politicians, the spread was around 20 percentage points, meaning that conservative legislators tend to greatly overestimate how conservative their constituents actually are.

“For perspective, 20 percentage points is roughly the difference in partisanship between California and Alabama,” the authors write. “Most politicians appear to believe they are representing constituents who are considerably different than their actual constituents.”

To make matters worse, they seem to believe this despite all evidence to the contrary; look at all the shock GOPers when they found out that Mitt Romney lost or the continuing belief that voters will eventually blame Pres. Obama for the sequester. They literally do not know what voters in the real world are thinking.

This also explains why Republicans find it so easy to say the most insane things. Todd Akin could’ve just as easily began his weird rape-theorizing with, “As everyone knows…”

Of course, none of this is especially new. I’ve been pointing out for years that conservatives believe whatever the hell it is they want to believe — and reality be damned. I mean, how many times do we need to see polling that shows “even registered republicans think…” or “even NRA members believe…” before it becomes the most obvious thing in the world? But it’s always nice to have these things confirmed empirically.

It may seem like the study shows that liberals and conservatives make the same mistake, but nothing could be further from the truth: liberals and conservatives make the exact opposite mistake in judging the conservatism of their constituents. Liberals err on the side of caution, while conservatives see their constituents through rose-colored glasses. And, of course, the righties are twice as far removed from reality.

But still, there’s valuable insight for lefties here. “For liberal politicians, they appear to have more freedom than they may have initially perceived to act on issues such as gay marriage and health care,” the report tells us. “But the perception that constituents’ wishes are more limited means that a politician may think that 60 percent of constituents need to agree before moving forward with a policy, hence, the idea of a universal health care system is often seen as out-of-reach, though it may not be.”

In other words, political courage from the left stands a good chance of paying off. Especially when your election opponent thinks everyone listens to Sean Hannity.

Scientist returns fire in GOP’s War on Science

Politico:

A scientist nibbled away at Sen. Rand Paul on Friday after the Kentucky Republican blasted his research on schools of fish as wasteful federal spending.

“He got the funding wrong and the species wrong, and he misrepresents the work we’ve done,” Princeton science professor Iain Couzin told POLITICO. “He’s done some serious cherry-picking here. That’s one study, we’ve had a series of studies that have taken many years.”

On Fox News on Thursday night, Paul said the military has spent $5.2 million studying goldfish and advocated yanking funding for such programs to cut the budget.

“In the military they have $5.2 million they spent on goldfish — studying goldfish to see how democratic they were and if we could learn about democracy from goldfish,” Paul said on Fox. “I would give the president the authority to go ahead and cut all $5 million in goldfish studies.”

The problem: if President Obama had the authority to “authority to go ahead and cut” funding for military goldfish studies, he’d be able to cut zero studies. The species being studied is the golden shiner. But I suppose “goldfish” sounds more ridiculous, so Rand figured he’d lie and go with that.

Unfortunately, that’s not the only fact Paul stretched or got wrong, which was pretty much everything. Couzin said that the research was for applications in artificial intelligence and robotics. Understanding how simple intelligences like fish work together would be tremendously important in fighting oil spills and radioactive leaks, for example.

“Our work aims to understand the principles of collective control in animal groups and what this can inform us about collective robotics,” he said. “It has nothing at all to do with human politics.”

Couzin also said that the $5.2 million figure cited by Rand was false. Funding for the project is mixed, with a portion coming from federal grants. You assume the rest would come from private industry, which would benefit from the research as well.

“If you think about it, schools of fish have been on the planet for much longer than we have and they’ve evolved to find solutions to problems. They can sense the environments in ways that we simply didn’t know how to do that,” Couzin said. “From ant colonies to schooling fish, it’s not that complicated but the feats they can achieve are extraordinary. The collective of a whole can solve problems in ways individuals cannot.”

He added: “Perhaps Sen. Paul should read our papers before he comments on them and perhaps he should consider more broadly how science can help society.”

Or maybe the next time Paul feels the need to act like an ignorant blowhard on Fox, he should check the impulse toward demagoguery and just not do it.

Study: Republicans are fear-motivated

Prevention:

[A new study] from the University of Exeter and the University of California, San Diego, evaluated the brain activity of 82 subjects engaged in gambling games. Then, researchers compared participants’ cerebral activity to their declared political parties. While Republicans and Democrats took similar risks during the games, the brain activity that prompted those risks was extremely different.

Among participants who voted Democrat, gray matter showed more activation in the left posterior insula, the region linked with empathy and emotion. The other side of the brain was Republican territory: conservatives flexed their right amygdala more often when making decisions. That brain region is associated with fear, reward, and a fight-or-flight response.

Incredibly, these differences were so pronounced that brain activity alone allowed researchers to anticipate, with 83 percent accuracy, which party a study participant belonged to. By comparison, knowing the party affiliation of an individual’s parents allows for 69 percent accuracy when making the same prediction, researchers noted in their study.

Actually, study after study has shown this link of conservatism to fear, but rightwingers always freak out over these findings and throw a flurry of victim cards. This report may come from Prevention magazine, but it’s posted as a wire story at the Fox News website. Maybe appearing under the Fox logo will finally get them to accept reality. I wouldn’t hold my breath, though.

Of course, you don’t really need a scientific study to conclude that Republicans are terrified of pretty much everything. Just listen to them talk about guns and you’ll hear nothing but blind animal panic. It’s why Wayne LaPierre argues in such apocalyptic terms — he knows his target audience.

It’s also why Republicans are so anti-science; not only does science tell us frightening things we’d rather not hear (i.e., climate change), but studies like this tell Republicans less than complimentary things about themselves.

[image source]

The Tea Party response to the State of the Meteor

David Horsey, LA Times.

[via Philotical]