Link: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/02/27/global_warming_deniers/?source=whitelist

...is a fascinating topic of study. I am still coming across people who adamantly claim that Global Warming is either still a subject for debate, or even that it is some sort of hoax. They also list scientists who allegedly do not agree with the consensus on global warming, and claim that that this proves there is no consensus.
Many of the claims these people put forward are actually rooted in ignorance of language. The use of the word "hoax" is one example. A hoax is a planned premeditated attempt to deceive. I have yet to see any compelling evidence that a large number of scientists, climatologists and other professionals have been plotting to create and perpetuate a collection of falsehoods called Global Warming. Absent that evidence, the use of the word "hoax" is nothing more than ignorant hyperbole.
Ditto the frequent attempts of the denialists to cry "gotcha" by pointing to instances of scientists who allegedly disagree withe consensus on Global Warming. The word "consensus" does not imply unanimity. There is an old English saying "one swallow does not make a Summer". Similarly, one dissenter does not destroy a consensus. Given the processes which underly the scientific method, dissention is inevitable and good. Many scientific advances were initially proposed by people working against the current consensus. However, that does not imply (as some people have also suggested) that anybody that dissents from the Global Warming consensus is therefore correct, an a courageous opponent of pernicious groupthink. Dissenters have to be able to come up with their own compelling evidence to help build a new consensus. Albert Einstein, for instance, was able to gain traction for the General Theory of Relativity, because when it's predictions were tested, they were found to match observed reality better than any previous theories. It is likely that in time Einstein's theory will be supplanted by a better one; that is how Science works. Conceptually the scientific model and process function as a journey, not a destination.
Which brings me to this interesting article in Salon (day pass may be required). The author , while warning about the dangers of the over-use of the word "consensus" (I don't agree with him on this one, for the language ignorance reason explained above, but as a long as people confuse consensus with unanimity, he may have a point), also provides some compelling responses to the denialist groups. The comments on the article are also worth reading as study material for their use of just about every type of fallacious rhetoric. Ad hominem abuse and fallacies abound. One thing I notice in this debate is that the denialists tend to be the first group to reach for fallacious argument and reasoning (many of the responses coalescing on the "Al Gore is a politician" meme. Yes, he's a politician. Now what's your point?)

Some of these read like reject Steven Wright lines, and the answer to (4) is obvious to anybody who knows anything about evolution and the origins of man...but I am being way too picky. Here is the list:

1. DON'T SWEAT THE PETTY THINGS AND DON'T PET THE SWEATY THINGS.

2. ONE TEQUILA, TWO TEQUILA, THREE TEQUILA, FLOOR.....

3. ATHEISM IS A NON-PROPHET ORGANIZATION.

4. IF MAN EVOLVED FROM MONKEYS AND APES, WHY DO WE STILL HAVE MONKEYS
AND APES?

5. THE MAIN REASON SANTA IS SO JOLLY IS BECAUSE HE KNOWS WHERE ALL
THE BAD GIRLS LIVE.

6. I WENT TO A BOOKSTORE AND ASKED THE SALESWOMAN, "WHERE'S THE
SELF-HELP SECTION?" SHE SAID IF SHE TOLD ME, IT WOULD DEFEAT THE
PURPOSE.

7. WHAT IF THERE WERE NO HYPOTHETICAL QUESTIONS?

8. IF A DEAF PERSON SWEARS, DOES HIS MOTHER WASH HIS HANDS WITH SOAP?

9. IF SOMEONE WITH MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES THREATENS TO KILL HIMSELF,
IS IT CONSIDERED A HOSTAGE SITUATION?

10. IS THERE ANOTHER WORD FOR SYNONYM?

11. WHERE DO FOREST RANGERS GO TO "GET AWAY FROM IT ALL?"

12. WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU SEE AN ENDANGERED ANIMAL EATING AN
ENDANGERED PLANT?

13. IF A PARSLEY FARMER IS SUED, CAN THEY GARNISH HIS WAGES?

14. WOULD A FLY WITHOUT WINGS BE CALLED A WALK?

15 WHY DO THEY LOCK GAS STATION BATHROOMS? ARE THEY AFRAID SOMEONE
WILL CLEAN THEM?

16. IF A TURTLE DOESN'T HAVE A SHELL, IS HE HOMELESS OR NAKED?

17. CAN VEGETARIANS EAT ANIMAL CRACKERS?

18. IF THE POLICE ARREST A MIME, DO THEY TELL HIM HE HAS THE RIGHT TO
REMAIN SILENT?

19. WHY DO THEY PUT BRAILLE ON THE DRIVE-THROUGH BANK MACHINES?

20. HOW DO THEY GET DEER TO CROSS THE ROAD ONLY AT THOSE YELLOW ROAD
SIGNS?

21. WHAT WAS THE BEST THING BEFORE SLICED BREAD?

22. ONE NICE THING ABOUT EGOTISTS: THEY DON'T TALK ABOUT OTHER
PEOPLE.

23. DOES THE LITTLE MERMAID WEAR AN ALGEBRA?

24. DO INFANTS ENJOY INFANCY AS MUCH AS ADULTS ENJOY ADULTERY?

25. HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO HAVE A CIVIL WAR?

26. IF ONE SYNCHRONIZED SWIMMER DROWNS, DO THE REST DROWN TOO?

27. IF YOU ATE BOTH PASTA AND ANTIPASTO, WOULD YOU STILL BE HUNGRY?

28. IF YOU TRY TO FAIL, AND SUCCEED, WHICH HAVE YOU DONE?

29. WHOSE CRUEL IDEA WAS IT FOR THE WORD "LISP" TO HAVE "S" IN IT?

30. WHY ARE HEMORRHOIDS CALLED "HEMORRHOIDS" INSTEAD OF "ASSTEROIDS"?

31. WHY IS IT CALLED TOURIST SEASON IF WE CAN'T SHOOT AT THEM?

32. WHY IS THERE AN EXPIRATION DATE ON SOUR CREAM?

33. IF YOU SPIN AN ORIENTAL MAN IN A CIRCLE THREE TIMES DOES HE
BECOME DISORIENTED?

34. CAN AN ATHEIST GET INSURANCE AGAINST ACTS OF GOD?

Link: http://grahamshevlin.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=13

My sister and I returned on Monday from a week in northern New Mexico. We stayed with the founder of Goddess Greens and chilled out in the high desert air. Some photos from this trip can be seen here.

Link: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/02/cayman-island-b.html

..concerning how a Cyman Islands bank managed to get Wikileaks taken offline in the US after obtaining a legal judgement forcing a shutdown via the Wikileaks ISP (Dynadot). This is a pretty amazing shutdown of information dissemination in response to information published by a whistle-blower. Online information freedom has never been more threatened in the USA.

Link: http://goddessgreens.com

My friend Ellen Marie Kenney, of Santa Fe NM, having finally tired of the business of nursing, has become an organic farmer, farming on 135 acres North of Tesuque.
Goddess Greens is her salad vegetable offering. I provided a number of the initial photos for the web site.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/15/bae.armstrade

"Where there's muck there's brass". This has never been more true than in the murky world of international arms deals. With billions of dollars of business at stake, all manner of deeply dysfunctional, unethical and illegal stuff happens. From the Al-Yamama deal in the 1980's to the present day, the British government has been up to its neck in debatable practices.
Currently, the government is being embarrassed by revelations that senior Saudi figures blackmailed them into trying to kill a prosecution investigation around an arms deal. This saga will run and run, because the legal actions now extend into other countries.

...and the Patriots came up short in their bid to become the second team to have a perfect season (following the 1972 Miami Dolphins).
Although I am not going to be devious enough to claim that I was right (since I made no prior prediction of the result), I did suspect that the Giants were capable of beating the Patriots on Sunday. The main reason for my suspicion was that the Patriots, IMHO, peaked in mid-season and have really been gutting it out to win games ever since. One of the key changes since mid-season is that opponents worked out how to play Randy Moss off the line of scrimmage, after the realization dawned that allowing him to run free at the beginning of a play would often equate to bad news at the end of the play, with Moss able to outrun most defenders and catch the ball at will. By jamming Moss off of the line of scrimmage, opponents were able to mostly eliminate Moss as a deep threat, reducing him to decoy status on all but a handful of plays. Although other receivers stepped up, that single loss on offense chnaged the dynamic of the Patriots offense.
Sunday's game came down to who could operate the best with the hammer down at the very end of the game. Eli Manning showed that although he has only just arrived in the Superbowl, he is every bit as cool as Tom Brady. After the Patriots went ahead late in the fourth quarter, Manning responded in true "Mr. Cool" fashion to put the Giants ahead again. The key play (which will come to be regarded as one of the great plays in Superbowl history) was when Manning somehow eluded a massive Patriots blitz, ran into open space and put the ball over the head of David Tyree, who was trying to find space up the middle but had four Patriots defenders closing on him. Tyree caught the ball over his head single-handed and jammed it against his helmet as he fell, helping to ensure that it could not be stripped by the Patriots. The frantic attempts of the Patriots to pull the ball away from him after he hit the ground showed that the Patriots players knew how important that catch really was.
When the Giants kicked the extra point after the go-ahead touchdown, I remarked at the time that this was a mistake. I thought that they should have gone for 2 points in order to force the Patriots to score a touchdown. However, I was puzzled after that at how the Patriots, with 35 seconds left in the game, and all of their timeouts still available, resorted to deep-throwing the ball when all they needed was a field goal to tie the game. Tom Brady is not a good deep-thrower of the ball; he does not have the arm strength of (say) Carson Palmer, and Randy Moss was bound to be double or triple-covered at that stage in the game. The Giants did exactly what you would expect them to do, dropping 8 players into coverage to avoid giving up the big downfield plays. Yet the Patriots proceeded to attempt what amounted to four "Hail Mary" plays when several well-executed out route passing plays could have got them into field-goal range. It was almost as if desperation had trumped thought over on the Patriots sideline. Desperation plays very rarely succeed. For every Doug Flutie "Hail Mary" winner there are usually a number of "glorious" failures. Bill Belichick did not win all of those games with the Patriots by dialling up the big play and crossing his fingers. That desperate last-ditch flurry was a puzzling breakdown by the Patriots.
What next? There is another cloud hanging over the Patriots concerning allegations that they taped the St. Louis Rams' final walkthrough before SuperBowl XXXVI. If it turns out that a Patriots employee did tape that event, the NFL may be forced to penalize the Patriots again (they have already lost a draft pick for the previous "Spygate" episode). The NFL has recently been put under the spotlight by Sen. Arlen Specter over their destruction of materials related to Spygate, and may feel obliged to be seen to be "doing something" if more evidence emerges. The NFL is currently digging itself into a hole over this issue, for reasons which are well-explained here by Gregg Easterbrook. If further evidence is revealed that broadens the use of video-taping and other disallowed methods by the Patriots of obtaining information on opponents, the NFL may have to impose more penalties. We may yet see more upheaval for the Patriots in the off-season, which, coupled with the likely retirements of older players and the fact that parts of the team are getting older, makes for a challenging Summer.

Anna Beatriz "Bia" Figueiredo, who has been trying to move out of Brazilian open wheel racing for a year or so, has signed to race in IPS for Sam Schmidt Motorsports in 2008. The press release seems to totally downplay her family name, which is either dumb PR writing or part of an idea to park the family name, which is not the easiest to pronounce if you do not know Portugese.
I have no idea if this is a good move or not - the IPS is not exactly a picture of health, but then hardly any US open-wheel series is in any sort of healthy state right now. I hope that Bia does well - we need to see a talented female driver actually win races in a top-flight series competing against talented men in order to dispel the "babes who are lookers but cannot race" mindset that currently seems to encumber female race drivers.

I thought it was about time that I changed the look of this blog...so I adopted a new skin in B2Evolution, and also added one of my own photos as the banner. This shows Grecian Rocks snorkeling spot, off Key Largo in the Florida Keys. More pictures from that trip can be seen here.

..via a series of manouvers from the Republicans and Democrats (well-documented by Glenn Greenwald over at Salon), I found a very concise comment on his blog which pretty much sums up my opinion of the devolution of civil liberties since 9/11. An extract follows:

...while I do believe there are terrorists in the world who wouldn't mind seeing me dead just for being an American, I acknowledge that the chances of me encountering one is somewhere far south of my chances of being struck by lightning. On the other hand, the danger of an abusive government to dismantle the freedoms that Americans have enjoyed for its entire history is clear and present; the PATRIOT Act, this NSA spying thing, the legitimization of torture, the politicization of the Dept of Justice, and signing statements (in no particular order) are clear examples of a very strong intention to change the US government in a distinctly non-egalitarian direction.