Also, a little public service announcement for a long time friend of CotL. Montag from Stump Lane wrote to inform us that there’s a new addition to the blogosphere — Mustard Mellon featuring the artwork of none other than Montag’s own little offspringlings. If you’re into neo-primitive duct tape sculpture and stop motion Lego dioramas (and who isn’t?) then Mustard Mellon is the blog for you!

Probably not. Although reported by respected papers like The Guardian and The Scotsman, the poll was conducted online as part of a viral marketing campaign for the new X Files movie I Want To Believe. Although one might argue that fans of X Files are more inclined to be conspiracy minded, thus skewing the results of the poll, one wonders if perhaps this poll inadvertenly gives a metric of the top conspiracy theories amongst the credulous.

Of course, one wonders if the recent spate of news stories promoting Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell’s beliefs in a U.S. government coverup of alien contact aren’t also part of the viral marketing campaign for the new X Files movie. Now that’s a conspiracy theory I could buy into.

Here’s the top 10 conspiracy theories as identified by the poll…

• Area 51 exists to investigate aliens (48%)
• 9/11 was orchestrated by the US government (38%)
• Apollo landing was a hoax (35%)
• Diana and Dodi were murdered (32%)
• The Illuminati secret society and masons are trying to take over the world (25%)
• Scientologists rule Hollywood (17% )
• Barcodes are really intended to control people (7%)
• Microsoft sends messages via Wingdings (6%)
• US let Pearl Harbour happen (5%)
• The world is run by dinosaur-like reptiles (3%)

Tip o’ th’ hat to Liberal England for the links.

After exchanging some messages with Phoenix we decided it would be great fun for both of us if Phoenix did an interview for Neural Gourmet. We spent the next few weeks, when Phoenix got to take a break from her work on Mars, talking about herself, working on Mars, and the important science she is doing. This is the first half of our exclusive interview with Phoenix. You can find the second half of this interview here.

Neural Gourmet: First of all, let me say just how excited I am to be interviewing you. You’re the first robotic lander I’ve ever had the pleasure of talking to. Phoenix Mars Lander is a little bit unwieldy though, so do you mind if I call you Phoenix, or do you have a nickname that everybody on the team calls you?

Phoenix: If you really wanna get into shortcuts, you can call me PHX, but I prefer Phoenix.

Neural Gourmet: Hah! PHX might be great for robots and NASA mission controllers, but I think I’ll stick with Phoenix then.

Neural Gourmet: Speaking of talking, how is it we’re communicating right now? How do you talk to everybody on Earth, and who helps you use Facebook and Twittr? And do you talk to any of the other landers and orbiters on Mars?

Phoenix: I make every effort to talk to as many people back on Earth as possible! I love meeting people from all over the world. Since there’s about a 15 minute delay between Mars and Earth, I have a few helpers. My Twitter is run by Veronica McGregor at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. My Facebook is maintained by two undergraduate students. Keri Bean’s a meterology major at Texas A&M University, and Patricia Wroblewski is a physics/astronomy major at the University of Arizona. They’re really good people and they do a great job. I do chat with Spirit & Opportunity a lot on Facebook, and in fact, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and its moon impactor companion, the Solar Dynamics observatory, the Mars rovers, and I have started a lunch club called the SLC - Spacecraft Lunch Club! To talk with Earth, I first talk to the Mars Reconniassance Orbiter, Mars Odyssey, or Mars Express, and they relay my information back home. I owe them so much for doing that for me!

Neural Gourmet: We’ve heard in the news about some of the exciting things you’ve done recently but we don’t hear a whole lot about just what kind of robot Phoenix is. So tell us a little bit about yourself. What are your interests? Do you have any hobbies?

Phoenix: I really like everything space! Not only is the work being done on Mars cool, but the other spacecraft, everyone from Voyager to Hubble, is doing something awesome. I also have on me the first library on Mars stored in a DVD, so sometimes I’ll read some books. Sometimes I like to pretend I’m at the beach and play around in the sand.

Neural Gourmet: That’s right! I remember reading about the DVD the Planetary Society placed on you in the news last year. Among the signatures, slideshows narrated by the likes of Arthur C. Clarke and Carl Sagan, and other goodies, there’s a science fiction library of stories about Mars. Do you have a favorite?

Phoenix: Well there’s so many awesome things on board, it’s hard to pick a favorite. The War of the Worlds may possibly be my favorite though. However, I would like to state I don’t think any Martians will be attacking anytime soon.

Neural Gourmet: Of all the science fiction stories on your DVD, the one I liked the best was Kim Stanley Robinson’s Green Mars (the middle book of his Mars trilogy). The reason his Mars trilogy so much is because he paid so much attention to the science that I felt like I knew what it was really like to live on Mars. Have you had a chance to read that novel and if so, how much did he get right? What did he get wrong?

Phoenix: I’m afraid I haven’t read it yet, so maybe one of these evenings when I don’t have much to do, I’ll read it.

Neural Gourmet: I understand that you’re an avid baker and you’ve brought along a sort of Easy-Bake Oven. What kinds of things will you be baking on Mars?

Phoenix: I brought an oven with me because even Martians need an Easy Bake Oven! Although the stuff I bake isn’t exactly tasty. I get to scoop up layers of the Martian soil and stick it into my oven named TEGA, or the Thermal Evolved Gas Analyzer. When I bake the stuff, I do it in steps. I do “temperature ramps” where I’ll quickly reach a certain temperature and see what happens. I can get my oven up to 1000 degrees Celcius! once I bake the soil, I look at what gases come out and by monitoring the gases, I can tell what is in the soil.

Neural Gourmet: What else would you like people to know about yourself?

Phoenix: A lot of people ask why scientists are so pessimistic about me coming back once winter is over, since the rovers Spirit & Opportunity did so. Well, once winter sets in, I’m going to be covered in dry ice, or carbon dioxide ice. That stress will probably snap wires and possibly make my solar panels snap off. If that happens, I will definitely not be able to come back to life. However, if I do survive, my software is programmed to wake me up.

Neural Gourmet: That’s terrible! Are you sad about the prospect of dying (not being able to wake up after the winter because of damage caused by freezing/thawing)? Could humans still repair you if they ever make it to Mars?

Phoenix: I won’t be too sad to die because I’ll have given the scientists back on Earth really important information, and since I’ve found water ice, we know that life could possibly survive there.

Neural Gourmet: Humans would have to wear space suits on Mars to protect them against the cold and make sure they have enough air to breathe. How did the engineers make sure you would survive on Mars long enough to do all the things you want to do?

Phoenix: I participated in several tests. During something called a TVAC test, or thermal vacuum test, my instruments are put in vacuum chambers that had less than four percent of Earth’s pressure, and I was cooled and heated well beyond my expected temperature ranges and was in there for at least three times my expected lifetime. My engineers wanted to make sure I could face any challenge!

Neural Gourmet: Can you tell me about some of the humans on your team? What are they like to work with? Are they real slave drivers or do they give you a chance to just sit back and take in the view?

Phoenix: The people back at the Science Operations Center in Tucson, Arizona, Lockheed Martin in Denver, Colorado, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California are really nice! My daddy, Peter Smith, is really funny. He reminds me of Santa Claus because of how nice he is and he’s always jolly! how appropriate I’m near the north pole. All the scientists and engineers on my team take care of me and make sure I’m not sick and I have enough power to keep me going. While most of the time they are very serious, they can be quite funny and open! A lot of people think scientists are reclusive nerds who do nothing but program computers and watch scifi, but my mommies and daddies are really friendly! They recently celebrated the alignment of solstices by talking to scientists on Earth’s south pole and I took an image during my summer solstice to dedicate to them.

Reading like a badly drawn Jack Chick tract, the comic book features two concerned Oklahoma County voters, toga-wearing gays, trench-coated henchmen,  a devil opposing Rinehart’s election, and an angel for the forces of good (otherwise known as Rinehart). The comic also alludes to a conspiracy by homosexuals and “good ol’ boy liberals” to keep Rinehart out of office. You see, last year Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson filed felony charges against Rinehart alleging that Rhinehart’s 2004 campagin had violated campaign finance laws.

Sheriff John Whetsel, also targeted by Rinehart’s comic book, calling it, “extremely pathetic and very bigoted. I was taken back that in 2008, a candidate would use that type of inflammatory material and do it under the name of being a Christian.”

University of Oklahoma political science professor Keith Gaddie called it one of the strangest things he’s ever seen. Gaddie noted, “I’ve never seen a comic book with the phrase ‘anal sodomy’ in it before. That was a new one for me.“

Rhinehart’s fellow Republican, Oklahoma County Assessor Leonard Sullivan, expressed his concern. Sullivan said, “I’ve really encouraged him on more than one occasion to get professional help. He really needs it.”

Allen, on the other hand, thinks differently,

If Brent Rinehart were to receive professional help, he’d be like Faulkner without alcohol or Hunter S. Thompson without drugs. Would Van Gogh have done any interesting paintings if he had gotten professional help? I hope Rinehart declines any treatment so the world can have more of his work. God made plenty of talented writers, gifted artists, and people who can spell.

But he only made one Brent Rinehart.

While it might be fun to laugh at Rinehart, I’m really given to wonder if Oklahoma voters are really so intellectually impoverished as to be swayed by Rinehart’s graphical delusional rantings and conspiracy theories. I know there’s probably at least a few, but I have to think that the majority of Oklahoma County voters will be insulted by Rinehart’s bigoted comic book. At least I hope that’s so.

If you’d like to see Brent Rinehart’s full comic book, you can download a PDF.

“The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming “incontrovertible.”

In a posting to the APS forum, editor Jeffrey Marque explains,”There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution.”

The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity — the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause — has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling. A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.”

The APS is the second largest organization of scientists in the world and one of the most prestigious. It publishes over a dozen scientific journals with Physical Review and Physical Review Letters among them, as well as organizing over twenty scientific meetings a year. So if the APS issues a statement that it doesn’t think anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is real, then the world has good cause to sit up and take notice. “Deathly news for the religion of Global Warming,” as one right wing pundit put it.

Except that’s not what happened.

Asher’s blog post was updated with the following message:

“After publication of this story, the APS responded with a statement that its Physics and Society Forum is merely one unit within the APS, and its views do not reflect those of the Society at large.”

And the APS posted this notice on their front page:

“The American Physical Society reaffirms the following position on climate change, adopted by its governing body, the APS Council, on November 18, 2007:

“Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate.”

An article at odds with this statement recently appeared in an online newsletter of the APS Forum on Physics and Society, one of 39 units of APS. The header of this newsletter carries the statement that “Opinions expressed are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the APS or of the Forum.” This newsletter is not a journal of the APS and it is not peer reviewed.”

Well now, that’s hardly the APS reversing itself on AGW. Additionally, Asher did some selective quoting of Jeffrey Marque’s Editor’s Comments in the APS’s Physics and Society Forum newsletter (Asher misattributes this as the APS’s forum too, but we’ll let that slide). Reading Marque’s actual comments we find that the APC’s Physics and Society Forum invited several people to contribute papers arguing either for or against the International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) conclusions. Christopher Monckton supplied the anti-AGW argument while David Hafemeister and Peter Schwartz from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo provided a paper supporting the IPCC’s conclusions.

I think it also bears mentioning who exactly Christopher Monckton is. He is a former journalist and an arch Conservative British politician, having been a policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher. Monckton is a member of many private-public Conservative think tanks including The Heartland Institute which aggressively campaigns against global warming science (and for “smokers’ rights”, receiving large donations from Phillip-Morris). He had a successful business consultancy and invented the Eternity Puzzle, a popular puzzle toy that carried a £1,000,000 prize for its solution.

Monckton is also something of a notorious crank. He is an Euroskeptic; opposed to European integration. In a 2007 interview with The Independent he is quoted as saying that he would (bolding mine),

“… leave the European Union, close down 90 per cent of government services and shift power away from the atheistic, humanistic government and into the hands of families and individuals.”

Monckton maintains similarly eclectic views on HIV/AIDS as well. In a 1987 article for The American Spectator he argued that the only way to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS was to blood test every single person once a month and forcibly quarantine anyone found to have or be carrying the disease.

Monckton has also been known to employ creative expansion of the facts to suit his needs. For instance, he claimed that he had to sell his house pay the Eternity Puzzle prize but later admitted that wasn’t true. In a letter to Senators Snowe and Rockefeller he claimed to be a member of the Upper House of the UK legislature when, in fact, he is not a member of the House of Lords.

All of that being so, perhaps the most important thing that has been left unsaid is what Mockton is not. For the plain and simple fact is that Christopher Monckton is not a scientist.

Now you might accuse me, and rightfully so, of arguing ad hominem. However, I think Monckton’s history and character are important for assessing his credibleness, especially if one isn’t a climate scientist their self. After all, if a person holds several views contrary to experts in their respective fields and has a history of being less than forthright then perhaps we should view any claims that person makes as suspect.

Still, Monckton’s history of credulousness doesn’t necessarily make him wrong. Nor does the fact that he isn’t a scientist rule out the possibility that he has something to contribute to science. Sadly though, Monckton walks a well-worn path he has trod many times before. For instance, his claim that cosmic rays are behind warming trends in recent decades has been thoroughly refuted and George Monbiot handily debunked many of Monckton’s other claims. Finally, Tim Lambert dispenses with Monckton’s claims of the IPCC’s overstatement of climate sensitivity, again noting Monckton’s spurious reasoning.

“Did you spot what he just did? If you assume that there is no delay in warming (which is wrong) and McKitrick is right (which is also wrong), then you get a low value of sensitivity. If you also assume that the IPCC values for ΔF_2x and f are correct, then their value of κ must be too high — Monckton comes up with a number 20% less. But in the previous section Monckton argued that the IPCC value of ΔF_2x was too high by a factor of three. If instead you use Monckton’s number, the IPCC value of κ is too low.

What Monckton is doing is double counting his (dubious) evidence that sensitivity is lower than the IPCC number. If he had two pieces of evidence that sensitivity is half the IPCC number he would multiply them together to claim that sensitivity is one quarter the IPCC number. This is not correct.

Too put it another way, in this case, by making some unrealistic assumptions he came up with a sensitivity estimate 20% less than the IPCC number i.e. 2.4K. Logically he should have stopped there — he has an estimate of sensitivity. Instead he uses this estimate of sensitivity in a chain of reasoning that leads him to conclude that sensitivity is 0.58K.”

What it all comes down to is that Monckton is simply wrong; wrong about it all. And the vast majority of respectable scientists across the many fields comprising climate science still think that humans are responsible for global warming.

The whole affair appears as an almost textbook exercise in critical thinking. Taken at face value Monckton’s claims even pass the sniff test with lots of scientific looking language, charts and graphs. On the other hand we have sensationalized and less-than-honestly reported claims from a crackpot fringe politico stumping for his pet cause with, seemingly, religious and political motivations. Contrasted with Monckton’s claims are those of thousands of scientists doing real work in the field of climatology whose work is subject to the scrutiny of their peers. Who would you believe?

Note: This post was originally written for Freethought Fort Wayne.

]]> http://neuralgourmet.com/2008/07/13/edward-tabash-threat-religious/feed/ http://neuralgourmet.com/2008/07/05/message-preach-choir/ http://neuralgourmet.com/2008/07/05/message-preach-choir/#comments Sat, 05 Jul 2008 19:05:45 +0000 Leo http://neuralgourmet.com/?p=115 Recently I started writing a weekly blog post for my local CFI affiliate, Freethought Fort Wayne. This week however, instead of my usual blog post, I wanted to direct everyone to Tim Farley’s new blog, Skeptical Software Tools (a site that is definitely going on my blogroll). Tim only has one post of note up as of now, but it’s a doozy chock full of information on harnessing the power of Web 2.0 to promote skepticism. It’s based on a presentation given at The Amazing Meeting 6 a couple of weekends back.

In particular, Tim sees the primary goal of the skeptic as battling misinformation, and the internet is an important front in that war. As wonderful a tool as the internet is for disseminating information, misinformation is everywhere on the net. And the sad truth is that those who wish to spread misinformation tend to be far more numerous and much better funded than those who wish to combat misinformation. Like Tim says, “we are outmanned and outgunned.”

So what do we do? Tim argues that we need to be more systematic than we’ve been in the past. While blog posts and google bombs are all well and good, they are both primarily reactionary and often preaching to the choir. We need to find ways of getting the message out to people who won’t seek it out for themselves. And to that end, he believes that Web 2.0 technologies have a key role to play because they offer community, specialization, programmability and the ability to build a new site out of data provided by other sites (this is called a mashup). He also believes that we must tailor our message to those who are neither skeptics or believers and that specialization is crucial.

Tim goes on to give very specific examples of how skeptics can employ Web 2.0 in the service of contradicting misinformation. In particular he champions the use of RSS, Yahoo Pipes, Google Alerts, Google Custom Searches, iCalendar, microformats (particularly hReview), geo-coding, mashups and open data.

I won’t bother to summarize Tim’s excellent post any further because it really should be read by every skeptic seeking to use the net to get the message out. Ideally these techniques should be adopted by regional skeptical organizations as a way of both amplifying their own efforts and as a way of furthering skeptical community.

Tim Farley created and writes the web site What’s The Harm? dedicated to highlighting the plight of those who have suffered because of their, or others’, beliefs in misinformation.

But it’s easy to think of instances where the opposite is the case. Perhaps the most famous instance in popular culture where supernatural beliefs led to great atrocity are the Early Modern European witch trials where tens of thousands of victims were executed and tortured. However, less remembered are the everyday tragedies arising from unexamined belief such as the credulous senior citized bilked out of their life savings by a crooked clairvoyant preying on their desire to reconnect with lost loved ones.

Most recently there’s the case of Colleen Leduc. Colleen is the mother of an autistic child in Barrie, Ontario, about 60 miles north of Toronto. Her daughter attends a public school because Colleen is unable to afford private therapy. On the morning of May 30th, Colleen received a frantic phone call from the school telling her that she was urgently needed back at the school. She wasn’t prepared for what awaited her.

At the school, Colleen was confronted by the principal, vice-principal and her daughter’s teacher with the disturbing news that they believed her daughter had been sexually abused based on a report from her daughter’s educational assistant and that the Children’s Aid Society had been notified. What was even more shocking was the basis for their accusations — a psychic!

“The teacher looked and me and said: ‘We have to tell you something. The educational assistant who works with Victoria went to see a psychic last night, and the psychic asked the educational assistant at that particular time if she works with a little girl by the name of “V.” And she said ‘yes, I do.’ And she said, ‘well, you need to know that that child is being sexually abused by a man between the ages of 23 and 26.’”

Later Colleen was visited by a representative of the Children’s Aid Society but the questions of her daughter being sexually abused were quickly put to rest because Colleen had equipped her daughter with a GPS tracking unit that continuously recorded both her movements and the audio around her. While it might seem odd that Colleen had equipped her daughter with a tracking device, it’s understandable after one learns that this same school had allegedly lost Colleen’s daughter several times. The geographic and audio data handily contradicted the psychic’s claims and thus the CAS case was closed, although an investigation into the school and how a psychic’s word came to be accepted as proof of sexual abuse is ongoing.

While it might be reassuring to think that cases such as Colleen Leduc’s are abberational, neither are they unheard of. While in the Western world we may no longer have witch trials, people are harmed by their credulous beliefs, or the beliefs of others, everyday. Often times instances of harm arising from beliefs in the paranormal and supernatural never come to public attention. Furthermore, we have a short memory for the fraudulent, thus people like Uri Geller are able to continue their careers despite having been repeatedly exposed.

So harm does demonstrably follow from paranormal and supernatural beliefs, and that is reason enough to challenge those beliefs where we might find them while the fact that harm does not always follow is insufficient cause to leave believers to their blissful ignorance. And since it is impossible to predict which anomalous beliefs will result in harm (leaving aside some radical religious beliefs for the moment) it becomes necessary to critically examine all beliefs in the extraordinary. I doubt this sort of belief can ever be eradicated since humans are quick to believe, and slow to doubt, but increased skepticism can only help further reduce the harm from irrational belief.

Originally written for Freethought Fort Wayne blog.