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Closing the Gap between the Science and Politics of Progress
Closing the Gap between the Science and Politics of Progress Ed.note: This article draws on a paper published this month in the international journal, Social Indicators Research. The paper is available on Richard’s website, www.richardeckersley.com.au Global politics is based on an outmoded and increasingly destructive model of human progress and development. Can science change a […]
Living With Truth Decay
Living With Truth Decay “Once a policy has been adopted and implemented, all subsequent activity becomes an effort to justify it” — Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam (1984. p. 245). In the 20th-century but still fun party game called Telephone, people sit in a circle and someone whispers a phrase […]
JCU bans Prof Peter Ridd from criticizing scientific institutions. Defiant, he refuses, fights on!
JCU bans Prof Peter Ridd from criticizing scientific institutions. Defiant, he refuses, fights on! JCU is trying (and failing) to gag Peter Ridd from discussing why we can’t trust scientific organisations Last August Professor Peter Ridd said the unsayable — that we can no longer trust scientific institutions. His employer, James Cook University (JCU) could […]
The tricks propagandists use to beat science
The tricks propagandists use to beat science A model of the way opinions spread reveals how propagandists use the scientific process against itself to secretly influence policy makers. Photo: Gilles Mingasson/Getty Images Back in the 1950s, health professionals became concerned that smoking was causing cancer. Then, in 1952, the popular magazine Reader’s Digestpublished “Cancer by the Carton,” […]
Is “Fake News” Really Fake?
Is “Fake News” Really Fake? The more complicated a situation, the more open to interpretation it is. The term “fake news” has been much in the news since the 2016 election. Unfortunately, it is not usually defined in any clear fashion. The implication is that the media engages in deliberate distortion and misrepresentation of the […]
Seeing Red on Climate
Seeing Red on Climate Young Republicans, reformed lobbyists, and green Tea Partiers: Meet America’s “eco-right.” Todd Tanner has a pretty sweet offer for his fellow Montanans: a new shotgun in exchange for science-based evidence that he’s wrong about climate change. The conservationist uses the challenge in an attempt to raise awareness about our warming planet. […]
Academic Freedom Re-examined
This is a ‘reprint’ of a letter-to-the-editor I wrote as a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario and was published in the McMaster Courier, June 20, 1989. I print it here just to share some thoughts and wonder if we were to substitute the notion of a ‘free press’ […]
H.G. Wells and Orwell on Whether Science Can Save Humanity
H.G. Wells and Orwell on Whether Science Can Save Humanity Though Wells and Orwell were debating in the era of Nazism, many of their arguments reverberate today. In the midst of contemporary science’s stunning discoveries and innovations – for example, 2017 alone brought the editing of a human embryo’s genes, the location of an eighth […]
The Great Unraveling: Using Science and Philosophy to Decode Modernity
The Great Unraveling: Using Science and Philosophy to Decode Modernity Photo by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center | CC BY 2.0 “Forty percent of the United States drains into the Mississippi. It’s agriculture. It’s golf courses. It’s domestic runoff from our lawns and roads. Ultimately, where does it go? Downstream into the Gulf.” —Sylvia Earle […]
An Introduction to Political Economy
An Introduction to Political Economy Last month, when I looked across the vast gray wasteland of the calendar page ahead and noted that there were five Wednesdays in November, I asked readers—in keeping with a newly minted but entertaining tradition here on Ecosophia—to suggest a theme for the fifth Wednesday post. This blog being the […]
Analysis: Why scientists think 100% of global warming is due to humans
Analysis: Why scientists think 100% of global warming is due to humans The extent of the human contribution to modern global warming is a hotly debated topic in political circles, particularly in the US. During a recent congressional hearing, Rick Perry, the US energy secretary, remarked that “to stand up and say that 100% of […]
Climate Scientists Attack Tony Abbott’s ‘Misleading’ Speech to Global Warming Policy Foundation
Climate Scientists Attack Tony Abbott’s ‘Misleading’ Speech to Global Warming Policy Foundation Australian climate scientists have hit back at their former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, describing his speech to a London think tank as being laced with distortions, falsehoods, misrepresentations, and misdirection. Abbott told the contrarian Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) that rising carbon dioxide emissions from […]
Science tells us this is all true
Science tells us this is all true On April 30, 1934, under pressure from Italian-American lobby groups, the United States Congress passed a law enshrining Columbus Day as a national holiday. President Franklin Roosevelt quickly signed the bill into law, and the very first Columbus Day was celebrated in October of that year. Undoubtedly people […]
I Was an Exxon-Funded Climate Scientist
I Was an Exxon-Funded Climate Scientist Photo by Mike Mozart | CC BY 2.0 ExxonMobil’s deliberate attempts to sow doubt on the reality and urgency of climate change and their donations to front groups to disseminate false information about climate change have been public knowledge for a long time, now. Investigative reports in 2015 revealed […]
