Monckton messes own nest

Ever get the impression the Christopher Monckton may have reached his use-by date? Maybe even well past it?

Looks like this might be the case as the climate change denier/sceptic/contrarian groups trying to organise a programme for him in New Zealand are having problems. Their hero has become so repugnant that dreams of huge publicity for their cause seems to facing the harsh truth of reality.

Apparently, TV programmes Q&A and Close-up are no longer interested. And the host for their Auckland event, Public Relations Institute of New Zealand (PRINZ), has pulled out and left the mess to The Climate Realists – a rather nasty little conspiracy group.

Avoiding reality

Of course this groups is unwilling to face up to the fact that Monckton has been caught out so many times telling outright lies, misrepresenting climate science, attacking scientists and their science, that he no longer has any appeal; except to the committed climate change denier or contrarian. After all, Monckton often compares his debate partners to Nazis, he argues that climate scientists should be prosecuted and imprisoned. And even that perhaps “. . . no one should be allowed to practice in any of the sciences, particularly in those sciences that have become the mere political footballs of the leading pressure-groups, unless he can certify that he adheres to one of those major religions – Christianity outstanding among them – that preach the necessity of morality . . .”. (see Monckton requires religious certification for scientists?)

Consequently, most serious legitimate scientists now refuse to debate with this guy. After all, such debates do far more for Mockton’s CV than they  for the climate scientist. The media is coming to see that he is so far out that without the appearance of a real controversy he is not worth interviewing.

But, true to form, these Climate realists must explain the problem as a conspiracy. As “things that have been going on behind the scene”. They explain the negative reaction of PRINZ members to their organisation being used in this way as conspiring to prevent “someone whose opinions are perceived as being ‘outside the politically correct mantra’ from speaking in public.”  (Of course no one has taken away that right from Monckton. he is still going ahead with a meeting but has lost endorsement of the PRINZ).

They see their inability to find someone reputable to debate with Monckton as another conspiracy. But again, what they have really lost is the opportunity to use such a scientist to provide credibility to the concept of a scientific controversy where none really exists. The same old tactic that creationists always attempt to use.

There is no conspiracy. This is just the result of Monckton’s own behaviour. He has made a mess in his own nest and is now facing the consequences.

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Terror in Norway

Norwegian island of Utøya

The bombing and mass murder in Oslo and Utøya, Norway, are both a shock and a surpise. How could the terrorist be so inhuman? And why Norway, usually considered one of the most sensible countries in the world?

Maybe we will get some answers. The suspect seems to want a platform and surrendered peacefully. His trial will be followed around the world.

But this act of terror brought two major thoughts to me;

1: Children as victims of terror

Schoolchildren killed during Beslam school seizure. Photo by Sergey Ponomarev, AP

I was particularly shocked during the 2004 Beslam school hostage situation in Russia about the fact that innocent children, many attending school for their first time, were taken as hostages. And many of them became victims. Terrorism raises the horror of the indiscriminate killing of people at random. But to target children is particularly inhuman.

The worst thing for a parent is to attend the funeral of their child. Usually such deaths are unexpected, and always tragic. Whereas you can celebrate the life of a grandparent who died of old age (and hopefully with dignity) – but with your child you can only mourn the loss of a life that might have been. This loss is not only tragic for the child, and her loved ones – particularly parents and siblings. It is also tragic for society which loses all the potential benefits and pleasure that could have resulted from that life.

The murder of about 90 young people who were just starting out on such a life is a tragedy for all of Norway. And one can only imagine the long-term psychological effects the murders have created in the minds of the survivors.

2: Terrorism is domestic

The automatic first reaction of the media was to see this as an imported act of terror. In fact, some sections of the media seem to have reduced their coverage when it became obvious the terrorist was local, white and probably Christian.

But most terrorism is domestic. It’s easy to immediately think of the attacks on New York’s Twin Towers in 2001 when terrorism comes to mind. But most acts of terror are committed by terrorists in their own country, against their own people. Very often against people of the same religion. Most acts of terror occur in countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Iraq.

Even in the case of European bombings, like Madrid and London, it’s easy to label them as Islamist and therefore foreign. Despite the fact that the bombers may have been local citizens with a mentality deformed by their local situations as well as their own or their parents origins.

So while the US had the Twin Towers, it also had the Oklahoma bombing and other local acts of terrorism.

Bush’s “War on terror” seems particularly perverted. As does NZ Prime Minister John Key’s assertion that we were doing our bit against terrorism by participating in that war.  Why should one think invading a country around the other side of the world is going to prevent terror? It does nothing to target people like the Oklahoma bomber, or the social defects and ideologies which produced him.

Norway’s involvement in Afghanistan has done nothing to overcome the ills of the local society which have produced people like this current terrorist.

Ernie Abbott - victim of Wellington Trades Hall bombing

Norway also shows us that even a country like New Zealand is not immune to terrorism. Even here, though, when we think of local terrorism we think of the 1985 Rainbow Warrior bombing by French agents. But we should also remember the bombing of the Wellington Trade’s Hall in 1984 which caused the death of Ernie Abbott (see Trades Hall bombing remains unsolved, 24 years on). This was most likely caused by a domestic terrorist with an ideology and motivation fueled by class hatred and the political rhetoric of the time.

The media is starting to release information on the person arrested for these acts of terrorism in Norway. The trial should produce a wealth of more reliable information. But so far it seems to me that the motives and ideology of the Norwegian terrorist are probably similar to those of the (still not caught) local terrorist responsible for Ernie Abbott’s death in 1984.

I think there is a lesson here.We should not see terrorism as a foreign problem, or an imported on. If it can happen in Norway it can happen anywhere. It can happen here.

We won’t solve that problem by invading foreign countries. We need to deal with the real causes of terrorism locally. By coming to grips with the factors responsible for fueling the ideologies motivating and promoting extremism and hatred in our own countries.

See also:
The tragedy on Utøya – an attempt to understand
What did the Oslo killer want?
Christian Extremist Charged in Norway
Random thoughts on the Norwegian tragedy
A glimpse into the deranged mind of a mass murderer
Oslo Terrorist Anders Behring Breivik Manifesto

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Something to celebrate

"Our Rocket is all set on the launchpad that Yuri Gagarin launched from 50 years ago." - Ron Garan. Photo credit Jake Garan

US Astronaut, Ron Garan, is spending today travelling on board a Russian Soyuz vehicle up to  the Inernational Space Station for a 5 ½ month stint. He finished his last post at his blog, FRAGILE OASIS, before the launch with this (see Last Blog Post On Earth. For Now.):

In the words of Yuri Gagarin as he left the launch pad on that historic day, Поехали “WE’RE OFF!”

The historical significance is that this launch occurs on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the first manned space flight by Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin – April 12, 1961. And from the same Baikonur Cosmodrome used for Gagarin’s launch. Garan talks about this historic event and some of the traditioons that have grown up around manned space lauches. (For example, every astronaut and Cosmonaut since Gagarin plants a tree before launch).

I remember Gagarin’s flight well. There was understandably far more interest in manned space flight then than there is now. It was certainly an historic event.

So I will be celebrating this anniversary – and hope many others will too. Especially children and students – but anyone interested in or appreciative of science. This event is usually called Yuri’s Night (see below).

Talking about scientific celebrations – Tim Handorf sent me a link to the 20 Best Holidays for Science Geeks. It’s a list of dates for celebration. Great for teachers and parents wishing to cultivate an interest in science among their children.

Here’s the list of suggestions:

Shoddy reporting on “god genes”

Having just read the paper referred to in my last post (The god gene – or is it a meme?) I was rudely distracted from my Sudoku puzzle during the TV news last night. A news report on this research grabbed my attention.

What a waste of time, though. Unfortunately it’s only value was as an example of the shoddy reporting which seems so frequent with science coverage these days.

What was the take home message for the ordinary viewer? – Scientists have discovered a “god gene”! A gene which makes people religious! We even got a shot of the first page of the paper to “prove” it. And other news sources have conveyed the same impressions (see for example Researcher discovers “religion gene”; Scientist: Religion gene spreads the word).

No god gene discovered!

But this is not true. The paper was written by an economist, not a molecular biologist. He developed mathematical models which  assumed a single god gene, or at least “religious predisposition (“religiosity” for short) is determined by a single gene”

It was an assumption for his model. It was not proved. No gene was discovered or identified in this work.

So the person in the street has been left with the impression that science has discovered a “god gene.” Worse, if the person in the street thinks about this and realises how silly it is she will take home the message that some scientists are really stupid.

Having conveyed a completely false message the TV report went on with fillers to rub it is. They interviewed Christians at a church who said they were happy to “believe in Jesus” and that their god created these genes anyway so they must be good. An academic got a brief sound bite – but he was an “expert on religion” not evolution or genetics and clearly didn’t understand this issue.

Ignore research results!

The news report effectively ignored the real findings of this research paper. This was that the model (which also assumed a higher fertility for members of conservative fundamentalist religions) predicted a growing influence of such religious views. Either by simple dominance via fertility or by spreading of a “god gene” via defections.

Now this is worth discussing. Irrespective of genes the higher birth rate for members of conservative fundamentalist relgions is an empirical fact.  There has been some discussion of this in other media. See God’s little rabbits: Religious people out-reproduce secular ones by a landslide in Scientific American; Atheists a dying breed as nature ‘favours faithful’ in Sunday Times; and  Why I no longer believe religion is a virus of the mind and It seems religion is not a neurotic accretion on human nature in The Guardian.

And I am sure viewers would have found such news interesting. Just imagine all the discussion it would have provoked at home around the TV set. Rational and irrational. Thoughtful and racist. But interesting. And better out than in.

Why could that have not been the central point in the TV news item? And I am sure we have capable demographers and evolutionary scientists in New Zealand who could have added to the discussion.

That would have been worth putting my Sudoku aside for.

“Other ways of knowing” – some sense at last

There’s been a lot of rubbish written about “other ways of knowing”. So it’s quite refreshing to read Richard Carrier’s classification of methods of knowing. This is from his book Sense and Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism. Well worthy reading by the way.

He starts by pointing out that no method of obtaining knowledge can produce absolute certainty. We can always be wrong, make mistakes. But we can list possible methods in order of reliability:

“What is rational is to assign degrees of conviction to degrees of certainty established by a tried-and-tested method. What is rational is reasonable certainty, not absolute certainty.”

“The methods of logic and mathematics are well-developed and provide the greatest certainty we have yet been able to find regarding anything, other than a present, uninterpreted experience. The next greatest certainty has been found in the application of scientific methods to empirical problems. In third place is our own daily experience, when interpreted with a logical or scientific mindset. Fourth is the application of critical-historical methods to claims about past events. Fifth is the application of the criteria of trust to the claims of experts. Sixth is the untested but logical application of inferential generalizations from incomplete facts—that is, plausible deductions. Such is the scale of methods that we have historically been able to discover and confirm as effective.”

“Experience shows that our degree of certainty will generally be weaker with regard to facts at each stage down this six-rung ladder, though within each category lies its own continuum of certainty and uncertainty, and the ladder itself is a continuum of precision and access to information: the more data we have to ground our conclusions, the farther up the ladder we find ourselves. Thus, mathematics is just perfected science; science, perfected experience; experience, perfected history; and history, perfected attention to experts; while plausible inference is what we are left with when we have none of those things.”

“Lacking any of the above approaches to the truth, we are faced with untrustworthy hearsay and pure speculation, where only the feeblest of certainty can ever be justified, if at all.”

Carrier writes that accurate methods of knowing have the properties of predictive success and convergent accumulation of consistent results.  However, these should be evaluated intelligently. Even the best method may produce faulty knowledge if used incorrectly.

So how do the different methods rate?:

Sharing a chemical moment

I must admit when I read the headline “Women Sharing a Chemical Moment in Time” my mental image didn’t include scientists. I guess that indicates that different popular meaning given to the word “chemical.” But, in reality all our moments are chemical, aren’t they?

This is an invitation to local women chemists to a function kicking off the International Year of Chemistry. And why especially women? Well this year is the centenary of Marie Curie’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry. (She had already received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903).

Wellington

You are invited to breakfast at the Southern Cross Bar, 39 Abel Smith Street, Wellington On Tuesday 18th January from 8:00 am

To mark the start of the International Year of Chemistry. A major theme of IYC2011 is Women in Chemistry because this is the centenary of Marie Curie’s Nobel Prize.

Please RSVP attendance to Joanne.Harvey@vuw.ac.nz

For the breakfast/brunch menu, see http://www.thecross.co.nz/menus

This is the first major event of the International Year of Chemistry 2011

– a worldwide breakfast for women in chemistry next Tuesday the 18th of January. New Zealand, of course, gets to kick it off so this is an exciting opportunity to network with others in your local area as well as initiating an international celebration. When we finish our breakfast, we will hand over (a “chemical handshake” via Skype) to Australia, and so on as each country partakes.

Looks like fun.

See also:
Year of Chemistry 20011. New Zealand’s focus on the International Year of Chemistry.
More information at IYC website Women Sharing a Chemical Moment in Time.

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“Climategate” smears found false – Mann cleared

The final investigation of Dr Michael Mann by the Pennsylvania State Unviersity has now reported. It has unanimously found that “after careful review of all available evidence, there is no substance to the allegation against Dr. Michael E. Mann, Professor, Department of Meteorology, The Pennsylvania State University.” (You can download the full report here – Final_Investigation_Report).

No surprise to anyone who has followed this whole “climategate” beat up with an objective eye. In this video interview from Climate Science Watch Mann gives his reactions and thoughts on the “climategate” campaign (from Interview with Michael Mann on the Penn State Final Report and the war on climate scientists).

Interview with Michael Mann on the Penn State Final Report and the war on climate scientists.

Its worth quoting from dean of the Graduate school, Henry C. Folley’s, letter reporting the findings:

Overdosing on water

This from the NZ Skeptics:

A public mass overdose of homeopathic remedies has forced the New Zealand Council of Homeopaths to admit openly that their products do not contain any “material substances”. Council spokeswoman Mary Glaisyer admitted publicly that “there´s not one molecule of the original substance remaining” in the diluted remedies that form the basis of this multi-million-dollar industry.

The NZ Skeptics, in conjunction with 10:23, Skeptics in the Pub and other groups nationally and around the world, held the mass overdose in Christchurch on Saturday to highlight the fact that homeopathic products are simply very expensive water drops or sugar/lactose pills. A further aim was to question the ethical issues of pharmacies, in particular, stocking and promoting sham products and services.

“You´re paying $10 for a teaspoon of water that even the homeopaths say has no material substance in it,” says Skeptics Chair Vicki Hyde.
“Yet a recent survey showed that 94% of New Zealanders using homeopathic products aren´t aware of this basic fact – their homeopath or health professional hasn´t disclosed this. The customers believe they are paying for the substances listed on the box, but those were only in the water once upon a time before the massive dilution process began – along with everything else that the water once had in it — the chlorine, the beer, the urine….”

NZ science bloggers – new opportunity

The NZ Science Media Centre will soon launch a blogging platform for New Zealand scientists. A site has been parked at NZ sciblogs for this.

Initially some of those scientists currently blogging, as well as new people keen to get into blogging, will be invited onto the platform. Existing bloggers may be offered the chance to syndicate their content onto Sciblogs. So it looks like Sciblogs will sart off with plenty of activity.

“Interfaith” blindness

There is a strange attitude towards religion in New Zealand. US President Obama can acknowledge that the pluralistic society includes people of various faiths and people with no faith (the non-religious). However our main political parties (National and Labour) seem unwilling to face that reality. At least, that’s how it appears in their interaction with the country’s “interfaith” movement.