Who Founded Greenpeace? Not Patrick Moore.

In what seems to me to be an indisputable refutation of an oft-repeated claim, ScienceBlogs has shown that any claim by Patrick Moore that he founded GreenPeace, or was a co-founder, is false.

Male College Students: if you sexually assault a female student you might be expelled. AFTER graduation

An interesting segment on the Daily Show. Watch the whole thing. Especially the end.

Man: “Let’s be real, let’s be real here Jessica, you’re telling me that women just spend their whole day navigating an obstacle course of sexual menace?”

Woman: “Yeah. Pretty much.”

Man: “Seriously.”

Woman: “Seriously.”

Man: “Hah … sorry. But not all men are bad. I mean some are still gentlemen. Thank you very much.”

Woman: “Oh. OK, yeah. Thanks. You know what, I’ll keep that in mind the next time a guy says he wants to lick my back when I’m walking to work at eight in the fucking morning.”

Anthony Watts and the Bottom of the Barrel

Not long ago Wormtail Anthony Watts published this post from — who else? — Lord Voldemort Monckton, causing Watts to claim that the premier graph shown as part of Mike Mann’s recent article in Scientific American is wrong. In particular, Watts claimed that the plotted data didn’t correspond to any known surface temeperature data set. Although he didn’t come right out and say it, I got the impression that Watts believed Mike Mann was perpetrating a fraud. Imagine that.

Frack You

For those of you who don’t read ClimateProgress, sometimes it surprises — and worries — me.

Shady Politicians

I’ve mentioned on a number of occasions that Republican party politicians are much more likely than Democrats to deny man-made global warming and/or its danger. But I have hoped for some time that the Republican party would shed their extremist stupid wing and move back toward the center. I’d like to have a genuine choice when I vote, but I haven’t felt that way for quite a while.

Arctic Sea Ice Minimum Forecast

It’s that time of year again, time to submit forecasts of this year’s upcoming September Arctic sea ice extent to ARCUS.

Weekly Awards

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.
— Mark Twain

The “idiot of the week” award goes to Jeff Miller, a republican congressman from Florida, who actually disputed man-made global warming by claiming that since the dinosaurs died long before people were pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we can’t possibly be the cause of climate change now. In an interview with MSNBC reporter Richard Liu,

Miller: It changes. It gets hot, it gets cold. It’s done it for as long as we have measured the climate.

Liu: But man-made, isn’t that the question?

Miller: Then why did the dinosaurs go extinct? Were there men that were causing — were there cars running around at that point, that were causing global warming? No. The climate has changed since earth was created.

As stupid as the congressman’s remarks were, he’s not even in the running for asshole of the week. The undisputed winner, by a landslide, is George Will, who actually claimed in an op-ed for the Washington Post that for women in college, being a rape victim is “coveted status.” I wonder how George Will would feel if he himself acquired that “coveted status”?

A Very Informative Post — but not the way they think it is

And that very informative post is at the Watts Up With That blog. It’s even the “recommended” post there.

Teachable moment?

Still getting comments from Dean1230 about this post. He insists that the cubic fit is insignificantly better than the linear model (for the tide gauge data from Sewell’s Point), and that the cubic model shouldn’t be extrapolated (which I said in the first place).

I suspect he thinks he now has ironclad proof of his point. It’s based on extrapolating curve fits based on limited data, ending before the present.

Keep your eye on the man, not the dog

Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist, and science communicator par excellence. He’s also the host of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, a reprise (or rather, update) of the original Cosmos: A Personal Voyage hosted by Carl Sagan.