The Island of Doubt

An irregular exploration of the struggle between the power of rational discourse and the scientific method on one hand, and the forces of superstition and dogma on the other. Mostly regarding climate change, though.

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Pi Day

Mar 12, 2010 1:28pm

One Strawbarb Pi, an entry in the Second Annual Pi Day Contest. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post......

Climatologists who are mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore

Mar 8, 2010 12:15pm

Randy Olson says: There comes a point where the public DOES want to see the science community stand up for themselves. And as if on cue comes the release of another round of once-private emails among members of one section of the National Academies of Sciences alerting us to efforts to do...

Island of Doubtful commenters

Mar 8, 2010 6:47am

I am pleased that activity on the Island of Doubt has increased in recent months. I manage to squeeze in a hour four or five days a week to write about what I think is the most serious public policy challenge of our time, and make what modest contribution...

"Balancing" climate education in South Dakota and elsewhere

Mar 4, 2010 6:33am

Leslie Kaufman in the New York Times presents a disturbing tale of attempts by creationists to up their chances of slipping religion into science classrooms by piggy-backing it onto "balanced" instruction of climatology. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post......

The neverending hurricane-climate story

Mar 4, 2010 6:01am

It's a sore spot for some climate change pseudoskeptics. Any time anyone makes any kind of claim about the effects of a warming planet on tropical storm activity, you can count on a deluge of rejoinders about how shaky the science on the subject really is. Read the rest...

Who are the people in your denial neighborhood?

Mar 2, 2010 6:51am

As regular readers will know, I prefer the term "pseudoskeptic" over "denier" when it comes to those who insist we needn't be worried about climate change. This is because the common denominator among any set of such characters tends to be a misapplication of the scientific method, a failure to...

The funniest thing I've seen in ages

Feb 25, 2010 6:15am

This has nothing to do with climatology, or science in general, but I can't resist sharing it with you. From the instructions to our new DTV antenna, which until the Great Ice Storm of 2010 damaged its transformer-coaxial connection, brought in more watchable channels than expanded basic cable or satellite: For...

Where's there's a Will, there's a way to obfuscate

Feb 23, 2010 6:23am

It's hard to know just when George F. Will parted ways with reality. Some argue he abandoned respect for historical accuracy years ago. But it's only in the last year or so, thanks to a series of bafflingly misinformed column on climate change, that it became clear to all but...

What is this "settled science" of which you speak?

Feb 17, 2010 7:41am

In the past couple of days a pernicious little meme has appeared in two leading North American newspapers. I refer to the notion that there is such a thing as "settled science." First, on a column about climatology Monday the Globe and Mail's Margaret Wente asked not-so-rhetorically "So much for...

Fixing journalism

Feb 16, 2010 6:54am

Covering climatology may not be the biggest challenge facing today's mainstream news outlets and the journalists they employ, but it certainly has exposed a serious weakness in conventional news reporting. That weakness, as I implied in my previous post, is a pathological fear of taking sides, even then the "sides"...

What ails journalism

Feb 12, 2010 7:13am

David Roberts at Grist, riffing on This American Life's Ira Glass, nails it on the head: "...news reporting is declining in part because of just this phenomenon: reporters do not react like human beings. The audience doesn't see or hear themselves in most news reporting. When covering something amazing, reporters are...

IPCC error rate: You were expecting something else?

Feb 12, 2010 6:43am

Via the ever-vigilant Stoat, I draw your attention to a letter to the Netherlands parliament from by 55 Netherlands scientists. Along with the usual "the science remains sound" defense of our understanding of anthropogenic global warming, it provides some useful perspective: The writing of IPCC reports and its quality control remains...

Why the denial camp is winning the climate wars (Part 2): they lie

Feb 11, 2010 7:48am

It gives me no pleasure to pass on the facts about the lack of respect for the truth shown by climate change pseudo-skeptics. But there's simply no getting around it. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post......

Trouble with the IPCC; trouble at the homefront

Feb 9, 2010 6:41am

In case anyone is wondering why I haven't posted anything for the past few days, what with all the fuss over the IPCC and all, it's not because I'm reluctant to comment on it. It's just that my little piece of western North Carolina is only now recovering from an...

Why the denial camp is winning (and we're all losing) the climate wars

Feb 4, 2010 7:44am

It's not so much that the pseudoskeptics who dominate the climate change denial camp are particularly clever, but they have been rather fortunate, and the forces aligned on the side of science have turned out to be human after all. The result is the denial camp is winning, and those...