I actually stopped subscribing some time ago, but this would be enough to justify it all over again. Over at the magazine Popular Science, they’ve taken to shaming volunteers on Wikipedia if they don’t “toe the line” on climate change. First, what Wikipedia says about volunteer contributions, bolding mine:
Wikipedia is written collaboratively by largely anonymous Internet volunteers who write without pay. Anyone with Internet access can write and make changes to Wikipedia articles, except in limited cases where editing is restricted to prevent disruption or vandalism. Users can contribute anonymously, under a pseudonym, or, if they choose to, with their real identity.
Hold that thought…
Now look what Popular Science’s Dan Nosowitz has written:
“Meet The Climate Change Denier Who Became The Voice Of Hurricane Sandy On Wikipedia”
But for days, the internet’s most authoritative article on a major tropical storm system in 2012 was written by a man with no meteorological training who thinks climate change is unproven and fought to remove any mention of it.
Nosowitz’ bio on PopSci:
Dan Nosowitz is the assistant editor for PopSci.com. He has previously written for Fast Company, SmartPlanet, and Splitsider, and got his start at the gadget blog Gizmodo. He is also the founder and editorial director of Oh Em Gee., a pop culture criticism collective based in Montreal. Dan holds an undergraduate degree in English literature from McGill University. You can follow him on Twitter.Pot, kettle, and all that.
Maybe he’ll provide some balance to the mess that climate change is on Wikipedia by telling his readers about the abuses and suspension of climate activist William Connolley on Wikipedia.
Oh, and where the hell is my flying car?
h/t to Verity Jones
Popsci is great, you’re not
I’m not renewing Pop Sci for that same reason among others.
“Dan holds an undergraduate degree in English literature from McGill University.”
well it’s PopSci and Dan runs a “pop culture criticism collective” that knows things about Radiohead (yes I had to verify what that collective does, and it’s incoherent), and radio is something scientific so he’s totally entitled to judge whether Sandy was climate change on steroids. /sarc
I stopped reading the magazine when the emphasis shifted to POP from SCI. Obviously, Mr. Nosowitz was hired to perpetuate that shift.
It always rankles when a scientific illiterate berates me for not subscribing to some scientific conjecture on the basis that it’s me who is unqualified. The burden to be qualified is wholly on the one proposing the conjecture.
I see another magazine is going (has gone) down the drain!
Popular Science you used to be worth reading! Your no longer even suitable for swatting bugs, get back to balanced coverage of technology and leave out the brain dead editorials.
Larry
One comment in the aftermath of Nosowitz’ diatribe nails him to the wall for hypocrisy.
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-11/wikipedia-sandy#comment-148773
I agree!
Pop Science, not Popular
I tried to improve on an article in Wikipedia in which the previous article was dotted with “needs a citation” notes. I wrote a more comprehensive article with new historical material that I found in some learned journals published by the University of Chicago. My revised article was rejected with the comment that it was based on dubious sources. Later the defensive author of the previous version put in some of the same claims that I had made, but sourced from some trade journals of the education “profession.” I have given up on contributing to Wikipedia.
Perhaps a little trawling of articles published under this Assistant Editors name on subjects he holds no qualification for? It might redress the balance a little …
Here’s the comment I submitted there:
11/03/12 at 10:04 am
The article stated, “I myself spoke to a hurricane expert about three hours before I spoke to Mampel who told me that the roughly two-degree increase in the water temperature in the Atlantic could have had a major effect on Hurricane Sandy’s strength in the northeast. Mampel doesn’t care. He wasn’t going to mention climate change.”
Here’s what Wikipedia says about the warming of the North Atlantic, in the article on the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, which indicates that the SSTs may decline after 2015 due to a downturn in the AMO (and implies that current warming is partly due to the AMO):
————–
“The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) is a mode of variability occurring in the North Atlantic Ocean and which has its principal expression in the sea surface temperature (SST) field.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..
“Relation to Atlantic hurricanes
“In viewing actual data on a short time horizon, sparse experience would suggest the frequency of major hurricanes is not strongly correlated with the AMO. During warm phases of the AMO, the number of minor hurricanes (category 1 and 2) saw a modest increase.[9] With full consideration of meteorological science, the number of tropical storms that can mature into severe hurricanes is much greater during warm phases of the AMO than during cool phases, at least twice as many; the AMO is reflected in the frequency of severe Atlantic hurricanes.[6] The hurricane activity index is found to be highly correlated with the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation.[9] If there is an increase in hurricane activity connected to global warming, it is currently obscured by the AMO quasi-periodic cycle.[9] The AMO alternately obscures and exaggerates the global increase in temperatures due to human-induced global warming.[6] Based on the typical duration of negative and positive phases of the AMO, the current warm regime is expected to persist at least until 2015 and possibly as late as 2035. Enfield et al. assume a peak around 2020.[10]”
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Here’s where to log in to cancel your sub., which I did over a year ago.
https://secure.palmcoastd.com/pcd/eServ?iServ=MDg5MTM0NjQ1Ng==
I myself also gave up Popular Science, National Geographic. Up here in Canada I no longer listen to a science program called Quirks and Quarks on CBC. CBC think BBC, the U.S. PBS and Australia’s ABC. That also goes for the discovery channel and Suzuky’s Nature of Things also on CBC. These programs and magazines used to be decent until they turned non science and political. I find with the Internet I can keep my science fad up to date and do not miss the above. Easier to pick and choose on the Internet without having to listen the BS on climate.
The comments below his unbelievably long article gives him plenty of pushback.
Yeah, where is my flying car?
Pop Sci and Pop Mech, when it comes to science and engineering, are the equivalent of People and US magazines, or maybe even checkout stand tabloids.
Wily is no longer topic banned for CC articles. Only the sceptics who were banned remain banned :o)
The majority of commenters on Mr. Nosowitz’s PopSci gossip column on Mr. Mampel seemed to be more interested science – even the warmists – although there were a lot more skeptics that weighed in in Dan’s pop puff puffery piece.
Don’t even CAGW types read PopSci any more either? Maybe that’s why they are leaning towards “social, socializing, or indeed socialism based political commentary – they’re desperate.
Anthony – have you seen the Australian Climate Commission skill with graphics first we noticed the one temperature graphic.
“Australian Climate Commission bungles simple temperature anomaly chart”
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=1819
“Oops Climate Commission graph: Queensland warmed nearly 3 degrees in 50 years?”
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/11/climate-commission-report-queensland-warmed-by-3-degrees-in-50-years-look-out/#comments
But now there is a second which is even worse –
“Australian Climate Commission bungles second temperature chart – already constructed for them by the BoM”
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=1822
Fresh pressed kale juice was his priority after the storm. What a nimrod!
For this same reason…Scientific American should be shunned.
I used to love Popular Science but I stopped subscribing to it more than 12 years ago as it seemed to me to have changed from its roots. It became less scientific and more about following popular trends! Allso they strayed away from the so called ” guy” stuff like cars, trucks, airplanes etc.
Yea, Robert Mueller has managed to get his flying cars on the covers of PopSci for decades. But he has never actually succeeded in making a flying car.
He missed his calling as a publicist.
Part of pursuing that pleasure, was renewing subscriptions to popular magazines such as Scientific American, The New Scientist, National Geographic and Nature. For each of those magazines, and some others, I reached a point where I realised they no longer dealt in big ideas, and the truth to be told, no longer even dealt in science. They’d dumbed down to touchy feely mysticism, a weird sort of political correctness and agenda-driven articles and papers. One by one, as the renewal dates arrived, I cancelled the subscriptions.
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/the-decline-of-popular-science-journals/
Pointman
I like BarryW’s comment:
“Pop Sci and Pop Mech, when it comes to science and engineering, are the equivalent of People and US magazines”. That’s true, but it’s really secondary.
I don’t read any magazines, for news or anything else. Magazines are always a day late and a dollar short. Anything that I’m interested in, I have already read about online (here for instance), long before it comes out on dead tree.
Anything that you read about in a paper publication is yesterdays news by the time they can get it to you. I can only assume that the people who buy them and read them are not online.
@ur momisuglyRoger Knights
You quoted the article:
From Frankenstorm-itis: Five degrees of Separation from Reality and Eleventy Gazillion Joules Under the Sea:
So, a non-science major criticizes someone for posting something on Wikipedia about Sandy because it is, among others, allegedly poorly sourced, when the critic himself uses as basis for that criticism a non-sourced assertion that is easily contradicted by publicly available data. Sigh.
Why did I stop reading Popular Science – Editors who brag about their sons homicidal fantasies about killing SUV drivers:
“DURING A RECENT FAMILY DRIVE out of town, my 13-year-old son,
Rex, launched into a diatribe from the backseat, blasting the environ-
mental myopia of every lone driver spewing unnecessary CO2 behind
the wheel of a hulking SUV. (He actually wanted me to bump them off
the road, thus ensuring that he won’t join their ranks until long after he
turns 16.) “Don’t they realize that if this keeps up, Manhattan is going to be
under water before long?” he demanded”
http://www.scribd.com/doc/37904427/Popular-Science-2010-10