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
maybe nosowitz works for the insurance companies – LOL. it’s going to get a whole lot “sexier”!
2 Nov: WSJ Blog: Tom Loftus: What Your CEO Is Reading: Global warming
It’s global warming, stupid. Global warming is real, folks, writes Businessweek’s Paul M. Barrett. Don’t believe it? Then we have a bridge straddling New York’s flooded Zone A to sell you….
***Severe weather gives new urgency to risk assessment. Harvard Business Review’s Andrew Winston takes a slightly different tack, arguing that climate change or no, “in a deeply unpredictable world,” multinational businesses have the obligation to examine supply chains and operations for risks associated with severe weather.
***“Risk assessment is going to get much sexier and much more important to global organizations,” he writes…
http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2012/11/02/what-your-ceo-is-reading-global-warming-pricing-out-innovation-apples-eddy-cue/?mod=google_news_blog
not so sexy for those paying! sent this to a cousin in north queensland, australia, asking if the following is true and got an earful back immediately with figures from her friends who’d been phoning in recent days with horror stories:
31 Oct: Herald Sun: AAP: Qld insurers accused of price gouging
INSURANCE companies in north Queensland have been accused of “outrageous” price gouging, with premiums going through the roof…
In one case the premium for a two bedroom home in Mackay leapt from $2642 to $13,616.
In another the premium rose from $1992 to $8133 in a single year for another Mackay home that did not flood in the 2008 “one-in-200-year” rain event.
Examples came from homes, businesses, and farms across the north, including Mackay, the Whitsundays, Bowen, the Burdekin and Townsville, as well as north to Ingham, Cairns, and Port Douglas…
***The Insurance Council of Australia said an independent Australian Government Actuary (AGA) report released on October 19 found no evidence of price gouging.
The ICA said the report found the north Queensland market remained competitive, and current market conditions were more likely to attract new insurers to the region than at any time during the past few years…
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/qld-insurers-accused-of-price-gouging/story-e6frf7kf-1226507751376
obviously the region will attract “new insurers” – what a gold mine!
Prior to about 2008/9, I regularly bought Popular Science and New Scientist magazines, and occasionally National Geographic as well.
In common with many of you here, I stopped buying them when the Global Warming drivel started up in earnest – I simply couldn’t stand it, even though some of the non-climate articles were very good.
At first I tried to ignore the overt climate change stories. But quite often I noticed it was becoming standard procedure for authors to sneak a sentence or two or even a whole paragraph about dangerous climate change into almost any topic they tackled.
Eventually I decided these partisan political activists didn’t deserve my hard-earned cash.
Even sadder for me, because I love science in general and space science in particular, was my exit from The Planetary Society a couple of months ago.
After being a member of that group since 1989, when the late Carl Sagan sat on its board of directors, I could no longer tolerate the fact that Bill Nye had become its leader.
As I’m sure everyone here knows, Nye is nationally-recognised science educator whose nationwide classroom includes millions of American children. He’s also a climate alarmist, subtly disseminating among those too young to differentiate fact from fiction the propaganda gospel according to the IPCC. In that sense, he’s no less contemptible than Gore.
I wrote and told him I had decided not to renew my subscription for that reason, and that Carl Sagan would probably turn in his grave to know the scientific foundations of the Society had been so thoroughly politicised and debased.
Needless to say, no reply was forthcoming. Not surprising. After all, how do you defend the indefensible?
“I myself spoke to a hurricane expert about three hours before I spoke to Mampel who told me that …”
I wonder how many hurricane experts he spoke to before finding one who’d tell him what he wanted to hear?
Here’s you flying car. http://mavericklsa.com/ and here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN6IlPBNRMQ Its all over youtube.
Sounds like a default market is developing for a genuine science mag. Refugees from the leftist takeover of editorial positions in all the ones that usta be worth reading would make a large subscriber base!
I am a frequent critic and former, never to return, subscriber to ALL-POP, NON-science with the following quotes, from “Gagging on Green Garbage”, June 17, 2010 at Canada Free Press….
“Popular Science was a Time Magazine property until January 2007 when it was purchased by the privately held bonnier Group of Sweden. Mark Jannot, the lame editor of this magazine admits in his July editorial that he is a BLINKERED TECH ACOLYTE and has a proven lack of objectivity with regards to the climate change issue”.
Then in “Finite Number of Falling Skies”, Sep 14, 2010 at CFP…
“The October issue of ‘Popular Science’ has a disturbing editorial by Mark Jannot which demonstrates that he is a bad editor, a bad scientist and a bad parent.”
I followed with the “sunshinehour1” quote of that same distasteful Jannot editorial mentioned above. The editorial went further to describe the horror cover of the next months issue, which i suspect reader outraged dampened. The Bonniers are attending Bilderberg members….just sayin.
Anthony,
could you please start a science TV channel and a science magazine ?
[Reply: Anthony is more likely to read this if posted in Tips&Notes. — mod.]
The Editor in Chief of National Geographic has recieved an email noting some of the main arguable statements about climate change that appeared in a special edition about global warming in September 2004. It was proposed to him, with examples, that a “ten years later” and “with better instruments” version of NG be produced for September 2014. So far the editor is impressed enough to not respond.
On the basis that there are sins of omission as well as sins of commission, how would WUWT readers feel about writing short, accurate corrections to assist the truth as we know it now and will know it better by 2014? It’s time to start planning now. I’m quite happy to coordinate.
NG continues to carry excellent articles and wonderful photography, but the said September 2004 edition was not among its medal winners. Let’s help them to get it right, eh?
There’s a wonderful partial alternative to PS available free online, Kevin Kelly’s “Cool Tools” site, with weekly updates by e-mail if you sign up for them. Kelly is a one-time editor of the Whole Earth Catalog, and this is in effect its online continuation. It consists of reader reviews of little-known, high-quality and/or unappreciated gadgets. (I wrote a few reviews, one of which, on the virtues of vinegar, stirred lots of comment and was reprinted on Boing Boing.) Here’s a link to its latest weekly issue. (I don’t know what’s happened to its former massive archive.):
http://us5.campaign-archive2.com/?u=53778f4d4f7441531ee40dbed&id=49d789ad2b&e=bd7f6241f9
Brian H says: @ur momisugly November 3, 2012 at 7:55 pm
Sounds like a default market is developing for a genuine science mag. Refugees from the leftist takeover of editorial positions in all the ones that usta be worth reading would make a large subscriber base!
________________________________
That ‘ genuine science mag.’ is already here. It is called WUWT.
Why the heck do you think us refugees from Pop. Science, Sci Am…. are now here at WUWT? We are getting our science fix only we get it daily instead of monthly. Much better!
Popular Science? Are they still publishing that rag?
Bill says: November 3, 2012 at 2:18 pm
Fresh pressed kale juice was his priority after the storm. What a nimrod!
**********************************************
Bill, when I saw your comment it seemed to be an inappropriate use of “nimrod”. My understanding of the meaning was “great hunter”. So, I looked it up and the story is much more complicated than that.
(Being just a Simple Red Neck, I often have to research things I read here!)
http://www.christiananswers.net/dictionary/nimrod.html
Cool.
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)
durango12: “We expect trash from Popular Science. It is after all the science version of a supermarket tabloid.”
Unfair (to the tabloids). The National Enquirer broke the John Edwards story when the whole mainstream media ignored it.
pat says: November 3, 2012 at 6:38 pm
obviously the region will attract “new insurers” – what a gold mine!
********************************
There is a common misunderstand of what “insurance” is.
There are few of us who would want to carry their own “risk”, i.e. forgo having any insurance at all. So, a large group of people put money in a “pot”. When one of them has a “loss”, it will be paid for out of that “pot”. An insurance company is, in essence, a cooperative to share the burden of risk.
The insurance company has two purposes:
First, it organizes and operates the “pot”. It also invests the money in that “pot” so that it will grow. When one of the insured has a “loss” the Insurance Company makes good on that loss under the terms of the contract. (The Insurance Company takes also takes a cut of the “pot” as their “profit”.)
Second, it calculates the “risk” and assigns a “cost” to that risk. This is called underwriting. Each individual case has a unique risk that can be calculated. A very simplified example: A house built on a 100 year flood plain has a risk of being flooded once in 100 years. The risk per each year is 1% of the value of the house. A FAIR price of insurance in this very simplified case would be that 1%. In another case, you could live on a 10 year flood plain. So the FAIR cost of your insurance would be 10% of the cost of your house. Since Insurance Companies are tightly regulated, “exorbitant” rates probably reflect the REAL RISK IN EACH CASE. It would be UNFAIR to give a particular individual insurance at less than the actual rate because all the other people in the pool would have to subsidize that decision (e.g. to live on a barrier island in a hurricane prone region.)
In these United States, the Federal Government provides flood insurance at very low rates. This means that when some fool chooses to live in a risk prone area, the politicians force the taxpayers to assume the risk created by said fool. When I bought my house, I chose a location some 40 feet above the 500 year flood plain. I resent having to pay for the risk crated by fools making poor choices.
Now, in your post you have implied that the insurance companies were going to make exorbitant profits. If that’s so, I would suggest that you mortgage everything you have and invest in those companies. Then, you too, will be among the filthy rich. But….I expect that you will find that those companies do not make big profits and your investment will be steady but only moderately performing.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)
durango12: “We expect trash from Popular Science. It is after all the science version of a supermarket tabloid.”
Unfair (to the tabloids). The National Enquirer broke the John Edwards story when the whole mainstream media ignored it.
National Enquirer also ended a scientific “Consensus” when it broke the story about Ulcers being caused by the H. pylori bacterium to the general public.
PopSci’s Michael Mann, climate hero and martyr edition was the final straw that led me to not renew my subscription. I need to send them an email to let them know why.
I’m amazed no-one has pointed out the obvious, which is that Wikipedia is free to edit, so the PopSci idiot could have simply edited the page he disagreed with – would have been a lot less effort than writing his harrangue, and a lot more effective.
I agree Popular Science is disappointing but it’s even more disappointing to me that the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) “Mechanical Engineering” magazine has shown no skepticism at all (that I’m aware of) regarding AGW. Aren’t professionals in any field supposed to offer advice to clients regarding big projects? For instance, if a business owner wants to put in a new AC system, the engineer is supposed to tally up the cooling load himself and install the most economic system for the problem at hand. Instead, the ASME attitude seems to be “yes yes we agree AGW us a horrible problem, whatever our client wants, we can built it”. So people can have their AGW reference battles on the Wiki pages to influence the hearts and minds of young people, but when all is said and done, whoever is the decider gets to decide, whoever is taxed gets taxed, and whoever is the builder gets to build.
In the US, an undergraduate degree is a Bachelor’s degree, usually in the Arts or Sciences. My degree is a Bachelor of Science in geology, which means I completed a basic four-year program of study in the field. If I’d gone on to graduate school I could have achieved a Master’s degree (MS) and then a Doctorate of Philosophy (Phd). So we call the BS degree an undergrad, and the others are graduate degrees.
An AA is an Associate degree, which is usually a two-year program of study.
Hope this helps.
Mods/Anthony … I ask for a little leeway, please, in my response below … _Jim
Uh oh; IMNSHO *this* is why we are in the trouble we are in. Apply Occam’s razor folks (in this case, to be specific, Hanlon’s razor), and realize it is simply ignorance on a grand scale and not some wide-ranging con-spir-acy by spooks and alphabet-acronym ‘agencies’ … 99.99999% of the time it is vested interest, or long-time working ‘practices’ (like ‘PC’) or simply tribal-style held beliefs handed-down as from teacher-to-student that have never been subjected to the scrutiny of logic, or examined consciously, that is, become aware of that ‘something’ within oneself (the awareness), that senses the decisions and awareness of the decision-making power of the ‘executive control’ system in the mind …
Verily, it is the progression from childhood to adulthood where the responses have generally in the past developed from ‘simple reaction’ to ‘thoughtful reflection’ in light of the facts as one grew
in experience and wisdom.
So, please, for the sake of humanity and yourselves, don’t fall victim to the ‘easy answer’, the mind-numbing response that all that is wrong with the world is because “it’s them” …
.
That’s nothing. I gave up Sean Connery.
The climate wars have caused me to discontinue regular reading of Scientific American, National Geographic, Popular Science and the AAAS publication of Science News (for which I was a subscriber since 1973). What issue I do pick up are for specific non-global warming topics, and even then my experience has lead me to be very skeptical of the positions in the articles.
When you realise that a meme is being promoted on any topic, all topics are suspect. I understand that the business of magazines is a profit-making one, but I do not believe that writers have to forget critical thinking to make a buck. You can always have a sidebar to recognize the weaknesses of your argument – which for most writers is not “their” argument anyway, but that of their sources, simplified.
The world we thought was to come with flyihg cars was the product of the same uncritical and uninformed opinion that characterises the warmist parade of tears.
Pop Sci has become virtually unreadable with its “modern” page layout and its dumbed down pop appeal. Not to mention its constant harping of green propaganda.
Popular Mechanics, once a second tier, has surpassed them for me.
Doug Proctor says:
November 4, 2012 at 12:04 pm
> AAAS publication of Science News (for which I was a subscriber since 1973).
Science News is not published by the AAAS. It used to be published by something called Science Service, now Society for Science & the Public.
They do have serious issues with the global warming line, especially long time writer Janet Ralloff, who has a strong connection to http://www.sej.org/ , the Society of Environmental Journalists. See http://www.sej.org/initiatives/climate-change/overview for an idea of what their agenda is.
I still subscribe to Science News (since 1969), they’re still more palatable than many of the rest.
Speaking of Science News, they have a reasonably mild article on Sandy’s development at http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/346130 (If that doesn’t work, try their home page.)
It did need a little counterbalance, so I added: