Observatorio de la Ballona

The great astronomy podcast Slacker Astronomy has moved on to Slackerpedia Galactica and AstronomyCast. I can’t say much yet about Slackerpedia, but AstronomyCast is excellent.

On a long drive last Friday, I listened to several episodes of AstronomyCast, and it is excellent. Dr. Pamela Gay, one of the main protagonists at Slacker Astronomy, provides excellent explanations of astronomical topics with good counterpoint and hosting of Fraser Cain of Universe Today. Well worth a listen on iTunes or direct.

On a related note, the old/new Slacker Astronomy site linked to a great video of the cleaning of the 200″ mirror at Mt. Palomar. Take a peek, it is a great three minutes.

After reading this deeply biased article in Scientific American, I was compelled to write a letter to the editors.

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: Fiddling While the Planet Burns — [ SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENTS ] — Will the Wall Street Journal’s editorial writers accept a challenge to learn the truth about the science of global climate change?

Editors,

Mr. Jeffrey Sachs does himself a great disservice in his column inviting the Wall Street Journal editors to have a broad and open discussion on concept of human caused global warming. His tendentious presentation shows him to be in the same “echo chamber” to which the editors of the Wall Street Journal refer.

He completely missed the point that the criticism of the “hockey stick” was done on strictly methodological grounds. Mr. Mann’s statistical methodology was criticized by leading statisticians. That deep statistical analysis is core to Mr. Mann’s hypothesis. This is hardly, as Mr. Sachs says, “flimsy and misleading.” Others have found that they can produce Mr. Mann’s “hockey stick” by feeding his data selection algorithm random data. Hardly good science.

The tone of the article reflects how this has become a religious debate. Mr. Sachs feels compelled to respond to emotion and with meaningless comments such as “global scientific consensus has nearly reached 100%.” When has consensus been an indicator of truth? The Wall Street Journal editorial page has “railed against” climate change findings because they are not treated critically and any competing viewpoint is drowned out in a roar from the true believers.

Nonetheless, Mr. Sachs suggestion is an excellent one. A respected and skeptical organization such as the Wall Street Journal should sponsor an open debate on the causes of global warming. It would certainly add more the debate.

Sincerely,

Mr. Sachs is employed as the Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. No doubt the center of the echo chamber.

I get totally fried by the “believe us or die” approach from the human-caused global warming crowd. Having de-funded all opposing research during the Clinton administration (thanks Al), they relentless push a scientifically weak agenda for political gain. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again. Make the point on scientific evidence. Omit the hyperbole and the angry presentation. Leave out the “right-wing” comments. Or references to the “dwindling ‘climate skeptic’ community.” Yes, they put scare quotes on “climate skeptic.”

What a moron. And it degrades what is generally a good magazine on science.

Ugh. Nothing more worth saying.