One way schools could help with the Covid-19 response

Severe Weather and Other Disasters, , ,
Spread the love

Most schools have science classes. Among the science classes there are some that occasionally use nitrile or latex gloves (“surgical gloves”). While it may be perennial true that science classes are low on gloves, there is a good chance that there are a few unopened boxes in the cabinet somewhere.

Schools will not be using these gloves for the rest of the school year, because there is not going to be in class instruction for the rest of the school year.

So, figure out how to get these gloves to an appropriate medical facility.

If you are not a teacher you may not understand this part: The science teachers may have had to promise their first born to even get these gloves, and other important scientific equipment, in the first place. They may be unwilling to go up against the bursars to give these gloves up now and fight later. Indeed, it would be technically illegal for them to unilaterally root through the cabinets and gather these gloves together.

The word has to come from the top. Call your local school’s principals or superintendents. Or email them. Make the suggestion. They’ll make a call or send out an email and it will happen.

I mentioned above “unopened boxes.” I assume previously opened boxes are less of interest to medial facilities, but I might have that wrong. Anybody know?

Anyway, try it, it may help.


Spread the love

Ancient Chinese Historians and the White House Press Corps

Politics, , , ,
Spread the love

This is a story that I learned from a well respected scholar of Chinese history and archaeology, K.C. Chang. He was, briefly, my graduate advisor. I am not a scholar of Chinese anything, and I can’t remember if this story had a textual source, but I have a vague feeling it was in a book introduction or review article written by Chang, and the subject matter was Chinese historiography. Historiography is the study of historical writing, in other words, the study of methods in history. When one studies Chinese historiography, one is often looking at very ancient texts, written by ancient Chinese historians. Apparently, “historian” was a job, not necessarily that different from “scribe” in some other ancient contexts, and during some times and in some places, the Chinese historian sat in the court of the Emperor.

Every now and then, I look for the original story, or some version of it, but I can never find it. It is a story with a lesson so important that it should be retold many times. I do not attest to its veracity, but I will stand by its meaning. Lacking a source to refer to, I hereby make up, er, reconstruct, a version of it so I can put it here in this blog post and refer to it later.

The story goes like this.

An Emperor was sitting court, and attended to by one historian and the historian’s assistants, and others. A man had been accused of a crime, and the Emperor was to decide his fate. Those arguing on behalf of the man clearly demonstrated that he had not committed the crime, and should be let go, but the Emperor had taken a dislike to this man, and ordered his immediate beheading. And so, he was beheaded.

The historian recorded this event, and included in the record, made right then and there, a phrase such as “The Emperor had the man wrongly beheaded.”

Made aware of this, the Emperor insisted that the historian, right then and there, “correct” the record to indicate that the Emperor was just in his decision. The historian pointed out that this was wrong, and he could not change the record.

The Emperor ordered the historian beheaded, and so he was, right then and there.

The first assistant historian then took over the job of historian, and recorded, “The Emperor had the man wrongly beheaded. Then, on seeing that the Historian recorded this accurately had that Historian beheaded.”

Becoming aware of this entry to the historical record, the Emperor insisted that the new historian “correct” the record to show that the Emperor was just. That historian refused, and under the order of the Emperor, was promptly beheaded.

The next assistant historian then took over, and recorded that the Emperor had wrongly ordered the beheading of a citizen, then, wrongly ordered the beheading of the historian that recorded that fact, then ordered the beheading of the historian that recorded that fact. This historian fully understood that he would now be beheaded as well.

But he was not. The Emperor saw that his own reputation was becoming more and more severely damaged, and he understood that a line of historians would form at his court to record this, because this was the role of historians at this time and place. The Emperor relented, went on with other business, and the third historian lived.

And this is why we know today of what that Emperor did.


Spread the love

Automate The Boring Stuff with Python Coding

Books, Computers, Information Science, Technology, ,
Spread the love

If everyone in the world understood and had a working command of regular expressions, everything would run smoothly. Especially if all of our interfaces to text allowed for their use. This has been pointed out. And, Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, 2nd Edition: Practical Programming for Total Beginners has a whole chapter on this.

What is a regular expression? We can talk about that in detail some other time. Briefly, it is a string of symbols that is designed to match a specified set of symbols, or a range of a set of symbols, in a larger body or stream of text. For example, if you pass a stream of information (say, all your emails) through a filter with the regular expression:

‘\d\d\d-\d\d\d-\d\d\d\d’

then any part of that stream of information that looks like a phone number (not using parens), such as 636-555-3226, will be isolated.

Automate the Boring Stuff with Python is a book that teaches beginning Python computer Augean programming focusing on examples from day to day life, including but well beyond REs.

The new edition includes pattern matching with regular expressions, input validation, reading and writing files, organizing files, web scraping, manipulating Excel spreadsheets and Google Sheets, PDF and Word documents, CSV and JSON files, email, images, and automating your keyboard and mouse.

The great benefit of a book like this is that you learn Python (the first part of the book gives you all you need to know to program in Python) in the context of things you actually want to do with Python. If you are interested in learning Python, or coding in general, this can be your first book.

The book is well done, as all in this series are, and fun. There are strong on line resources including all the code, and that information is regularly updated. Generally, “No Starch” press books are great, and this is one of those!

I would like to have seen at least sidebars on manipulating things using Libreoffice software, but note that the book focuses on documents, and OpenSource software does work with normal Excel and Word documents, so it is there.

The second edition adds a new chapter on input validation. The Gmail and Google Sheets sections, and the information on CSV files is also new. I plan on using the software tips and tricks to develop my own highly specialized and targeted search software. I’m often looking for files that have specific extensions, and certain kinds of content, in certain locations. Just the ability to hard-wire where to search for files will save me a lot of time and trouble.

Author Al Sweigart is a professional software developer who teaches programming to kids and adults, and who is author of Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python, Cracking Codes with Python, and Coding with Minecraft, all of which are quite nice. We need a new edition of Coding with Minecraft, by the way, that looks at a wider range of coding options and keeps up with the major advances in that software environment! So, get to work, Al!


Spread the love

Republicans and their aversion to the truth, and their attack on science

War on Science,
Spread the love

Maybe we will now see the end of the Republican war on science. Indeed, we should see people in the streets with their torches afire and their pitchforks a-sharpened. Because of this sort of crap:

source

Also, Republicans are racists. Like this:

“As long as I’m president” Hmm… we can fix that.


Spread the love

Covid-19 Bored At Home: Try Board Games

Severe Weather and Other Disasters, ,
Spread the love

The kids are home from school because the schools have been closed. The adults are home from work because work has been closed. You’ve done all the binge shopping you can afford, and now you are sitting at home with your stash of toilet paper and children’s medicine (oh, and shame on you for that), wondering what to do with yourself other than binging on Netflix and playing Minecraft for hours on end.

You might consider board games to fight the boredom.

We have tried out several board games recently. Some of these were suggested by Jim, Jan, Julia, and Rachel (you’all can identify yourselves in the comments if you like). They are among the top games out there. I knew they were good, but when I googled “best board games” and all of them showed up on the various lists, I figured, well, there you go. These are good games.

Some are new, some are classic. Most interestingly, some are not games in which a particular player wins, but rather, all the people playing either win or lose.

Choose carefully. To get all these games is going to put you out a couple of hundred bucks. Also, some of the games have multiple version and add in packs.

Hyped UP Tic-Tac-Toe

One of the simplest games ever invented is Tic-Tac-Toe. You can play that, oh, five or six times before getting bored out of your mind! But Otrio is to Tick-Tack-Toe what a proton is to organic chemistry.

It is played like tic-tac-toe but instead of writing into a space an X or an O, you just put the O. No Xs. But the O’s come in three sizes, and nest, and there are multiple ways to win. The total number of possible moves is very large. This game is a blast, and you will play it several times as you start to get a sense of strategy.

Ticket to Ride is a classic game that we only recently discovered. There are many versions. When we got this game a while back, we picked the Ticket to Ride – Rails & Sails version. The idea is that players build routes, including train and boat segments, between cities. When the game ends, the player with the mostest and bestest routes win (it is a bit complicated). The various versions of this game have a variety of differences, but mainly, the map you play on varies. This version has a world map on one side of the board, and a map of the Great Lakes on the other side.

This is a game that is fairly simple to play if all the players are novices, but that gets much more complicated as players gain experience and figure out that certain somewhat more complex strategies are required to win.

Stratego is one of my favorite games from my youth. Each player has a number of tiles, representing a range of soldiers, some bombs, a spy, and a flag. You set them up in a way in which you can see how your pieces are arranged, but your opponent only sees the blank side of your pieces. You then attack each other. Lower numbered pieces take higher numbered pieces, but any piece that hits a bomb is dead, except an 8 (the bomb defuser). The Spy can take a Marshal (the highest value piece) but can be taken by any other piece. So, there is room for a great deal of strategy in Stratego. Which is probably why they call it that.

While on the subject of 19th century rooted war games, consider Risk. It is a classic you certainly know about.

Codenames involves all the players against the board. The concept is simple yet diabolical. Two players face off over a set of 25 words. Each player says a word (not among the 25) and a number. The other player then chooses which of the 25 is conceptually linked to that codename. The number supplied with the codename tells the recipient of the clue how many words are expected to match. So, for example, if among the 25 words on the table we have dog, cat, bird, and stroke, I might say “pet, 4.”

That sounds pretty simple, but if the recipient of the clue guesses certain answers, the game ends instantly and you all lose. There are other complexities as well.

There are different versions of this game, mainly depending on how many players you normally would have.

There is also a Harry Potter version. This one is difficult unless all the players are fully briefed on the Harry Potter mythos. Otherwise it becomes an awkward version of a Harry Potter trivia game and, essentially, can’t be played. Our house rule when playing this version is: You can ask Google to define or describe a particular item (ie, “OK Google, what is a Norwegian Ridgeback?”).

Arboretum is a pretty new game that uses cards. The cards have trees on them. Using a rummy-esque pattern of choice and discard, you lay down the tree cards in a pattern that will form a path through a hypothetical arboretum. A set of simple rules define what makes a valid path. At the end of play, everyone declares what paths they have. There are moves one can make that invalidate the best laid path of another player. The scoring turns out to be complicated, and this is when new players realize that the strategy is deep, despite the simple surface appearance of the game.

Naturally, no panoply of board games in this day and age would be complete without Pandemic. We just got turned on to this one. It is one of those games in which all the players work together to beat the board and, sadly, usually don’t. But you do have fun all dying in a pandemic, so that’s good.

I have a suggestion for a house rule for this game, which you will appreciate once you play. Each player is randomly assigned a “role.” The role is a particular set of abilities, like a researcher who can cure a disease, or a field worker who can stop a disease, etc. My suggestion is to choose, as a group, which role to assign to each player, instead of having random chance decide which roles are even being used. Once you play the game you’ll see how this can add to the fun, but at the same time, not make it ridiculously easy to win. You still won’t win. You will still all die in the Pandemic.

Happy boardgaming!


Spread the love

Greenland Ice Melt On Track to be Worst Case Scenario

Climate Change
Spread the love

Ice has been melting from Greenland and Antarctdica’s glaciers at a rate six times greater than 20 or 30 years ago. According to NASA, “If the current melting trend continues, the regions will be on track to match the “worst-case” scenario of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of an extra 6.7 inches (17 centimeters) of sea level rise by 2100.”

Keep in mind two things, when you read this 6.7 inch statistic. 1) Historically, the most hand-wringing, pearl clutching ice melt experts underestimate the rate of melting. That trend has been consistent for two decades. 2) When talking about both Greenland and Antarctica, if Greenland is a big deal, but if Greenland is big, Antarctica is Humongous. Greenland experiences, melty summers and snowy winters, so there is a regular flux of ice mass, with the trend being net loss over time in recent years. Antarctica experiences below freezing temperatures even in the summer over most of its ice mass. Well, until recently. Recently, there have been daytime temperatures sufficient to melt the surface.

In all, the Greenland Ice Sheet has enough water to raise global sea levels by 7.4 meters, if it all melted. From the article in nature:

Over recent decades, ice losses from Greenland have made a substantial contribution to global sea-level rise, and model projections suggest that this imbalance will continue in a warming climate… [Recent research has shown a] five fold increase in the rate of ice loss from Greenland overall, rising from 51 ± 65 Gt yr?1 in the early 1990s to 263 ± 30 Gt yr?1 between 2005 and 2010. … There was, however, a marked reduction in ice loss between 2013 and 2018, as a consequence of cooler atmospheric conditions and increased precipitation. Although the broad pattern of change across Greenland is one of ice loss, there is considerable variability; for example, during the 2000s just four glaciers were responsible for half of the total ice loss due to increased discharge, whereas many others contribute today. Moreover, some neighbouring ice streams have been observed to speed up over this period while others slowed down, suggesting diverse reasons for the changes that have taken place—including their geometrical configuration and basal conditions, as well as the forcing they have experienced. In this study we combine satellite altimetry, gravimetry and ice velocity measurements to produce a reconciled estimate of the Greenland Ice Sheet mass balance between 1992 and 2018, we evaluate the impact of changes in SMB and uncertainty in glacial isostatic adjustment and we partition the ice sheet mass loss into signals associated with surface mass balance and ice dynamics. In doing so, we extend a previous assessment to include more satellite and ancillary data and to cover the period since 2012.

The result of this melting has been .7 inches of sea level rise, or a third of all sea level rise, during the study period.

From Real Climate, where you will see an excellent discussion of sea level rise: Past and future sea-level rise. For the past, proxy data are shown in light purple and tide gauge data in blue. For the future, the IPCC projections for very high emissions (red, RCP8.5 scenario) and very low emissions (blue, RCP2.6 scenario) are shown. Source: IPCC AR5 Fig. 13.27.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/10/sea-level-in-the-5th-ipcc-report/comment-page-3/

Previusly, the IPCC estimated that global sea levels would rise about 28 inches by 2100. That is enough to remove Cape Hatteras and possibly require New York City to build dikes or move to avoid flooding in much of its area. But, the IPCC gave a range of possible scenarios, and this study suggests that the worst of those is well within the range of possibility.

HERE is the link to the research team’s site.

Source: The IMBIE Team. 2019/2020 (first early publication Dec 10 2019, published in March 12 2020 issue). Mass blanance of the Greenland Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2018. Nature 579, 233-239(2020)


Spread the love

Congratulations Kerry Emanuel

Climate Change, Science
Spread the love

The BBVA Foundation has awarded climate scientist Kerry Emanuel the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Climate Change.

MIT’s press release:

Emanuel’s research has provided fundamental contributions to understanding of tropical cyclones and how they are affected by climate change.

The BBVA Foundation — which promotes knowledge based on research and artistic and cultural creation, and supports activity on the analysis of emerging issues in five strategic areas: environment, biomedicine and health, economy and society, basic sciences and technology, and Culture — recognizes MIT Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Atmospheric Science Kerry Emanuel’s body of research on hurricanes and their evolution in a changing climate, as well as his effectiveness for communicating these issues. The annually bestowed Climate Change award acknowledges “both research endeavors in confronting this challenge and impactful actions informed by the best science.”

“By understanding the essential physics of atmospheric convection…he has unraveled the behavior of tropical cyclones – hurricanes and typhoons – as our climate changes,” cites the foundation’s conferring committee.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, after completing degrees at MIT and later joining the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) faculty, Emanuel pinned down the mechanisms behind hurricanes and how warming surface oceans fuel storms and increase intensity as the climate changes. This issue is of particular concern to humanity because, of the natural events, tropical cyclones cause many deaths and bring about high economic costs. Further research has probed connections between anthropogenic global warming and cyclone frequency, intensity, development time, and geographical expansion of hurricane occurrence.

The selection committee noted Emanuel’s exceptional theories and research that “has opened new approaches for assessing risks from weather extremes.” He has expanded this work by co-founding the MIT Lorenz Center, a climate think tank which fosters creative approaches to learning how climate works.

For Bjorn Stevens, BBVA Foundation committee chairman and Director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, “it is hard to imagine an area of climate science where one person’s leadership is so incontestable.”


Spread the love

What will happen on Super Tuesday 2020? (Updated to exclude Buttigieg and Klobuchar)

2020 Election
Spread the love

Super Tuesday is coming up, and I have my predictions.

Last cycle, I predicted the relative performance of Sanders and Clinton in each race, and my predictions were uncannily accurate. I did better than polling and other predicting agencies or individuals. This year, things are more complicated, and I have less confidence now than I did near the end of the last primary cycle. One reason is the larger number of candidates that are not as clearly distinct. Another reason is Bloomberg. It is simply hard to tell what effect he is having.

A third point of difficulty is, of course, those odd states. Minnesota is one of these this year, since Senator Kobuchar is popular here, so a model based any information outside of Minnesota does not help. Same with Vermont (Sanders).

This model is a little complex so I’ll explain how it works. The simple version is that I predict the performance of each candidate, in absolute terms (but incidentally scaled from 0 to 100) based on a regression model using ethnic makeup of each state. The regression model is derived from actual performance of that individual (out of 100% among the investigated individuals). However, the “actual performance” data exists only for Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. This is not enough data, and it is for various reasons screwy data. So, I add in the polling data form the better polled states (such as California, Texas, etc.) So actual and polling data from 13 states are used to predict all of the states. Since some of those polling states are on Super Tuesday and some are not, the resulting table of data includes a mix of polling and prediction. This is fair because those polling data are used IN the prediction.

The original ethnic data included various flavors of Asian and Hispanic numbers. when including these numbers, statistical confidence dropped. As was the case last cycle, the best predictive data is simply percentage of white vs black in a state. This makes sense for a lot of reasons we can discuss at another time. I will simply point out at this time that when it comes do Democratic Primary and Caucus results, #BLM in a big way.

R-squared values for the regression runs was generally close to 0.85.

Bottom line: Sanders comes in first in most states, with Biden second in number of firsts. But remember, this is a delegate fight, so the number of delegates matters.

I’m not going to try to predict the number of delegates since that is so dependent on things like the 15% threshold that it would be easier to just wait until Wednesday and see how it comes out!

Here are my predictions, UPDATED to reflect recent changes in the field of candidates:

Greg’s Predictions for 2020 Super Tuesday, Democratic Primaries.

Spread the love

Can we please be done with fetishizing early voting?

2020 Election
Spread the love

It is said that about two thirds, maybe more, of Democrats who participated in the Nevada Caucuses of a few days ago had voted, using early voting, prior to the nationally televised and widely watched Democratic presidential debate in which Elizabeth Warren performed so well that pollsters and pundits assumed she would gain a significant boost. But because most of the voters voted before Warren’s very good day, nothing happened.

An uninformed vote is not as good as an informed vote. In the dynamic electoral process in which we undeniably live, especially during a primary, an early vote is a less informed vote, and thus, not as good as a vote on voting day itself.

Early voting and similar programs were created to make it possible for more people to get to the polls. It was not created to help a majority of voters become less informed. Yet, it seems to have had that effect.

Meanwhile, we have placed early voting on a pedestal it does not deserve to be on. During the last election cycle, I witnessed the same scene several times. At the launch of a door-to-door canvas, the organizer implores the volunteers, who will be knocking on scores of doors to engage potential voters, to remember to remind people that they can vote early. Why? Because early voting is how we win! When challenged, when asked how we win by voting earlier instead of later, the response was usually simple and almost cult like: When we vote early we win!

What is behind that idea? This: When early voting started to happen, Democrats did a lot of it, and at the same time, this increased Democratic turnout. (After a few years of early voting in a region, this effect might in some cases flatten out and early voting stops favoring one party.) More turnout is thought to help Democrats, and more Democratic turnout, obviously, helps Democrats. So, early voting gave Democrats a leg up. Why does early voting help Democrats? Because early voting offsets the limitations some people have with respect to time, health, mobility, etc. Republican tend to not have these negative priv-points. Republicans just have the priv. They can mostly vote on election day because they are more likely to be the ones in charge of deciding where other people go, or to have the resources to overcome what might to others be limitations. It is also probably true that Republicans are more politically disciplined than Democrats. A very typical community might have 40% Republicans and 55% Democrats, but Republicans win with margins of 52-48% at the voting booth, because Republicans all get out to vote and Democrats often don’t. But in years when Democrats really rock the vote, they win, barely, in those same places by increasing turnout. It is an old and tried and tested formula. The first 5-8% of extra turnout may be something like 70% Democratic.

This makes early voting a good thing for Democrats, all else being equal.

What has been missed, though, is that people who were going to vote anyway, no matter what, don’t get a better vote when they vote early. Their vote is not worth more. Their vote does not do more, or get more, or count for more. But, it is a vote they may be casting and regretting.

Vote early if you need to. If not, don’t fetishize the ability to vote early. Don’t think your early vote is a better vote. Stop trying to talk everybody into always doing it. Don’t be a totally time-abled and physical-abled person and run around bragging that you voted two months early in the middle of a rapidly changing context. Your vote might be a less informed vote, and thus, not as good as a vote you cast on election day.

Having early voting as an option is a good thing. Actually voting early, way early, when you don’t have to, is not necessarily a good thing.


Spread the love

Lack of coronavirus COVID-19 in Subsaharan Africa?

Health and Medicine
Spread the love

That there is no coronavirus COVID-19 reported in Subsaharan Africa is a huge concern.

Why?

1) It seems likely that this virus spread out of China in part by Chinese people working or visiting overseas.

2) China has had a long standing diplomatic and commercial presence in several areas of Subsaharan Africa including the Congo and Sudan, and some other places.

3) These are places where illness are only barely monitored and generally not well reported.

My guess is that coronavirus COVID-19 is in the Congo and Sudan and a few other places, and it is not being addressed.


Spread the love

Sara Gideon Vs The Pearl Cluther

Uncategorized
Spread the love

Everyone in the world is annoyed with Maine Senator Susan Collins. She is constantly pausing to grab the nearest string of pearls, to clutch vibrantly in front of whatever media outlet is watching. Then when push comes to shove, or as they say in Maine, it’s time to cut bait or fish, she’s back in the lobster boat pulling traps for Mitch or Donnie.

A recent poll shows that one of the handful of challengers that have emerged to replace Collins, Sara Gideon, has pulled neck and neck. Or, as they say in Maine, this race has become tighter than bark on a tree. Collins is in a gaum at 42% and Sara Gideon is happier than a clam at high tide with 43%. That difference is just a dite, but considering Collins’ last election, it feels a like christly big gap.

In 2014, Collins left her opponent, Shenna Bellows, in the culch with a 36% margin. Being neck and neck with Collins in this most recent poll is a wicked pissah.

The poll is here.

Gideon’s campaign site is here.

A dictionary of Maine terms that will help you translate this post is heah, heah, heah, and heah.


Spread the love

NOAA Gets Cool New Computers

Technology, , ,
Spread the love

NOAA will be adding two new Cray computers (one operational and one backup) to replace existing hardware used in weather forecasting. According to a press release, “the computers — each with a 12 petaflop capacity — will be operational and ready to implement model upgrades by early 2022 after a period of code migration and testing. They will replace the existing Cray and Dell systems, “Luna” and “Mars” in Reston, Virginia, and “Surge” and “Venus” in Orlando, Florida.”

When combined with other hardware that will remain in use, the total capacity will rise to 40 petaflops. (A petaflop is a measure of computing speed equal to one thousand million million (1015) floating-point operations per second.) Given upgrades in storage and connectivity, and this increasing computing power, there will be a noticeable increase in resolution and other features of NOAA’s modeling of earth systems.

There is a rumor that the Trump Whitehouse plans to sell off the hardware to some friends who live out near the airport in Queens, and replace it with lower grade equipment that Trump claims works just as well (see illustration).

Though the press release does not give details, a spokesperson for NOAA just informed me that these computers will run the Linux operating system. I had assumed so, but wanted to check. Linux is the standard operating system for super computers, because it is a super operating system. Nobody wants to see the Blue Screen of Death in the middle of their tornado warning.

Specifically, the computers will run the Cray Shasta Linux Environment. This is a high performance suit designed to run large and complex applications on more than a half a million cores, with docker container support, and the robust Cray system management support including staged upgrading capabilities and the low overhead Cray system snapshot analyze.


Spread the love

Your Cranky Uncle vs Climate Change

Books, Climate Change, , , , , ,
Spread the love

It is said that scientists are lousy at communication, lousy at telling everyone else about their science, in understandable and compelling terms.

This is of course absurd. There are tens of millions of scientists, and dozens of them are really excellent communicators!

This IS the book you are looking for.
Among the many sciences, there is a science of science communication. It overlaps, unironically, with the science of conspiracy ideation, and borrows a great deal from the broader communication fields.

One of the leading science communicators of the day is cognitive scientist John Cook. John is at George Mason University. He is so tightly linked to the founding and development of the Skeptical Science project that “Skeptical Science” is the name of his Wikipedia entry. This binds John and his mission to a lot of us. Where we once might have said, “I am Spartacus,” we now say, “I am Skeptical. Science!” For John, it is just “I am SkepticalScience.”

Cook is likely known to you for the Consensus project. There were two main projects, a few years back, in which scientist attempted to measure the degree of consensus over the idea that anthropocentric climate change is real. (It is real, and the consensus is near 100% in both peer reviewed literature and the conclusions of actual scientists.) John and his colleagues did one of those, and beyond that, widely promoted the results so that everyone knows about it.

Guy from 1917 (left) and cognitive scientist John Cook (right). Whatever made me think about that sticking the head up out of the trench analogy?
Like I said above, there are tens of millions of scientists. Developing and disseminating the results of consensus research in climate scientist was equivalent to being the only guy sticking your head up out of the trench in that movie, 1917. Science deniers, both avocational and bought-and-paid-for, got all over cook like skin on a grape. Didn’t phase him, though. He continued to develop a series of new projects including a massive online course (Making Sense of Climate Science Denial), an artificial intelligence system for detecting fake science, and most recently, the Cranky Uncle project.

“Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change: How to Understand and Respond to Climate Science Deniers” is a crowdsourced book (and an app). There will be a book launch on March 4th in Arlington. This book gives us the whole ball of wax that is the science of climate science denial in a very funny, really well produced, and compelling wrapping. It will amuse you, and it will advise you. Your cranky uncle is done for.

I don’t have a cranky uncle anymore (he died). But I do have a lot of neighbors who like to write in ALL CAPS. They show up when I give a talk on climate change, and they bring their conspiracy theories, logical fallacies, cherry picked “facts”, absurd expectations, and references to fake research done by fake experts. It is a lot to deal with. But now, I can use the Lewis Black technique for dealing with evolution deniers, but instead of pulling out a trilobite, holding it up and saying “Fossil!” I can pull out a copy of Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change and say “Oh yeah? Imma look up what you just said in this BOOK!” or words to that effect.

Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change: How to Understand and Respond to Climate Science Deniers is the book now. Pre-order it!

For completeness, here is Lewis Black demonstrating the fossil technique:


Spread the love