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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
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Species Collapse:(5)
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This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
stupid humans  ~ global warming  ~ anthropogenic change  ~ short-term thinking  ~ deniers  ~ contamination  ~ ecosystem interrelationships  ~ climate impacts  ~ oil issues  ~ economic myopia  ~ carbon emissions  



ApocaDocuments (5) matching "deniers" from this week
[see full week] ~ [see all stories tagged "deniers"]
Sun, Sep 5, 2010
from Postmedia News:
U.S. study says people are hesitant to believe good news from scientists
A newly released American study suggests the public often rejects the opinions of scientific experts. The public tends not to trust scientists, says research from California - but there's a twist. People are mainly reluctant to believe good news, it turns out - such as the message that a flu vaccine is safe. But the public is more likely to trust the researchers who frighten with bad news. Overall, the study, published in a research journal called Public Understanding of Science, concludes that "scientists' efforts to influence public opinion have a limited effect." ...


Thank goodness politicians listen to scientists!

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Thu, Sep 2, 2010
from Scientific American:
Eternal Fascinations with the End: Why We're Suckers for Apocalyptic Endings
You might think that the enterprise of science, with its method and its facts, would inoculate us against the most extravagant doomsday obsessions. But it doesn't. If anything, it just gives us more to worry about. Some of the most fervent and convincing doomsayers, after all, are scientists. Bill Joy, co-founder and former chief scientist of Sun Microsystems, has warned that of out-of-control nanobots could consume everything on earth. Astronomer Royal Martin Rees has publicly offered a bet that a biological catastrophe--accidental or intentional--will kill at least one million people by 2020 (so far, no takers). Numerous climatologists sound the alarm about the possibility of runaway global warming. They all stand on the shoulders of giants: British economist Thomas Malthus predicted in the 19th century that the rise in population would lead to widespread famine and catastrophe. It never happened, but that didn't stop Stanford biologist Paul R. Ehrlich from renewing the warning in his 1968 book The Population Bomb when he predicted that global famine was less than two decades away. Catastrophe didn't arrive then, either, but does that mean it never will? Not necessarily. Still, people often worry disproportionately about disasters that are unlikely to occur.... Some researchers think that apocalyptic dread feeds off our collective anxiety about events that lie outside our individual control.... The desire to treat terrible events as the harbinger of the end of civilization itself also has roots in another human trait: vanity.... Our fears of the apocalypse may in the end mirror the most fundamental fear of all: fear of our own mortality. ...


Does it matter if we hope we're wrong?

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Wed, Sep 1, 2010
from Upshot:
Noted anti-global-warming scientist reverses course
With scientific data piling up showing that the world has reached its hottest-ever point in recorded history, global-warming skeptics are facing a high-profile defection from their ranks. Bjorn Lomborg, author of the influential tract "The Skeptical Environmentalist," has reversed course on the urgency of global warming, and is now calling for action on "a challenge humanity must confront." Lomborg, a Danish academic, had previously downplayed the risk of acute climate change. A former member of Greenpeace, he was a vocal critic of the Kyoto Protocol -- a global U.N. treaty to cut carbon emissions that the United States refused to ratify -- as well as numerous other environmental causes. ...


He's a bjorn-again believer!

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Wed, Sep 1, 2010
from American Institute for Biological Sciences, via EurekAlert:
Researchers analyze 'the environmentalist's paradox'
Global degradation of ecosystems is widely believed to threaten human welfare, yet accepted measures of well-being show that it is on average improving globally, both in poor countries and rich ones. A team of authors writing in the September issue of BioScience dissects explanations for this "environmentalist's paradox."... Three likely reasons they identify--past increases in food production, technological innovations that decouple people from ecosystems, and time lags before well-being is affected--provide few grounds for complacency, however.... The researchers resolve the paradox partly by pointing to evidence that food production (which has increased globally over past decades) is more important for human well-being than are other ecosystem services. They also establish support for two other explanations: that technology and innovation have decoupled human well-being from ecosystem degradation, and that there is a time lag after ecosystem service degradation before human well-being will be affected. ...


None are so paradoxed as those who will not see.

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Tue, Aug 31, 2010
from Washington Post:
Judge rejects Ken Cuccinelli's probe of U-Va. global warming records
A Virginia judge on Monday dismissed a civil subpoena issued by Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II to the University of Virginia that had sought documents related to the work of a global warming scientist and former university professor.... Cuccinelli, a vocal global warming skeptic who has contended that climate scientists have colluded to skew data, said he thinks that the documents are key to deciding whether to launch a fraud investigation into Mann's work. He said he plans to reissue the demand, crafting it with the judge's ruling in mind. He indicated that he might appeal portions of the ruling. ...


I don't think global warming skeptics should be in positions of decision-making power.

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