Dec06
Ignorant “Denier” Bashing
on December 6, 2012 at 8:43 am…over at Popular (Non)Science.
No, Rebecca, it is not a “known fact” that storms are getting more severe. But I guess that’s what you get from a “science” writer with a BA in history/journalism.
Just cancelled my subscription renewal.
I can’t stand these politicized green agenda pushing propaganda rags any more.
I stopped them, Discover and Sci Am a couple of years back. Climate BS in all of them.
PopSci, like PopMech, has a horrible website and horrible user experience, apart from their political leanings.
I normally refuse to read either purely on “this website sucks” grounds, though occasionally Reynolds will link there and I won’t notice until it’s too late.
According the scared IPCC report, global warming will reduce the number of severe storms because temperature differences between north and south reduce, and it is temperature differences that power storms.
Oh, they’ve used that argument too, after the 2006 and 2007 hurricane seasons failed to uphold the unprecedentedly active 2005 season as “the new normal.”
Popular Mechanics at least still has a readable magazine.
PS’s “modern” design/layout is virtually unreadable, and PS’s content is growing dumber faster than public school teachers.
OK, maybe Popular Science has “gone native.”
But I had the impression that Popular Mechanics is one of the few reason-base wide-circulation publications still out there.
Item 1. Popular Mechanics did good work in standing up to 9-11 Trutherism, explaining that maybe steel doesn’t burn, but if you get a fire hot enough, steel softens up nicely. I was even thinking of getting the University of Wisconsin-Madison Provost, who got dragged into the Truther controversy, a gift subscription (the fellow is a Mechanical Engineer with research credentials in combustion, if you are wondering), but the “good angel” on my other shoulder headed that off.
Item 2. Again, a couple years or a few years ago, but they had run a piece on “alternative energy”, what the engineering trades are, and why it may be a few years before it becomes mainstream.
Maybe it is just me, but Popular Mechanics is not overtly political and in the context of what they do, it is Such a Good Thing.
That’s been my impression too. It’s one of the few print magazines we take that doesn’t come because we belong to something like the NRA or the Moose lodge.
Catastrophic climate change seems to become a bit like a horoscope in the near term. The actual predictions of weather changes due to climate change have to do with long-term averages several decades in the future, but so many people can’t seem to avoid trying to interpret modern events through the lens of climate change. There will always be extreme events, record storms, record highs, record lows, record rains, etc. with or without the forecasted climate change, that’s the nature of statistics and chaotic systems, it doesn’t really mean much on its own. What matters is whether its part of a significant trend, which requires averaging over a period of a decade or so. But when you do that, of course, all of the drama as it relates to weather goes away.
But, if you approach climate change like a horoscope then you can cherry pick all of the weather events that match the predictions and suddenly everything is as it was foretold. Of course, this is just confirmation bias, as always, but it feels so good to be right doesn’t it?
PS now has an Australian edition and I can’t even read those articles on line. No great loss and the reason I used to read PS was to get a U.S. perspective and stories. Dumbasses.
Guess none of this really matters much anyways. The World ends next Wednesday. Come on sweet, sweet mother of death.
Global warming… I wish we had it! That way I wouldn’t be spending cash heating the room I’m in right now. It would also make shipping much easier. No need to use the Panama Canal anymore. Perhaps they will be talking about how the ice sheet in Antarctica is shrinking this summer again as usual. Tell me something I don’t know. Perhaps we need to send the author at PopSci a memo from the lady who photographed those bears in the ice sheet telling him what really happened. I know. We will just send him an ice hockey stick.