eriqa’s Recent Comments

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  I see nothing particularly brave about pouncing on a minor error for the glee of a "gotcha" moment against the Evil Global Warming Establishment. Obsessive, yes. Brave, not really. If these dedicated skeptics had unearthed a pattern of mistakes, or evidence of NASA covering up mistakes, then yes, it would mean something. Otherwise, it's like gloating over finding a typo.On Is Freeman Dyson really "brave"? posted 4 days, 4 hours ago 20 Responses

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  Of course, it is possible to eat well even in a food desert with a 24/7 barrage of junk food advertising (if, and it's a big if, you really understand how important good food choices are.) Motivated, educated people can overcome even the most daunting circumstances. But shouldn't the aim of our public policy be to make good food choices PROBABLE, not just POSSIBLE? I don't understand this particularly American way of thinking, where as long as one extraordinary person can overcome massive social barriers, it is as if those barriers aren't important for the millions of ordinary people. Why spend time parsing moral fine points within a system we all agree is dysfunctional? Let's just make the system better by redirecting subsidies to healthier foods, having clever nutrition education in schools to counter the junk food adverts, and doing simple things like helping farmers markets accept WIC and food stamps.On Is Michelle Obama about to take on Big Food? posted 1 week, 6 days ago 40 Responses

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  For a concise summary of the central flaw in the "1500 Years" book, see

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0HGFSUx2a8

  part of the excellent "Climate Change Crock of the Week" series, debunking various spurious climate change conspiracy theories.  If you are really interested in researching the issue, I recommend watching each of these 10 minute videos and seeing if you can find any refutation of their specific rebuttals.

  Re: "1500 years":  yes, indeed, there has been a spike in global temperature above Greenland approximately every 1500 years.  What Fred Singer doesn't tell you - and please bear in mind that for years Dr. Singer made his living arguing that cigarettes do not cause cancer, a fact I can't quite dismiss as irrelevant to his standards of scientific integrity - is that there was an accompanying drop in temperature over Anarctica at those same 1500 year intervals.  Thus these "Dansguard-Oescher events" represent shifts in the balance of temperature from North to South - but no change in average global temperature as we are seeing now.

  Finally, it may seem as if "nobody seems to engage with those who disagree" and I am sorry if it seems frustrating - but as Chris said above, these arguments have been had and won over and over for the past 6 years while Rome burned.  Imagine being a public health official charged with fighting AIDS in Africa, and how much of your scarce time and resources you would like to spend arguing with those who think it has no relation to HIV or is a US conspiracy.  It is time to just get on with solving the problem.

   

  On In the House, a nine-way tie for climate swing vote posted 5 months, 1 week ago 29 Responses

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  Understanding that the actual negotiators need to be there in person, there are going to be a lot of "climate tourists" who just want to be able to say they were there, when.  While the impulse to see years of your work validated in person is understandable, those folks really would do better to stay home.  It would be interesting to know what the Danes are doing in terms of videoconferencing arrangements (video side events, etc.) to both let the non-traveling world participate more than it usually does, and to give a publicity boost to this technology as an emerging way to cut carbon emissions.  

  On Tips for flying to the Copenhagen climate conference posted 5 months, 2 weeks ago 21 Responses

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  Not just stupid...

  ...gratuitously, pointlessly stupid.  48 days to go.On Bizarre gap year in residential conservation tax incentives posted 11 months, 1 week ago 3 Responses