Heretics Corner

You've heard of fast food now it's fast ethics.

I normally steer clear of animal welfare issues but McDonald's are always a deserving target of anybody's ire.

McDonalds ~~are stopping the use of gestation stalls~~ have asked suppliers to outline their plans to phase out the use of sow gestation stalls (quite beastly cages for pregnant sows if you must know). They tell us so in a press release here.

The take home point here is that gestation stalls were fine for McDonald's until now. But the moment McDonalds express concern about gestation stalls is the moment they garner good publicity for themselves. Before they've actually changed anything. This isn't a corporation with a conscience it's a corporation with a very clever PR strategy. It's a strategy worth emulating by making a blogpost expressing my instant distaste for McDonalds.

H/t Grist

First denialist review of Mann - published without actually reading it

Publication of Dr Michael Mann's long awaited new book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines sends the deny-o-sphere into a spin of kneejerk punditry. First out of the traps is blogger Tom Nelson who only manages to blog that a keyword search on Kindle yielded hits for "denier" "Morano" "McIntyre" and "Watts".Yup Tom, it's a book, got words in it.

Quite how that constitutes a review is anyone's guess. But it's good enough for Watts Up With That who then urge readers not to review the book without reading it. But Anthony - that's precisely what Tom has just done.

This nonsense is continuing to barrel round the echo chamber with multiple negative reviews on Amazon from the same reviewer. Contrary to Amazon rules. A practice this blog notes climate deniers have form on.

Wow : The Night Sky in the Atacama

An Astronomer's Paradise from Babak Tafreshi on Vimeo.

H/t Grist

Where are the skeptics ?

A stage magician cuts his assistant in half. A skeptic would reason that some kind of visual trick is at work, that the girl has not really been chopped in two.

The climate blog-o-sphere is quite different though. Andrew Montford makes a Freedom of Information request to the Met Office asking for Sir John Houghton's emails relating to AR3. The respondent answers that they do not hold any such emails. Monty then writes a blogpost concluding "it appears that Sir John has deleted historic records".

Observation nothing - conclusion scandal.

I've tried asking "How can you be sure that he holds emails relating to AR3 ?" Needless to say Monty meets that line of questioning with a stony silence.

Climate skeptics rewrite Sagan. Can they sink any lower ?

Carl Sagan was one of the greats of science communication. Often remembered for his epic Cosmos (well worth revisiting, available on You Tube) he was also the instigator of the Pioneer 10 plaque which carries humanity's message across the galaxy. Thus long after you and I have turned to dust Carl Sagan's work will still be on it's interstelllar voyage .

Vloggers have divided up much of Carl Sagan's work into bite sized chunks like 'pale blue dot' which gives an astrophyscist's perspective on our environment . Tear to the eye stuff.

Hat tip to Climate Crocks for finding this film which directly addresses the question of anthropogenic global warming .

Sagan died in 1996 at the age of 62.

2012 and a guest blogger on the Bishop Hill blog lifts a passage from chapter IV of Dr Sagan's book Cosmos and posits that Sagan would have opposed the AGW consensus and the IPCC. A staggeringly cynical use of a widely respected dead scientist to attack the IPCC and make a partisan point. Does make one wonder what next for the Bishop Hill blog , Charles Darwin blogs on Dark Matter perhaps or Euclid's thoughts on the PIP implant scandal?

Book Review : The Self Illusion

Another Book Review for Amazon this time I've read The Self Illusion by Professor Bruce Hood which is free ! Five Stars :

Fascinating look at how the brain works and what the 'self' is inside it (or otherwise). Hood puts forward the view that the 'self' is really just a construct of the brain. This might be controversial and whilst still science his work takes the reader to the edge of philosophy.

Hood reveals plenty along the way such as "We now know that the unborn baby can learn the sound of their mother’s voice, develop a preference for the food she eats while pregnant and even remember the theme tune to the TV soap operas she watches while waiting for the big day to arrive."

Fans of The Matrix will be delighted to learn that it is 'not that far off the mark when it comes to understanding the nature of the human mind' according to the Professor. Indeed Hood is very excited about the internet "I tell my own children that they are living during one of the major transitions in human civilization, that humankind is currently in the midst of the next great evolutionary leap." Probably he didn't mean to sound Maoist there. This inspiring work is well worth a read, as Hood observes 'It is one of most exciting times to be alive in the history of humankind.'

No prior knowledge of neuroscience is required, you will learn a bit about dopamine and how it makes the anticipation of reward more satisfying than reward itself. Just as well , Professor Hood promises us a fuller version of this free ebook later in the year.

Powerful video of Schneider on AGW impacts and denial

Hat tip Wild Weather Dan for this. Must see.