Did they have to make it so pretty?

The NY Times has put together a lovely illustrated story about data collection on Greenland. The story is prettily terrifying, though. The ice is melting, and forming lakes of liquid water on the surface of the ice cap, which then drains away in fast-running rivers that cut deeper into the ice and then drain into holes that run even deeper into the glacier — it’s a dangerous place, and if you fall in, you’ll be swept away and instantly dumped into a pit. It also means the ice sheet is porous and riddled with rot already.

In addition to the personal terror for the researchers, this work is about a process that’s going to affect us all.

But Mr. Overstreet’s task, to collect critical data from the river, is essential to understanding one of the most consequential impacts of global warming. The scientific data he and a team of six other researchers collect here could yield groundbreaking information on the rate at which the melting of Greenland ice sheet, one of the biggest and fastest-melting chunks of ice on Earth, will drive up sea levels in the coming decades. The full melting of Greenland’s ice sheet could increase sea levels by about 20 feet.

Is that scary enough for you yet? Hang on, there’s worse: our Republican congress.

But the research is under increasing fire by some Republican leaders in Congress, who deny or question the scientific consensus that human activities contribute to climate change.

Leading the Republican charge on Capitol Hill is Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, the chairman of the House science committee, who has sought to cut $300 million from NASA’s budget for earth science and has started an inquiry into some 50 National Science Foundation grants. On Oct. 13, the committee subpoenaed scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, seeking more than six years of internal deliberations, including “all documents and communications” related to the agency’s measurement of climate change.

I find the behavior of these Republican science-deniers unbelievable. There’s the obsessive derangement rivaling the Benghazi hearings, the appointment of unqualified know-nothings like Lamar Smith and Darrel Issa to play obstructionist games over scientific issues, and the abuse of legal strategies to harass scientists. Someday, we’re going to look back on this time as a period when the American government basically committed global crimes against humanity, as smiling rich fucks did everything they could to impose their ideological delusions on a dangerous reality.

But do read the NY Times article. The aerial views and maps of the ice sheet are gorgeous, and the field scientists are bravely carrying out important work, while the cowards and crooks of congress close their eyes and try to undermine that work.

Need entertaining podcast recommendations

nightvale

I’ve been increasing my daily penance of exercise by a considerable amount, and am now spending an hour or more a day making my brain send electrical impulses to large muscle groups generating somewhat rhythmic motions. This is not fun. I’m only doing it because the technology has not yet arrived to allow me to discard the decrepit husk of flesh supporting me, and place my brain in a vat with a nerve bundle connected directly to the internet. So it goes.

Anyway, what I’ve been doing to make it tolerable is hook my auditory nerve, via a sensory transduction interface made of meat, to a device that feeds my brain podcasts, downloaded off the internet. I know, you peons who have been chained to long commutes in a vehicle are already totally familiar with this medium, but my commute is about one minute long, and involves crossing the street. So until now I haven’t had much opportunity to soak in soundwaves long enough to get past the introductory title, but that’s changed.

Give me ideas! I’ve been listening to Welcome to Night Vale, which is nice, because here in Minnesota we’ve long been habituated to this form of entertainment by Prairie Home Companion, but this is like PHC as written by HP Lovecraft with a heart transplant from a gay socialist.

Need more. Light, weird, entertaining is best — heavy, too distracting stuff might get me run over by the massive farm equipment on our roads. Also, soon enough I’ll be bundled in layers and freezing in icy blizzards while walking, so it’s got to be amusing enough to motivate me to brave the winters.

Thunderf00t keeps proving me wrong

I was so, so, so wrong to invite him to blog here. His latest escapade: a woman wrote a letter to his employer complaining about his assholishness, trying to get him fired*, and so he doxxed her and sent his legions of haters to ruin her business with bad reviews. And of course the scum at 8chan are excited and see blood in the water and are cheering on attempts to drive her to suicide.

These are truly terrible, awful, vile people. I’ll never forgive myself for inviting him to join us at a network that’s the antithesis of everything he stands for.

The people who have been targeted by 8chan and Thunderf00t are struggling to keep their business afloat, and have created a fundanything page to raise money, and so far they haven’t even come close to what the thundering asshole gets for every video he makes. Yeah, people suck.

*This was a bad move for a number of reasons. 1) it was going to have no effect (I speak from experience) and should have no effect, 2) his employers certainly already know that he’s an asshole, and have no problem with it, and 3) it gave him an excuse to be openly vindictive.

Todd Starnes, entomologist

couple-weds-while-covered-in-bees

Todd Starnes, Fox News wingnut, must really love insects, because he’s begging his god to send more.

When the public schools tell students that our Founding Fathers were a bunch of terrorists: Send the hornets, Lord! Clear the field! When a teacher tells a little boy he can’t pray over his meal: Send the hornets, Lord! Clear that field! When the Pentagon tells them to take down a cross on a Christian chapel: Send those hornets! Clear the field! When the Supreme Court says they know better than God: Send the hornets, Lord! Clear the field! And, when the president says that America is no longer just a Christian nation: Don’t send the hornets, Lord. Send the mosquitoes and the gnats, and the bumblebees and the lightning bugs and the cicadas! Send every critter you got, Lord! Clear the field!

[Read more…]

The reality of a career in biology

biocareers

37% of students entering biology Ph.D. programs drop out? Only 8% achieve the goal of getting a tenure track faculty position? That last statistic, at least, isn’t as bad as it sounds, since there are lots of alternatives.

I’d also add, though, that this is another case where random drift, rather than selection, probably dominates. Those 8% aren’t likely to be the best (although some are!), but only the most persistent, or the luckiest.

Wow, it sure is easy to become a “psychology expert” on Fox News

They have one! Her name is Gina Loudon, and her qualifications are…

Loudon, a tea party activist who became a reality star after she and her husband joined ABC’s Wife Swap

She also has a Ph.D. in a “psychology related field” from an online university, and has published in such distinguished journals as Breitbart, WND, and Townhall. I wonder if the APA would agree with her title.

She’s also using her lofty position as the Fox News Psychology Expert to dispense dangerous stupidity. She’s against transgender surgery because — I love this, coming from a Tea Party Reality TV star — it’s anti-science.

And the science is on my side of this, she remarked. I’m not sure why the other side is deciding to be science deniers now. Johns Hopkins University ended their program because they realized that people who go through with the sex change surgery have a 20 fold increase in suicide rates as opposed to those who don’t.

As is pointed out at the link, she’s referring to a debunked study to make that claim. She seems to buy into the idea that transgender men and women are just mentally disordered, who need more therapy to get over it.

There’s a video of Loudon. I haven’t watched it. I have a personal rule against watching videos of anyone chatting with Steve Doocy — I only have so many brain cells to spare.

Ben Carson is simply a horrible human being

I think we all know that already, but his latest interview clinches it. He wants Roe v. Wade overturned, and he compares abortion to slavery.

Think about this. During slavery — and I know that one of those words you’re not supposed to say — but I’m saying it. During slavery, a lot of the slave owners thought they had the right to do whatever they wanted to that slave, anything that they chose to do. And what if the abolitionists had said, ‘You know, I don’t believe in slavery, I think it’s wrong. But you guys do whatever you want to do.’ Where would we be?

You know, you could talk to the slaves, they could express themselves, they could speak about their anger and pain. A blastula or a fetus are not comparable to Frederick Douglass. And more, slaves were forced against their will to live in shackles — if you’re going to compare slavery to anything, it ought to be the women who are compelled to bear children against their will.

Rape or incest, I would not be for killing a baby because the baby came about in that way. And all you have to do is go and look up the many stories of people who have led very useful lives who are the result of rape or incest.

Shouldn’t the women have a voice here? All you have to do is go and look up the many stories of women who had abortions and lived useful, happy, productive lives afterwards, in careers that would have been cut short if they’d been forced into motherhood.

But oh, right, the women don’t matter in Ben Carson’s head.

He’s such a horrible person, without a thought in his head.