Ouch … more Superfreakonomic Uber-Pwnage (all sorts)

Jon Stewart, Pwned! (by Jon Stewart)BPSDB I was rereading Brad Johnson’s article about the Jon Stewart non-interview with Levitt of Superfreakonomics infamy when I realized that one of the links he provides is the Stewart interview on Crossfire… Ouch, nasty, but so apropos. It brings up a couple of points worth mentioning in regard to [...]

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Even No One Care of Us …

BPSDB “‘Even No One Care of Us, We Can start to Care Each Other and Nature First.’” – from the children of Sidhi Astu Orphanage House, Tuka, Bali, Indonesia, Climate Day of Action A Number Heard Round the World Moms Against Climate Change

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The US Chamber Pot of Commerce punks itself, again

BPSDBThe good news about the US Chamber of Commerce (CoC) and their climate change Denial public relations disaster just keeps rolling in, thanks to … The US Chamber of Commerce. In August the CoC made a very public demand for political trials of climate change science. This proved to be a public relations “own goal” [...]

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Daily Show pooches Superfreaknomics interview, big time

To make Glenn Beck’s head explode?BPSDB “I really don’t know what I’m talking about, do I?” Jon Stewart Well no shit Sherlock! The question is, why not? The context (nutshell version) is that the new book Superfreaknomics has a chapter on climate change that is scientific gibberish. Not simply wrong, but error riddled nonsense. One [...]

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Actually it’s the WSJ, not a parody site … i think

BPSDB No, the Yes Men have not punked the Wall Street Journal, although you sure could be forgiven for thinking “Freaked Out Over SuperFreakonomics” is a DenialDepot post mocking how extremely braindead and fraudulent climate change Denierism can be. There’s really nothing in Brett Stephen’s article to suggest that it’s supposed to be serious (cf [...]

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Independent statisticians reject ‘global cooling’ fable

BPSDB“WASHINGTON — Have you heard that the world is now cooling instead of warming? You may have seen some news reports on the Internet or heard about it from a provocative new book. Only one problem: It’s not true, according to an analysis of the numbers done by several independent statisticians for The Associated Press [...]

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Scary Monsters (And superfreakonomics)

“When I looked in her eyes they were blue, but nobody home”BPSDB I thought I was done with this particular tar baby and would just leave it to Brian to keep track of the ongoing discussion of Superfreakonomics, but like others (eg here and here) I just can’t seem to shake it off. Actually there [...]

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I chose the right man!

BPSDBIn acknowledging the Woody Guthrie Award, Dan manages to weave together some of his own personal history, as well as Guthrie’s, anthropogenic climate change, and the struggles of the 1930s that inspired and motivated so much of Guthrie’s music, all in just a few short paragraphs! Now that‘s story telling! … he does Guthrie proud.

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The Woody Guthrie Award for A Thinking Blogger

BPSDBIt has been almost a month since Honestpoet did me the singular honour of making me the recipient of the Woody Guthrie Award (presented to A Thinking Blogger). I am very late in acknowledging this honour and making the presentation to another blog for several reasons, one of them being the timing of my absence [...]

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Zen and the art of planetary maintenance II: Impossible love

BPSDB One of the great challenges in any social justice activism is that the ultimate goal is, practically speaking, impossible.  Whether we are talking about ending poverty or human trafficking, stopping climate change or saving the whales, any sort of realistic analysis says that they are unattainable goals that are beyond ridiculous. Needless to say [...]

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US Chamber of Commerce Punks the Yes Men

BPSDBThe US Chamber of Commerce (CoC) disrupted a Yes Men /Avaaz Action Factory press conference on Monday as part of an elaborate prank meant to distract attention from the Chamber’s regressive and ignorant stance on climate issues. Some have suggested that it was the Yes Men who were pranking the US Chamber of Commerce (here [...]

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Housekeeping with Gratitude

First, HUGE thanks to S2 for minding the store while I have been lost where ever it was that I was lost (below). Particularly as the absence turned out to be much longer than planned. Also an interesting lesson learned … I have been futilely trying to recruit guest bloggers for many months, and it [...]

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Superfreakonomic-expialidocious “I did not deny climate change with that woman!”

BPSDBA week ago Joseph Romm fired the opening salvo in what became a hail of criticism of the forthcoming book “Superfreakonomics” by  Levitt and Dubner, particularly the climate change chapter which had been circulating on the web (albeit probably illicitly). Now the authors  have begun to reply to their critics, or at least put out [...]

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Hudson’s choice

BPSDB Over at ClimateSight, in the middle of a long but highly readable post entitled Credibility in a Bewildered World, there is this: And a controversy really sells. For example, would you rather pick up a newspaper with the headline “Another Study Confirms What Everyone Already Knew”, or “Scientists Locked in Epic Battle over Question [...]

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Blog Action Day

BPSDBI missed it – I was too busy. However it seems to have been a success: We are about to hit 27,000 32,000 total trackable blog posts, and our current estimate is that together we reached at least 17 million people today. We are also about to exceed 12,000 registered bloggers on the site and [...]

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An odd kind of Icon

BPSDBThis one has been going around for a while now, so it isn’t new. Apologies if you’re already aware of it, but if you haven’t come across it before, read on. A reader recently pointed us towards a poster at http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Holgate/sealevel_change_poster_holgate.pdf as evidence that rising sea levels are no threat to humanity. In his view [...]

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Sense and Censorship

BPSDBI seem to have opened up a can of worms in The Curious Incident of the Denier in the Night-time. For anyone who has not yet waded through all the comments, I tried to calm things down by imposing a temporary ban (on that thread alone) on any comments that were not relevant to Mike’s [...]

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