Thoughts about the Hand of God

I'm going to issue a plea to scientists:

Can you please stop giving scientific stuff suggestive names?

Let me clarify: I am not talking about that kind of suggestive.  That kind of suggestive I couldn't care less about.  You can name the next astronomical feature you discover the Giant Pair of Bazongas Nebula, as far as I'm concerned.

What I am talking about is the use of religious symbolism in names.  First we had poor Leon Lederman, who has lived to regret his choice many times, nicknaming the Higgs boson "the God Particle."  Then we had a bunch of population geneticists, studying human DNA haplogroups, calling the progenitor of the human Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA, respectively, "Adam and Eve."

Even Einstein fell prey to it -- when he first heard about the quantum probability theories of Erwin Schrödinger, he quipped, "God does not play dice with the universe."

So it's not like it's without precedent.  I'm just asking for it to stop.

All of this comes up because of the following image of an exploding star, recently released by NASA:

[image courtesy of NASA and JPL]

And what are they calling this?

"The Hand of God."

Now, I'm sure that whatever scientist first called it this had tongue planted firmly in his or her cheek.  But the problem is, that's not the way the average American layperson perceives it.  Given that something around 80% of your average American laypeople subscribe to some form of religion, this sort of thing sounds mighty serious to a significant fraction of the public.  And even amongst those who don't believe that this is literally the hand of a deity, it can give rise to overwrought articles like "Beyond NASA Photo, 'Hand of God' Seen Everywhere," in which we are told that science and religion go, um, hand in hand:

This ubiquitous natural wonderland caused man to acknowledge and honor the Creator of creation, as Copernicus did when he wrote, "[The world] has been built for us by the Best and Most Orderly Workman of all."  Or as Galileo wrote, "God is known … by Nature in His works and by doctrine in His revealed word."  Or as Pasteur confessed, "The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator."  Or Isaac Newton: "When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance."

The author goes on to state that even modern scientists admit that there's room for faith:

"Now,” [astronomer Robert] Jastrow continues, "we would like to pursue that inquiry farther back in time, but the barrier to further progress seems insurmountable.  It is not a matter of another year, another decade of work, another measurement, or another theory; at this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation."

The famed scientist’s ultimate conclusion is astonishingly candid, particularly in light of his own professed agnosticism: "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream.  He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

Oh, come on.  It's not that I think that religion and science are incompatible, exactly; I know plenty of religious scientists (and quite a few rational, logical religious people).  It's more that all of the historical fuddling about really doesn't mean anything.  Copernicus and Galileo were religious, sure; but Copernicus didn't release the official draft of his manuscript until he was on his deathbed because he was terrified of the Christian powers-that-be (and sure enough, they burned every copy of his book they could get their hands on).  And Galileo had his own struggles with the Vatican, ones that are so well known that they hardly need to be detailed here.  The only reason that Newton and Pasteur didn't run into problems is that by their time, the power of the church had waned some (and what they were proposing didn't bring them into direct conflict with religious dogma in any case).

So the issue isn't that you can't be both religious and scientific; the issue is more that when they come to opposing conclusions, you have to choose one or the other, because they approach knowledge from completely different directions.  I've made the point before, as regular readers undoubtedly know.  So it really isn't relevant that Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and Pasteur were religious; what is relevant is that when it came to their science, they didn't get it from the bible, nor even some kind of mystical divine revelation, but from rigorous analysis of the evidence.

And as far as Jastrow; seriously?  We scientists are pictured as pulling ourselves along, stumbling blindly uphill, finally reaching the pinnacle of knowledge, and coming across... theologians?  I'm sorry, Dr. Jastrow, but do you really want to compare the list of discoveries, advances in knowledge, and inventions that have helped the human condition that have been produced by science, and those that have been produced by religion?  I know you were talking about some kind of final, teleological understanding of the Big Picture -- but honestly, given their respective track records, I'm betting that if we ever get to the Cosmic Big Answer, it's going to be the scientists who do it, not the theologians.  The theologians will still be too busy arguing over whether god cares about what consenting adults do in their bedrooms.

So, anyway.  Let me say it again: it's hard enough to keep the terms of the discussion clear without the scientists themselves making it worse by giving stuff religiously suggestive names.  I mean, if you really want to go that direction, at least pick a god nobody much believes in any more.  If you'd wanted to call the exploding star The Mighty Fist of Thor, I doubt anyone would have cared, except people who are passionate about Marvel Comics, and honestly, I think they can manage the cognitive dissonance better than the religious people can.

Canadian alien invasion conspiracy

The conspiracies have been coming hard and fast lately.  I'm finding it hard to keep up with all of them.  We have all of the "false flag" operations (from the various school shootings to the death of actor Paul Walker), assorted weather phenomena that clearly are man-made (such as this week's polar vortex event), and miscellaneous accusations of Top Secret Scary Stuff (like what I dealt with in yesterday's post, which was the hidden agenda at CERN to use the Large Hadron Collider to resurrect the Egyptian god Osiris).

Which brings up an interesting question: if you're a conspiracy theorist, are you required by the bylaws to believe in all of them?  Or do you pick and choose?  Are there some ideas so idiotic that even Alex Jones would say, "Naw, that's just ridiculous"?

Because if the latter is true, I think I may have found the odds-on favorite.  Jim Garrow, an "Obama birther truther" and general wingnut, appeared on a radio show a few days ago hosted by Fox News contributor Erik Rush, and in an interview that should win some kind of award for sheer bizarreness, told us all about how President Obama is part of a secret plot.  He's upset by his decreasing approval ratings, and he's found a way to remedy the problem.  And that solution is to sell us out to aliens and Canadians.

No, I'm not making this up.  Here is a direct quote:

What we’re going to be seeing soon is the unveiling of the concept that we have, in fact, been contacted and have been in communication with people from other civilizations beyond earth, and that will be part of the great deception...  It’ll be a great fraud, the whole basis of this, it is a great hoax.  Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper have signed an agreement to assist one another militarily in the event of an insurrection.  Now we’re bringing in a new element, a group of people who could be armed and could be in a position to shoot American civilians who have never sworn allegiance to the Constitution.  I don’t know where that would fit with respect to the Chinese and Russian, who happen to be here under whatever guise, whether it be training or sharing of information, who knows what they might be in place.  But it opens up a pretty scary scenario.

Amazingly, Rush didn't immediately call in his assistants to have Garrow forcibly brought to a mental institution for evaluation.  He just said, "Wow."  And Rush's other guest, Tea Party commentator Nancy Smith, said, in a serious voice, "Personally I’ve already heard some other sources saying the very same thing that you’re saying."

Seriously?  We're being sold out to the Canadians?  Who are going to come over and shoot up the place?  You do know that you're referring to the single most courteous society on Earth, right?

But no.  Rush et al. just kind of sat there and acted as if what Garrow said was completely normal.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that in previous appearances on Rush's show, Garrow told us how he also believes that President Obama ordered the murders of Andrew Breitbart, Michael Hastings, and Tom Clancy because they'd all figured out that Obama is a Saudi operative and were about to blow his cover.  And that if that didn't work, he was going to give up the subtle approach, and just drop nuclear bombs on Charleston, South Carolina, except that three of his military leaders talked him out of it, so he fired them.

Man, that brings "no more Mr. Nice Guy" to a whole new level, doesn't it?

Seriously, folks, what does it take to stop people from listening?  Are there really individuals who are that gullible?  I'm pretty certain that Garrow himself is simply insane; but in order to keep appearing on Erik Rush's radio show -- which presumably has sponsors and listeners -- someone has to be paying attention, and believing this guy.

Which worries me.  Because these people vote.  And if people like Garrow keep getting spots on the public airwaves, it's providing an avenue for distributing their craziness, and simultaneously giving it a veneer of credibility.  I mean, we have enough ways to spread stupid ideas out there, what with how easy it is to simply click "Share" on social media, without radio talk show hosts giving paranoid loonies a forum.

But I guess I should look at the bright side; even if Garrow's right, I'd take my chances with the Canadians over people like Michele Bachmann and Louie Gohmert.  Even if they passed a law mandating that we switch from Big Macs and milk shakes to poutine and beer, the Canadians have a national health care system, they're the country that has the highest number of citizens with advanced degrees, and they're the world's largest producer of cheese.  So they must be doing something right.

So I say what the hell.  Let the Canadians take over.  They couldn't possibly screw things up any worse than we're already doing.

ConCERNing Osiris

Many of you undoubtedly know about CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire), the world's largest particle physics laboratory, located on the border of France and Switzerland.  It's home to six particle accelerators and some of the most impressive discoveries in subatomic and high-energy physics in the world, including last year's demonstration of the existence of the elusive Higgs field, the field that confers the property of mass to every bit of matter in the universe.

Pretty impressive stuff, and most of it over my head even given my bachelor's degree in physics.

Now, switch gears for a moment.  You'll see why in a bit.

Many of you undoubtedly also know about Osiris, the ancient Egyptian god of the dead, although perhaps not the same ones who knew about CERN.  Osiris was one of the most important gods in ancient Egypt, given their fixation on the afterlife.  Unlike his fellow deities, who had animals' heads, Osiris looked pretty much like an ordinary guy, except that he had green skin.

Osiris became the god of rebirth when he was killed by his brother Set, who chopped his body up and threw it into the Nile river.  Osiris's wife Isis found her husband, in chunks, and sort of stuck the chunks back together and brought him back to life, only to find out afterwards that there was a chunk missing.  Unfortunately for Osiris, that chunk turned out to be a body part that most of us males are pretty fond of, if you get my drift.  Understandably upset at his wife for not finding a fairly important bit of him, he convinced Isis to make him a new one out of gold, which strikes me as a pretty poor substitute, all things considered.  But it must have worked, because soon after Isis gave birth to the god Horus, who looked just like his parents hoped except for the possible problem of having a falcon's head.

Then Osiris died again.  Poor guy just couldn't catch a break.

Now, by this time you're probably wondering what CERN and Osiris can possibly have to do with one another.  So let me explain.  CERN, you see, isn't just a place where physicists go to conduct complex and far-reaching experiments about the subtle structure of matter; it is actually a portal whose chief purpose is to create a wormhole, which will allow Osiris to be raised from the dead.

Again.  Hopefully they'll remember to bring along his penis this time.

Don't believe me?  Take a look at this article over at UFO Sightings Hotspot, called "Ta-Wer AKA Osiris AKA CERN."  Here's the main argument, if I can dignify it by that name:

According to researcher William Henry, the ancient Egyptian object named Ta-Wer aka “Osiris” device, was a stargate machine capable to open wormholes or dimensional openings used by Seth and Osiris to “travel across the underworld.”Is CERN the new “Osiris Ta-Wer”? A modern stargate machine based on ancient technology?

When work at CERN's Large Hadron Collider is completed in 2015, the collider should have twice the power and be able to help unlock more of the universe's mysteries and to explore an entirely new realm of physics.

With the LHC power doubled, they will start looking for what they think is out there and they hope that something will turn up that no one had ever thought of.

It is known that the secret societies are obsessed with the raising of Osiris and maybe they already know what they are looking for and was the placement of a Shiva Statue outside the CERN Hadron Collider a hint?

Sure.  Because a green-skinned Egyptian god and a multi-armed Hindu god are clearly the same guy.  But do go on:

According to Stephen Hawking: “ bending space-time is theoretically possible— by exploiting black holes, or wormholes if they exist, or by traveling at super speeds, based on Einstein’s theory of relativity.”

Although many people believe that time travel is science fiction, it is not, and taking into account the obsession of the illuminati to use CERN as a stargate machine, it may be possible in the near future, we will face God’s miracles as seen by the ancient Hindu people when their Gods travelling through stargate devices. 

You know, if I were Stephen Hawking, I would be really pissed at the way nutjobs use quotes from legitimate research, lectures, and interviews to support their bizarre ideas.  These guys cherry-pick almost as much as the fundamentalist Christians do.  And at least the evangelical Christians basically understand the stuff they're reading.  With articles like this one, though, you get the impression that the folks that write this sort of woo-woo horse waste have about as much actual comprehension of quantum mechanics as my dog.

They end, though, with a question:

Is there some occult ritual being carried within the LHC facility and is Shiva the one they are attempting to bring to Earth?

No and no.  Thanks for asking.  And once again, Shiva and Osiris aren't the same dude.  By no stretch of the imagination is a three-eyed, eight-armed dude wearing a necklace of skulls even remotely like a green-skinned bearded dude with a missing wang.  Are we clear on that now?

 And CERN has nothing to do with gods of any kind.  They do physics there.  End of story.

It's a regrettable tendency on the part of a lot of people to hear bits and pieces of stuff they don't understand, combine it with other stuff they only partially understand, and come to drastically wrong conclusions.  The cure, of course, is to try and find out a little about the actual facts, to learn some real science, but that, unfortunately, is a level of hard work that some people are unwilling to undertake.  So we haven't seen the end of this kind of thing.

Woo-woo wingnuttery, it seems, will be with us always, sort of like death and taxes but even more annoying.

Faith, belief, and agnosticism: a guest post by author Cly Boehs

My dear friend, the author and artist Cly Boehs, was inspired by one of my posts from two weeks ago to write an essay of her own responding to the points I brought up, and I have invited her to present it here.  You can (and should!) read Cly's short stories, posted on her wonderful blog Mind at Play, and I encourage you all to buy her brilliant collection of four novellas, The Most Intangible Thing, available at Amazon here.  I know you'll be as entertained and intrigued by Cly's writing as I am.

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On Skeptophilia on December 24^th, 2013, in an article entitled, "Elf highway blockade," you ask the question, “…how do specific counterfactual beliefs become so entrenched, despite a complete lack of evidence that entire cultures begin to buy in?” You state that you get how individuals can become superstitious but are perplexed by how cultures can do this—supposedly because more heads should be better than one? The underlying question seems to be—why wouldn’t there be enough dissenting voices in such groups to stop such ridiculous claims? How can so many be so wrong about something so outlandish? 

Since I’ve spent quite a bit of time researching, thinking and writing about why people (as individuals and groups) believe what they do, I’d like to take this question on, at least offering an opinion in brief form. Over time, I’ve come to two major conclusions (1) groups don’t use factual evidence any more than individuals to come to their beliefs; and (2) once individuals’ beliefs are strengthen by numbers, the believers take on a superior hue such that they disavow any other claims than their own—they are right and that’s that. You seem to be asking how this can happen when there is contrary factual evidence readily available for them to see. To a rationalist, a term like “factual evidence” is redundant because both “facts” and “evidence” imply objectivity. To a person basing evidence on faith or will-to-believe, “evidence” lies in subjective truth; and since that truth’s validity is based on personal experience, the more of those will-to-believers you can gather together, the greater the validation of truth (see below).  

I’d like to draw attention to two points about both individuals and groups that allow any belief (superstition or not) to become foundational to them. First, culture, the state, the church, all organizations and institutions are made up of individuals and studies have shown that what the individuals in the group believe becomes strengthen by numbers. Which brings me to my second notion: that belief(s) of the group are held together because they believe they are right, often the only right. The strength of belief gained in numbers produces a feeling of superiority such that the group forms an “us vs them” mentality and most often (depending on how significant the belief is to the group) takes it to battle against other beliefs. Lord knows we have enough examples of this throughout human history and in foreign affairs today. 

It is tremendously important that we remember that groups are made up of individuals—that in the most important way, groups do not exist in and of themselves. When we begin thinking that they do, we end up in extreme situations such as with the Nazi mentality of World War II, the mass execution of 1862 in Mankato, Minnesota and the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. The defendants at the Nuremberg trials (or any others for that matter) can claim immunity on the grounds of mass-think. Which leads me to this business of feeling superior and safe because of being right. 

I realize in your article you are talking specifically about superstitious group beliefs—beliefs way, way out there like believing that elves not only exist but have rights. But I ask you, how far off is this from the now institutionalized belief that our supreme court recently translated into the law of the land, that corporations are individuals with rights? And how far away from beliefs such as transmigration of souls and transubstantiation is the belief in elves? Or that Buddha’s mother, before his birth, was struck on her right side by a white bull elephant that held a lotus in its trunk, an elephant that then vanished into her— or as another story goes—the elephant entered her womb and shortly after disappeared? This is after the elephant walked around her three times—well, of course it was three times. Three is the magic number of fairy tales and religious triads, right?

We all know stories from sacred texts that defy objective evidence—water into wine, an ass speaking on the road to Damascus, parted water to expose dry land (Buddha performed this one before Moses), a Hindu holy man changing jackals into horses and back again at will and the list goes on and on. Miracles or superstitions as a foundational belief arises out of “faith,” as a belief not based on facts. In fact, such beliefs as miracles and superstition are a demonstration of faith. Actually, it’s why they are there. Faith of this kind produces massive power in individuals especially when socialized and politicized, which makes faith-based belief(s) concrete in ritual and activism. Superstition works in this way because when individuals, strengthened by groups, believe against “the odds,” e.g., the Anabaptists against the Catholics and Protestants; the American Revolutionaries against English and French militaries—such polarities only strengthens each in what they believe is right. [A study demonstrating this clearly showed up recently on the site politico.com in which two psychologists demonstrated that the more extreme a person’s views are the more they think they are right.] The most important component in any cultural or polarized situation is belief, not reasonableness, facts. And this is because facts change by necessity; while belief can remain consistent and constant if founded in faith, the will-to-believe. The validity of a belief is often expressed in this constancy down through time, e.g. the Vedas are 3500 years old and Christian time is counted since Christ and so forth. There is comfort in not only being right but being so with such consistency and constancy. 

So how does a group of people (note that a singular verb is used for the term “group”) end up believing that elves should be given rights to stop a highway through their sacred territory? By individuals comprising the group believing elves-are-individuals-with-rights. And these individuals find strength in this belief by numbers in the groups and by the outlandishness of the belief as proof of faith in that belief. According to this logic then, the crazier the idea, the greater the faith needed to believe it; therefore, the greater the proof of its validity. Trust of this sort and the will-to-believe—a trust to act in faith before any supporting evidence, one of William James’ terms for this is “confidence”—can be constant in a way reason based on facts cannot. And the stronger the faith of an individual or group is, the stronger the belief. And because of this, psychologist and philosophers of all kinds of stripes have opted for head over heart, reason over emotion-and-feeling, reason over will. And it’s easy to see why. When people fear that their faith or will-to-believe is taken from them, they know that what they regard as constant, permanent, is gone; living in a constantly ambiguous state-of-affairs leaves one too vulnerable. ‘Tis unsafe. 

But polarity is not the answer. An alternative to rightness-in-belief lies in the willingness (note the word) to believe conditionally—not to give up belief. We will believe (again, note the word). We have to believe in order to function, actually to literally live at all. We don’t have all the facts for what we believe, never will. But in order to develop more fully as individuals, our beliefs have to be founded with an open heart and mind. And in order for this to happen, individuals have to believe in the self over groups, have to understand how culture can be an obstacle to self-identity, and have to be willing to die because believing this is deeply threatening to those caught in the whole system of belief that states “being right” is all there can be, especially when it comes wrapped in the outrageous intentionality of religious fervor. 

And what about imagination and creativity in all of this? The human capacity for ambiguity is at the heart of creativity, true self-identity, justice and all human endeavors with inherent freedom for the individual in them. Ambiguity is not waffling between one held belief and another—it is remaining open to the possibility that states-of-affairs can be other than they are perceived to be. In other words, we can be wrong. And the human ability to be wrong is inherent in so much of what we learn. [Gordon pointed out to me recently Kathyrn Schulz’s TED talk, “On Being Wrong,” which is a beautiful declaration on why we seek solace in being right.]

My view is not that we should evolve to a state of rationalism over beliefs based on faith or will, but become individuals with an ability to suspend belief just as we suspend facts. By “suspended belief or facts,” I mean lift the total-rightness-of-belief, out of its foundational bedrock, i.e. hold what is known either as fact or belief-through-faith in regard, even respect, even act on it until something else replaces it. But when suspended belief of this kind is presented to individuals as a possibility, they usually become more radicalized in their position than before. They can’t give up the constancy of faith over the inconstancy of facts, when in order for all of us to live as fully as possible, we have to give up both so that we can embrace both. What’s interesting is that when suspended belief is presented to a rationalist, meaning they have to take the agnostic position over the atheistic one, there is just as much fluttering of feathers and great resistance. Since rationalism is based on evidence (observable facts) and without it, there can be no belief, they are just as adamant in their position as Faith-and-Will believers are in theirs. Suspended belief doesn’t mean no belief. It means not knowing or even not knowable—which is what agnosticism is.

So what to do with the Friends of Lava and the project detrimental to elf culture?

What would “suspended belief” look like for both sides in this dispute? Why not negotiate and do it while applying Gordon’s suggestion of critical thinking thrown into the mix…mess—the discussion being along the lines of how far traditions in culture should/could be allowed to influence progress of a practical nature. But also, discussion with some open-mindedness has to be there as well, lifting that desire to be right and listening to the other side, working together to meet some middle way in the situation. We have these negotiations going on all the time—the ten commandments monument in the Alabama Judicial Building and another one in Oklahoma on its state capitol grounds as examples. Is this really too terribly different from the Icelandic version of respecting the Little People and their territory? Unfortunately we haven’t found a way yet to discuss such disputes without the rush to polarities and the superiority of our views—so until such time, it is left to the settlements in the courts.

The polar vortex agenda

Dear readers,

Before I get to today's post, I want to point out something that you probably have already noticed -- a new feature in the upper right-hand corner of Skeptophilia labeled "Donate."  If you're a regular reader -- or even if you're not, and just want to support the effort and time it takes to bring posts to you six days a week that leave you thinking or laughing or both -- then consider making a donation!  You can contribute securely through PayPal, and your (much appreciated) donation will help assure that we will be able to continue to provide you with skeptical content for a long time to come.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

cheers,

Gordon

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Rush Limbaugh is kind of predictable.  All you have to do is watch the weather map. If we have any sort of anomalous weather, you can guarantee that a day or two later he will be drawing on his skills as a climatologist to inform his loyal listeners that whatever it is had nothing to do with global warming.  It's just like clockwork, sort of like intestinal gas after a meal at Taco Bell.

This time, though, he's gone a step farther.  The piece of the polar vortex that has been spinning its way across the northern United States, causing widespread damage, thousands of school closings, and wind chills in some places lower than -50 Fahrenheit, is not real, Limbaugh says.  It's all a hoax.  And guess who is perpetrating this hoax?  You'll never guess.

The liberals.  Told you you'd never guess.

Here's what he had to say in Monday's Rush Limbaugh Show:

Do you know what the polar vortex is? Have you ever heard of it? Well, they just created it for this week...  Now, in their attempt, the left, the media, everybody, to come up with a way to make this sound like it's something new and completely unprecedented, they've come up with this phrase called the "polar vortex."  If you've been watching television, they've created a graphic, all the networks have, and it basically consists of a view of the planet if you are right above the North Pole. They put this big purple blob, or blue blob, or red blob, depending on the network you're looking at, over the entire North Pole, and they call that the polar vortex. It actually sounds like a crappy science fiction movie to me, but anyway, that's what they're calling it.

We are having a record-breaking cold snap in many parts of the country.  And right on schedule the media have to come up with a way to make it sound like it’s completely unprecedented.  Because they’ve got to find a way to attach this to the global warming agenda, and they have.  It’s called the ‘polar vortex.’  The dreaded polar vortex.”

Liberals are in the middle of a hoax, they’re perpetrating a hoax, but they’re relying on their total dominance of the media to lie to you each and every day about climate change and global warming.  So they created the polar vortex, and the polar vortex, something’s happened, and that cold air which normally stays is in the North Pole, something’s happening, something deeply mysterious and perhaps tragic is happening.

Whatever it is that keeps the polar vortex vortexed in the Arctic Circle is vanishing, and that cold air is coming to us. Normally it stays up there. But now it's down here. How did it get here? That's the deepening mystery. That is the crisis. That is what is man-made. Man is destroying the invisible boundaries that keeps that air up there. How did it get cold in previous winters? Well, it got cold in previous winters, but, see, as far as most people are concerned, this is as cold as it's ever been in their lives. Well, but, Snerdley, I'm just telling you their technique. Forget truth. The truth and the Democrat Party, the truth and the American left never intersect.

My point is you have a lot of people who are believing that this is as cold as it’s ever been.  You might think that flies in the face of global warming.  Ah, ah, ah, ah.  Global warming’s not climate change, and we, folks, are causing all of this, you must understand.  The hoax continues.

So, let's analyze this, shall we?

First of all, let's look at his first contention, which is that the "polar vortex" was just invented by liberals last week to scare everyone, for reasons unknown.  Strange, then, that the term was first used 150 years ago to describe the Arctic air circulation (Littell's Living Age, #495, 12 November 1853, p. 490), and has been standard terminology in climate science ever since.  All you have to be able to do is to use Wikipedia -- something that apparently is outside of Mr. Limbaugh's rather limited skill set -- to find out that the reduced ice coverage in the Arctic Ocean, coupled with weakening of the polar air circulation, has been known for years to cause "meanders" in the jet stream that sometimes cause whirling blobs of cold air to break loose from the main polar vortex -- just like what happened this week.

But let's consider other sources.  They had a lot to say about the phenomenon this week over at ClimateCentral.org, where in an article on this week's weather we read:

The forecast high temperature in Fairbanks, Alaska, on Monday was in the 20s Fahrenheit — warmer than many locations in Georgia and Alabama. That fits in with the so-called “Arctic Paradox” or “Warm Arctic, Cold Continents” pattern that researchers first identified several years ago. Such patterns bring comparatively mild conditions to the Arctic while places far to the south are thrown into a deep freeze...  The warmth in the Arctic made headlines in early December when the temperature hit 39°F in Prudhoe Bay, north of the Arctic Circle. That was the highest December temperature on record there since at least 1968, according to the National Weather Service.

Even more interesting was what Rick Grow, writing for The Washington Post, had to say:

Large atmospheric waves move upward from the troposphere — where most weather occurs — into the stratosphere, which is the layer of air above the troposphere. These waves, which are called Rossby waves, transport energy and momentum from the troposphere to the stratosphere. This energy and momentum transfer generates a circulation in the stratosphere, which features sinking air in the polar latitudes and rising air in the lowest latitudes. As air sinks, it warms. If the stratospheric air warms rapidly in the Arctic, it will throw the circulation off balance. This can cause a major disruption to the polar vortex, stretching it and — sometimes — splitting it apart.

What is unusual about this week's event is that instead of just spawning a minor meander, nearly the entire polar vortex came unhinged and started drifting south -- which you can see on the following map, showing that while Chicago was in the deep freeze, northern Labrador was experiencing far warmer than normal conditions:

 

What I find interesting about this is that when we set record high temperatures -- like we did two weeks ago in the Northeast, when in my usually chilly home town we shattered all previous records for that day with a balmy 67 Fahrenheit -- the climate change deniers point out that as everyone knows, there's a difference between weather and climate.  That was just a single day's high, nothing to be concerned about.  But when we have cold weather, you have bloviating windbags like Mr. Limbaugh ranting about how the icy conditions show that global warming is a hoax.

Sorry, dude, you can't have it both ways.  If you can't use single weather events to support climate change, you can't use single weather events to deny it, either.  But the problem is that then, you're forced to look at trends -- which means that you'd have to be honest and admit that the global average temperature is increasing steadily.  Which is the last thing that Limbaugh and his cadre want to do.

So who is it, exactly, that seems to have no intersection between their agenda and the truth?

As I've said before: to reject the basic tenets of climate change, you have to ignore mountains of hard data from the last fifty years, coupled with the predictions of climate models developed by some of the best climatologists in the world.  Because they have no particular difficulty coming to consensus; well over 90% of climate scientists not only believe that the Earth is warming, they believe that the warm-up is due to human activity, especially the burning of fossil fuels.

The problem is, more people listen to fools like Rush Limbaugh than listen to the scientists, which is exactly what people like him want.  Dumb folks down.  Science is hard, and often confusing; here, let me tell you what to think.  The people who are trying to get you to change your ways are just liars and hoaxers with a secret agenda to destroy the U. S. of A.  It's okay, you can still drive your Hummer around with a clear conscience.

And outside, the wind is still howling, and the weather is becoming more and more unpredictable.  Today, as I write this, it's -4 F.   By Saturday, it's predicted to be 48 F and raining.  In upstate New York, in mid-January.

Liberal agenda, my ass.

Tweets from time travelers

So, you know how I said yesterday that science has an advantage over woo-woo beliefs, because the woo-woos never seem to see when an idea is so phenomenally silly that it deserves to be rejected out of hand?  And that therefore, we should be listening to the scientists, not the woo-woos?

I take it back.

This near-instantaneous retraction has come about because of a paper published by Michigan Technological University astrophysicists Robert Nemiroff and Teresa Wilson entitled "Searching the Internet for Evidence of Time Travelers."  Nemiroff and Wilson note that time travel into the future is possible (in fact, that's kind of what we're doing right now); they also make the less obvious point that the rate at which you travel into the future can differ from another person's, because of the Special Theory of Relativity.  Time travel into the past is, they say, "more controversial," although there are some features of the General Theory of Relativity that may allow it.

[Image from Dr. Who courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

It is, of course, the latter possibility that is of the most interest.  It's been riffed on in countless novels, short stories, and movies -- I even played around with the notion myself, in my novel Lock & Key.  Rips in the space-time continuum account for at least a hundred plots on Star Trek alone.

But as a reality?  I'm kind of doubtful.  And so far, I've got nothing against what Nemiroff and Wilson have written.  But wait till you hear how they tried to detect time travelers:

Time travel has captured the public imagination for much of the past century, but little has been done to actually search for time travelers. Here, three implementations of Internet searches for time travelers are described, all seeking a prescient mention of information not previously available. The first search covered prescient content placed on the Internet, highlighted by a comprehensive search for specific terms in tweets on Twitter. The second search examined prescient inquiries submitted to a search engine, highlighted by a comprehensive search for specific search terms submitted to a popular astronomy web site. The third search involved a request for a direct Internet communication, either by email or tweet, pre-dating to the time of the inquiry.

Yup.  They were trying to find some place that a time traveler slipped up, and tweeted something last August like "On January 7, 2014, people in the northern part of the USA should plan on dressing warmly.  #fuckingcold"

Specifically, they looked for mentions of Pope Francis prior to his election, and Comet ISON prior to its discovery.  Not surprisingly, Nemiroff and Wilson stated in the conclusion of their paper, "No time travelers were discovered."

My question is how, if these people from the future are smart enough to come back here, they would also simultaneously be dumb enough to get onto Twitter and post something that gave away the game.  I'd think they'd be pretty careful about that, wouldn't  you?  Not only would it reveal their identities as time travelers, it could also potentially change what for them is the past, and you know that would create some sort of temporal paradox that would monumentally screw up everything, and we don't even have Geordi LaForge around to fix things.

Nemiroff was interviewed by Raw Story about his research, and the interviewer actually asked him why he thought that a time traveler would use Twitter at all.  "Twitter is an echo of what’s going on in society," he replied, "so I’d ask you, 'Why do you think a traveler wouldn’t use Twitter?'  Besides, it wouldn’t have to be the traveler himself who used Twitter.  Someone could have overheard him say something prescient, and put that on Twitter in a way that would be magnified through conversation."

He then went on to relate the old joke about the guy who was searching for his lost car keys under a streetlight, and a cop comes along to help him.  After a fruitless search, the cop asks, "Are you sure you lost your car keys here?"  And the guy says, "No, I lost them over there."  The cop says, in some annoyance, "Then why are you looking for them here?"  And the guy says, "Because there's better light over here."

Nemiroff says that his search on Twitter is like the guy searching under the streetlight; "You have to go where the information is."  To which I respond: I don't think you understood the joke.  The whole reason that it's funny is because the keys weren't there.  Also, very possibly, because the guy looking for the car keys was a wingnut.  This is definitely not the kind of joke that you would use in support of what you're doing.

Nemiroff, though, isn't discouraged.  "We didn’t prove that time travelers aren’t here," he said, "only that we couldn’t find them."

Now, don't get me wrong, I have nothing with a couple of scientists having a little lighthearted fun, once in a while.  But Nemiroff and Wilson might want to prepare themselves for a nomination for the 2014 IgNobel Prizes, awarded to the strangest, silliest research published each year.

So despite Nemiroff's and Wilson's best efforts, they ended up like Monty Python's "Camel Spotters;" they spotted nearly one time traveler.  Just about what I'd expect, given their experimental protocol.  So I should wrap up this post and go and get another cup of coffee, especially considering that because of the Great February 2014 Coffee Bean Shortage, I'll soon be...

Oops.

Hank the Bigfoot, and the minimum standard for evidence

One of the charges that gets leveled at skeptics is that we're not just questioning the evidence, we've already decided beforehand what we believe -- that is, that we're as blind to actual evidence as the people we're criticizing.  I've gotten that comment from people of a variety of different beliefs -- from the religious, from ghost hunters, from alien aficionados, from conspiracy theorists.  But always, it's the same:

"You're not really a skeptic.  You selectively ignore evidence that doesn't fit your beliefs.  If you'd just open your eyes, you'd see that you're so certain that you wouldn't accept hard evidence if it came up and bit you right on the ass."

To which I say: okay, I acknowledge that we all have our biases.  But at least people who subscribe to the scientific method have something going for them that most of the aforementioned so-and-sos don't; we have a decision-making protocol for deciding what actually counts as evidence.  Evidence has to meet the minimum standard of (1) supporting whatever the contention is, and (2) not supporting some other contention even better.

So while we might have our own biases, we're not as likely to fall for them as you might think.  When hoaxes and bad research happen -- as they do, sometimes -- the perpetrators almost always get caught out eventually.

Because if science is good at one thing, it's self-correction.  The majority of bad research never gets read, because the vetting process (replication and peer review) winnows out most of it before it gets very far along.  It's only the odd exception that slips through, and even those usually get caught in short order once published (forcing the public embarrassment of a retraction, such as the mess surrounding the Andrew Wakefield paper that alleged a connection between vaccination and autism).

Now, contrast that to what happens in other areas of study.  Just in the last two days, for example, we have three news stories, which I will present in increasing order of craziness, in the field of cryptozoology.  And nowhere that I've seen has anyone, even the more-or-less reputable cryptozoologists who would like to see the subject become a legitimate area of study, yell at these people, "Will you please stop making shit up?  Because you're embarrassing yourselves and everyone else in the field."

And apparently they've never even heard of the word "retraction."

Let's start with our friend Rick Dyer, who has appeared in Skeptophilia several times before for his outlandish claims of having seen Bigfoot, photographed Bigfoot, videotaped Bigfoot, found footprints of Bigfoot, found hair from Bigfoot, and slow-danced with Bigfoot.  Okay, I made the last one up, but that's not so far, plausibility-wise, from what he's now claiming:

That he has shot a Bigfoot, and is soon going to be touring the country with the body.

Oh, yes, and the Bigfoot's name was "Hank:"

My first thought, upon seeing this, was "Dear god, no!  He killed Glóin the Dwarf!"

But no, Dyer is saying that this time, really and truly cross his heart and hope to die, he has a real Bigfoot.  Which he will show us, really soon.  Promise.

Which at least isn't as silly as the latest entry from the category of Yet Another Bigfoot Video that appeared over at Unexplained Mysteries a couple of days ago.  You can see the whole video here, which shows what appears to be either some poorly-executed CGI or else a video clip of a guy in a costume filmed using the "AutoBlur" function.  Here's a still:

Isn't it funny how, in these days of digital imaging, when an average cellphone can take better photographs than a $300 camera could twenty years ago, we still can't get a clear shot of these freakin' things?

But even that isn't as ridiculous as the claim by Kirk Sigurdson over at Cryptomundo that the reason we can't get close to Bigfoots is because they use infrasound like a "sound cannon" to make researchers sick:

(S)asquatch researchers have been grumbling about side-effects associated with ultra low frequency “blasting” for well over a decade… and for good reason: infrasound exposure can be quite uncomfortable, particularly when it is purposefully directed at a human target.

It can also be deadly. Perhaps this is why the subject of squatch-generated infrasound is an up-and-coming topic of great interest in bigfoot circles these days, along with the fact that cutting-edge human technology is catching up with the natural abilities of whales, dolphins, elephants, rhinos… and, yes, bigfoots...

When a bigfooter is exposed to infrasound—even though he (or she) cannot audibly hear the sound—its effects can certainly be felt.

Panic, anxiety, nausea, irregular heart rate, elevated heart rate, and the activation of “flight response” in the reptilian complex of the human target’s brain are only a few examples of observed side-effects.

So there you have it.  The Bigfoots are scaring us away with their infrasound blasting.  Maybe that's also what makes the photographs and video footage so blurry.

In any case.  I try to be patient with all of this stuff, I really do, and I make every effort to keep an open mind.  But every time I see one of these completely spurious claims trumpeted as real (and nearly every post in the "comments" section in full support, with any doubters getting shot down instantaneously as credulous fools who are unwilling to think outside science's "box"), I just throw my hands in the air in disgust.  I mean, really, people.  If you want to convince folks -- and by that I mean the ones who aren't already convinced, i.e. the people who would like to have a little in the way of hard evidence before they ink themselves into the "believers" column -- then do a bit of self-policing.  Establish some standard of veracity.  I know there are a few places that do a pretty good job in this regard -- the Society for Psychical Research and Centre for Fortean Zoology being two good examples.  But for cryin' in the sink, those are two sites amongst thousands.

So until you folks figure out a way to rein in the hoaxers and wackos, don't come complaining that the skeptics are viewing y'all with a wry eye.  Because we actually have an established protocol for what constitutes evidential support.  It's you people who refuse to use it.