Quark Soup by David Appell: Shellacking "The Republican Brain"

co-author Alex Berezow gives Mooney's approach to science a(nother) well-deserved shellacking:

"Herbert fawned over Mooney’s book, the primary thrust of which is that psychology, neuroscience, and genetics explain why Republicans are “smart idiots” and reality deniers. Herbert found Mooney’s book “convincing,” despite the fact that few (if any) scientists would agree. In fact, Mooney’s main premise has been roundly debunked as pseudoscientific nonsense by a neuroscientist, a biochemist, and high-profile evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne. As described in the New York Times, such critics resent the “bastardization [of neuroscience] by glib, sometimes ill-informed, popularizers.”

"Similarly, our book makes the point—among many others—that such politicization of science illustrates everything that is wrong with modern science journalism. In our chapter “The Death of Science Journalism,” we discuss how too many science writers have morphed into cheerleaders who uncritically embrace progressive political causes at the expense of good science. For these writers, science isn’t about uncovering the wonders of the natural world; instead, it’s just another platform from which to bash and demonize political opponents. We believe such journalistic malpractice epitomizes science writing at its absolute worst."

What’s Next?

[Harold Ambler] Now is a thrilling time to be a weather watcher and an even more thrilling time to be a climate-system watcher. Does Russia’s harshest winter in seventy years (including 1944), constitute a confirmation of the global cooling camp’s predictions? Does Northern Hemisphere snow cover above average for another winter constitute such a confirmation? Will more people in the United States study climate cycles sufficiently to understand that 2012 was not a particularly warm year in Earth’s history? It’s all thrilling as anything. And only time will tell.

It’s too late to stop global warming, according to top climate scientists | Science Recorder

Any possibility of halting the effects of global warming will likely fail, according to a newly released report.

A published report by Johannesburg-based Wits University geoscientist Dr. Jasper Knight and Dr. Stephan Harrison of the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, finds that government attempts to curtail greenhouse gas emissions over the past decade has largely failed and that policy makers should seek ways of adapting to a warmer planet.