Let those global warming dollars flow | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

One of the weirdest (and by that I mean most ridiculous) claims I’ve heard from global warming deniers is the idea that somehow there is a cabal of scientists making up all the information we see about climate change.

First, scientists aren’t very good at that sort of collusion. As Ben Franklin said, "Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead." Scientists as a rule tend to abhor misleading people or out-and-out lying. And those who do tend to be caught by the peer-review process.

Anyway, ignoring the idea that tens of thousands of scientists are playing a Jedi mind trick on the rest of us without a single one of them betraying the secret (and no, Climategate and its sequel don’t count since that was all trumped up smoke and mirrors by the denier crowd), the real reason this claim is ludicrous is because of its supernova-bright irony: a lot of the deniers can be traced to having fossil fuel funding...Mind you, this isn’t supposed to be evidence that global warming deniers are paid frauds. It’s simply using Occam’s Razor, asking which makes more sense. Taken that way, it just shows the idea that scientists are on the wrong side of this is really silly.

The slaughter of polar bears that rarely gets mentioned (ca. 1890-1930) | polarbearscience

In summary, commercial whalers and fur traders slaughtered a huge number of polar bears world-wide, especially between 1890 to 1930, when more than 60,000 bears were harvested over a 40 year period. Polar bears share this history with many other marine mammals – they are not unique in that respect. However, in contrast to those other species, the modern literature on polar bears is largely silent about that black period of its history (except for Stirling 2011), to the detriment of modern polar bear research.

It is hard not to wonder why that is the case.

Grill a Burger, Go to Jail? | Power Line

Just watch: after they come for our burgers, they’ll come for our grilled chicken, too

Umbra’s second helpings: Unplug your vampire appliances [VIDEO] | Grist

Did you know that three-quarters of the energy your appliances burn is used while they’re turned off? It’s true.