Category Archive: Deserts

Mar 25 2013

Gizmodo fails again

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There’s a whole lot wrong with this Gizmodo piece on the proposed Palen Solar Electric Generating System. In fact, the fuckup per sentence ratio is higher than in any piece I’ve seen this month outside of Mercola.com. The Solar Energy Zone “Initiative” wasn’t “signed into law” by Obama — it was a record of decision …

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43 comments

Mar 22 2013

It’s nice to see someone willing to live by their own advice

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Bad Science, Deserts, Quackery

by Chris Clarke

All the scientists and naturalists out there crying foul on behalf of the desert need to hang their intellects up for a moment and spend some time in their hearts for a while. I get the best rebuttal yet to my piece taking down Allan Savory’s “green the deserts by filling them with cows” pseudoscience. …

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25 comments

Mar 20 2013

Joshua tree book excerpt up at KCET

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Deserts, Environment, Evolution, Organisms

by Chris Clarke

In March 2005, after record rains but before devastating wildfires that destroyed wide swaths of the Mojave National Preserve, I did a little thinking in one of my favorite places about solitude, growing up silent, campfires, and Dear old Dad. Oh, and yucca moths. Fleshed out slightly more, this KCET piece will be a chapter in …

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4 comments

Mar 15 2013

TED Talk: spreading bullshit about the desert

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Bad Science, Communicating science, Deserts, Ecology, Organisms, Quackery, Skepticism

by Chris Clarke

What? TED vectoring pseudoscience? Unpossible! In one recent particular instance, though, a TED talk firmly grounded in bullshit — literal and figurative — is gaining a mortifying amount of traction with people who really should know better. The lecturer is Allan Savory, who for the last couple decades has been pushing his own brand of …