Thanks to Ed Brayton and some other folks, FreeThoughtBlogs has been successfully moved to a new host, many thanks to those of you who witnessed our birth pains. So now we can rock and/or roll!

The image above shows the actual NASA Global Temperature Index by meteorological station produced by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies or GISS — in repsonse to the comment below, you can actually see what the annual numbers looks like here or tabulated and formatted in various visual presentations here. The raw data for this graph are empirical observations, temperatures around the world to be exact. After the highs in 1998 and 2005, climate change skeptics — many funded by the fossil fuel industry — proclaimed an era of global cooling was upon us and we can thankfully dismiss those biased scientists at NASA and elsewhere when they say otherwise. It’s a neat swindle; using that dishonest tactic every local or absolute maximum record temperature is by definition evidence for global cooling!

Now that the solid numbers for 2010 are in, they’re back to explaining the evidence doesn’t matter. Imagine what they’d think if that chart were upside down, no doubt they would clearly see a powerful, unmistakable cooling trend huh? With last year’s data in the graph, we can now add a new entry to the original climate change (denial) 101 apologetics by year and mean temperature visual aid. Here at the Zingularity we believe one good, or bad, turn deserves another. Presenting the unofficial climate change denial 101 game plan:

So far the CRU hack seems to be the main spiel used to distract from the new data. Which in itself is a con because that event vindicated the scientists involved. Mike Mann, perhaps best known for the Hockey Stick paleoclimatic record and who was on the inside of that event, reminded me just now by email that, “There have now been a half dozen investigations by various independent organizations and commissions in the U.S. and the U.K. and in every case they have found that there was absolutely no evidence of scientific misconduct revealed in the fossil fuel industry-manufactured controversy known as ‘climate gate’. As the pre-eminent journal Nature editorialized about the theft of emails and subsequent smear campaign by industry-funded climate change deniers”: “The theft highlights the harassment that denialists inflict on some climate change researchers”.”

Needless to say, reality never stands in the way of a good zombie lie.

While writing another post today there were a couple of annoying programs on my local cable stations, both on channels that are supposed to be about science and history. Or used to be anyway. The first was a documentary on ghosts, the other a look at the legend of Noah’s Ark. The former was bad enough, the latter gave the flood story way to much credence and covered it with far too little objectivity. Ghost shows are just too damn ridiculous, so I opted for the Ark nonsense. That program took the dodge of a local flood, basically reducing Noah to a mystical guy who builds an advanced — by Bronze Age standards — raft with a lean-to houseboat on one end and maybe some goats and chickens tied up on the other side. 

They could have mentioned for example that no matter how much “pitch” was used to seal it, a wooden boat the size of the biblical Ark  would not be seaworthy for long. Even relatively gentle waves would produce stress beyond the strength of wooden ship building materials available at the time. Let alone a pitching, rolling ocean in the middle of a rainstorm laying down several feet of rain an hour for weeks on end.

The program could have introduced viewers to some basic thermodynamics and meteorology, how much water can be held by the atmosphere at specific temperatures and pressures for example. I haven’t worked out what a shell of liquid water  representing a global rise in sea level of several thousand meters would imply if held as vapor. I’ll go out on a limb here and predict it means a five to tenfold increase in ambient pressure and a rise in global temperatures  of a couple of hundred degrees.  This is a radically different planet than the one we live in. It would be covered with thick clouds from poles to equator, from space we’d be a brilliant puffy white cotton ball. On the surface it would be darker than a moonless night and hot enough to cook the flesh right off the bones.

Geologists know a lot about which sediments and what marine environments produce various types of sedimentary rocks and how those deposits can be cooked and folded, some even eroding away to form totally new deposits. Limestone and shale require different kinds of conditions to form than sandstone. And yet all over the world there are layers of sandstone sandwiched between other kinds of rock. My friend Ed Brayton has a great zinger where he wryly notes “Right in the middle of a massive global flood a desert broke out.”

But I heard precious little modern geology or science on the show. And that’s a disservice. Because that’s what the actual flood story in Genesis says or clearly implies. It was a giant boat with two of a whole bunch of species on board and enough food and water to keep them alive for the better part of a year, the flood was global, so vast it created many geological features we see today, and it rained enough in 40 days to cover the mountains. The ark eventually rested on Mt. Ararat giving a minimum water depth of 5,137 meters or almost 17,000 ft. When the water receded 7 months later (Where exactly does a global sea recede to, underground caves? ), God made the first rainbow as a sign he would not destroy the world again. Or at least anytime soon.  

 Speaking of God and climate, I didn’t get a chance to make it to Rick Perry’s prayathon down in Houston this weekend. But I can tell you it’s about 105° degrees outside in Austin right now, not a cloud in the sky. One would think if Noah witnessed a divine flood covering the earth, God would have the ability to give Rick Perry a gentle summer rain shower over a parched Lone Star State smack dab in the middle of the worst drought on record. Dumb question: is there any kind of time horizon for effectiveness on these things? Can we establish a date or devise a sliding scale for the purpose of testing the prayer-and-effect hypothesis?

As mentioned in the introductory post on the Zingularity, like everyone else on earth I was born an atheist, unlike most, I stayed that way. Long before I was old enough to know why super natural beliefs were suspect, I was prone toward skepticism. I always wondered why I was spared, or cursed according to some. Is it possible there’s a genetic component to my view? I don’t know. If there is, it would surely be a complex interplay of genes and culture. But let’s speculate, let’s assume such a genetic basis exists. Purely for the purpose of discussion.

The reason I find this idea so fascinating is because evolution works on genes. One popular definition of evolution is “a change in alleles within a population over time,” where an allele is one of two or more versions of a gene. Most of us alive today descend from the large populations that developed around early city states. It’s a numerical likelihood for one thing, and those populations were the ones that developed resistance to endemic diseases that plagued early settlements and ravaged remaining bands of hunter-gatherers.

If modern history is any guide, many of those early populations held a rich mythology, and they weren’t terribly tolerant of dissenting views. A thought experiment: if, over centuries and thousands of generations, individuals who did not profess a firm belief in local superstition were socially unpopular, up to and including outright massacred, then a propensity to accept the prevailing mythology might confer an adaptive advantage. Iterate countless times, our speculative alleles become fixed, and the resulting population might be composed chiefly of those who believe, or those who excel at pretending they do. We might end up with two main kinds of people, true believers and shameless, one might even infer sociopathic, fakers. Sound familiar?

OK, it’s a giant stretch. An egregious jump with little or no data behind it, and it’s probably difficult to test. Besides, religion probably has all kinds of adaptive value beyond my hasty speculation. Genocide is sure as hell not contigent on religion — humans have been coming up with ugly justifications for it since antiquity and probably long before that. The willingness to suspect unseen, hidden cause and effect, the desire to construct fanciful explanations for observed phenomena, could even help fuel the intellectual engine behind what we call science today.

But it strikes me as an interesting notion nevertheless.

The imgur site claims the following comments are taken from a cable news comment page, ostensibly in relation to a story involving religion or atheists. I have no way to confirm that, or when it happened if it indeed did. But if someone can try that would be great. Some of the alleged comments:

I say kill them all and let them see for themselves that there is a God.
KILL THEM.
These people are the scum of the earth.
Can we start killing them now?
Few groups are filled with more hatred than atheists.
Nail them to that cross.

And it goes on and on. Again I haven’t confirmed this; I’m in a place where I can’t do that right now. No idea if that’s legit stuff or completely made up. Have at it.

Update 6:20 PM CDT: Yeap, Jerry Coyne covered this and they appear to be genuinely posted on a Fox News Facebook page. Hat tip Ex Machina in comments below.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (NASA/JPL homepage) has snapped some intriguing photos of what appears to be evidence for relatively recently flowing water. The dark, dare I say almost greenish streaks, suggest sub Martian ice may have liquefied during the planet’s lengthy spring and summer and poured down a crater wall forming gullies and other features:

“The key here is we know Mars has a lot of ice, but this is the first time we’re ever seen the potential for liquid,” said Phil Christensen, a Mars researcher with Arizona State University who wasn’t involved in the research. “They’re finding water much closer to where it can be liquid through much of the year.” The initial finding was made by a University of Arizona undergraduate student, Lujendra Ojha.

The highest temperatures on Mars rarely exceed the freezing point of water on earth, but researchers speculate there may be salt and other minerals mixed in which would lower the melting point. Follow the water has become the slogan among astrobiologists. Many feel the best shot for find extraterrestrial life, including life transported by impacts between planets in our solar system, is to find the water. The solution for all life we know about is literally water. That’s why places like the Jovian moon Europa beckon.

It was thought after the Viking Missions in 1976 that Mars might be a very dry world. The Mars Phoenix lander in 2008 changed that view. Not only did the landscape revealed by Phoenix’s cameras show unmistakable signs of a phenomenon well known to geologists and hydrologists called frost heaving, the lander found large deposits of water ice a few inches below the Martian soil everywhere it looked.

The question I have for any biologist or microbiologist who wants to take a crack at it: given what we know of the Martian soil and other environmental conditions, and assuming some briny seasonal water a few inches below the surface, are there types of terrestrial bacteria that could survive? Intuition tells me there ought to be, but I’m no microbiologist.

Far from being a dry world, Mars may turn out to have quite a bit of water safely stored away as ice. And water is one of the more useful substances we can find in space. It’s not just great for drinking, it can be used to create oxygen to breath, and it can be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen, the basis of a powerful liquid rocket fuel. On Mars we may have a little world with carbon and nitrogen in the air, water underground, and enough iron and other minerals locked up in the ancient shifting sands to sustain a human colony on the Red Planet. To Mars, bitches!

Fox News is worried, about the children of America being fed misleading information. In cartoon form no less. Won’t someone please think of the children?

Today’s (August 3) edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends included a remarkable exchange on the issue of SpongeBob Squarepants, climate change science, and the state of science education in the U.S. Apparently, using cartoons to teach children about important science issues of the day raises hackles at Fox, especially when those issues are at odds with their political perspectives. In particular, Fox & Friends attacked SpongeBob for an episode in which the role of human emissions …

The horror! Using poor, innocent cartoons to help children understand our world. Fox went full-bore against this scientific heresy. And man, it’s a damn good thing Fox is holding the line against this ideological propaganda in slick celluloid form. Where are all the other news networks?

Oh yes, you know what comes next, right? Mike Huckabee, Fox News contributor, has a little side business, a little old cartoon series of his own to peddle:

So — what does Huckabee’s “unbiased” view of 9/11 look like? A lot of praise for the PATRIOT act (which it, should be said, many conservatives don’t like), a lot of praise for the Department of Homeland Security, a lot of praise for Israel and the clear implication that President George W. Bush was responsible for the death of Osama bin Laden.

One might think Fox News, given their deep and no doubt geniune concern for the nation’s children, might want to mention their own contributor’s lack of, ummm, comprehensive review. Instead they went on a tear about how US kids are falling behind in science. Right after taking down climate change vis-a-vie Comrade Spongebob. Fair and balanced. They report, you decide.

Riffing off of Ed’s post on Stephen Meyers, which I can’t link because the site suddenly won’t let me, and it probably won’t let me for a very good reason. But it’s just creationist clown Stephen Meyers pitching the tired old creationist argument about “No New Info.” If you haven’t ever seen that one, it basically claims that nature cannot produce “new information.” And since the field of analytical information theory is even more obscure and specialized than the other popular fields of twisted creationist swindles like the one misusing thermodynamics. No one wants to get in the weeds on it. That’s one of the reasons creationists like to use it.

It happens that this argument is easy to disprove, in the formal sense, as in disproven to a 100% metaphysical certainty. And all you need to understand the shape of that proof is a firm grasp on what Less Than, and More Than, mean in elementary arithmetic.

Assume a genome replicating to form a daughter, and an information metric in which the terms ‘more’ info or ‘less’ info exist. If a single random mutation occurred between parent and daughter, creationists would say it must have less information. Now assume a back mutation when the daughter replicates which reversing the original mutation, thus restoring it to the exact same state as the parent. Nice huh?

In other words, if what creationists claim is true, it becomes possible for a genome — and by extension an organism — to have less, or more, information than itself, at least as defined by any genetic characteristics, which is a clear violation of one of the fundamental requirements of any metric set.

Hot off the press! More unsourced rumors! I hear strong rumors swirling from my own proven DC sources that the following names will probably be on, or are at least being very seriously considered, for the budget-deal super-duper committee:

On the GOP Senate side: Jon Kyle, Jeff Sessions, Orrin Hatch.

On the Dem Senate side, Max Baucus and Chuck Schumer … couldn’t get much else there.

On the House GOP side it was Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan (Of course!) and on the House Dem side Steny Hoyer or Nancy Pelosi, then Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Sandy Levin (D-MI).

Use them at your own risk, I was unable to get anyone to speak on the record with attribution about any of the above.

That is all.

A few new speculative details emerged on the plight of Charles Monnett of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE). Via New Scientist:

In 2004, during an aerial survey of bowhead whales in the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska, Monnett and his colleague Jeffrey Gleason observed four dead polar bears. In 2006, they noted in Polar Biology that these were the first drowned bears seen since the survey began in 1987 – and speculated that such drownings may increase as pack ice retreats.

So what is Monnett being accused of here? Faking the sightings, manipulating data elsewhere? Your guess is as good as mine.

Update from a reader in comments below: Interview with Monnett linked here.

Or rather we were beaten last week, as in We the Atheist People, I’m just now catching up. Texas Governor and possible 2012 GOP Presidential contender Rick Perry was handed a victory last week in a suit brought against his activities by atheists:

Judge Gray H. Miller, of Federal District Court in the Southern District of Texas, ruled that the plaintiffs — the foundation and five of its Houston-area members — had suffered no concrete injury and that the governor’s invitations for Texans to join him in a day of prayer were “requests, not commands.” People offended by the governor’s prayer rally can either not attend, not pray or express their disapproval using their First Amendment rights, the judge said. He dismissed the lawsuit and the motion to stop the governor’s official participation.

Perry is one hell of a piece of work. He went from an old-school southern Dixiecrat who ran one of Al Gore’s early campaigns to a fire-breathing social conservative in the space of a few years. The progressive (And the Texan!) in me fears the damage a Perry administration could do to the already fragile United States. The blogger who is living part-time in Austin in me crackles in amusement at the thought of covering Perry: George Bush clone, Texas Ranger, for four years or more