Why Scientists Should Be Atheists revisited

My Oxford University Press blog post on Why Scientists Should Be Atheists generated an interesting discussion in the comments of my blog post here that linked to it. One issue that was raised was my use of the word ‘should’ and why I was singling out scientists with that imperative. Why should scientists apply the same standards they use in science to everything in life? Of course, no one can be forced to do so and people can (and do) compartmentalize their thinking to enable them to be scientists by day and believers in all manner of supernatural entities by night (so to speak).
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The carbon bucket will soon overflow

A graphic from the Global Carbon Project vividly illustrates how close we are to a tipping point in climate change.

What is the benefit of remote starting cars?

I came across this tragic item of a person who was killed when a car that had been remotely started moved.

A New York man has died after being crushed by an empty car accidentally started by remote control.

Michael Kosanovich, 21, had been standing between two parked 2002 Lexus IS300s, on 6 December, when one of them had been started remotely by its owner, police said.

The car rolled forward and he was pinned between the two vehicles.

Bystanders tried to push them apart but as they did so, the car rolled forward and crushed him again.

Mr Kosanovich was taken to hospital with severe trauma to his torso and legs, according to the New York Police Department (NYPD). He died of his injuries on 7 December.

The NYPD said Mr Kosanovich had been inspecting one of the vehicles at the time of the accident, intending to buy it.

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Taking advantage of people desperate for miracle cures

Coincidences abound. A couple of weeks I was talking about Jonathan Miller and the next day I learned that he had died. Then just a few of days ago, I mentioned Alan Keyes’s name because he was the source of the so-called ‘crazification factor’, the size of the population that votes on the basis of tribal loyalty over everything else. I casually wondered what had happened to him. He used to constantly run as a Republican for federal elected offices the US senate in 1988, 1992, and 2004, as well as the presidency in 1996, 2000, and 2008. He is a conservative Christian, fiercely anti-abortion and anti-gay and was a birther to boot.
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Measles cases surge globally. Happy now, anti-vaxxers?

In 2000, there were 28.2 million cases of measles and 535,600 deaths. Thanks to massive efforts and vaccines, those numbers started coming down dramatically but more recently measles cases have risen again around the world. It is reported that in the last year alone, it went from 7.6 million cases of measles and 124,000 deaths in 2017 to 9.8 million cases of measles and 142,000 deaths in 2018, most of them children under the age of five.

It should be noted that it was in 1998 that discredited British physician Andrew Wakefield (who was later stripped of his medical credentials) published his now notorious and later withdrawn paper claiming a vaccine-autism link, that the British Medical Journal editorialized as an “elaborate fraud” and credited an investigative journalist Brian Deer with exposing it.
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CO2 emissions for 2019 will hit record, but rate of increase is slower

Scientific American magazine reports that the Global Carbon Project has released a study that has bad news and just a bit of good news.

Global carbon emissions are expected to hit an all-time high in 2019, scientists say, smashing a previous record set in 2018.
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There is some good news. The authors expect a substantial slowdown in worldwide fossil fuels emissions for this year. Emissions from coal, oil and natural gas expanded by about 2% globally in 2018. For all of 2019, they predict an expansion of just 0.6%.

Part of the slowdown can be attributed to declines in coal use in the U.S. and much of Europe, and lower-than-expected growth from other key coal consumers this year.

“We’re estimating a decline of 10% this year” for the U.S., said the Global Carbon Project’s executive director, Pep Canadell, “well above previous decline levels.”

But slowing the growth rate is not enough. We need to lower the rate altogether.

Philanthropy as a license to behave badly

I have had many posts about really awful wealthy people (the Sackler family and Jeffrey Epstein being noted examples) using philanthropy to cover over the stain of their actions and enable them to act like they are pillars of the community. The assumption is that these acts of generosity are after-the-fact attempts at covering up their ill-gotten gains or their evil acts and ingratiating themselves into society.

But Patricia Illingworth, a professor of ethics, writes that the problem is even worse and that the very act of philanthropy may actually give these people a sense that they have the right to behave badly, something she refers to as ‘moral licensing’.
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I can’t believe I’m defending Donald Trump

I was intrigued by this news item.

One of President Donald Trump’s most common responses to intelligence briefings is to doubt what he’s being told, former Deputy Director of Intelligence Susan Gordon said Tuesday.

Gordon, an intelligence veteran of more than 30 years, said Monday that Trump had two typical responses to briefings.

“One, ‘I don’t think that’s true,'” Gordon told the Women’s Foreign Policy Group.

“The one is ‘I’m not sure I believe that,'” Gordon continued, “and the other is the second order and third order effects. ‘Why is that true? Why are we there? Why is this what you believe? Why do we do that?’ Those sorts of things.”

The article implied that Trump was asking these questions because he had got information from other sources that he liked and trusted more that went counter what the intelligence briefers were telling him.

In my own teaching of science, I had two goals: (1) to enable students to sufficiently understand (not necessarily believe) the scientific consensus on the topic we were learning so that they could use it to solve problems; and (2) to get in the habit of reflexively asking themselves the questions: What do I believe? Why do I believe it? What is the evidence for it? What is the counter-evidence against it?

I felt that these two things enabled them to function is the world of science as well as building up necessary critical thinking skills that would stand them in good stead in all areas of their lives.

So I cannot fault Trump for asking the intelligence officials such questions. Of course, it is not clear if he was actually seeking information in order to make better judgments or whether he was merely finding a way to reject conclusions he did not find congenial. Given what we know about him, the latter is likely but still the asking of such questions is a good thing.