Tag Archives: Climate Change

Podcasts

Stephen C. Meyer on the nationally syndicated Michael Medved show

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The Michael Medved show is a national radio show broadcast out of Seattle, Washington. According to Talkers magazine, he has the fifth largest radio audience. Mr. Medved will now have a segment on origins, evolution and intelligent design every week.

Here is the announcement:

Does science conflict with religious faith? Does nature offer scientific evidence of design? Should public-school students learn about all sides of contentious scientific issues? Or should teachers spoon-feed them with only the politically approved views? Should scientists be free to pursue the truth, wherever the search takes them? What if it leads to conclusions that are disturbing to a rigidly secular point of view?

Starting this Thursday, April 25, the Michael Medved Show will shine a bright light on these and other fascinating questions that are vital to the future of our nation and our culture.

[…]From Darwinian evolution to climate change, science has become a major flashpoint in the culture war. In using science as a political and cultural weapon, aggressive, evangelizing materialists count on our not knowing enough to argue back. That’s why, to follow and participate in the greatest debates of our day, you need to know about the science behind the controversies.

Each week, leading fellows from Discovery will join Mr. Medved to talk about the intersection of science and culture, how bad science and biased science are corroding the best American values. They’ll talk about the assault on human dignity and uniqueness, about attempts to silence dissenting scientists and suppress academic freedom. They will discuss the danger posed by revived Social Darwinism and the new eugenics. And yes, they’ll explore the debate over scientific materialism versus intelligent design.

The Michael Medved Show is one of the top ten most listened to radio talk shows in the United States. Syndicated to some 200 radio stations, it reaches an estimated weekly audience of 3-4 million people.

Here is the first segment, courtesy of the Intelligent Design: The Future podcast.

The MP3 file is available for download at the link above.

The description is:

On this episode of ID the Future, hear Dr. Stephen Meyer talk with Michael Medved on the Medved Show’s very first “Science and Culture Update.”

Each week, leading fellows from Discovery Institute will join Mr. Medved to talk about the intersection of science and culture. Listen in live online or on your local Medved station, or stay tuned for at ID the Future for the weekly podcast.

The podcast is about 15 minutes long, and focuses on work of the atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel, and his views on intelligent design. I highly recommend that you listen to the podcast. It was awesome.

This segment was broadcast in the third hour of the Thursday show, so I am expecting that it will be a regular feature of the third hour. This is cause for rejoicing – a mainstream radio audience is going to have a chance to think about how science and culture interact. Great news!

Now might be a good time to subscribe to the ID: The Future podcast.

News

Reuters: scientists struggling to explain 15 years of global cooling

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From the left-leaning Reuters news service.

Excerpt:

Scientists are struggling to explain a slowdown in climate change that has exposed gaps in their understanding and defies a rise in global greenhouse gas emissions.

Often focused on century-long trends, most climate models failed to predict that the temperature rise would slow, starting around 2000. Scientists are now intent on figuring out the causes and determining whether the respite will be brief or a more lasting phenomenon.

[…]”The climate system is not quite so simple as people thought,” said Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish statistician and author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist” who estimates that moderate warming will be beneficial for crop growth and human health.

Some experts say their trust in climate science has declined because of the many uncertainties. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had to correct a 2007 report that exaggerated the pace of melt of the Himalayan glaciers and wrongly said they could all vanish by 2035.

“My own confidence in the data has gone down in the past five years,” said Richard Tol, an expert in climate change and professor of economics at the University of Sussex in England.

I think it’s important to note that science is not to blame for these failed predictions. What is to blame is government handing money to corrupt charlatans who then produce “scientific research” that proves that bigger government is needed to control capitalism and constrain individual liberty. In effect, government bribed the university charlatans to fake research that would trick the public into voting for more government control of job creators and their employees. The fastest way to solve this would be to get the government out of the higher education business and let science serve the needs of ordinary people instead of corrupt socialists.

News

Report: biofuels raise the cost of gas for little environmental benefit

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From the liberal BBC.

Excerpt:

A report by Chatham House says the growing reliance on sustainable liquid fuels will also increase food prices.

The author says that biodiesel made from vegetable oil was worse for the climate than fossil fuels.

Under EU law, biofuels are set to make up 5% of the UK’s transport fuel from today.

Since 2008, the UK has required fuel suppliers to add a growing proportion of sustainable materials into the petrol and diesel they supply. These biofuels are mainly ethanol distilled from corn and biodiesel made from rapeseed, used cooking oil and tallow.

But research carried out for Chatham House says that reaching the 5% level means that UK motorists will have to pay an extra £460m a year because of the higher cost of fuel at the pump and from filling up more often as biofuels have a lower energy content.

The report say that if the UK is to meet its obligations to EU energy targets the cost to motorists is likely to rise to £1.3bn per annum by 2020.

[…]There are also worries that taking EU land out of production to grow rapeseed oil in particular is creating more climate problems than it solves. The more fuel of this type that is put into cars the bigger the deficit created in the edible oils market. This had lead to increased imports of palm oil from Indonesia, often produced on deforested land.

“Once you take into account these indirect effects, biofuels made from vegetable oils actually result worldwide in more emissions than you would get from using diesel in the first place,” said Rob Bailey.

“Plus you are asking motorists to pay more for the fuel – it makes no sense, it is a completely irrational strategy.”

Meanwhile, closer to home:

The Obama administration on Monday renewed an interagency agreement that backs the development of biofuels for the aviation industry and reiterated its support for embattled federal renewable fuel targets.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood signed a pact extending a program that has worked with the private sector and rural communities to create an alternative to fossil fuels for aviation.

“We want to re-affirm the importance of this particular industry in this administration,” Vilsack told reporters at an industry conference in Washington.

The “Farm to Fly” program aims to support annual production of 1 billion gallons of aviation biofuels by 2018.

The program will focus on evaluating various sources of renewable alternatives to jet fuel, while also developing state and local partnerships with private companies.

Federal support for biofuels has come under increased scrutiny amid complaints from livestock producers and refiners that the federal biofuels mandate has contributed to higher food prices and could threaten gasoline supplies.

This isn’t a smart way to improve air quality, and it’s not going to help consumers who are already paying a ton of money for gas.