The Questioning Librarian

I freely admit a very great and growing disillusionment with Michael Shermer. While previously I had immense respect for him and what he had to say, I've been disappointed with some of his recent columns in Scientific American, and freely criticized his post dismissing the problem of income inequality in the United States when it was posted a few weeks ago. His libertarian flag is flying high again in his August column for the magazine in which he appears to side with known climate change denier Bjorn Lomborg in asserting that climate change is just one of many problems we face, and by no means the most important. The article is somewhat muddled, making it difficult to determine just what, exactly, Shermer is calling for.  He agrees that climate change is real, and a threat, and that something should be done, but he attempts to cast a lot of doubt on how severe the effects of climate change will be. Shermer writes that while global warming is real, "predicting how mu...

I think I only just noticed on Friday that it was spring. Yes, there have been a few warm and sunny days this past month, more than welcome after the endless night of winter, but they seemed illusory, like it was too good to be true just yet. When I left the apartment that morning, there could be no doubt that the season had arrived. The scent of the air, the small warmth of the breeze, and the morning sunshine meant spring, for certain. I noticed how green the grass was, how without noticing it the trees had all started budding and blooming. My drive north to State College for a meeting was an endless panorama of mountains turned green, with brilliant dots of purple, scarlet and white revealing the blossoms of spring among them. I finally planted flowers today, turning a desolate patch of weed into a more attractive plot of ordered flowers, and while my back aches from the work, I always feel at home when I'm working with plants, rare though that may be anymore.  For over ten...

I have an unfortunate habit when it comes to the written word. Not only do I acquire more books than I can expect to read, I tend to let magazines I subscribe to pile up until there is nearly a year's worth; I then, sometimes, start to read them one after another until I am finally caught up. I'm attempting to get better on both accounts, mostly to diminish the amount of things sitting gathering dust in my apartment. All this is a long and winding path to get to the fact that I'm currently working through several years of old Astronomy magazines. I no longer subscribe or purchase that magazine, not because I don't enjoy it but because there isn't enough time to keep up with every magazine I'd be interested in reading, while still being able to read the books I choose. In one old issue, at the beginning of 2011 (yes, they have piled up for quite a while!) the author wrote about what we can look forward to in the next decade as far as space missions. It really wa...

My last few reads have all had to do with climate change in some way or other. Needless to say, it has been a depressing bit of reading. From Donald Prothero's chapter tackling climate change denial in Reality Check to the article about sea level rise in September's National Geographic to the book I just finished, Bill McKibben's Oil and Honey ,   being presented with the enormity and the gravity of the problem is daunting to say the least. Worse still is the knowledge that much of our government, including representatives who are supposed to be acting on behalf of "the people", has been bought completely by the fossil fuel industry, money from oil and coal companies flowing into the coffers of politicians who then dutifully halt even the most limp-wristed half-measures to tackle the climate problem.  For all the denial that exists out there, I've generally thought that the basic science of climate change was fairly simple to grasp and, in an ideal world,...

It's no great secret that I used to vote straight-Republican in nearly every election. I was proud to vote for the party of individual responsibility and small government, as I saw it then, as opposed to what I viewed as the party of dependency and the nanny state. But the GOP I used to vote for isn't the same one, and I've changed myself. We parted ways several elections ago, and at this point I cannot bring myself to vote for a single Republican in any election, from the local representatives all the way up through to the Presidency. The Republican Party is, to put it at its mildest, a party driven by greed and by hostility to all those who are unlike themselves. They are the party of Avarice and the party of Cruelty, and they show this in their every word and their every action. The singular accomplishment of the modern GOP is the fusion of pro-corporate economics with radical religious fundamentalism. Both are toxic to the freedoms and liberties of the citizens of ...

Yesterday I came across a commercial for Unilever's Project Sunlight entitled "Why bring a child into this world?" Usually I skip right over these ads to get to the content I've actually come to watch, but I was curious enough to watch it through to the end. It is an interesting and important question that, in an ideal world, every couple or individual should give serious, reasoned thought to before having a child. I suspect that for many there is little thought given to it; either it is accidental or the attitude is taken that having children is just what people do. Given the world we live in and the future we face, the question needs more thought given to it than that.  The ad, however, is overwhelmingly positive, citing more food being grown, clean water, diseases cured and long lifespans for much of humanity. Take a look for yourself: There is something that deeply bothers me about this, beyond even the glossy propaganda that tells couples "The futur...

It is easy to get frustrated, and never more so when witnessing the absolute gullibility of humanity. We all know, of course, about the strange beliefs that some people hold, that aliens abduct and probe humans, that aliens built the pyramids, that planes disappear in the Bermuda Triangle and that Bigfoot is walking around somewhere in the undiscovered wilds. We may shake our heads at the fact that some people swallow an endless number of conspiracy theories, seeing the hidden hand of the Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Jews, or some other secretive power behind the workings of the world. We rightly mock and ridicule anyone who seriously believes that FEMA is setting up detention camps, just waiting for a crisis to allow them to impose a fascistic "New World Order" on the United States, or that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a false flag operation. These are easy targets, however, and only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to wrong and foolish things that we believe. ...

For a long time now, I've been concerned about the environment--worrying about my impact, worrying about the profligacy with which we burn through the natural resources of the earth, reading about climate change and conservation and all the implications of the millions of tons of carbon that we're sending up into the atmosphere with reckless abandon. This interest has led to, at times, some mildly obsessive behaviors,  including trundling all the recycling from the grocery store where I used to work to a collection point (picture it, the entire back end of a Jeep crammed with unsold newspapers and plastic strawberry containers). While I like to think that my behavior in this regard is a little less obsessive than it used to be, I still try to do my part. I'm fortunate that where I currently live I can mostly walk to where I need to go, so I'm happy to let my car sit while I walk to work and out for the occasional bite to eat. I still recycle as often as I can, and do s...

After an inexcusably long absence, I've returned today to my occasional series highlighting those people and organizations whose stances are not only in contradiction to reality but are so counter-factual as to be absurd. However, becoming an "Enemy of Reason", joining the ranks of such notables as Ken Ham, Conservapedia and Creation Moments, requires more than just the average brand of crazy. Being listed as an "Enemy of Reason" requires holding and promoting positions that are hopelessly irrational. Congresswoman Bachmann meets both of these qualifications. Sometimes an Enemy of Reason is a one-issue person, someone who may otherwise be reasonable except on that one topic that, as soon as they open their mouth and talk about it, makes them seem crazy. Others are crazy on a number of different positions, and it is into this category that Bachmann falls. The first position Michele Bachmann holds is support for the unscientific notion of Intelligent Design, ...

Reducing one's own impact really does begin at home. By now, we've all heard the exhortations to turn out the lights, switch to efficient light bulbs, turn off the faucet, etc, etc. These are all important, and I encourage people to be taking those steps to reduce energy consumption. Walk or bike if that's feasible. But what if there was another way to reduce energy consumption? Don't waste food! We all know that we do it; I'm no exception. But what if we can change that? We waste roughly  one-third of all food we produce.  Surely this is a terrible tragedy, an unconscionable waste. But this is the proverbial, and no pun intended, low-hanging fruit of the climate change debate. Forget windmills or solar power or electric cars (alright, well don't forget them, they are massively important for the overall solutions to the problem), this is something easy that can be done on a personal level by everyone in this country. If you really aren't going to eat it, d...

It's no great secret that I consider myself to be a center-right kind of guy. But frankly, people like James Inhofe make me ashamed to label myself as such. I try to base my opinions on facts and sound reason to the extent possible, but I don't think the good Senator from Oklahoma would know facts or reason if they stood and danced in front of him. Here's the full article:  http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/inhofe-obama-oil-gas/2011/03/08/id/388782?s=al&promo_code=BD37-1 Inhofe claims that the administration has admitted, specifically Energy Secretary Steven Chu, that they wish to drive up gas prices to the level of Europe in order to make alternative fuels competitive. What planet did this man arrive from? I have very serious doubts that any administration figure would seriously assert the notion that gas prices should rise to the level of Europe (about 7-8 dollars per gallon). The Administration's credibility depends upon an economic recovery before 2012, and...

Listening to NPR this morning while I was getting ready to leave, I was struck by the feature story that I was hearing over the airwaves, about the intersection of climate change and religion in Kiribati. In this little nation, where the overwhelming majority are deeply religious, many of the 33 islands are but six and a half feet above sea level while the most modest projections for sea level rise are around three feet according to IPCC estimates (which, according to the book I'm in the process of reading by Peter Ward, failed to take into account several factors which makes this estimate moot anyway; the actual rise in this century will be much higher, followed by endless centuries of rise). But even in this nation, surely a sign of the grim reality of climate change, as certain freshwater sources become increasingly saline and undrinkable, deniers exist. One interviewed man based his opposition on the Biblical Flood story of Noah in which, after the Ark landed on dry land, say...