Scientific American – RAnt(hony)-ings

Climate Change: Australia’s Wildfires

The fires raging across the southern half of the Australian continent this year have so far burned through more than 5 million hectares. To put that in context, the catastrophic 2018 fire season in California saw nearly 740,000 hectares burned. The Australian fire season began this year in late August (before the end of our winter). Fires have so far claimed nine lives, including two firefighters, and destroyed around 1,000 homes. It is too early to tell what the toll on our wildlife has been, but early estimates suggest that around 500 million animals have died so far, including 30 percent of the koala population in their main habitat. And this is all before we have even reached January and February, when the fire season typically peaks in Australia.
Scientific American Blogs

Hat/Tip to Cool Physics and Mopery With Intent to Gawk

New York Times: The Daily

Stitcher – The Daily – January 13, 2020

Today, Explained – One billion animals dead – Monday, January 13, 2019

We Deceive Ourselves to Better Deceive Others

Facebook – The Skeptic’s Guide – Scientific American

I have known for a long time that you have to believe a thing before you can convince others. I see no reason to limit that observation of human nature by saying the things you manipulate with must be true. They just have to sound true, and most of that is presentation.

It’s good to get confirmation of the hypothesis through scientific study, even though I’m not surprised by the results. Most people will only watch/read far enough to get confirmation of the thing they are told to believe, want to believe. It takes effort to discover the whole picture. If there is no reward in filling out the picture, most people will not bother.

I would be interested in discovering which portion of the test group refused to do the work after watching all the videos. Were they less inclined to demonize or praise? That information would be more revealing of human nature, in my opinion.

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Best April Fish Joke, Ever

Spotted on Scientific American, now available only on the Wayback Machine if you know how to look for it. I, dear reader, am just the kind of geek you are looking for to find this kind of useless false information and re-expose it to the light of day.

Good journalism values balance above all else. We owe it to our readers to present everybody’s ideas equally and not to ignore or discredit theories simply because they lack scientifically credible arguments or facts. Nor should we succumb to the easy mistake of thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S. senators or best-selling novelists do. Indeed, if politicians or special-interest groups say things that seem untrue or misleading, our duty as journalists is to quote them without comment or contradiction. To do otherwise would be elitist and therefore wrong. In that spirit, we will end the practice of expressing our own views in this space: an editorial page is no place for opinions.

It appears that they have republished this tidbit annually since 2005.

Facebook status update backdated to the blog. SA has published this article annually (as far as I can tell) every year since 2005 (it is 4/5/2018 now) Good satire never gets old, especially when half the American population still rejects evolution.