The Jewel in the Crown – India
India has nothing but friends these days, that is if you leave out Pakistan. Russia’s her friend, has been for generations. China wants to be India’s BFF. And America is…
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The Polarizing Poles: Yet Another Study Shows That More Knowledgeable Conservatives Are *Worse* on Global Warming
Figure1b.png Bloggers and commentators have been talking a lot lately about a recent study, by Dan Kahan and colleagues in Nature Climate Change, capturing what I call the “smart idiot”…
The Big Waffle? New Report Exposes Corporations That Try to Split the Difference on Global Warming
caterpillar-logo-2401.jpg We hear a lot about the Koch brothers. And before them, we heard a lot about ExxonMobil. In other words, we all know the names of the corporations, and…
A Top Scientist Ignores the Science of Why People Deny Science
800px-Richard_Leakey.jpg In the world of evolutionary science, you don’t get much more prominent than Richard Leakey (pictured here). An anthropologist and conservationist, he’s the son of the archaeologist couple Louis…
The Meaning of Tropical Storm Alberto–and a 2012 Hurricane Rap Session
800px-Atlantic_hurricane_tracks.jpg Uh oh. Hurricane season has started early. On Saturday (the 19th), when Tropical Storm Alberto spun up off the Carolina coast, forecaster Brennan of the National Hurricane Center had…
Will Climate Denial, Like, Ever End?
The_Heartland_Institute_logo.png This week, as the Heartland Institute commences its annual conference, the organization is clearly back on its heels. Funders, experts, and even some staff are bailing, reports The Guardian.…
The Weekly Standard on “Hillbilly” Climate Denial
WStandard.c1.v17-34.May21.Cover_.jpg In its latest cover story, the conservative Weekly Standard has decided to try to refute, outside of the scientific literature, the large body of research on the psychological underpinnings…
Illinois Coal Association Emerges As Heartland Denial-a-Palooza Sponsor
shutterstock_71070031.jpg Following the May 4 shocking Unabomber billboard campaign and subsequent departures of more of Heartland's corporate donors, Heartland was likely heartened to add the Illinois Coal Association as a…
Us and Them: The Psychology Behind the Heartland Institute Billboards
Leo-blog–The-Heartland-I-007.jpg The Heartland Institute’s jaw-droppingly ill-advised, and now withdrawn billboard campaign—pictured here—has drawn a huge volume of denunciations in the last week. There’s not much more to say substantively about…
A View From Nowhere? The Case Against Knee-Jerk Centrism When It Comes to Politics and Science
n_hayes_gopuniteso_120505.jpg Debate over The Republican Brain is mounting, as emotional (and highly extraverted?) conservatives fling meaningless attacks at the book—attacks so off target it’s doubtful in most cases that the…
Corak in Context
Professor Miles Corak had a post on The Globe and Mail’s Economy Lab yesterday comparing measures of unemployment in Canada and the U.S. I remember learning in Economics 100 that…
Conservatives, Seeking To Show They Are Open-Minded, Ignore Contrary Evidence (And No, This Is Not an Onion Article)
brainsWEB.jpg I was on the road last week, so I couldn’t properly respond to this Daily Caller item, which is really sort of marvelous. Basically, it’s an attempt to use…
Let’s Just Say It: When It Comes to Science, The Right is the Problem
polar_House_Means.jpg This weekend in The Washington Post, two deans of the Washington establishment, the Brookings Institution’s Thomas Mann and the American Enterprise Institute’s Norman Ornstein, finally stated what has been…
Heartland Institute Attacks Forecast the Facts, Denies Its Climate Change Denial
heartland logo.jpg This is a guest post by Daniel Souweine, Campaign Director, Forecast The Facts On April 24, Heartland Institute President Joe Bast issued an angry missive attacking Forecast the…
Dueling Ledes (Compare & Contrast), Redux
AP video, Feb 15, 2011: A recent government report states the terrorist threat from Canada is greater than from Mexico, and that only 50 kilometres of the border is adequately…
Today In The Annals of Stupid Backlash Tricks
Flash: Aggrieved Daily Caller Ex-College Republican thumbsucker (is there any other kind?) has a megasad cuz his bike was stolen (if stats hold true, by a blackity-blackblack black kid!), causing…
Conservatives versus Science: A New Scientific Validation of the Republican War on Science (and Republican Brain) Thesis
rwos.jpg For a while now, I’ve been aware of a powerful new paper that directly tests the central argument of my 2005 book The Republican War on Science—and also validates…
How Do You Build a Scientific Republican?
411px-Jon_Huntsman_by_Gage_Skidmore.jpg It’s widely known that Republicans, far more than Democrats, reject modern climate science. And more and more, it has become apparent that this is at least partly because Republicans…
The Science of Truthiness: Why Conservatives Deny Global Warming
Final Cover.png These are notes for remarks that Chris Mooney gave recently at the Tucson Festival of Books, where he was asked to talk about his new book on a…