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The Management

Bay Area cartoonist and animator Mark Fiore has given us another great cartoon narrated by Flamey McGassy. You might know Mr. McGassey from the educational video “Your Guide to Global Warming.” His follow up is entitled:

“If only we could pinpoint something that’s been reducing CO2 at high levels over the past few decades…”

If only.

You can view the cartoon here (requires Flash player).

If that was your answer in Jeopardy!, you’d probably be hard pressed to guess the question. However, this week’s This Modern World attempts to connect the dots.

You can read Tom Tomorrow’s chronicle of Gloomy Gus and Perky Pete at Working for Change.

The Union of Concerned Scientists is sponsoring a scientific integrity editorial cartoon contest they are calling “Science Idol.”

On issues from air quality to global warming, government science is being censored, manipulated, and distorted on an unprecedented scale. Scientists and citizens alike have helped UCS put the issue of political interference in science squarely on the public agenda. Now here’s your chance to show off your artistic and comedic talents in support of independent science—it’s said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what about an editorial cartoon?

The deadline is July 31, so get cracking. You can learn more about the “Science Idol” contest and UCS’s scientific integrity work here.

On another note, we’re moving. The Pacific Institute’s Integrity of Science Blog will soon be setting up residence at ScienceBlogs. More about that soon, but suffice to say we are excited to be joining the numerous excellent blogs that the Seed Magazine venture hosts.

While climate change threatens the extinction of thousands of plant and animal species, it seems to have brought beer-swilling-everyman-robots out of extinction.

In a creative ad for “An Inconvenient Truth,” Bender (of “Futurama” fame) shares the stage with, and provides belligerant response to, Vice President Gore.

It’s nice to know that despite the gloomy message of “An Inconvenient Truth,” and the science snuffing that continues to stall action, that VP Gore’s sense of humor is not extinct.

In other news, scientists had something more to say about global warming this week.

Between games of Frisbee golf with Dick and Condi at his Crawford Ranch, President Bush took time off to issue a “very serious” statement on global warming.

“For centuries the rays of the sun have warmed the surface of our earth’s crust. And a apparently those rays are intensifying in such a way that … uh … it’s increasing lava flows. And a …

“I’m not gonna lie to you. I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.” You can view the Quicktime video at OneGoodMove

OK, so it’s Saturday Night Live alum Will Ferrell portraying President Bush. The message is pretty much the same, though.

“I’m sure by now you’ve all heard what liberal scientists are trying to say. It seems that, uh, liberals and godless tax-raisers are trying to make me look bad by using such things as facts … and scientific data.”

This week, Tom the Dancing Bug goes literal with the climate science hurdles that corporations have erected and scientists have had to clear.

You can see the whole comic at Salon (be patient with the ad).

Remember the name Theodore Hapner. The “maverick” Florida chemist may soon be finding himself on the shortlist for openings in industry-funded think-tanks, cable news show guest lists, and Federal science agency appointments.

In Hapner’s own words:

“I’m sure my opponents would love to see me throw in the towel and start using empirical evidence to back every one of my theories [...]

“What my hopelessly pedantic colleagues fail to realize is that their scientific method is just that—their method … After all, would a chemist who closely observes a phenomenon, formulates a hypothesis, predicts a likely outcome, and then tests the hypothesis be capable of proving that photons, far from being subatomic particles, are actually the size of a child’s fist?”

Thankfully, Dr. Hapner’s story was reported in The Onion.

OK, this is the last straw for me. Do you believe global warming is real but you’re not convinced that the impacts will be bad enough to do anything? Well, you’re part way home — at least you’re starting to listen to the science.

Here is the last straw for me, however. I think we have to do whatever it takes to prevent global warming entirely, because it turns out that warming and more carbon dioxide makes poison ivy worse. Not only does the nasty stuff grow three times larger when exposed to more CO2, but it produces more of that nasty, itchy chemical — urushiol.

Maybe we can deal with sea level rise; maybe we can adapt to the loss of species; maybe we can manage the disruptions to our water supply from losing western snowpack. But more vicious and dangerous poison oak? Shoot me now.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060529/ap_on_sc/poison_ivy_2

Like Mission Impossible 3 (Tom Cruise-detractors) and The Da Vinci Code (Opus Dei), Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth has its detractors (climate skeptics) fueling some pre-release backlash. Claiming eco-alarmism, the Competitive Enterprise Institute fights fire with fire.

“Mr. Gore has always promoted causes that would require taking decisions away from the people and putting them in the hands of an expert elite,” said [Myron] Ebell, who directs CEI’s global warming policy program. “Mr. Gore’s ideal would be to give each person a book of energy rationing coupons and every year put fewer coupons in the book. It is a program of mandatory energy starvation.” Source

CEI has gone so far as to develop two sixty minute commercials that, according to Greenwire, will be targeted to Middle America. “Energy” suggests a false dichotomy where we can either drive our minivans in peace or ride our bicycles in the snow. “Glaciers” suggests a “he said, she said” scientific debate (“But other scientific studies found exactly the opposite”). Each commercial ends with “Carbon Dioxide. They call it pollution, we call it life.”

We call these commercials tired and clichéd in their desperate attempts to muddy public understanding of climate science.