Real Sceptic

Ray Comfort On The Atheist Experience Show

The Atheist Experience is a weekly television show that features live calls from atheist and believers. Which makes some interesting viewing with all the different questions, combine this with very knowledgeable hosts and guests this makes for some interesting viewing.

In the latest show they had Ray Comfort on the phone during their show. Ray Comfort is very well known biblical apologist from the United States. He runs Living Waters Ministries which has the following mission:

In our passion to glorify God, magnify His grace, and exalt His Son, Jesus Christ, it is our mission to serve the local church by assisting in globally educating God’s people in the principles of biblical evangelism; Exhorting them to fulfil the Great Commission; and equipping them with every necessary resource along the way. We do this primarily through the teaching and preaching of God’s Word, strategic conferences, academic and practical training opportunities, networking platforms, and the production and dissemination of various printed and audio/visual media.

A large portion of this is handing out and making materials that for example argue against the theory of evolution. Material that straw mans or misrepresent the science completely and utterly. One of the more famous howlers in this subject is the now famous banana argument. Where he states that it’s a perfect example of design by god of a fruit for humans. Although there is one little detail, the domestication and the subsequent selection by humans to the banana we all know now is well documented.

This shows that a lot of the times his arguments aren’t that convincing for people who know a little about science. Or who are just sceptical about claims made by theists. And as such Matt and Russell of the Atheist Experience Show had no problem at all discussing Ray Comfort. Who constantly changed the subject, argued over semantics and engaged in the argument from ignorance so many times I lost count.

The show is well worth watching if you’re interested in the subject.

Sitting On The Nuclear Fence

Previously I’ve written about Robert Llewellyn and his Fully Charged show on YouTube. But this is not the only channel he actively maintains. One of the other channels, where he expresses his views on diverse topics, is Wet Liberal Whenever.

In his latest instalment he talked about nuclear power and his sitting on the fence with nuclear power. His position is very much comparable to my own. There are risks and problems with using nuclear power, especially with decommissioning and spent fuel. But it probable does have a place among our sources for electricity, and especially technologies like travelling wave nuclear reactors look very promising (these ‘burn’ and reduce the waste of our current reactors).

But the main point, and one I fully agree with is that a lot of nuclear power will not solve the problem of our CO2 emissions. For that we need to implement current renewable technologies and invest in research to improve these technologies. As these might be expensive to install, but running them is extremely cheap as they don’t use fuel and most require very little maintenance.

Global Warming And The Earthquake In Japan

Yes, some people actually said that the earthquake in Japan is, or could be, linked to Global Warming. Which is obviously incorrect if you’ve been following the scientific literature.

But Lee doren (HowTheWorldWorks) did stumble on a grain of truth when he dealt with the subject in his video:

And I don’t want to hear any Rube Goldberg talking points on, well you see we give off carbon, and then it melts the big ice sheets up on the north pole, and those weights are pushing down on the plates, and therefore the release of the weights then leads to earthquakes. I’m sorry folks that’s not how earth quakes take place. That’s not how plate tectonics take place. I don’t want to hear any nonsense.

Now this wasn’t one of the most clear explanations, but what you can understand from this is that Lee Doren holds the opinion that the earthquake has nothing to do with global warming. And cannot be linked to any melting ice sheets and subsequent sea level rise. And he’s correct with that. Read more

A Little Correction

In the YouTube video “CO2 is plant food” that I released on the 27^th of November in 2010 I mention the Russian heatwave as one of the potential consequences of increased temperatures. Events like these are indeed predicted, but in this particular case it has been shown that it was due to climate variability.

On the 9^th of march NOAA published the following press release about this:

The deadly Russian heat wave of 2010 was due to a natural atmospheric phenomenon often associated with weather extremes, according to a new NOAA study. And while the scientists could not attribute the intensity of this particular heat wave to climate change, they found that extreme heat waves are likely to become increasingly frequent in the region in coming decades.

[...]

While a contribution to the heat wave from climate change could not be entirely ruled out, if it was present, it played a much smaller role than naturally occurring meteorological processes in explaining this heat wave’s intensity.

The researchers cautioned that this extreme event provides a glimpse into the region’s future as greenhouse gases continue to increase, and the signal of a warming climate, even at this regional scale, begins to emerge more clearly from natural variability in coming decades. Climate models evaluated for the new study show a rapidly increasing risk of such heat waves in western Russia, from less than one percent in 2010, to 10 percent or more by the end of this century.

So although it is a correct example of what might happen, it’s not correct that I used it as an example of what is happening. And as such I’m retracting that statement and have put up an annotation on the video announcing this.

The Internet in Society, Empowering or Censoring Citizens

RSA Animate released another great video where Evgeny Morozov explores the impact of the internet and technologies on societies. And how these can actually inhibit civil empowerment instead of giving citizens the tools to fight an authoritarian state.