science

‘Don’t Look Up’: Hollywood’s primer on climate denial illustrates 5 myths that fuel rejection of science

By Gale Sinatra and Barbara K. Hofer | – Every disaster movie seems to open with a scientist being ignored. “Don’t Look Up” is no exception – in fact, people ignoring or flat out denying scientific evidence is the point. Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence play astronomers who make a literally Earth-shattering discovery and then […]

Denialism

Fauci on Ted Cruz asking for his Ouster: “What happened on Jan. 6th, Senator?” “I’ll be saving lives and they’ll be lying.”

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – CBS’s Margaret Brennan interviewed Dr. Anthony Fauci on Sunday for Face the Nation and got some fireworks. Brennan asked Fauci about the death threats he and his family have received and how he dealt with it. He said he just went on doing his job, pointing to the lightning fast […]

Climate Crisis

Green Energy initiatives in Dem Infrastructure Bill infinitely Cheaper than a gradualist phase-out of Fossil Fuels

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The green energy proposals in the $3.5 trillion Democratic Party infrastructure bill now being heatedly debated have been attacked from the Right and even the center as “costly.” That is wrong, wrong, wrong. The faster we put in solar panels and wind turbines, the more money we will save, to […]

astronomy and outer space

Did a Cosmic Airburst inspire the Myth of Sodom and inadvertently Spark millennia of Homophobia?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In a new paper in Nature archeologists Ted E. Bunch and Malcolm A. LeCompte et al. present their findings that a cosmic airburst destroyed an ancient city in 1650 BC (about 3600 years ago) at the site of today’s Tell el-Hammam in western Jordan near the mouth of the Jordan […]

China

China Emerging as Competitor to Tesla: Will it build the best Cars in the World?

The Conversation

By Tom Stacey ” Europeans and other western nations have dominated automotive excellence for over a century. Whether it is the satisfying thud of the door closing on a Volkswagen from Wolfsburg, or the beauty of a Ferrari from Modena, these brands are iconic – and very lucrative for their manufacturers. When we think of […]

Epidemics

Public Citizen: It Turns out Pfizer-BioNTech Vaccine depends Heavily on Publicly-Financed Research

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Public Citizen recently uncovered “an agreement that the European Commission reached with Pfizer and BioNTech last November to purchase 100 million doses of the companies’ mRNA vaccine, which was developed with the support of https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-09/pfizer-vaccine-s-funding-came-from-berlin-not-washington”> government funding and U.S. taxpayer-financed technology. In the 104-page contract, Public Citizen […]

astronomy and outer space

Islam’s deep traditions of art and science have had a global influence

The Conversation

By Kalpana Jain | – For people who would like to learn more about Islam, The Conversation is publishing a series of articles, available on our website or as six emails delivered every other day, written by Senior Religion and Ethics Editor Kalpana Jain. Over the past few years she has commissioned dozens of articles […]

Inequality

Jeff Bezos Should Have Thanked American Taxpayers for Paying for His Space Ride

Inequality.org

By Scott Klinger | – ( Inequality.org ) – Shortly after emerging from his 10-minute space flight last week, Jeff Bezos thanked Amazon customers and employees for their primary role in paying for his Blue Origin joyride to the edge of space. The Amazon founder’s comments quickly elicited scorn from many employees who toil in […]

Epidemics

Why was there such Resistance to the (correct) theory of Aerosol Transmission of Covid-19?

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Droplets or aerosols? This was the issue that gripped pandemic politics for months. The scope of the disease and the appalling number of lives at stake constituted one reason for the intensity of the conflict. Equally important was the fact that this was and remains at least […]