New Scientist

“Sharknado 2: The Second One” is poised to take a bite out of Manhattan and devour many of the week’s water-cooler conversations. Like the first “Sharknado” movie, the premise is so ridiculous it actually manages to entertain. In the same way, some media claims about what climate change has already done or threatens to do in the future are so absurd they’re actually laughable. Climate-change…

At Slate, Mark Lynas tells the story of activist-orchestrated media deception — although one sometimes wonders whether the press even minds being deceived in these instances, and in certain cases whether some journalists are in on the scam. The deception involves activists who are against any form of biotechnology advances laying waste to a field of genetically modified "golden rice" in the…

It would seem New Scientist magazine recently decided to sacrifice credibility in the field of research.  Journalistic research, anyway.  In their recent article titled, "Science heroes and villains of 2008," New Scientist has taken the liberty of naming some noteworthy individuals in the field.  As their opening salvo states (emphasis mine):  The collective brain of New Scientist has come up…

A new study published in the journal Science last Friday concluded that the continued burning of oil-related energy products combined with the planting of additional forests is better for the environment than the manufacture and use of biofuels such as ethanol. In fact, the authors suggested that governments across the globe move away from biofuels as a global warming solution completely, and…