Four former EPA administrators testified before the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety that more climate change action needs to be taken now.

Obviously, substantial action has been taken, it just hasn't been by the government. CO2 emissions from energy are back at early 1990s levels, which means so is overall CO2. Coal, the biggest polluter that America was forced to rely on when the Clinton administration banned nuclear energy in 1994, now has early 1980s levels of emissions.

I have no idea what is happening here but I am linking to it because...I don't know why.

Weird Al Yankovic as Isaac Newton takes on someone dressed as Bill Nye in an epic rap battle about science.

An easy win, right? Bill Nye couldn't even figure out how to take down Ken Ham, after all. Well, in true WWE wrestling style, Neil Tyson comes in at the end and tags up for Nye. Then it's on, baby.



Who wins? You decide.

The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund is a group that is basically right on a big issue - the freedom of family farms and consumers - and then takes that libertarian philosophy and does something really wrong with it: they think there is some natural right to foist off raw milk on a public which, let's face it, is not agrarian any more. Raw milk will make a lot of people sick, especially if it is embraced by the anti-science/nutritionist/fad diet segment.

But they have a funny graphic which is correct, namely that relying on mainstream journalism, with its swinging pendulum of Miracle Vegetables And Cancer Causing Products, is a big mistake.

To wit, TIME magazine:

You may not know this, but there are Democrats who don't accept climate change. Quite a lot of them. Even elites in Congress.

You wouldn't know it from reading most science blogs, of course. They are firmly trapped in 2004 - and missed the 1990s, when Democrats were the anti-science party, killing the SSC and America's green energy program - and think that global warming and evolution are the only two science denial things happening in the country. Since it is election season, the first wave of 'Republicans are anti-science' articles has already hit and there will be a lull now that primary season is over, but efforts to insist that vaccine denial is not primarily Democrats are out in force.

Writing in Pacific Standard, Science 2.0 fave Dr. Michael White notes something that isn't obvious to the public - if you ask most biologists to identify race, they can't do it.

If you ask anthropologists, sure. Race is an entirely social construct. There have been numerous efforts to make race scientific, based on differences in appearance and such. Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid, etc. were actually not flawed science rationale hundreds of years ago but this concept of race is still perpetuated.

As he notes, biology can tell us all kinds of things about people; genes can match people to within 30 miles of their native village. But objectively, which is to biologically, races don't exist. Unless a redhead is a different race than a blonde.

Undercover journalist James O’Keefe has released a new video, this one a sting operation to expose Hollywood environmentalists.

The front for this one is an undercover journalist from Project Veritas posing as "Muhammad,” a member of a Middle Eastern oil family, who is willing to pay $9 million to American filmmakers to fund an anti-fracking movie.

O’Keefe entraps actor Ed Begley Jr., actress Mariel Hemingway, and director Josh Tickell (Sundance Film Festival Winner and director of environmental message movies Fuel, The Big Fix, and PUMP), who agree to the film while promising to hide the source of the funds.

As former NSA director Michael Hayden learned on an Amtrak train last year, anyone with a phone can become a livetweeting snoop.

But why use a person when you can use a lamo? 

Two artists, Kyle McDonald and Brian House, have built Conversnitch for less than $100. It resembles a lightbulb or lamp and listens in on nearby conversations and posts snippets of transcribed audio to Twitter.

Teaching is somewhat of a thankless job. One group tells you not to 'teach to the test' while another blames you when international test scores show American kids are in the middle of the pack.

Well, American kids have always been at the middle of the pack, for as long as there have been international tests. And yet those apparently dumb kids from the first test in the early 1960s, who were almost last on standardized tests, have led the world in Nobel prizes and science output. Those kids grew up to be the people who now lead the world in adult science literacy.

So it's time to give teachers a break this Teacher's Week.

Do you have what it takes to be one? Here is how to find out.

Nothing brings out woo speculation like health issues.

Health books and fad diets are easy sales because everyone wants a short cut and, on the other side, pundits can engage in some causalation and insist they can cure those things you already have.

Diet faddists insist, for example, that no one had heart disease or cancer way back when. It was a reasonable guess. Even with the prevalence of guns you are far less likely do die a violent death than at any time in world history, which means you are more likely to die from something else.

Yet ancient Egyptians had cancer, they had heart disease - nothing modern at all about that.It may be time to stop looking for magical bullets in sugar or high-fructose corn syrup or vegan diets or going gluten-free.