Hal Lindsey is that You?

Armageddon: only sex sells better.

I've mentioned that when it comes to global warming I am a "Lukewarmist."

Yes, I think global warming is happening.
Yes, I believe that humanity is at least partially responsible as the driver of this phenomenon.
No, I do not think the alarmists know as much as they think they know.

I say this because science is about making predictions and testing the validity of our theories upon whether, how, and when those predictions pan out.  Climate science has a pretty poor track record in this department.

Essentially, it becomes a battle against fundamentalists.  Fundamentalists who believe they are doing what is necessary to save our souls planet.

Tom Hartsford over at Real Clear Science describes the problem better than I can in this recent article.

Predictions are made by building models using the smartest simplifications we have thought of and running them on the most powerful computers ever built. Basically, it's the best we can do right now. 

But there is a major failure of science going on. 

The failure is the lack of transparency and honesty about how feeble these models are and how much we should stake on their all-too-fallible forecasts. Thus the same problem continues: climate science has once again botched a prediction that its models were underequipped to make. 

It seems that there can be no moderate and honest discussion of this issue. Skeptics are singled out in creepy enemies lists. Actually, we're now supposed to call them deniers, as though they were disputing the existence of HIV or the holocaust. Numerous scientists, as well as senators,anti-vaccination Kennedys, and clickbait purveyors have even called for the imprisonment and legal prosecution of those who disagree with them. 

Climate science acts like it is fighting a holy war. There are only those who are just and those who must be silenced and stopped at all costs. Anyone who mounts reasonable logical, empirical, or skeptical challenges to the orthodoxy must be ruined, not by counterfactual evidence, but by vicious attack.

The problem is not with the science per sea.  It is a problem of thinly veiled hubris.

Science: Men have a Better Sense of Direction

I am going to note the publishing of a study.

I will not editorialize in any way.
Of course, I just did, didn't I?

It's been well established that men perform better than women when it comes to specific spatial tasks. But how much of that is linked to sex hormones versus cultural conditioning and other factors?
Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) decided to explore this idea by administering testosterone to women and testing how they performed in wayfinding tasks in a virtual environment.
Using fMRI, the researchers saw that men in the study took several shortcuts, oriented themselves more using cardinal directions and used a different part of the brain than the women in the study.
But when women got a drop of testosterone under their tongue, several of them were able to orient themselves better in the four cardinal directions.
"Men's sense of direction was more effective. They quite simply got to their destination faster," says Carl Pintzka, a medical doctor and PhD candidate at NTNU's Department of Neuroscience.
The directional sense findings are part of his doctoral thesis on how the brain functions differently in men and women.  

Its Not about the Science

While the study has been scrutinized for ethical concerns regarding its execution, the finding that Golden Rice elevates vitamin A deficiency in children has not been questioned.

A controversial study that showed genetically engineered golden rice could alleviate vitamin A deficiency in children was retracted by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition on 29 July, nearly 2 years after investigations found problems with how the study had been conducted. Supporters of golden rice are dismayed by the outcome, first reported by Retraction Watch, but they point out that the data and conclusions remain robust.

The study was retracted not because the data or the conclusions have been found faulty, but because of discrepancies surrounding consent forms and the possibility that children were studied without proper ethical safeguards in place.

That's bad.  That should not happen.  Those responsible for the lapse should face appropriate consequences. But the science is valid and children could be helped by the addition of golden rice to their diet.

But the battle is not about science, it is about politics and politics is about perception.

We are surrounded by genetically modified organisms.  Unless you eat a truly paleo diet of game and forage, you eat GMO.  Heck, if you eat whitetail deer, you are still eating something which eats a whole lot of GMO's.

Label them and let those with too much money pay more for the privilege of feeling morally superior to those who do not or can not.  But an ideology that would let kids go blind for the sake of its own ideological purity, I think that is something worth resisting.