Whenever I sit down to write a post about global warming or the environment, I'm filled with a sense of sadness. Sadness because I know most people won't read the article or share it. Sad because I know the industry I work in can't report on it with the attention it deserves ...read more
Rick Santorum doesn’t accept evolution or human-caused climate change, and he’s an anti-gay bigot. So why does CNN pay him of all people to give opinions? Lest it be viewed as the “Clinton News Network,” CNN has array of conservative pundits who presently have one job: to defend ...read more
In an interview published with the Associated Press today, Donald Trump claimed he has a "natural instinct for science" that allows him to discern what is true and what is false when it comes to climate change. According to Trump, these supernatural instincts developed outside ...read more
Jordan Peterson has an amateurish understanding of evolutionary biology that he is unashamed to flaunt wherever he is asked to speak. Most famously, he compares lobster hierarchies to human ones -- two species that evolved separately over hundreds of millions of years. As an ...read more
In a telling sign of how utterly chaotic, dysfunctional and idiotic the Trump White House is, 13 federal agencies unveiled today what the New York Times called an "exhaustive scientific report" that states humans "are the dominant cause of the global temperature rise that has ...read more
President Donald Trump, 45th President of United States of America in alternate reality Zeta 137, spent the first vacation weekend of his Presidency at Camp David with his family. Sources report the First Family enjoyed the beginnings of fall colors, along with gluten free ...read more
We are an odd species. With highly advanced technology that can monitor weather patterns, analyze complex climate change data and make stunningly accurate predictions, we are still pumping billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere faster than we ever have in history. Reported ...read more
What kind of a person likes to dangle the threat of human extinction in front of the people he has sworn to protect? That would be the current President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. This morning multiple news organizations have reported that White House officials say ...read more
Politico published an article discussing how erratically Trump consumes news and how easy it is to slip him bullshit that he will then regurgitate on Twitter if left unattended like a four-year-old: Just days earlier, K.T. McFarland, the deputy national security adviser, had ...read more
The Washington Post reports on a profoundly disturbing effort that somehow manages to still be a silver lining: Alarmed that decades of crucial climate measurements could vanish under a hostile Trump administration, scientists have begun a feverish attempt to copy reams of ...read more
by Shannon Argueta Republicans in the House of Representatives continued their assault on science and health care on Wednesday with a vote to hold a company that provides researchers with fetal tissue in contempt of court. Democrats objected to the vote and walked out in ...read more
Speaking on a panel at the premiere for a right wing propaganda documentary 'Climate Hustle', Sarah Palin inexplicably went after Bill Nye the Science Guy over his lack of scientific credentials. “Bill Nye is as much a scientist as I am," Palin told the audience that had ...read more
A few days ago, my Twitter feed succumbed to a familiar trend. Firstly, scant rumours of a bombing trickled out - this time in Brussels. Minute by minute, details of the nature of the attack accumulated, until it became clear this was yet another jihadist terrorist attack. People ...read more
This is a big deal, a very big deal. The discovery of gravitational waves in spacetime is a monumental event in scientific history -- the culmination of over a century of thought, and several decades of failed experimentation. According to the Guardian, to detect the waves ...read more
I recently noticed a trend on my Facebook news feed: uncomfortably cute memes shared from the page of David Wolfe. “Your eyes are useless when your mind is blind.” “An easy life has never produced a powerful mind.” Who is David Wolfe? On casual investigation I was aghast to ...read more
It's called a Carbon Tax, and we can see a working example in Sweden. Don't believe it? Here's a chart produced by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency mapping the country's economic growth against its CO2 emissions: In an article submitted to the World Bank, Magdalena ...read more
Well there's a surprise, Senator Ted Cruz isn't just an unpleasant bigot -- he's also an idiot. In an unbiased assessment of all the major presidential candidates' scientific accuracy, eight climate and biological scientists reviewed statements made in debates, interviews and ...read more
For the love of God, what is going on at CNN? Not that this needs saying, but asteroids are not caused by global warming, because they ARE FUCKING ASTEROIDS. Oh dear. ...read more
As if Florida wasn't suffering enough from face eating zombies, climate change denying politicians, KKK prison guards, and deadly snake kissing morons, a flesh-eating deadly bacteria has been found in Florida beaches that is activated by warm weather. Reports the Palm Beach ...read more
To get an idea of just how vulnerable the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) makes people, some cursory research should provide enough detail to understand how devastating it can be. Those carrying HIV are at serious risk of being infected with Tuberculosis (the leading cause of ...read more
Florida, the state where it is legal to shoot unarmed black people, real life cannibal zombies eat peoples' faces, and grown men shoot themselves in the balls because guns, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the state officials are not allowed to officially acknowledge climate ...read more
On August 2 1939 – just before the outbreak of World War II in Europe – President Roosevelt received a letter, signed by Albert Einstein. The letter warned of the danger that Germany might develop an atomic weapon, and advised that the United States should develop its own, as ...read more
If you want to know how to build a multi-billion dollar media empire, Rupert Murdoch is definitely your man. If you want to understand climate science, it turns out Murdoch is also your go-to source of wisdom. Speaking with his own Sky News Australia, Murdoch dropped some ...read more
We rail on part-time scientists in the form of vaccine deniers and new age celebrity nutritionists here at the Banter with a great deal of pleasure. There's nothing more satisfying than debunking the pseudo-scientific nonsense people like Jenny McCarthy plaster all over the ...read more
Not to get all 'UpWorthy' on you, but this is really awesome (and it's Friday). British woman Joanne Milne has been deaf since birth, has been losing her vision because of a rare medical condition Usher Syndrome. In February of this year, Milne was fitted with cochlear implants ...read more
I blame Bill Nye. Several weeks ago, Nye thought it'd be a fine idea to debate a well known creationist and founder of the Creation Museum, Ken Ham. On debate points and grasp of reality, Nye absolutely won the debate. But ultimately, Ham was the real winner. Not only did the ...read more
Both Jenny McCarthy and Kristin Cavallari have been in the news recently for their stance on vaccines, reigniting the tiresome debate over the risks posed by vaccinating your child. McCarthy was hilariously put down last week by Twitter users who answered her #Jennyasks ...read more
News that camel bones have now disproved the official narrative of the Bible has been swirling the internet for the past 48 hours, going up on the front page of sites like Fox News, Raw Story and the Huffington Post. Some background to the story: domesticated camels were ...read more
Last night, Billy Nye 'The Science Guy' debated some creationist called Ken Ham on the age old question: "How did we get here?". Who is Ken Ham? It's irrelevant really, because he believes the world was created 6,000 years ago. In other words, he's completely crazy and ...read more
I'd like to preface by saying I admire Bill Nye. He's one of those rare personalities who inspires us to learn more about the world and his contributions to education are indispensable. That said, I'm not quite sure why he agreed to debate Australian "young Earth" creationism ...read more
Newspaper photographer Rogério Soares caught a tragic, yet stunning moment with his camera on the coast of São Paulo in Brazil, capturing the precise moment when 36-year-old tourist Rosangela Biavati was struck by a lightening bolt while she ran towards the ocean. The sequence ...read more
In a fascinating interview with biogeneticist Eric S. Lander, the Atlantic's James Fallows asks how far we are away from using Genomics (DNA sequencing and the study of genomes) to cure fatal afflictions and chronic diseases. Lander's answer is breathtaking: Remember in the ...read more
A new study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences suggests that our emotions do indeed influence our bodies in very specific ways (or at least we perceive it that way). As reported by the Atlantic, Finnish researchers used five experiments with ...read more
Commissioned by an interdisciplinary team of scientists and academics from the research centers at UC – Berkley and Stanford, a joint study released today has proven definitively that if one does not use it, he or she will ultimately lose it. Taking on what is still an ...read more
Morning people, Tuesday is here - three more days till the weekend, so plenty of time to fill your brain with entertaining/useful information before killing your brain cells with alcohol. Here's what you should be reading: Build a Happy Brain There's a very interesting ...read more
Apparently, up to 85 percent of many insects have same-sex sex. Gay sex, threesomes, you name insects really are incredibly liberal. Or so we thought. From Science Daily: Dr. Inon Scharf of Tel Aviv University's Department of Zoology and Dr. Oliver Martin of ETH Zurich have ...read more
Happy Friday people, it's the last day of the week so no need to do any real work. Only 8 hours till you're off and drinking/flirting/bantering with your work colleagues at your local watering hole. Anyway, kill some time by reading what's good on the internets: Obamacare is ...read more
While the image of 22 year old Chinese man Xiaolian might be disturbing to some, it is a testament to the power of modern science to do good that the young man has a chance at having a normal life after his nose got infected and badly damaged after a car accident. Doctors in ...read more
It's Tuesday morning people, and it probably feels like Monday given the long weekend. Fear not, there is much to read on the internet to pass the hours away, and we've boiled down the best of it so you don't have to. 1. Obama Rolls Out John McCain to Sell War in Syria The ...read more
All the world's Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though. - Richard Dawkins on Twitter Generally speaking, I'm a big fan of Richard Dawkins. I've read several of his books and listened to many of his ...read more
@ell, the bat-eared bore, the cornflakes for brains Prince of Piffle is galloping apace once more atop his favorite hobbyhorse. Charles Philip Arthur George, aka the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Rothesay and first in line to be the head of state of a combined 130 million ...read more
In a review of Jonathan Crary’s new book 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep Steven Poole cites Stanley Coren's take on the subject of sleep - a place he regarded as the last refuge from capitalism: Back in 1996, Stanley Coren’s book Sleep Thieves blamed insufficient ...read more
The Telegraph broke this last week, raising hope for millions around the world diagnosed with HIV: Danish scientists are hoping for results that will show that “finding a mass-distributable and affordable cure to HIV is possible”. They are conducting a clinical trial to test a ...read more
The Daily Banter Headline Grab from AP: A baby born with the virus that causes AIDS appears to have been cured, scientists announced Sunday, describing the case of a child from Mississippi who's now 2 1/2 and has been off medication for about a year with no signs of ...read more
Many of us are enjoying our post-election schadenfreude, observing as the Republican Party increasingly marginalizes itself, demographically and politically, and scrambles to cut a narrowing path to the White House while also attempting to shove the tea party demon back into its ...read more
By Bob Cesca: You might recall how Bobby Jindal suggested that Republicans should stop dumbing themselves down. I used this quote in yesterday's column, but it bears repeating: "It is no secret we had a number of Republicans damage our brand this year with offensive, bizarre ...read more
The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From The AP: ROSWELL, N.M. (AP) — In a giant leap from more than 24 miles up, a daredevil skydiver shattered the sound barrier Sunday while making the highest jump ever — a tumbling, death-defying plunge from a balloon to a safe landing in the ...read more
The problem of non-vaccination is reaching a crisis point, and doctors are reacting to this by turning away patients who aren't vaccinated: "If an adult caregiver or parent decides not to vaccinate their children, we feel that they're taking an unnecessary risk, so we wanted to ...read more
Thankfully, science keeps marching on. A universal flu vaccine has been successfully tested on humans with the disease for the first time, it was reported Monday. The U.K.'s Guardian newspaper said that unlike existing vaccines, this one, which was tested by scientists at ...read more
Andrew Wakefield's study linking vaccination to autism is the lodestone of the idiotic anti-vaccine movement, a movement that has led to the unnecessary death of innocent children, a movement led by former Playboy model Jenny McCarthy and actor Jim Carrey. It is a complete fraud: ...read more