What's Happening this Month
February Skeptics in the Pub
Wednesday, February 15, 2012, 6:30 pm
Al’s Wine and Whiskey Lounge, 321 S. Clinton St., Syracuse
Come hang out with Central New York Skeptics at Al’s in Armory Square. Larry Slosberg is the organizer of this event.
March CNY Skeptics Meeting
CNY Skeptics Presents Bryce Hand, Ph.D., on Climate Change
Wednesday, March 21, 2012, 7:00 pm
DeWitt Community Library at Shoppingtown Mall
Buckland Community Room
Join us at our March meeting where longtime CNY Skeptics member Bryce Hand, Ph.D., will talk to us about climate change. Bryce is professor emeritus of geology at Syracuse University.
Here’s what he says about his presentation:
This contentious and politically charged issue involves several very important questions: (1) Is it happening? (2) If so, is it our fault? (3) Should we care? and (4) Is there anything we can do to reduce future warming, if in fact it seems to be a problem?
My response to every one of these questions is “Yes,” and I’ll try to show why thousands of scientists active in climate research agree. We’ll look at the historic (and geologically ancient) record, the physics driving “greenhouse” warming, and some implications few people are aware of, while addressing the usual counter-claims of deniers.
CNY Skeptics Presents Damian Allis, Ph.D., on Controversy in Science
Wednesday, January 18, 2012, 7:00 pm
DeWitt Community Library at Shoppingtown Mall
Buckland Community Room
Science advances one funeral at a time.
– Max Planck
The infinite unknown that is our universe is being studied by a finite number of people with finite budgets and a finite number of hours in the day, many of them with real jobs to boot. Opinion and intuition have served as double-edged swords throughout the practical application of the scientific method, often weighing down now-famous great leaps forward for reasons having nothing to do with science itself.
We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are.
– Anais Nin
Damian will spend his time being both antagonistic and defensive as he discusses some of the history of now-obvious-but-previously-insane truths and facts gleaned from the scientific method, then will briefly describe his own work in the field of molecular manufacturing, an area of research previously seen as profoundly forward, then game-changing, then heretical, then highly suspect, and now increasingly academic, all without strong experimental evidence for or against for most of its history.
Damian Allis is research assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry at Syracuse University.
