Monkeys and Flat Earth

I've seen this image posted by quite a few people in the last few days.

I agree, this is awkward. But not for the reason that I think the creator of the meme had in mind. This is nothing but a cheap shot. And one that is not only lazy but hypocritical. When evolution deniers ask if we came from monkeys the reaction from "our side" is often ridicule because the claim of evolution isn't that we came from monkeys but that we had a common ancestor. This is essentially the same thing.

I've never seen this image used by a Flat Earther to describe what they believe. And it isn't likely to be because they are almost all Geocentrists. By making such an obvious and fundamental error we present ourselves as no better at critical thinking and civil discussion than creationists.

Ignorance: willful, motivated, or lazy?

As I'm sure many of the people that will read this know there is a far too large group of people that call themselves skeptics, and are pretty good on most topics, that don't accept anthropogenic climate change.

One of them posted this meme in a Facebook comment on a Skeptical Inquirer post about the increasing public acceptance of the science and importance of climate change.

There are several things wrong with this, and I'm not even going to mention the grammar (well, not any more than I just did).

This is NOT what climatologists claim to be able to do. They claim to know what some of the details of the CLIMATE will be like in the future. So there are TWO major errors here. 1) It is CLIMATE not weather that is being modeled. 2) The predictions aren't for a specific year but for trends of the climate in the future.

So this brings me to the question that is the title of this post. I'm going to accept that the people making this claim are actually ignorant of the errors they are making. Have they actually never come across this simple explanation? Are they unable to accept this explanation because of motivated reasoning? Or are they just too lazy to think about it? Have I missed another possibility?

Isn't THIS enough?

In Tim Minchin's fantastic "Storm" he asks the question:
"Isn't this enough?
Just this world?

Just this beautiful, complex
Wonderfully unfathomable, natural world?"

One of the things that really irritates me is the need many in the media have to put artist's nearly baseless renderings in the thumbnails or headers for stories about new and fantastic images from actual research. At this moment the probe Juno is orbiting Jupiter and, as an aside to its primary mission, it is returning spectacular images of the largest of our gas giants.

Here's an example of this problem that is, interestingly enough, dated Monday 11, 2018. It starts with this image:

Which, if you look carefully you'll see is a screencap from Cosmos on Fox.

To echo Tim Minchin's words above: Isn't THIS enough?

There are lots more at: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/images/index.html

Astronomical Hyperbole (Jupiter's moons)

About once a year Jupiter is nearly directly opposite the Sun in our sky. This, in keeping with the terribly creative terminology so common in Astronomy, is called "opposition". When at opposition Jupiter is at near its closest to the Earth so it is bigger and brighter in the sky. This year opposition is in early June and social media was awash with posts announcing this event. But, instead of saying that Jupiter was at its biggest and brightest they breathlessly proclaimed that you'd be able to see Jupiter's four largest moons in binoculars. Which is quite true. The problem is that this isn't unusual. If you have decent binoculars, and can hold them steady enough, you can ALWAYS see Jupiter's moons in binoculars providing the Jupiter is visible and the sky is dark enough. The distance to Jupiter varies by about 20% from an average value so the changes in size and brightness, while noticeable, are just not that big.

*Anything* that encourages people to look up is welcome but this kind of hyperbole just puts silly ideas in people's heads and makes it harder for them to learn about astronomy if they ever get interested.