The Big Con

The Big Con Exposing the danger of science denial, anti-science propaganda, and political disinformation.

Follow this page for daily news and content to help innoculate yourself against “the big con.” Ex Astris Scientia. Exposing the danger of the anti-science movement in the United States. Topics include: science education, climate change, homeopathy, human sexuality, nutrition, neuropsychology, political science, tribalism, cultural cognition, critical thinking, reasoned discourse, and more.

09/02/2026

According to a new first-of-its-kind UN report by the world’s leading climate scientists, global heating will reach at least 1.8 degrees Celsius, even in the best-case scenario.
The authors warn that “there are no good outcomes above 1.5 degrees Celsius.”

“Extreme weather, glacier melt, ecosystem loss and sea-level rise will intensify. Some Small Island Developing States and low-lying coastal cities could be partially or completely submerged. Risks of tipping points will grow. Human health, food and water security, cities and infrastructure will come under increasing strain. These impacts will not be distributed equally, and some losses will be irreversible even if global temperatures eventually decline.”

To be clear, overshooting 1.5 degrees is NOT an invitation to give up. It means we have to work even harder and with greater urgency to return to a lower baseline.

UNEP executive director, Inger Andersen, said: “We have to act with urgency and determination. Every fraction of a degree avoided, every year by which overshoot is shortened, and every adaptation action taken will save lives, will protect ecosystems, and reduce economic losses.”

Report:
Limiting Overshoot: Navigating exceedance of 1.5°C and pathways towards return
UN Environment Programme
2026-08
wedocs.unep.org/handle/20.500.11822/49857

09/01/2026

I suppose the title for this piece is a purely rhetorical question at this point.

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09/01/2026

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Three-quarters of Americans said in a recent poll that they oppose datacenters being built next to their homes

08/31/2026

NEW YORK (AP) — In the opening scene of American writer Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Ministry for the Future," a heat wave combined with a breakdown of the electrical grid in India kills 20 million peo...

08/31/2026

Politics--alas--is what we need

08/28/2026

Hat tip to my friend Jeff Beradelli for this. Look how rapidly the area around the glacier collapse site has been warming. Again, this is likely a global warming related catastrophe.

08/28/2026

As intelligence agencies warn that Putin is planning to escalate his war with some form of attack on Europe, his spiritual advisor took to social media to post this.

Alexandr Dugin is a man so closely associated with the belief systems and values of Vladimir Putin that he became colloquially known as "Putin's brain".

Dugin has spent his life warning of the evils of liberalism and democracy, and insisted that only Russia could save humanity through the advancement of Christian Russian Orthodox values. In 1997, he wrote a now infamous book titled "The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia".

The book provides the blueprint for how Russia could fight "the battle for the world rule of Russians". It laid out in detail how Russia needed to use information warfare, economic power, and military force, to establish a new Eurasian Empire.

It's been used a textbook in schools, indoctrinating a generation of Russians into a belief that the Russians had a God given right to rule the world from the "third Rome" (Moscow), and that notions like democracy and civil liberties were a uniquely Western invention that were bordering on satanic.

It called for Georgia, most of the Baltic States, Finland, and Central Asia to be annexed into this new empire though force, while Belarus and Moldova are expected to voluntarily join after a decades long propaganda onslaught.

He was adamant that an independent Ukraine could not exist if Russia was truly going to become a superpower, arguing that "Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning, no particular cultural import or universal significance, no geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness, its certain territorial ambitions represents an enormous danger for all of Eurasia and, without resolving the Ukrainian problem, it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics".

Western Europe, meanwhile, would become a collection of weakened vassal states, subordinate to Russia's will, and argued that to achieve this Russia could help fund and organise a collection of right wing political parties to infiltrate and erode liberal democracy from within. To achieve this, Dugin suggested finding ways to weaken the NATO alliance, culminating in the removal of US military presence in Europe.

But perhaps most disturbing is Dugin's vivid advice on how Russia could subdue the greatest impediment to Russian ambitions, the great defender of the liberal values Dugin despised... the USA.

He argued that Russia should use special services to "...introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social, and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics'."

The book was written in 1997.

Vladimir Putin became Russian President in 2000.

He's had 26years to put this plan into place.

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