Category Archives: Health

Business, Economics, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Our (Near) Future Lifespan

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Four visions.

I think it’s a mistake to call the fourth one “immortality.” A better phrase is “indefinite lifespan.” Unless our understanding of the universe is wrong, we’ll all die eventually, when it gets cold. And medical breakthroughs won’t save us from having an ACME anvil dropped on us.

Absent backups, that is. Which is philosophically unsatisfying, from the standpoint of identity.

But we need to start thinking about policy in terms of scenarios three and four, and ObamaCare is a disaster on that front (as is social security, lifetime tenure for academics and judges and popes, etc.). Plus, if people are going to continue to be born, and not die, we will eventually need other places to live than this planet.

Business, Economics, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Reply To “Bad Astronomer” About Climate Skepticism

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…that Slate refused to publish:

The argument I made was that climate change has benefits as well as costs and that the benefits are likely to be greater than the costs until almost the end of the current century. I maintain that the balance of evidence supports the conclusion that up to a certain level of warming — about 2 degrees Celsius — the benefits of climate change will probably outweigh the costs. Plait admits that there will be benefits, but he assumes that they are smaller than the harm however small the warming and that I am somehow foolish for not sharing his assumption. He gives no source for this claim, which flies in the face of peer-reviewed sources.

Sadly, that’s Phil’s style. His claims are essentially faith-based.

[Update a few minutes later]

Climate moron David Suzuki doesn’t even know what the data sets are.