…never really died. A brief bio of Bob Ettinger.
Of course, it’s worth noting that cryonicists do believe that patients in suspension aren’t dead. That only occurs after information death (as occurs rotting in a grave, or being cremated).
Category Archives: Science And Society
Climate Models
…are flawed. That’s putting it mildly:
Professor Curry said: “It’s not just the fact that climate simulations are tuned that is problematic. It may well be that it is impossible to make long-term predictions about the climate – it’s a chaotic system after all. If that’s the case, then we are probably trying to redesign the global economy for nothing”.
I’ve been saying that’s likely the case for years. I’ll look forward to reading her paper.
Light Blogging
Working on a new venture, an op-ed about the hypocrisy of the NASA safety culture, renovating the house, and a long essay on the potential for private robotic planetary exploration.
Perverse Incentives In Academia
This is sort of a disaster, particularly in the context of the student-loan mess.
Here's the horrifying key table from the paper Siddhartha Roy co-authored on perverse incentives in academia. #AAASmtg pic.twitter.com/sdrUlPmXs7
— Mike 48% Tⓐylor (@MikeTaylor) February 18, 2017
Wooly Mammoth
Is it on the verge of resurrection? That would be pretty cool. I wonder if they’d be as smart as elephants?
Winston Churchill And ET
A recently discovered document with his speculations about extraterrestrial life.
The Climate Cover Up
I was amused to hear about the panic of “scientists” in the government “protecting” from the Trump administration data they’ve been hiding for years. But here’s a comprehensive round up of their rewriting the past.
A Taxonomy Of Uncertainty
This is a beautiful taxonomy. The root of a great deal of suffering is people believing their field is level 3, when it's actually level 4. pic.twitter.com/8yg2sRocNL
— Will Wilson (@WAWilsonIV) February 15, 2017
Climate science is currently somewhere between levels 4 and 5, but many (particularly ignorant adherents of the climate religion) think that it’s at 2 or 1.
Edward Abbey
Something I learned today: Charles Platt is a long-time friend of his.
The New “Climate Denial”
This is the ongoing game of the warm mongers, to continually redefine and conflate terms, but Judith Curry gets right down to it:
exactly what is being ‘denied’? As far as I can tell, here is what is being ‘denied’: that the policies put in place under the Paris Agreement will on net be beneficial to global societies and ecosystems, and that they will have any kind of impact on the climate of the 21st century.
Climate denialism is no longer about science; its about action versus inaction – in particular, the UNFCCC’s preferred actions. It doesn’t seem to matter that the emissions targets are woefully inadequate for preventing what they expect to be ‘dangerous’ climate change; emissions targets are unlikely to be met; and the climate will show little change in the 21st century even if the targets are met.
Let me take this opportunity to redefine climate denialism: denial that the UNFCCC policies will accomplish anything significant regarding improving the climate as defined by increasing human welfare and the health of ecosystems.
I’d restate it as denial that we can have sufficient certainty at this time to think they will to justify implementing them.