Is it anti-science?
I think it needs more competition than just Indiegogo.
Category Archives: Science And Society
Standing Orders
I really should get or make a standing desk.
[Update a few minutes later]
On the other hand, while I can walk for a long time, my back hurts if I stand for very long. So I’d really have to get a treadmill.
Climate Change
What are the real questions?
Basically, there’s one real problem — the real climate refuses to behave correctly. I went into this at length then, so I won’t repeat the whole argument, but the basic point is this: the actual observed temperatures have been flat for almost 20 years, and are now at the edge of the confidence interval — that is, the modelers would have taken a 20-1 bet against the temperatures staying this low.
Damn you, Gaia!
Locked-In Syndrome
A new technique for communication. The good thing is that you probably don’t even have to be good at math. Just the attempt to solve the problem would create the desired response. Being in this state is one of my nightmares. Hard to know if it would be preferable to death, but this technique may allow us to find out for some individuals.
[Via Geek Press]
Michael Mann
Hey, he said it, not me.
The Climate Cultists
The AGU Statement On Climate Change
…and Roger Pielke’s response.
It’s shameful the way that scientific societies have become politicized.
Larva Breeders
Ummmmmm…no. Just no.
Though they might be useful in space.
To The New Editor Of Science Magazine
An open letter:
…you do have an unparalleled opportunity, which is to turn what has become just another glossy advocacy magazine back into a distinguished scientific journal.
Unfortunately, during the intervening 35 years of your remarkable scientific career since you were a graduate student, a once-stellar magazine has fallen on hard times. Starting with Donald Kennedy, and continuing under Bruce Alberts, it has become a shabby vehicle for strident climate activism … and that experiment has proven once again that Science can’t be both an activist journal and a scientific journal. Science magazine has thrown its considerable (but rapidly decreasing) weight behind a number of causes. And yes, some of those causes are indeed important.
The problem is that you are convinced the causes are hugely important, and you want to convince us of the same. But once you convince people that your causes are more important to you than your science, that’s it for your authority regarding the science. You either get to have activism, or you get scientific authority. You don’t get both. And the past actions of your magazine have clearly demonstrated that these days your activist causes are much more important to you than the science.
Read all.
Remembering Ploesti
Thoughts on energy and war from Bob Zubrin:
In World War II, we controlled the oil. In this war, the enemy does. This is an unacceptable situation, because it places our fate in the hands of people who want to kill us. In World War II, we had no compunction about destroying the Nazi fuel-making facilities at Ploesti and Leuna, or about systematically sinking the Japanese tanker fleet, because we didn’t need their oil. As we have seen, those attacks were incredibly effective in breaking the enemy’s power. On May 12, 1944, the day of the Leuna raid, the Third Reich ruled an empire comprising nearly all of continental Europe, with a collective population and industrial potential exceeding that of the United States. A year later, it did not exist. Once Japan’s tanker fleet was sunk, the collapse of its empire was almost as fast. Today we are confronted by an enemy without a shadow of the armaments of the Axis; all the Islamist countries have is oil. Were we to destroy that power, they would be left with nothing at all. But we can’t hit them where it would truly hurt, because our economy needs their oil to survive.
And we have people in power who think that climate change is a bigger risk than totalitarianism. Because, you know, in many ways, they don’t mind totalitarianism that much, as long as it’s their own.