…to the Stern Report:

Stern

Well, I’m ready to drink my hundred glasses of red wine a day. Vive la vin!

Nuremberg-style trials for global warming skeptics?

Next time they call people fascists, some of these folks need to look in the mirror.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Jonah Goldberg (with whom I had the pleasure of chatting for a few minutes last night) has related thoughts.

So much of the demonization of conservatives from liberals in the last fifty years has worked on a formula which goes something like this: “I want use the state to impose my dreamy good intentions. Conservatives are evil. So, if they get ahold of government they will use government to do evil in the same way that we would do good.”

Several health reasons why s3x is good for you. Particularly as you get on in years.

This isn’t surprising, given human nature, and the evolutionary process that developed it. It’s in our genes to distrust “the other.”

But one of the features of the Anglosphere is its ability to build trust institutions, even in the face of physical diversity. I’d like to see some cultural cross comparisons. Any takers on further thoughts?

Speaking of hurricanes, while the Atlantic remains quiet, the biggest storm of the season so far is pounding the Phillippines, and due to hit Manila directly. It unexpectedly went from a tropical storm to a Category 4 typhoon in twenty-four hours. It just shows that we have a long way to go to be able to predict these things. It also shows that we don’t pay much attention to tropical cyclones unless they affect the US, because I haven’t seen anyone reporting it.

Anyway, the lack of predictability brings up our immediate dilemma. We’re about to go out of town for ten days. Should we shutter up before we leave (which would be a royal pain, amidst the other packing)? It seems unlikely that there will be a storm that hits south Florida during the first week of October, but you never know.

Read Professor Pielke.

I was amused at the unintended irony of this story at the BBC:

President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, John Holdren told the BBC that the climate was changing much faster than predicted.

What does that say about their ability to make predictions?

This may be a breakthrough for obesity:

After the volunteers had eaten, Dr Batterham took blood samples from them every 30 minutes for an hour and a half, and measured the concentration of peptide YY. As she suspected, it was the high-protein meal that coaxed the greatest production of the peptide.

Having proved the point in people, she then turned to a more reliable laboratory animal

This is interesting. Many human social rules carry over into cyberspace.

I just got review copies of Chris Mooney’s book, The Republican War On Science, and James Lovelock’s most recent work, The Revenge Of Gaia. Both titles seem a little overwraught to me, and I’ve already expressed skepticism on Chris Mooney’s thesis. But I’ll report anon, after reading them.