It ought to be of interest to anybody skeptical of anything that James (the Amazing) Randi has just died at the age of 92. As a kid in the 60’s and 70’s, I was a major UFO enthusiast with minors in ancient astronauts and bigfoot. I subscribed to publications from outfits such as NICAP (where … Continue reading
Author Archives: Mike Dombroski
Journalism / literature / media / politics / renewables
Amazon Climate Book Rankings
I sort of like to keep up on who’s writing books about climate and how they’re doing. Amazon always has a list of product details that includes four rankings. There’s a best seller’s rank and three top categories ranks. Two people I follow closely have just written books so I thought I’d check out how … Continue reading
Tesla’s Battery Day
Yesterday was Tesla’s much anticipated battery day where they announced some of their major new battery developments. They have a 16 minute video with Elon Musk and another guy on stage wearing black t-shirts giving a summary. These developments sound very impressive to me. They appear to have found new manufacturing methods that will make … Continue reading
Peter Gleick Sticks Up for Malthusianism
2018 Sagan Prize winner, Peter Gleick, has written a review of Michael Shellenberger’s new book, Apocalypse Never and it’s been getting a lot of links from Shellenberger’s critics. He starts out with a description of the two opposed philosophies of Cornucopianism and Malthusianism and how they apply to environmentalism. The review is illustrated with side by … Continue reading
New Book by Michael Shellenberger
On June 30 Michael Shellenberbger’s new book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, will be published. He has a twitter thread full of blurbs by prominent intellectuals like Richard Rhodes, Tom Wigley, Steven Pinker, Jonathan Haidt, Kerry Emanuel and more. He originally intended for it to be about nuclear power, but has “decided to broaden its focus last year in … Continue reading
From Skeptoid: Wind Turbines Save Birds
I just ran across a January episode of Skeptoid about wind turbines and birds. It claims they save (or will save) more birds than they harm — says so right in the conclusion: Wind turbines and birds are a perfect example of how statistics can be misused. When we trumpet only the number of bird lives lost, … Continue reading
Michigan Dams Collapse
Mid Michigan is suffering through some historic flooding after the Edenville and Sanford dams failed after heavy rains. Lake Sanford has been drained into downtown Midland causing the evacuation of thousands. Someone caught some video of one of the dams breaking. Here’s another video which nicely summarizes the situation. I live in Bay City which … Continue reading
The Great Corona Lockdown Hockey Stick Twitter Brawl
When Brad Keyes wrote his great Shibbolithic post at WUWT, I just had to tweet it out. Hey @Revkin @chriscmooney @theresphysics @BSchmidtTweets @michaelshermer @BrianDunning @NaomiOreskes @EthonRaptor @ClimateOfGavin @Potholer54T @BadAstronomer @STWorg @rebeccawatson You people are so missing out!@BradPKeyes @wattsupwiththat https://t.co/rZn3T8nVjo — Canman (@DombroskiMike) April 9, 2020 This resulted in a long long thread about issues like … Continue reading
From Janet Cooke to Chris Mooney
From Woodward and Bernstein’s cracking of Watergate to Janet Cooke’s fabricated 8 year old heroin addict and now with Chris Mooney — the Washington Post continues its long history with Pulitzer prizes. Is this a linear progression, a parabolic rebound or asymptotic degeneracy? Chris Mooney has just won a Pulitzer prize for a series of articles … Continue reading
Mark Jacobson and the Legalistic Scientific Method
There are a lot of analogies that can be drawn between science and law. They both have their respective (if not respectable) practitioners, scientists and lawyers. Scientists present their work to scientific journals, where it is evaluated, usually with a process called peer review, and hopefully becomes science. Peer review is not the only … Continue reading
