So much of the debate surrounding climate change seems to hinge on questions of causation. In particular, the two principal causation questions of interest are: Is the anthropogenic emission of carbon dioxide the cause of global warming? Is the global warming the cause of the current incidence of extreme or environmentally damaging weather-related events? The …
Professor Petra Tschakert at the University of Western Australia is halfway through a project to “locate loss from climate change in everyday places”. These places include my very own Perth stamping ground of Willagee. Heavens, my parents moved to Willagee in late 1953, when it was raw sand. Willagee featured the Housing Commission’s half-finished jerry-built … Continue reading
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
Have at it! Continue reading
Since the dawn of time mankind has been faced with two brute facts: Nothing is straightforward and entropy is a bitch. To address the former, and in apparent defiance of the latter, our species has benefitted from two developments that have broadly co-evolved: Complex brains and complex societies. So much has been written about these … Continue reading
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
Lots of embedded tweets coming up, with little climate or climate mitigation. Please skip if either or both are a bother. Let’s begin not with bookcases but with the proud owner of about twenty, Sarah Vine, Daily Mail journalist and wife of Michael Gove, senior UK government minister. Vine tweeted this yesterday in praise of … Continue reading
I have learned that “include” is p.r.-ese for “here is everything we’ve got, and then some.” — Andrew Tobias, The Funny Money Game The Michael Moore documentary, Planet of the Humans, has now got over five million views, and the exasperated debunkings have been pouring … Continue reading
