Dave's Archives

Tag: science

  • The flying car revolution will never happen

    One of science fiction’s greatest mistakes is the flying car. And that icon of the future is under further threat from a real technological revolution, the driverless car. My mental image of a flying car is shaped heavily by their depiction in the Fifth Element, in which Bruce Willis drives a yellow taxi that is,…

  • Fred Singer’s climate consensus denial

    So I read with some bewilderment [1]In the naïve sense of one who expects intellectual honesty. a recent article by Professor S. Fred Singer on climate change. It jumps around a bit but mostly tries to attack the idea of scientific consensus. Singer’s logic leads from platitudes like this: Scientific veracity does not depend on fashionable…

  • Straw alarmism

    So much is said in the political catastrophe surrounding climate change that I can’t quite imagine anyone keeping up with it. However, rbutr has informed me that one particular pseudo-anonymous article at something called the “Independent Journal Review” (or “IJReview”) could do with a closer look, and so I shall oblige. The IJReview discusses James Lovelock’s…

  • Hopes for 2012

    Here’s a bit of everything for the new year — some hopes for what we could and should be doing as a nation, in no particular order. We must address the asylum seeker debate with decency, maturity and humility. We should accept many more refugees, and at the same time encourage other countries to do so…

  • The Galileo gambit movement

    I’ve had another sudden fit of pseudo-artistic buffoonery. I stumbled across the Galileo Movement largely by way of Wendy Carlisle’s Background Briefing report: In February this year a new group emerged: the Galileo movement. Its scientific advisers are the who’s who of the international climate sceptics movement. Its patron is the powerful Sydney radio personality Alan…

  • Poor persecuted Monckton

    His Great and Wondrous Beneficence the Lord Christopher Monckton did, after all, give a lecture at Notre Dame University. Attempts (initiated by Natalie Latter) to dissuade Notre Dame from lending Monckton its credibility did not come to fruition, though drawing attention to his Lordship’s rank lunacy is always a small victory in itself. As the…

  • Belly button biodiversity

    See microbes grown from your bellybutton lint (via Carl Zimmer).

  • Who is Dennis Ambler?

    Continuing on (a bit) from my [intlink id=”1426″ type=”post”]last post[/intlink], I’m going to examine another of Dennis Ambler’s articles for the Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI). This one is mostly a long rambling swipe at lots of different and very accomplished individuals, and not (as in the other case) an outright attempt to reinvent the…

  • Consensus Bashing

    The Science and Public Policy Institute certainly does provide a lot of hilariously twisted commentary on climate change. Two years ago (January 2009), Doran and Zimmerman (D&Z) published a paper based on Zimmerman’s masters thesis. Unsurprisingly, they found that the vast majority (97%) of climate scientists think climate change is real and human-induced. This kind of…

  • The sun is trying to destroy us again

    Slightly Disgruntled Scientist, I think the sun is on to you.