You may have noticed that a lot of folks seem to be in a panic about Climate Change. This concern rests on the assumption that increased atmospheric CO2, presumably from human activity, will cause increased heat retention in the atmosphere, leading to potentially dangerous over-heating of the planet. The principle is pretty straightforward. Incoming radiant energy from the sun, consisting […]
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The Path of Greater Resistance
Or: A Skeptic’s Journey We all have our favorite topics, and those of you who have read much of this blog undoubtedly know that one of mine is Climate Change, AKA Global Warming, AKA Global Weirding, AKA Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, AKA Climate Alarm. In this subject I have a minority viewpoint, but one that is, I think it fair […]
Continue readingThe Power of Conditioning
It was a silly, negligible article on what has lately become a silly, negligible website. A wiser person would have let it slide. But it poked me in a tender place, and I am not the kind of person who can just let such a thing go. So instead of shrugging it off with a sigh I took the bait. […]
Continue readingA Grandiose Conceit
A few weeks ago, on March 24, we were treated to the spectacle of the First Annual Earth Hour, in which everyone on the planet turned off the lights for exactly sixty minutes, beginning 8:30 p.m. local time, as a gesture of solidarity with this beleaguered planet we call home. OK, so not exactly everyone. Well, truthfully hardly anyone. You […]
Continue readingCritique Me, Critique You
A few weeks ago, I published an essay in this space critiquing the recent March for Science, which coincided with Earth Day 2017. The March had been represented as a non-political demonstration of grass-roots support for continued funding of basic scientific research. Fair enough. But in reality it was, of course, a highly political, highly public rejoinder to the Trump […]
Continue readingOne! Two! Three! What are we Marching For?
Hint: It ain’t Science Just a few days ago we celebrated Earth Day, 2017, during which all of us paused for a moment to share our appreciation for our home planet, this verdant and fecund oasis in the endless vacuum of space. Gaia says “Thank you,” by the way. In addition to the usual festivities, this year we were treated […]
Continue readingAn Open Letter to the Readers of Salon
Or: Global Warming, Meet Lysenkoism; You Two Have a Lot in Common! While wallowing in the bloom of online post-election bloviation the other day, I chanced across this entrancing article on Salon. Being a reliable voice of the American Left, Salon can be counted on to deliver the party line on whatever issue has momentarily captured the zeitgeist. And […]
Continue readingGood News is No News
Two separate, unrelated items in the scientific press have recently come to my attention. Both are, it would not be a stretch to say, pleasantly surprising, at least to those of pessimistic bent. And with their emergence is raised the faint but tantalizing possibility that perhaps the end is not at hand after all. The first item, which relates recent […]
Continue readingA Catastrophe that Isn’t
The pitch is about as direct as you can imagine, the causal chain unambiguous and damning. There is, we are told, a place called the Marshall Islands, a collection of coral islets straddling the equator a few hundred miles northeast of Australia. A little slice of paradise, it is an idyllic place of waving palm trees, warm ocean breezes, and […]
Continue readingA Nagging Uncertainty
Recently, a small item surfaced in Google News that caught my attention. This article was about a group of scientists from Yale who had just completed what amounts to a census of the world’s trees. After several years of work involving researchers from around the world, the team came up with an estimate of just over three trillion, or about […]
Continue readingThe Perfect Clarity of True Belief
Recently, I posted an essay in this space on the very topical issue of climate change, a subject I happen to care about, and on which I have strong opinions. I did this with some minor reluctance because the subject is a hot-button issue, and my opinion, though well-reasoned, is not exactly mainstream. It was at least theoretically possible that […]
Continue readingA Really Inconvenient Truth
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule it. H.L. Mencken The cartoon, by Chan Lowe of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, titled “A GOP Thought Experiment,” shows an Earth floating in space, completely covered with water. The caption reads: “If global warming floods the planet but nobody is around to […]
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