It’s amazing that critics of the application genetic fingerprinting have made so little rhetorical use of the year of the technique’s original discovery.
10Sep04 — 4
- 04.11.24 test
- 04.05.23 Ten-year quest through Development Hell pays off
- 04.04.23 Testing "podcasting"
- 04.03.23 Mistakes Have Been Made
- 04.02.23 Coming soon
- 11.02.19 Live comedy review: Geoff Norcott at the Southport Comedy Festival
- 08.20.19 Republic Interiors
- 12.27.18 The Wykehamist Fallacy
- 12.08.18 The Moral Degradation of The Labour Party
- 10.14.18 FILM REVIEW: Downsizing
This is totally unrelated except for being a science question: can anyone recommend a book that explains in layman’s language what the deal is with global warming? When National Geographic lists several recent years as being “the hottest on record” how did they arrive at that conclusion? What are they talking about? To what records do they refer, logged since when? And what research supports the theories about causes, such as “greenhouse gases” and “it gets hotter before an ice age”? As I preview this posting, these look like rhetorical questions from the Right. But that’s not it at all. I lean left by American standards, probably slightly right of center in the UK (I’m a Democrat). I’m just looking for something to read without an agenda and written in tolerable prose. If it appeared in Science Magazine it’s too hard. Forgive me, PooterGeek, for hitching a free ride.
Jon, the only wise words to drop from the mouth of that old thug, Nikita Kruschev, was when he stated that there were *no neutral men*! Thus, I can only advise that if you are looking for “something to read without an agenda”, don’t hold your breath. You sound far too intelligent to think that the ‘scientific community’ ever lives up to its ‘reputation’ for dis-interested loftiness, particularly when it comes to things like ‘global warming’. (For more, ad nauseum, see our conversation below)
As one or other of your American private eyes used to say, “Look for the moolah!” And when it comes to global warming, there is stacks and stacks of it to be had—provided, of course, that you play the right tune. Hit a bum note, like Bjorn Lomborg did when he wrote his book “The Skeptical Environmentalist”, and you will get the big freeze treatment from your erstwhile colleagues in the search for Scientific Truth—in fact, the big freeze they kept promising us all before they discovered the big fry up! But, hey, hot or cold, what’s the difference so long as the research grants keep on rolling?
You could also have a browse at http://www.john-daly.com/ Alas John Daly died a short while ago but his site and memory are kept fresh with sceptical good sense.
Thanks, David, for the response and the web site tip. I bet there’s a lot of money to be made in a popular-science book explaining just how global temperature is (and has been) measured. But the topic does seem to evoke a great deal of passion, which is a pity, considering how many easier-to-grasp reasons exist for not burning our fossil fuels like a drunken sailor.
Jon, I forgot to warn you also to look out for the ‘Fuehrer princip’ as well as the ‘moolah’. You imply that somehow we are ‘wasting’ our fossil fuels, but I would suggest that ‘waste’ is a tricky concept to quantify. I assume you’re a young man, and I might think you driving 4 miles across town to get a few beers and the chance of a leg over is a waste of petrol, but you might consider me sitting here with the lights on writing rubbish to blogs is an equal waste. To decide what is, or is not, wasteful will therefore require tribunals, inspectors, assessors, rules and regulations, and all those little ‘Fuehrers’ who know better than us what’s good for us will come crawling out of the woodwork with rulebooks in one hand and truncheons in the other.
Don’t worry about fossil fuels. If and when they become scarce the price will rise and huge amounts of money will be shifted into finding more, and extracting it more easily, and finally, into alternative sources—but as we stand today, that is a long time off. Let me tell you a story. In 1981 the leading doomster (and still ‘dooming’ away today), Paul Erlich (author of “The Population Bomb”), was offered a bet that the price of non-government-controlled raw materials would not rise over the next 10 years. He took the bet like a shot because he assumed that consumption was bound to outstrip stocks. He lost! And by the way, every major prediction in Erlich’s book failed to occur, including the absolute certainty that by 2000, 65m Americans would be dead of starvation. This widely praised and revered ‘doomster’ also said, “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000”.
If this man tips you the winner of the Kentucky Derby—don’t back it!