Running-out-of-time. Next year, in December, delegates from more than 190 nations will gather in Paris to take another shot at completing a new global treaty on climate change.
Understanding Harper's Evangelical Mission. Signs mount that Canada's government is beholden to a religious agenda averse to science and rational debate.
Cornwall Declaration. Download the Cornwall Declaration (pdf)View a list of notable signersAdd your endorsement The past millennium brought unprecedented improvements in human health, nutrition, and life expectancy, especially among those most blessed by political and economic liberty and advances in science and technology.
At the dawn of a new millennium, the opportunity exists to build on these advances and to extend them to more of the earth’s people. At the same time, many are concerned that liberty, science, and technology are more a threat to the environment than a blessing to humanity and nature. Out of shared reverence for God and His creation and love for our neighbors, we Jews, Catholics, and Protestants, speaking for ourselves and not officially on behalf of our respective communities, joined by others of good will, and committed to justice and compassion, unite in this declaration of our common concerns, beliefs, and aspirations. Our Concerns. Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem. Photo The Cisco Meraki office in Mission Bay, San Francisco, is 40 paces from the water, and just as nice as Google’s.
On a clear winter day in late December, I sat in one of its conference rooms with a company spokeswoman on my right and Sanjit Biswas on my left, peering out through floor-to-ceiling glass. Www.physics.oregonstate.edu/~stetza/ph407H/A Beautiful Theory.pdf. The Twitter Trap. Counter-Currents Publishing. TalkOrigins Archive: Exploring the Creation/Evolution Controversy.
The Morality of Migration. The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless.
In announcing the Department of Homeland Security’s policy directive on June 15 stating that undocumented migrant youths who meet certain conditions would no longer be deported, President Obama said that “It was the right thing to do.” What he did not say was whether he meant “the right thing” legally or morally. Obviously, he considered the action to be legal, even though this invocation of his administration’s power drew strong criticism from many, including Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Does Immigration Mean 'France Is Over'? The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless.
PARIS — It is difficult to go more than a day in France without hearing someone express the conviction that the greatest problem in the country is its ethnic minorities, that the presence of immigrants compromises the identity of France itself. This conviction is typically expressed without any acknowledgment of the country’s historical responsibility as a colonial power for the presence of former colonial subjects in metropolitan France, nor with any willingness to recognize that France will be ethnically diverse from here on out, and that it’s the responsibility of the French as much as of the immigrants to make this work.
When equality is invoked, it is understood that this is equality among equals. The heresy of religious opposition to global warming – Opinion – ABC Religion & Ethics. Do not be deceived.
The opposition to the scientific evidence supporting anthropogenic global warming (AGW) among some conservatives may, at times, hide behind a pseudo-scientific veneer. However, much of it is often really rooted in an anti-intellectual strain of religious fundamentalism. The ‘Green Dragon’ Slayers: How the Religious Right and the Corporate Right are Joining Forces to Fight Environmental Protection. Table of Contents Introduction As Republican officials accelerate their efforts to weaken environmental regulations and attack climate scientists, energy corporations are reaping the benefits of a decades-long effort to put a more benevolent, humanitarian, and even religious spin to their anti-environmental activism.
Among their most valuable allies are the Religious Right organizations and leaders who have emerged as ready apologists for polluters and critics of efforts to protect the environment. The Religious Right’s attacks are intended to lend credence to the efforts of corporations and the GOP to quash the Environmental Protection Agency and chip away at state and federal environmental safeguards. And increasingly, Republican leaders themselves are echoing the same misleading arguments and themes of the Religious Right’s corporate apologists. Corporate America’s Religious Right Power Play. Reddit interest network. And then there’s the energy imbalance. There are a few things I have been considering writing about, but since I’ve renamed the blog to be more explicitly physics orientated, I thought the first should at least reflect that change.
There’s a recent paper by James Hansen – and 17 co-authors – called Assessing ‘‘Dangerous Climate Change’’: Required Reduction of Carbon Emissions to Protect Young People, Future Generations and Nature. It’s an interesting paper because it discusses both the scientific evidence for global warming/climate change and considers various policy options (violating what many would regard as a fundamental rule – I don’t though). The paper’s been discussed in a number of other places already (here, and here for example), but I was going to discuss one very basic thing that I think it covers very well. Probably the most fundamental aspect of global warming is the existence of an energy imbalance.
At a time of climate stability, Earth radiates as much energy to space as it absorbs from sunlight. Global Subsidies Initiative. Investing federal oil and gas subsidies in clean energy would bring Canada 18,000 more jobs, a healthier economy and a cleaner environment. Toronto, ON – A new report released today by Blue Green Canada – Canada’s foremost entity to bring unions and environmentalists together – shows that investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency would create more jobs than the same amount of investment in fossil fuels.
The report comes as the federal government prepares the 2013 budget. Global Warming and Climate Change skepticism examined. Fox News defends global warming false balance by denying the 97% consensus. A study published earlier this year in the journal Public Understanding of Science found that consumption of politically conservative media outlets like Fox News decreases viewer trust in scientists, which in turn decreases belief that global warming is happening. This is in large part a result of disproportionate representation of the less than 3 percent of climate scientists who are 'skeptical' of human-caused global warming, as well as interviewing climate contrarian non-experts, for example from conservative fossil fuel-funded think tanks.
Last week, I reported that studies of media coverage leading up to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report revealed that Fox News and other politically conservative media outlets continued this practice of false balance. Fox News was particularly guilty, representing climate contrarians in 69 percent of their IPCC stories. Paying the Price: The Economic Impacts of Climate Change for Canada. Climate Change Could be Expensive for Canada Unless global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are brought down and Canada invests in adaptation, the economic impacts of climate change on Canada could climb to billions of dollars per year. Paying the Price: the Economic Impacts of Climate Change for Canada – the fourth report in the NRT’s Climate Prosperity series – is the first national study to show what the economic consequences to Canada could be as a result of climate change, under four separate scenarios involving two factors: global GHG emissions and Canadian economic and population growth.
Although Canada contributes approximately 1.5% of global emissions, the report concludes that climate change impacts brought about by increased world-wide emissions have a real and growing economic cost to Canada. CO2 lags temperature - what does it mean? Earth’s climate has varied widely over its history, from ice ages characterised by large ice sheets covering many land areas, to warm periods with no ice at the poles. Several factors have affected past climate change, including solar variability, volcanic activity and changes in the composition of the atmosphere. Data from Antarctic ice cores reveals an interesting story for the past 400,000 years. During this period, CO2 and temperatures are closely correlated, which means they rise and fall together. However, based on Antarctic ice core data, changes in CO2 follow changes in temperatures by about 600 to 1000 years, as illustrated in Figure 1 below.
This has led some to conclude that CO2 simply cannot be responsible for current global warming. Figure 1: Vostok ice core records for carbon dioxide concentration and temperature change. Arguments from Global Warming Skeptics and what the science really says. Is there a scientific consensus on global warming?
Science achieves a consensus when scientists stop arguing. Global warming vs climate change. There have long been claims that some unspecificed "they" has "changed the name from 'global warming' to 'climate change'". In reality, the two terms mean different things, have both been used for decades, and the only individual to have specifically advocated changing the name in this fashion is a global warming 'skeptic'. Global Warming vs. Climate Change. Climate change: Sea ice, global cooling, and other nonsense. Fire photo by peasap; Earth photo by NASA; composite by Phil Plait. The Importance of the Afterlife. Seriously. JCsplash. Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain. The Cult of Bayes' Theorem. Facing the Intelligence Explosion. Facing the Intelligence Explosion. Faith, Hope, and Singularity: Entering the Matrix with New York’s Futurist Set.
Machine Intelligence Research Institute. Will MacAskill recently completed his DPhil at Oxford University and, as of October 2014 will be a Research Fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Common Sense Atheism — Atheism is just the beginning. Now it's time to tackle the harder questions. The Affect Heuristic. Priming and Contamination. Suppose you ask subjects to press one button if a string of letters forms a word, and another button if the string does not form a word. (E.g., "banack" vs. "banner".) We Change Our Minds Less Often Than We Think. "Over the past few years, we have discreetly approached colleagues faced with a choice between job offers, and asked them to estimate the probability that they will choose one job over another. What Evidence Filtered Evidence? Efficient Charity: Do Unto Others... Knowledge of Today - Counterculture blog. Evolution and the Inevitability of Intelligence. Baudrillard's Blender.
An Argument Against the Existence of God. The Essence of Existence: A College Application Essay.