Population and climate

Submitted by naught101 on Sat, 06/06/2009 - 14:40

This is in response to a discussion about population control and climate change on an e-list I'm on. In particular, it's in response to a line by a mate, Jono:

it's not the number of people that is important, but rather the power of the argument. Population control arguments need to be challenged wherever they occur, because they turn the climate movement into a war against human rights rather than for human rights.


Population control doesn't have to infringe human rights.

Politics

Submitted by naught101 on Tue, 06/02/2009 - 23:30

Terry Pratchett notes in one of his discworld books that politics is fundamentally about the running of the city. Politics - from Aristotle's ta politika "affairs of state,", from the Ancient Greek polis - the city state.

Useful questions

Submitted by naught101 on Wed, 03/04/2009 - 14:05

Been thinkin' with a few friends, about what makes people get up and get active around problems like climate change. For some of my friends, it's love - for family, for society, for other species. For me it's anger. For some, anger comes because others are infringing on their own rights.

Journalism, truth, and climate change.

Submitted by naught101 on Sun, 02/15/2009 - 14:32

I'd like to declare here and now that I'm sceptical about the "reality" of the round earth. There are many dissenting voices, sceptics of the current "consensus", and significant evidence to show that the earth is not round. Not to mention that it's bleedingly obvious - just look out the window: No curvature there, eh?

But despite this, dissenting voices in the debate are silenced. Proponents of the round earth hypothesis pursue their beliefs with a zeal unmatched even by the world's most fundamentalist religions. While it's true that many scientists believe that the earth is round, there are also significant dissenting voices, but were one to mention this in general conversation, or on talk back radio, one would immediately be shouted down, cut off, ostracised. In short, censored.

This is not how science should operate. Science is not decided by majority opinion, but by healthy debate. And while one side is being censored, there can be no real debate.

I'm not saying definitively that the earth flat or round - I'm still undecided, just that the debate needs to be opened up, so the true process of science can run its course, with maximum access to evidence and competing theories from both sides. Until all the information is on the table, I'll be most skeptical of the majority-imposed "consensus".


Sound familiar? The above arguments are frequently used by the denial-o-sphere (denial-o-plane?). While obviously climate change science is not so developed, or certain (or simple) as planetary physics, that does not mean that the above arguments have any weight in a climate context.

Climate Stats tutorial, how to, and how not to.

Submitted by naught101 on Mon, 01/19/2009 - 03:31

I've been starting to learn Octave, a maths programming language. Octave is similar to other packages that are often used to create nice graphs that you often see around the place, especially when it relates to climate change. This is a bit of a slap-dash tutorial on how to get some graphs happening with Octave.

Looks like the Clean Coal Carollers got cleaned out.

Submitted by naught101 on Tue, 12/16/2008 - 07:55

There was such an uproar in response to this hilariously crap PR campaign, that America's Power has killed it. It's not on facebook, and it's not even on their own website any more. Fucking classic. That PR agency won't be popular next year. America's Power's has made some weak excuse for killing the little bastards. "Behind the plug" - so that's what it was?