Dissonant Reality
There is a persistent belief among both scientists and non-scientists that good theories must be somehow beautiful or elegant or something similar, because reality itself is ultimately β in some…
There is a persistent belief among both scientists and non-scientists that good theories must be somehow beautiful or elegant or something similar, because reality itself is ultimately β in some…
A year ago, I predicted that the Covid19 pandemic would kill 35 million or even more people. Although mortality statistics suggest that the current official death count (about two and…
In several countries, lockdowns and/or other pandemic-related measures have provoked protest or even riots, and in many more, policies intended to slow down the spread of Covid-19 are widely ignored.…
This year several governments announced that their countries will be carbon neutral by 2050. This is a cheap promise, of course, as the target is so far in the future…
In August, French blogger Pauline Harmange published a booklet titled Moi les hommes, je les dΓ©teste (Me, men, I loathe them), which caused quite a stir in France (and a…
In his Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals Kant argued that the moral law (assuming there is one) must be unconditional and universal. As part of that argument he made…
One of the oldest quantitative claims in climate science is that the likely global average temperature increase due to a doubling of atmospheric COβ is between 1.5 and 4.5Β°C. This…
According to the Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update published this week, the global mean temperature is projected to be more than 1Β°C above the pre-industrial average in this and…
In 2019 typhoon Hagibis destroyed part of the railroad that leads to Hakone, a small town near a volcanic lake in Japan that has a long history as a resort…