Latest
This week I wrote a blog post re-examining the historical evidence for the view that what happened in pre-historic Easter Island is a classic story of ecological ‘collapse’ and thereby holds lessons for us all. Jared Diamond, who used the Easter Island story as the lead case study in his 2005 book ‘Collapse’, responds to the charge below. I am happy to publish his comments in full, including links to two scholarly articles that Jared also supplied.
Recent
One of the reasons why it is extremely unlikely that climate scientists are engaged in some kind of ‘warmist’ conspiracy – a central charge of global warming ‘sceptics’ – is that the scientific method is at its best inherently self-correcting. Those who are the first to spot and highlight errors and exaggerations are generally not non-expert campaigners from the outside, but scientists themselves. So it was with the Times Atlas mistake on Greenland this week – which I think represents a victory for science which should strengthen the case for taking climate change seriously.
Read more »
Few historical tales of ecological collapse have achieved the cultural resonance of that of Easter Island. In the conventional account, best popularised by Jared Diamond in his 2005 book ‘Collapse’, the islanders brought doom upon themselves by over-exploiting their limited environment, thereby providing a compelling analogy for modern times. Yet recent archaeological work suggests that the eco-collapse hypothesis is almost certainly wrong – and that the truth is far more shocking.
Read more »
With the situation at the stricken reactors of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant now relatively stable, the longest-term and most concerning aspect of the disaster in Japan is the exclusion zone, which has displaced thousands of people from their homes, villages and schools due to the danger of radiation. Needless to say, this is adding enormously to the misery and trauma of the earthquake and tsunami. In this article I examine what science can tell us about whether the exclusion zone is really needed, and how risky the radioactive fallout around Fukushima likely is in comparison to other dangers.
Read more »
In a long online TV interview this week with a supportive (indeed bordering on sycophantic) interviewer, Al Gore this week made some noteworthy statements comparing those sceptical of the science on climate change with Civil Rights-era racists in the American deep south. I don’t want to join the predictable chorus of condemnation, but I do think Gore is wrong, and that his attitude reveals something about why the climate debate has become so polarised and divisive.
If you have six minutes to spare, first watch the video below (extracted from the whole hour-long thing).
Read more »