Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
Today’s key message is this: Without dramatic reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions, most of the planet’s land-based ecosystems—from its forests and grasslands to the deserts and tundra—are at high risk of “major transformation” due to climate change. This comes from a newly published study by an international research team. Climate change warnings are often labelled as … Read more
What do people who believe in creationism and people who believe in conspiracy theories have in common? According to a new study the correlation is Teleological thinking. What the heck is that? OK, more on that in a second. First, let’s think briefly about why knowing about this matters. Understanding how we as humans can be … Read more
Land based heatwaves rather obviously involve an increase in air temperature, but since most of the planet is covered by water then we also have something similar in the world’s oceans – marine heatwaves. The concept recently entered the public’s social consciousness when the following was tweeted … Another sea-surface temperature record was broken today, … Read more
A paper has appeared in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Science) that is attracting a lot of media attention. Titled “Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene” it lays out a possibility that we face a runaway climate hothouse. Note the word I’ve underlined. Many of the media stories highly overhype it … Read more
How do we know that humans are responsible for Global warming, or that there is in fact any Global warming at all, what evidence do we have? There are in fact several lines of evidence. We know that certain gases such as CO2 are greenhouse gases. This is been an established fact for rather a … Read more
The plot of the 2004 movie, The Day After Tomorrow, is that the Atlantic Ocean Circulation which carries warm water North suddenly stops and plunges the entire Northern Hemisphere into an Ice Age almost overnight… er yes, well it’s just a movie. What is actually going on with the Atlantic circulation is a concern, and … Read more