Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
During the summer of 1778 the famous explorer and cartographer Captain Cook was well into his third voyage of discovery. When he set sail in 1776 the public had been advised that it was to return the Pacific Islander, Omai to Tahiti, but the real motive was was to locate a Northwest Passage around the American continent. After dropping off Omai, the expedition … Read more
The White House has issued a rather detailed plan for how the US was going to actually tackle climate change. Science journalist and author Chris Mooney, writing within the Washington Post, explains that this 111 page document is … a “mid century strategy” to massively slash U.S. carbon emissions by the year 2050, reducing them 80 … Read more
The World Meteorological Organisation is an intergovernmental NGO with a membership of 191 Member States and Territories. It was founded in 1873. Well OK, that’s a tad misleading. It was originally known as the International Meteorological Organization (IMO), and was re-badged with its current name in 1950. Their remit is to be the UN’s specialist for all things weather … Read more
As we roll through the months the quantity of Arctic sea ice will of course follow natural seasonal variations. In recent decades it has been observed that it is very much in decline overall, but to some degree this Arctic sea ice loss has been balanced out by a corresponding gain of sea ice in the Antarctic, … Read more
The official position of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is that the “Do Nothing” approach will led to an increase in Global temperatures of something in the range of 2.6 and 4.8 degrees above pre-industrial numbers by about 2100. However, there is now some emerging evidence via an analysis of palo-climatology data that this may … Read more
Often we can become trapped in binary thinking that blinds us to other possibilities that are potentially better answers. The classical example is that when faced with a glass that contains exactly 50% water you divide the world up into the optimists who see a glass that as half-full and the pessimists who see it … Read more
