Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
Almost every Spring and Autumn for the past couple of years the UK’s Daily Express has run stories such as the above claiming that the season ahead is about to hit extremes. Instead of seeking guidance from a real meteorologist, their source is weather eccentric James Madden, forecaster for his one-man company Exacta Weather. Autumn is … Read more
It has been known for some time that the annual ice loss during the seasonal melt in Greenland was large, but new calculations revel that it is even bigger than previously thought. The challenge of working out just how big that ice loss is has lacked data because nobody is there on the ground at … Read more
Many calculation made by cosmologists about the universe start with the assumption that it is uniform and is not stretched or distorted. If this assumption turned out to be false, then all such calculations would be invalidated, so is it true? The idea that it is uniform does not appear to be correct when you consider … Read more
This year’s Ig Nobel awards have been announced. No, not Nobel, but Ig Nobel, because these are spoof awards, but the research that gets an Ig Nobel is wholly real. The fact that the scientific community is prepared to both mock and laugh at itself is indeed both praiseworthy and truly entertaining as well. To qualify … Read more
Last Wednesday, 21st Sept, the ratification of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change leapt boldly towards coming into force. We are not quite there yet, but it is a lot closer. I was blogging about this a few days ago, and so this was something I did anticipate. At the time the expectation was that another 20 … Read more
The above diagram says it all really, 2016 was the second lowest on record. It was not and is not a typical year by any measure because globally each and every single month has broken all previous records for that month and so it comes as no great surprise to observe that the Arctic ice … Read more