tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55979062012-01-11T19:56:47.400+10:00Philip Machanick’s views on the worldPhilip Machanicknoreply@blogger.comBlogger1241100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-60907569475521779992012-01-01T20:31:00.001+10:002012-01-01T20:31:43.817+10:00

In the latter half of 2011, an official from one of South Africa’s more disfunctional provincial governments, being quizzed on the popular radio station SAfm about a delivery failure, tried to weasel out by claiming that a study was in progress. The interviewer didn’t let him get away with this and wanted to know why this solved the problem when, the last time the issue came up, a study was

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-33572549874962492882011-11-29T01:36:00.000+10:002011-11-29T01:36:34.272+10:00

Back in 1988, the apartheid regime threatened to close down the Weekly Mail, now called Mail&Guardian. I played a minor role in defending the paper, known popularly as The Wail because it kept complaining about how terrible things were (and rightly at the time). I’ve just had cause to haul out my tattered copy of the paper’s history,  …You have been warned, to compare against current events. At

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-30026116656353680102011-11-25T23:52:00.000+10:002011-11-25T23:52:10.369+10:00

In another of my rare forays into cuisine (for another, see my trick for making gelato), here is a crossover of my own creation: pumpkin and rhubarb pie. This makes 2 pies (20cm) or 4 smaller (10cm) ones. Pie crust 4 cups flour 200 ml macadamia oil 2 teaspoons sugar 6 tablespoons chilled water Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly then gradually incorporate the oil, adding a little extra four if

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-56305343635837044332011-10-21T23:05:00.000+10:002011-10-21T23:05:04.918+10:00

For someone who styled himself as the king of kings and called his opponents rats, this was hardly a fitting end: being flushed out of  a drain and dying in doubtful circumstances in captivity. What troubles me about Gaddafi's death is that it is not the form of "justice" one should seek in democratic society. Whether he was deliberately killed or died in cross fire as claimed by the provisional

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-30612565909290811202011-09-21T18:12:00.000+10:002011-09-21T18:12:37.004+10:00

When I returned to South Africa after living abroad for 9 years, I was surprised to find how far the quality of service at Nedbank, a bank I've dealt with for 30 years, has slipped. Here's a small fraction of the problems I've had, all leavened with being asked "to whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?" every time I've contacted the call centre. For a start, my cheque account was a on a low

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-13553932100006143542011-09-09T23:25:00.000+10:002011-09-09T23:25:54.146+10:00

A group of 200 "prominent" South Africans have signed a letter objecting to the turn of events in Libya. This letter, titled "Libya, Africa And the New World Order - An Open Letter from Prominent Africans", is the most detailed apologia yet for the AU's position that there should be no outside intervention and only a "political" solution in Libya is acceptable It's worth examining some of the

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-69369550553499258592011-08-23T20:31:00.000+10:002011-08-23T20:31:56.653+10:00

Back in March, I wrote about how the Arab world was seeking a new modernity. The African Union, it seems is not. While the Arab league was fairly quick to expel Libya, the AU treated the conflict in Libya as if it was a political dispute to which there was a political solution. I followed events on the Al Jazeera web site as well as twitter in the early weeks of the revolution and these

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-43763338667093313012011-08-22T01:43:00.000+10:002011-08-22T01:43:10.125+10:00

Ford did it with the Model-T. VW nearly went broke for the same reason. Is Microsoft heading for trouble by listening to their customers too much? Not so long ago, I recall reading somewhere that Microsoft was not going emulate Apple's iPad design, because they had consulted their business clients and they all wanted something that looked like Windows. This all reminds me of how VW battled to

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-27357987554076205172011-07-26T17:24:00.001+10:002011-07-26T17:24:50.769+10:00

When I moved to Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa from Brisbane in Australia I expected a few surprises, but not too many because I have after all lived in South Africa before. 9 years ago, I moved from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (Wits) to the University of Queensland, and things have not changed that much over that time. I’ve also lived in a rural area in the

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-32044078053711097482011-05-11T09:06:00.000+10:002011-05-11T09:06:35.342+10:00

I am not an expert on climate science but every now and then I run into something that most people don’t understand and try to add to public understanding. A common question is the interaction between different greenhouse gases. Why does water (H2O) vapour, present in much higher concentrations, not dominate any changes in the greenhouse effect? Why is methane (CH4) said to be a much more

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-25605456965462832302011-05-02T19:53:00.000+10:002011-05-02T19:53:57.017+10:00

The UK referendum on a new voting system has generated heated debate. But it’s not as if the idea hasn’t been tried before. Australian has used a preferential system since 1918, and it has generally worked out pretty well. On 5 May, UK voters will be faced with the referendum question: 'At present, the UK uses the 'first past the post' system to elect MPs to the House of Commons. Should the '

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-20539834798372893022011-04-29T09:08:00.000+10:002011-04-29T09:08:08.173+10:00

When I moved to Australia from South Africa in 2002, I too had been conned by the Australian marketing machine. Of course there's the genuine stuff: the Anzac legend, Gallipoli, exploits in the world wars, and so on. But there’s also the latter-day myth: the bronzed Aussie crocodile wrestler, the nation that can take on any sporting code you can imagine and many you can’t and win, the nation that

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-57098368553925791862011-04-26T09:12:00.000+10:002011-04-26T09:12:34.750+10:00

Opinionations: Campbell Newman Running without a seat

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-30667949642719229672011-03-30T21:28:00.000+10:002011-03-30T21:28:01.359+10:00

I take up a position as associate professor of Computer Science at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa on 1 April; I’m putting this article up in advance because stories with a 1 April dateline have a certain connotation. This one’s for real. After several years at the School of IT and Electrical Engineering at the University of Queensland, St Lucia and slightly fewer years at the

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-75900132677217892832011-03-23T17:16:00.000+10:002011-04-14T08:54:19.700+10:00

When The Australian described Campbell Newman resigning his mayoral position to lead the LNP’s parliamentary team from outside parliament as “Campbell Newman running without a seat” I waited for the professional cartoonists to take up the idea. They didn’t so here’s my attempt. Strange things happen in Queensland politics but none stranger than this. Campbell Newman needs a substantially bigger

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-1471117484438404492011-03-20T17:59:00.000+10:002011-03-20T17:59:24.374+10:00

Making crispy meringues is not too hard. I’ve reported this before but it’s worth repeating in an article of its own. You need to observe a few basics: eggs do not beat well from cold; bring them to room temperature separate the egg whites you will be using cleanly; any yolk is no good do not over-whisk at first use a copper mixing bowl, otherwise you may need to add extra ingredients to get the

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-81862259446757909562011-03-14T09:46:00.001+10:002011-03-14T09:46:46.171+10:00

A while back for a specific campaign, I had a self-hosted WordPress blog. I decided that for the future, it would be simpler to maintain on Blogger. The problem is I bought the domain name from Aplus.net, who do not have any obvious way to detach the domain name from them and for absolute simplest future maintenance, I wanted to buy the domain via Blogger. After repeated emails and online

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-28297490011768565072011-03-05T10:08:00.000+10:002011-03-13T08:06:30.554+10:00

Japan has done it. South Korea has done it. China may yet do it. A society with a long cultural tradition that has become stuck in old ways or that has become corrupted and lost its internal drive can only escape by defining its own modernity. Yes, there are major flaws in each of those I've cited: Japan went the extremely bad path of adventurous militarism in the first half the the twentieth

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-84465357729972311432011-02-23T08:17:00.000+10:002011-02-25T19:26:04.750+10:00

Gaddafi on Al Jazeera, a reality check we aren’t getting from any other media here in Australia: I sent off a letter to The Australian yesterday. it didn’t appear long with the others on Libya today: I’ve been watching the increasingly horrifying situation in Linya unfold over the last few days via twitter, the Al Jazeera web site and whatever informal sources I could find. The reporting of

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-41523015313086747032011-02-09T14:10:00.000+10:002011-02-20T11:44:43.878+10:00

Examine this picture closely. It is the scariest picture you will see in a long time. It is from the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook 2010. The IEA is the energy policy research agency of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which represents the interests of the major developed market economies. Apparently. So what’s so scary about this picture? The

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-37233701393038981192011-01-11T09:23:00.000+10:002011-02-10T11:03:07.611+10:00

I'm working on a new novel with the working title, The Day it Rained Forever. Here in Queensland, it is starting to feel a bit like that. While the floods here are not causing the devastation the recent Pakistan floods caused, because the population is lower and we have good early warning systems, you nonetheless have to start wondering why one in hundred year events are happening so often.

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-13477811971559742852010-12-06T09:52:00.000+10:002011-02-10T10:52:32.310+10:00

The Australian last weekend published a lengthy defence of its position on climate change, claiming its editorial policy was never anti-science, with the following rather surprising wording emphasised: THIS newspaper supports global action on climate change based on the science. They published a letter from me, cutting much of the substance, so I present it in full here: I read Graham Lloyd’s

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-55429990151472838202010-11-08T20:01:00.000+10:002010-11-08T20:06:34.505+10:00

The Tea Party is not a new phenomenon. In Australia, we had Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party, and it was pretty much the same thing. A general angst was verbalised in populist right wing terms, and swept up a lot of people who didn’t really agree with the sort of extremism that goes with this sort of viewpoint  – and a good number who thought if you prefaced a racist view point with “I’m not a

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-64395244763658295312010-10-19T10:24:00.000+10:002010-10-19T10:24:16.685+10:00

On 23 October, residents of the Brisbane city ward of Walter Taylor will be voting for a councillor to replace Jane Prentice, who was elected to the federal parliament. While thinking through issues for the campaign, I ran into Brisbane city council’s document, Our shared vision Living in Brisbane 2026, which contains this interesting snippet: Green and active transport In 2026, Brisbane will

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-30880240685290022072010-08-22T21:18:00.000+10:002010-08-22T21:18:52.314+10:00

As the final results of the Australian federal election trickle in, I marvel at how close I came to calling it. I sent this letter to The Australian the day before the election: John Howard and Paul Keeting agreed on one thing: change the government, you change the country. Never has this been more true that this election. Every scorecard I’ve seen from pro-environment, pro-justice and

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-67711135997775881492010-08-12T15:35:00.000+10:002010-08-12T15:35:43.193+10:00

This Australian federal election has been characterised by an even higher than usual amount of mudslinging. Let’s look at three examples: Liberal attacks on the government’s broadband plan, Labor attacks on Tony Abbott’s attitude to labour relations, and the attack by both sides on asylum seekers who, when I last checked, were not one of the parties running for office. Opposition leader Tony

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-10495599285461248102010-07-28T15:40:00.000+10:002010-07-28T15:40:47.905+10:00

Here’s an IPCC error we don’t hear reported too often. This picture from the 2009 Copenhagen Diagnosis illustrates how far out the IPCC’s 2007 Fourth Assessment Report was in predicting reduction in Arctic sea ice extent. The black line is a combined (ensemble) figure of a range of simulations, and the dashed lines represent the highest and lowest values of the simulations. The red line is the

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-80873159950550975412010-07-23T10:54:00.000+10:002010-07-23T10:54:43.018+10:00

If this Australian federal election is the election where the Liberals lost their mind, it’s also the election where the Labor Party lost its soul. The ALP last election stood for an evidence-based approach on climate change. Ross Garnaut was tasked with summarising the best science, and producing an economic response. The plan was that the government would go with what he recommended. If anyone

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-18241277918507147832010-07-08T12:40:00.000+10:002010-07-09T09:59:32.928+10:00

Talk about treating a vulnerable group as political football... there’s a World Cup on for the real thing. Is that not enough? The announcement by the new Australian prime minister Julia Gillard that she is going to be “tough” (in politics, a synonym for stupid) on refugees and it’s unfair to call harsh attitudes to refugees “redneck politics” has to be challenged. Harsh attitudes to refugees

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-53777862356069196062010-06-25T08:31:00.000+10:002010-06-25T08:32:09.061+10:00

No matter how much The Australian may try to spin the palace coup against Kevin Rudd as arising from his mishandling of a proposed tax on mines, the big swing against Labor in the polls has consistently been towards the Greens. I’m not sure in what universe The Australian lives, but in this one, people do not desert a ruling party for the Greens out of empathy with embattled miners, at risk of

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-19748391428185593412010-06-21T08:41:00.000+10:002010-06-21T13:52:35.723+10:00

I’m increasingly convinced that the reason for so much opposition to climate change science is not because of some flaw in the science but because there’s fear of the collapse of industrial society if we stop using fossil fuels. This is not an irrational fear but it leads to irrational behaviour like attacking scientists personally, and pay good money to attend vaudeville shows where deniers

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-19625242362487029232010-05-30T18:21:00.000+10:002010-06-04T09:21:10.908+10:00

In April 2009, The Australian published an article claiming an ice age is imminent, based on the observation that sunspots were few and far between. The article also contains a completely bogus claim that temperatures dropped 0.7°C in 2007. While the temperature drop claim was pure fabrication (or to be charitable, misreading of a data source), the drop in sunspot count is not, and sunspot

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-47501443643520323732010-05-11T10:09:00.000+10:002010-05-11T10:09:46.664+10:00

Imagine what you would do if you were an executive in an industry making $100-million a day in profits, and someone came up with some bogus science that threatened your profits. Worse still, this bogus science, if accepted, represented an existential crisis: it would close you down. What would you do? Imagine also you are a highly technical industry requiring world-class science to conduct your

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-32622472616925383322010-04-05T13:45:00.000+10:002010-05-02T11:11:36.617+10:00

Since the whole brouhaha over stolen climate scientists’ emails broke last year, a clear emphasis of the science obfuscation lobby has been trying to con the public into believing the data is all flawed, and there’s nothing to worry about. One of the fall-backs in the attack on the mainstream has been the claim that satellite data hasn’t been showing as strong an increase as the data sets based

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-19250517559452335752010-03-21T10:15:00.000+10:002010-03-21T10:15:31.995+10:00

As the cacophony of voices attacking climate science grows, I have to wonder: where are the journalists? Have they forgotten their job description? In any other field, if such an obvious, misinformed lobby arose, would they rate any attention? Well, maybe. During organized tobacco's war on science, many newspapers reported propaganda created by paid tobacco lobbyists as a legitimate alternative

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-23422638744346800632010-03-07T19:57:00.000+10:002010-03-22T10:14:46.171+10:00

I talk a lot here about climate science, but I have a growing realisation that the vast majority of those who get exercised about this issue don’t know enough science to read papers in academic journals, and certainly are not excited about the issues that really attract scientific controversy, like string theory (someone has gone so far as to write a book about that with the stinging title, Not

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-736587378817327002010-02-18T21:08:00.000+10:002010-02-25T22:50:18.092+10:00

One Terry today at The Australian asked some questions. Unfortunately the paper is a lousy forum to conduct a conversation because it updates slowly and is patchy in posting comments. Also, Terry, the answers to your questions are readily available. It’s not my fault if Australia’s only national daily doesn’t report science much above the level of superstition and rumour. I would offer my

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-15083277427958949532010-02-16T07:51:00.000+10:002010-02-16T09:08:49.323+10:00

I have set up a petition so those who object to the traducing of climate science can make their voices heard. I hope even opponents of the mainstream position will sign, because the issue is not whether the science is correct or not, but whether science should be tested by weighing evidence against theories, or by personal attack on scientists. Even The Guardian, a paper that usually breaks from

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-74877767733318860832010-01-29T09:29:00.000+10:002010-02-22T22:19:08.926+10:00

Yet another bunch of anti-science letters in The Australia, this time in response to an article reporting the UK's chief scientist as saying climate scientists are prone to dramatise claims. It suits the tabloid press (including those who disguise this tendency with a broadsheet layout) to frame issues in absolutes and set up crazy debates. Anything any scientist says that sounds the vaguest

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-84897695915163637542009-12-01T12:46:00.000+10:002009-12-01T13:11:03.049+10:00

We have no option but to deal with climate change.Either we deal with it or it will deal with us.There is no serious challenge to the science behind climate change. The whole basis for the denial movement is not attacking the science, but attacking the scientists. Look for a real scientific paper attacking the science. There is a very small number of these, all of which have been debunked. Most

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-31280591499437386792009-11-25T08:03:00.000+10:002009-11-25T08:55:48.999+10:00

Another round of letters in The Australian, another round of debunking.Let's focus this time on the comments, since I had a letter published.First, Greig, a regular contributor:Philip Machanick in the past you have vehemently argued that it is CO2, and not the sun, which is the major driver of observed global warming. And now, year after year, global temperatures stubbornly refuse to climb in

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-9659733351369001502009-10-21T16:21:00.000+10:002009-10-23T10:07:25.736+10:00

Here’s a pair of letters that appeared in The Australian. First, one from me:MARC Hendrickx (Letters, 17-18/10) alleges that Pen Hadow “had to be rescued in the Arctic in 2003 due to the extreme cold and excessive ice”. Hadow in fact had always planned to be airlifted off once he arrived at the Pole, and the only issue was that he started his solo walk from Canada to the North Pole late in the

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-88717105840835168682009-10-11T14:43:00.000+10:002009-10-12T21:46:44.552+10:00

A lazy wet Sunday: what’s for lunch?I have some nice organic tomatoes from a farmer’s market, a little left over Regianno Parmesan and some supermarket spinach and ricotta tortellini (the fresh kind, not died). On a less lazy day, I’d crank up the pasta machine – but not today. For dessert I have about 200g of good fair trade dark cooking chocolate, and some milk and eggs in the fridge.To get

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-25894800813451720862009-08-23T10:29:00.000+10:002009-09-19T16:25:04.791+10:00

District 9 has been picking up pretty good reviews on the whole, but another whole layer has been missed by many reviewers who don’t understand the South African setting. I lived in South Africa until 2002, and have been a long-time follower of the local SF culture. I’ve been a member of the national SF club, SFSA, since the 1970s, and the fact that there is this sort of creative talent in South

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-65795847528658514412009-08-16T09:22:00.000+10:002009-10-01T16:12:35.968+10:00

One of the Big Lies in the campaign to confuse the public about climate science is that true science proceeds from exact information applied to an exact formula, producing an exact result. Because results reported by climate models are inexact, the Lie goes, the theory must therefore be flawed. Members of the public without scientific experience can be excused for getting this wrong; experienced

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-35750866335116321562009-08-13T19:13:00.000+10:002009-08-15T11:49:08.425+10:00

I saw Bob Carter, a leading opponent of climate science, on SBS TV (semi-commercial government-owned channel in Australia) news tonight (13 August 2009). Shortly afterwards, the view switched to a slide carrying the claim that the IPCC’s models “predict monotonic warming, and they are wrong”. Here is the slide, captured from the online edition of the news (about 1:18 in from the start):This is a

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-14406934078380898272009-07-22T08:53:00.000+10:002009-07-22T11:21:30.101+10:00

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has set up a blog, with the first topic for discussion climate change. One Malcolm has taken up the opportunity to post copious volumes of alleged “facts” that purport to show that the PM has failed to exercise “due diligence”. The blog bizarrely prevents posting of internet links of any sort making it hard to point directly at factual content to debunk this

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-45230590262619124892009-07-14T21:10:00.000+10:002009-07-16T09:33:22.588+10:00

After years of complaining, I’ve decided to take on the Australian Tax Office’s inability to create an eTax system that is platform-independent. While a minority of computer users use computing platforms other than Microsoft Windows, they have a right to access government services. It is also wrong that a government agency is favouring one company over other alternatives. It’s as if you were only

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-35929080862749366812009-07-01T10:35:00.000+10:002009-07-01T15:34:04.166+10:00

Finally, I managed to get a letter into The Australian after many tries at arguing reasonably about the drivel that passes for debate about climate change that they publish on a regular basis.It seems that polite doesn’t pay: strong words are what they are after. Could it be that the tactic many on the science side of the debate have been using of politely refuting the scientific inaccuracy of

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-41841389538079467802009-06-06T11:33:00.000+10:002009-06-07T20:43:31.103+10:00

The Ian Plimer saga continues, with yet more articles in The Australian featuring his half-truths and attempts at politicizing climate science in the cause of selling his book.Let’s just look at one more small sampling:Some 85 per cent of volcanoes are unseen and unmeasured yet these heat the oceans and add monstrous amounts of CO2 to the oceans. Why have these been ignored? Why have there been

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-77936421677123911282009-04-20T07:40:00.020+10:002009-04-20T14:22:11.781+10:00

Saturday 18 April 2009 represented a new high or low point (depending on your perspective, which turns out to be significant) in The Australian’s project to develop a new postmodern science, in which “objective truth” depends totally on the observer, and deconstruction replaces evidence-based evaluation.First, there was an article “Revealed: Antarctic ice growing, not shrinking”, which

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-7633774547094817352009-03-30T19:45:00.010+10:002009-03-31T14:00:41.678+10:00

Have you ever woken up, stretched, and before you had time to stop yourself, suddenly realised that everything you know is wrong?Probably not.Most people never have that happen to them, even if they really are wrong about everything.I lived in South Africa during the apartheid years, and you’d think that no White South Africans supported the system to hear people talk now – but believe me, as an

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-2555825784636396362009-01-09T19:00:00.015+10:002010-08-16T10:02:56.058+10:00

on Jenkins in his article “The warmaholics’ fantasy” (The Australian 06/01/2009) ends by asking this: “The real question is in acknowledging the end of fossil fuels within the next 200 years or so: how do we spend our research time and dollars?” Unfortunately, Jenkins has made the common error of not factoring in growth in demand. The latest annual figures available from BP’s authoritative

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-1843141757087434152008-12-18T18:28:00.005+10:002008-12-19T18:35:27.175+10:00

When Kevin Rudd announced a 5% target for emissions reductions for 2020, you could almost hear John Howard laughing from the political grave. It's small comfort to me that in discussing climate matters since then, a Labor supporter called Rudd “Howard” by mistake. Freudian?The science the government has in front of it says you have to reduce emissions by 25% by 2020 to save the Great Barrier Reef

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-54897072253343629272008-12-04T18:24:00.008+10:002008-12-04T19:20:38.730+10:00

Robert Mugabe is doing it.The leadership of the old powers of Europe did it in the First World War.The climate change denial movement wants it too.When conditions change so that the old logic no longer applies, leaders whose time is past are wont to cling to the old ways, no matter how inapplicable. One of the sorriest outcomes of this sort of stubbornness is the damage to those not responsible,

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-86992708515442170232008-10-27T20:30:00.009+10:002008-11-05T08:34:29.057+10:00

With just over a week to go to the US presidential election, I now feel confident in predicting not only an Obama win, but a landslide of historic proportions. The Obama and McCain campaigns are both playing this possibility down, claiming the result will be close. They have to. If Obama relaxed now and predicted a landslide, it could result in some of his supporters staying at home. If McCain

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-58918353666480874742008-10-14T10:31:00.006+10:002008-10-15T08:21:19.377+10:00

Some people are already talking about how mitigating climate change is a luxury that will have to await recovery from the economic meltdown. That is loser talk. Governments at least in countries with sound economic management that haven't run up massive debt can and should look at this as an opportunity for long-term infrastructure spending. And what better way to plan for the future than to

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-86688626542094928232008-10-10T08:31:00.003+10:002008-10-10T08:57:36.317+10:00

On 9 October 2008, The Australian's foreign editor, Greg Sheridan, published an opinion piece expressing disappointment with both US presidential candidates. He attacked McCain in particular for his proposal to refinance bad mortgages at the level the house actually turned out to be worth to the tune of $300-billion as rewarding those who made bad decisions.It seems that Obama pretty much agrees

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-18708322669460396872008-10-07T20:37:00.006+10:002008-10-21T10:50:31.567+10:00

Social democrat parties have in recent years (going back to Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, more recently joined by Australian Labor leader and prime minister Kevin Rudd) been espousing the Third Way – supposedly a middle ground between capitalism and socialism. Socialism was widely believed to have failed with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ascendency of tendencies like Thatcherism and

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-61969674109072166212008-10-05T18:16:00.006+10:002008-10-06T15:38:47.566+10:00

On 5 October 2008, Labor state member for Indooroopilly Ronan Lee jumped ship and joined the Greens.Labor supporters have been quick to label this as an opportunistic move; in a state where the Greens have battled to win elections at any level, it's hard to see how this could be so.I'd like to point out that the opposition Liberal National Party has a big problem. Inner city voters don't like the

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-38350222420074617282008-09-27T09:42:00.004+10:002008-09-27T12:19:00.490+10:00

On 14 August 2008, I sent the following letter to The Star, South Africa’s leading daily, pointing to the possibility of a section of the ANC splitting on the basis of principle, rather than personal gain.Once again, a brilliant article by Max du Preez (ANC fast sinking into a morass of hooliganism [retitled in this online version], 14/8).For some time the conventional wisdom has been that a real

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-70838247254656022162008-08-29T23:49:00.008+10:002008-10-06T09:58:03.046+10:00

Dave Patterson is one of the most respected names in computer architecture, and rightly so, having been one of the co-founders of the RISC movement, as well as being one of the prime movers behind RAID, among other things.Nonetheless, when he posted an article on the potential and pitfalls of multicore designs on the Computing Community Consortion blog, I couldn't help but post the following,

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-33884372346961860872008-07-07T21:03:00.008+10:002008-07-07T21:30:24.476+10:00

A popular affectation among climate inactivists is to insist that all climate change is driven by the sun. Let's look first at figures for total solar irradiance or TSI, a value giving the energy from the sun incident on the earth. This number has been available from satellite data since 1978. It has been estimated in the past by indirect means ("proxies") but let's stick with the modern data the

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-25144537976613432032008-06-30T08:04:00.007+10:002008-06-30T08:39:18.388+10:00

If you make a mistake in using the ticketing system in Brisbane's public transport, you are penalised. Isn't it time we were given the right to charge the system a penalty when the system screws up?Here's an example to illustrate the point.Public transport in and around Brisbane is on a single ticketing system (with the exception of the airport train, which operates to its own rules). Recently a

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-26973107313521544082008-06-28T16:25:00.012+10:002008-06-29T15:18:04.570+10:00

The Brisbane city council's 2008 budget has resulted in widespread angst and anguish over a proposed change in the property rates formula for units (apartments on community titles, what the Americans call condos). The proposal is to add a parity factor, an Orwellian name if ever there was one, to ensure that some people pay on a higher scale.The issue as I understand it is that dwellings are

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-78878546088715407602008-06-28T12:03:00.017+10:002008-08-19T01:23:43.932+10:00

Peak oil is increasingly on people's minds as they refuel, watch air travel costs escalate, and wonder why no one warned them it would happen. Possibly, just possibly, this is the wake-up call that will liberate us from shorty-term politics, and focus everyone on long-term solutions.But should this have been such a surprise?For starters, let's look at where the oil price is. As I write this, it's

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-19867102098320195682008-06-24T13:48:00.009+10:002008-06-24T19:07:26.635+10:00

The fact that anyone who has an internet connection to the outside world can publish anything they like doesn't mean that everything published on the net is good. On the contrary, it's likely that as the fraction of the world's population with internet connectivity grows, more drivel will be published -- unless there's a mechanism to edit or select content. For example, although anyone can edit

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-82814599209837940562008-06-23T09:59:00.003+10:002008-06-23T10:07:45.738+10:00

The recent Brisbane City Council budget included double digit rate rises for many ratepayers. Single digit rate rises were promised at the election: did Campbell Newman mean by this a raised middle finger? Because that's what he's delivered. The updated rates calculation includes a multiplier based on the value of the land a unit is situated on, which does not allow for how many units are on

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-81486630141051120872008-06-19T18:34:00.010+10:002008-06-19T18:59:16.004+10:00

How do they make low-fat gelato at Italian ice-creameries?Most home ice-cream recipes are relatively high in fat, because this makes it easier to set the ice-cream to a nice texture. If you use an ice-cream machine it also works better with a high-fat mixture. If you make ice-cream by hand, the lower the fat content, the more you need to take the mix out of the freezer as it sets, and give it a

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-29741024560294874202008-06-12T09:18:00.003+10:002008-06-12T09:33:02.282+10:00

There's been some debate in Australia in the wake of prime minister Kevin Rudd's announcement of financial backing for Toyota to build a hybrid Camry in Australia on whether hybrids represent a big saving in carbon emissions or not. This is an old debate, starting with a claim that a Toyota Prius's lifetime energy cost was higher than a big SUV, when you took into account manufacturing and the

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-14805841417575616652008-06-09T09:43:00.014+10:002008-06-09T18:33:15.379+10:00

In a recent article, I explored the link between organized tobacco's obfuscation of science, and the climate denial industry, based on facts reported by George Monbiot.Today, The Australian features a letter from one Max Rheese of the Australian Environment Foundation (AEF), in effect claiming that global warming is a hoax.I'm tired of arguing how global warming didn't end in 1998. Instead of

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-21119532001688374042008-06-09T08:30:00.002+10:002008-06-09T09:27:02.787+10:00

Banks in Australia are starting to push the idea of using a PIN instead of signing for credit card transactions.This sounds as if it should be more secure. After all it involves the new wonder magic "technology". However, there is a serious downside to using a PIN instead of signing: if someone spots you typing the PIN and steals the card, they can use it on an ATM. If they steal the card

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-27116779806858314752008-06-03T08:57:00.004+10:002010-12-31T15:34:17.403+10:00

George Monbiot, in his book Heat, reveals the link between organized tobacco and organized climate change denial. I followed up his references and the documents he found make for interesting reading: memos from APCO, a PR firm, to Philip Morris on how to fake a grassroots movement (what we'd call astroturfing today). I strongly recommend reading Heat but in the meantime here are some examples, in

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-72873068071485651012008-06-02T08:19:00.005+10:002008-06-02T21:39:16.371+10:00

One of the biggest problems with both climate change and the growing threat of peak oil is that it's all too easy to fall into the trap of subsidizing special interests, rather than actually tackling the real issues.Either we accept that these problems are real (singly or collectively) and we focus on solutions, or we don't. In either case spending good money on non-solutions is idiotic. If there

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-42116023607649225872008-05-29T13:25:00.007+10:002008-06-11T16:38:21.826+10:00

Peak OilAs oil and with it products we use to fuel our cars and trucks gets more expensive, there is growing anguish about the effects on the cost of living. China alone is adding millions of cars a year to the total, and peak oil theory says we should be hitting limits soon on production growth.In reality, as prices go up, there will be options of exploiting kinds of oil previously too expensive

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-76613046399631732802008-05-27T09:02:00.007+10:002008-05-29T13:25:42.647+10:00

Every now and then someone creates a mailing list to announce something and makes three rather fundamental errors: they set it up so that the reply-to address is the whole list, they allow anyone to post to it, and they don't make it as clear and obvious as possible how to unsubscribe.What really boggles me is that this seems to happen most often in announcements of technical conferences of

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-64180051807738174652008-05-24T21:52:00.003+10:002008-05-24T22:31:51.292+10:00

One end of Apple's range is being ignored and it's not the iPhone.There's something of a feeding frenzy going on around iPhone 2.0, with claims that inventory has dried up (all models at time of writing show "Currently Unavailable" at the Apple Store, a sure sign that something is up), Apple has imported unusual consignments to the US, various phone providers leaking alleged attributes of the new

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-84882837488216514582008-05-23T08:24:00.010+10:002008-05-30T10:37:13.607+10:00

In 1894, the Times of London estimated that by 1950 every street in the city would be buried nine feet deep in horse manure. – Eric Morris, From Horse Power to Horsepower, Access no. 30, Spring 2007This prediction has something of the character of predictions of the effect of climate change. Of course, what happened in the meantime was that trains and cars largely replaced horses (and despite the

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-27443267741578619152008-05-22T08:39:00.003+10:002008-05-22T09:05:04.332+10:00

The still new Rudd government in Australia has announced deep cuts in funding for the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), one of the few research bodies to receive consistent funding under the previous anti-intellectual Howard government.The CSIRO and to a lesser extent universities are suffering from the misplaced desire by governments for research entities to

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-51376288331605070742008-05-15T13:39:00.002+10:002008-05-24T21:51:00.319+10:00

It is bizarre that anyone is claiming that we should be basing climate models on sunspots at all. What is important is how much energy is incident on the planet, and how the overall energy balance changes. Sunspots may be a proxy for solar output, but we have direct measurements in the modern era, specifically satellite-based measures of total solar irradiance (TSI).Nonetheless the thing

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-48332786916134076042008-04-30T13:42:00.034+10:002008-05-21T13:58:21.380+10:00

One of the most common questions encountered in discussions on climate change especially by those who don't accept the science is, "Why doesn't it get hotter every year?" or other variants, such as, "Why hasn't it warmed since 1998?" (pick your favorite year). The real question underlying all this is: "If there is a warming trend of so many degrees per century, why can't we see that exact trend

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-6845368328490043062008-04-28T11:33:00.011+10:002008-04-30T10:45:49.699+10:00

On 23 April 2008, The Australian published an article, "Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh" by Phil Chapman, geophysicist and astronautical engineer, who was also the first Australian to be sent into space by NASA.Possibly he's still out there, because he tells us: All four agencies that track Earth’s temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-42032446486557883492008-04-22T08:52:00.007+10:002008-06-24T08:35:46.254+10:00

A shipload of armaments for Zimbabwe was turned away from South Africa on Friday 18 April 2008, thanks to activist unions, an inquiring press and a strong human rights activist community.The timing of this shipment leads to the obvious question: is this the reason for the delays in counting the votes in the now not so recent election? Was the government waiting for fresh stocks of ammunition

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-90727516760629398592008-04-15T20:53:00.003+10:002008-04-15T21:57:06.944+10:00

I did not know Rob Robertson and his wife Gert well. My wife Fiona Semple introduced me to them, and they immediately felt like old friends. In a few visits, I had a sense of a big life, lived to the full, yet without selfishness.On our last visit in December 2006, he proudly showed off mementoes of his bungee jump. He had done this at the highest jump site in the world. He had negotiated to do

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-88736083865900375352008-04-10T19:29:00.024+10:002008-05-14T16:07:36.854+10:00

I must say up front that I would be ecstatic if the anti-anthropogenic global warming position was shown to be correct, because the probability of action to stop CO2 emissions in time to avert some of the predicted consequences is close to zero. Unfortunately, the universe does not subvert itself to my will, so I have to work with the next best thing: understanding reality as well as possible,

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-6232156177698028052008-04-10T07:59:00.018+10:002008-12-03T15:02:51.308+10:00

On 9 April, The Australian published an article titled "Good science isn’t about consensus" on its front page.The New York Times's masthead motto is "All the news that's fit to print." The Australian's might as well be "All the news that fits our prejudice." Don Aitkin is of course entitled to his opinion (though as the late Senator Moynihan reminded us, he is not entitled to his own facts). The

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-56025942957479126242008-03-29T19:00:00.009+10:002008-06-11T16:09:19.810+10:00

I stumbled on this, probably not meant to be in a publicly accessible place. I hope ExxonMobil will not be too outraged if it appeared early on my blog.-----EMBARGOED UNTIL April 1st, 2008-----SPRINGFIELD--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 1, 2008--Speaking today at City Hall, Springfield, C M Burns, President Corporate Affairs of Exxon Mobil Corporation (NYSE:XOM), announced a major change in ExxonMobil's

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-84155668103300470082008-03-06T22:28:00.020+10:002008-03-17T09:03:05.622+10:00

As Kermit said, it’s not easy being green.I recently stumbled upon a bunch of excitingly clean green things, like claims you can run a car on water (a teensy bit of electricity separates out the water into hydrogen and oxygen and you burn the hydrogen) and magnetic power generators that apparently make electricity out of nothing.Now, I have actually majored in physics, and while some people may

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-55509518258571450282008-02-19T21:32:00.007+10:002008-02-19T22:01:13.090+10:00

I've placed my first election ad for my campaign in the MacGregor ward of the Brisbane City Council on YouTube:So what do I stand for?In short, a liveable city.What does that mean? A city that puts people first.In the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, one of the main characters is called Ford Prefect. He was a space alien and in an error in his research prior to landing on Earth, he thought cars

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-53256713600147920952008-02-05T01:10:00.001+10:002008-06-06T08:40:29.479+10:00

Lucky, lucky Americans.You may be wondering how I can say this when your economy is in the toilet, the war in Iraq is a disaster, Afghanistan is unravelling and there is no obvious end in sight.Well, one thing is obviously ending soon: the Bush presidency.Can George Dubya Bush be as stupid as he sounds? People have argued that you have to be smart to get to be president of the US. However, we

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-74322773357945590272008-01-31T03:10:00.000+10:002008-01-31T15:32:37.195+10:00

Having observed this phenomenon in various fields including the link between tobacco and ill health, the link between HIV and AIDS and the link between CO2 emissions and anthropogenic global warming, I can offer a few general hints on how to start a new junk science campaign: Think of a really obvious objection to a field of science in which many eminent people have put decades of work.

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-4927987059181824322008-01-27T10:39:00.000+10:002008-01-31T15:36:21.261+10:00

Queensland state premier Anna Bligh announced late 2007 that Queensland would start fluoridating drinking water (at the time only done in a small fraction of the state). Predictably, anti-fluoride campaigns have sprung up.Is this another scare along the lines of controlling tobacco or climate change will destroy the economy, or is there something in it?I picked up a pamphlet with a number of

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-13902388140646202232008-01-17T10:07:00.000+10:002008-01-17T11:10:19.630+10:00

Here is an interesting article on SSD vs. HD pricing: Flash Memory vs. Hard Disk Drives - Which Will Win?In the 1990s, in my advanced computer architecture course, I demonstrated that the price trend of hard drives was going to intersect the price trend of DRAM at around 2004 to 2005. Of course an solid state disk (SSD) can't be made out of DRAM without a robust power source; FLASH has fixed that

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-9706393266582459052008-01-11T10:22:00.000+10:002008-01-11T17:23:12.771+10:00

The link between smoking tobacco and cancer was first established in the 1930s, and it took about 60 years for a good fraction of the world to accept the need to limit smoking.The climate change debate is of similar character – some of the same players are even involved. The tactics, not surprisingly, are similar. Promote the view with a combination of bought off scientists and fake grassroots (

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-74689219460909322622007-12-15T17:24:00.000+10:002007-12-15T17:24:40.899+10:00

A Few Things Ill Considered: How to Talk to a Global Warming ScepticThis is a pretty good site to start from when entering the debate: there is no censorship of contrary views.I've included it as one of the resources on the google group for my book, No Tomorrow.

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-28006979348635474192007-12-12T11:29:00.001+10:002007-12-12T11:42:35.079+10:00

In keeping with the theme of cargo cults mentioned as a problem with computers in education, let's look again at another field where the outward appearance of science is sufficient: climate change doubt.One Ernst-Georg Beck has attracted some attention through publishing a paper claiming that CO2 variation was much greater in the immediate pre-industrial era than today.One bunch of comments not

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-37330895125246166312007-12-10T00:54:00.000+10:002007-12-19T09:54:32.372+10:00

If you want an example of the reality of rapid human-induced climate change, you only need to look at the change in tone of reporting after Labor won the Australian federal election. In barely a week after the win, reporting on Kyoto changed in the Australian (mostly Murdoch's News Limited -- strictly limited) press from "we can do more by staying outside an imperfect system" to "Australia

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-12132053670210128002007-11-27T10:35:00.000+10:002007-12-10T14:15:47.295+10:00

Australia has just elected a new Labor government; the new leader, Kevin Rudd, in most respects appears to be a distinct improvement on his predecessor, Liberal (= conservative in Australia) prime minister John Howard.One area where I am not convinced is Rudd's obsession with putting technology in the classroom.Somewhere in the various newspaper articles about the Rudd transition, I saw the

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-22471452418402158872007-11-26T10:34:00.000+10:002007-11-27T10:35:37.488+10:00

Trust the Danes to come up with an innovative solution to global warming and obesity: slap a 180% tax on cars, so everyone has to ride bikes instead of driving everywhere.I'm in Odense, the third-largest city in Denmark, birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen, and a nice compact city to explore on foot (if you can avoid being run down by bicycles). November is not the best time to be here – grey

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-52337255853871903802007-11-18T02:54:00.000+10:002007-11-18T15:03:12.078+10:00

According to this article on the BBC web site, an open invitation to submit evidence of bias against climate change doubters' research revealed almost nothing.The opposite case is also interesting to contemplate – that there's a natural bias in favour of contrarians, even if they have nothing to offer.If climate scientists are successful in making the case that the problem is really, really

Philip Machanicknoreply@blogger.com0