climate, photos, miscellany
Exploiting the oil sands is like drinking seawater, when you are already dangerously dehydrated. It’s like starting up a smoky old kerosene lantern aboard a space station that is rapidly running out of air. It’s like giving more whiskey to the already-drunk guide who is paddling our canoe over Niagara Falls. And yet, huge expansion [...]
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In many situations – especially those that can be characterized as a ‘tragedy of the commons’ or ‘free rider’ problem – taking the ethics of the situation seriously often involves ignoring the game theoretical aspects and applying a maxim of moral reasoning like the categorical imperative. If each actor behaves in such a way that [...]
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This is an interesting anomaly: Some prominent voices at NASA are fed up with the agency’s activist stance toward climate change. The following letter asking the agency to move away from climate models and to limit its stance to what can be empirically proven, was sent by 49 former NASA scientists and astronauts. The letter [...]
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Yesterday, I got the my third and final vaccination against the human papillomavirus (HPV). Some strains of this wart-causing virus also cause cancer. The vaccine I bought – Merck’s Gardasil – protects against HPV types 16, 18, 6, and 11. About 70% of cervical cancers are thought to be caused by types 16 and 18, [...]
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In The End of Nature, Middlebury College professor and 350.org founder Bill McKibben makes the case that humanity has put an end to nature by altering the climate, and then goes on to consider the implications. McKibben’s book – first published in 1989 – briefly explains why human activities are increasing the quantity of greenhouse [...]
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As with other high-risk activities, I think gambling on climate change is irresponsible and reckless, even if the people making that bet turn out to be right. If a person runs across a minefield in order to experience the thrill of danger, few people are likely to congratulate them for their bold choice in the [...]
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I saw Margin Call yesterday – an interesting fictionalized depiction of the start of the mortgage-backed security meltdown of 2008. The film depicts one fundamental cause effectively enough, namely models that understimated the level of risk associated with mortgage-backed collateralized debt obligations, though what I have read about the crisis suggests that this may not [...]
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There are masses of important recent news stories on the topic of smartphone security. I have been filing them below posts like this one, this one, and this one, but they really deserve a spot of their own. First news story: Micro Systemation makes software that allows people to bypass the 4-digit lock code on [...]
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No matter what else we achieve, if the generations alive now fail to prevent catastrophic climate change we will be seen as failures by the generations that will suffer after us. We will be remembered as the people who had all the knowledge and technology required to preserve a habitable Earth, but who were too [...]
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Recently, I suggested that perhaps there is a division between ethical questions that are hard to answer and those where the answers are merely deeply inconvenient. Something a bit similar is probably true of climate change policies. There are a few things we should obviously do, but many large questions outstanding. Something clear: carbon pricing [...]
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Keep carbon underground. Help stop the Northern Gateway oil sands pipeline.
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Content copyright Milan Ilnyckyj (2003-2012). May be used non-commercially with attribution. For more details see this page.