Yesterday, John McCarthy, one of the fathers of modern computer programming passed away. John McCarthy may not have received as much notoriety among tech people as Steve Jobs did, but he was perhaps more influential. McCarthy developed LISP in 1959, based on Alonzo Church’s lambda calculus, for use in artificial intelligence research. My contact with …
Category Archive: Science
Oct
24
Sep
29
Spend the $5 Billion to mitigate Climate Change
Today, there was much in the news about the report by the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, which says that the effects of global warming could cost Canada $5 Billion dollars a year by 2020. If you read my post of January 2010, this would be a great deal! We should embrace …
Jun
16
Little Ice Age, redux?
At the American Astronomical Society (AAS) conference this week, three papers lead to the conclusions that Solar Cycle 24 is very weak and that Solar Cycle 25 may not really happen at all. This is bad news for our climate. The problem with a “quiet” sun, lacking sunspots, is that when it has happened before …
Jun
16
IPCC fiction, again
Steve McIntyre has again identified that the UN IPCC is making things up, and publishing them as “facts” when there is no supporting evidence whatsoever. Further, he points out that this claim: Close to 80 percent of the world‘s energy supply could be met by renewables by mid-century if backed by the right enabling public …
Jun
07
On Computer Simulations and Reality
Today, I was directed to a very good article, But It Worked in the Computer Model, on why complex computer models, of any subject, will usually contain errors and not provide a good analogue to reality without a lot of real world experimentation. It also explains, tangentially, why many students coming out of universities with …
Apr
28
The problem with “Alternative Fuels”
I will admit that I am employed in a field that is heavily tied to the energy sector, which may bias me towards it, although I hope not as much as some might think. I am not against alternative energy sources. However, I am against massive government subsidies to force convert us, because the track …
Mar
18
On Fukushima
The Fukushima incident raises a number of questions about the design and operation of nuclear facilities. Most notably: How is it that no one had considered the possibility of a subduction earthquake followed by tsunami in that location? Why were the emergency generators located in the “wash zone”? However, as bad as this incident is, …
Mar
17
On Earth Hour
Everyone should read Earth Hour: A Dissent, by Ross McKitrick. He makes some very good points. The greatest is right at the beginning and closing: I abhor Earth Hour. Abundant, cheap electricity has been the greatest source of human liberation in the 20th century. Every material social advance in the 20th century depended on the …
Feb
02
Roy Spencer’s Challenge
Dr. Roy Spencer, a noted climate blogger and meteorologist, has put forward a challenge to the Church of Anthropogenic Climate Change: What most people don’t realize is that the vast majority of published research on the topic simply assumes that warming is manmade. It in no way “proves” it. If the science really is that settled, …
Jan
28
The glaciers aren’t melting?
Recent scientific study shows that the Karakorum glaciers in the Himalayas are GROWING, not melting as the IPCC claimed in the 2007 AR4 report. Now we know that the AR4 report has been shown to have been based on non-existent science. This, along with the cold winters we’ve had the last couple of years (both …