the Foresight Institute

IOP comments on Climategate

By J. Storrs Hall, on February 28th, 2010

The UK-based Institute of Physics (IOP) publishes, among other things, the journal Nanotechnology, one of the leading journals in the field, and has had special issues with papers from Foresight conferences gaoing back to the 90s.
It was thus somewhat surprising, yet gratifying, to find them submitting quite a strongly-worded critique of practices in climatology that [...]

Original Sin

By J. Storrs Hall, on December 20th, 2009

Mike Treder has a post at IEET that reads like a catechism of the Gaian religion. Now I’m a firm supporter of freedom of religion and Mike has a perfect right to believe what he does and indeed to preach it to whomever will listen. (And besides, Mike is a friend of mine.) [...]

Feynman on Climategate

By J. Storrs Hall, on December 17th, 2009

We here at Foresight are not particularly interested in climate change — the effects, even if you take the IPCC projections as gospel, are dwarfed by the capability of nanotech (for good or ill). But we are considerably more concerned about the way science is done, and whether it can reliably find the truth. So [...]

Some Historical Perspective

By J. Storrs Hall, on December 5th, 2009

At Bryan Caplan’s blog this morning there was an odd comment that stirred up a 40-year old memory:
A single sentence in the Durants’ The Age of Napoleon makes me wonder whether I can trust a word they write on economic policy:
The memory is that it was reading another part of the Durant’s Story of Civilization [...]

Eine Kleine Nachtphysik

By J. Storrs Hall, on November 29th, 2009

(or a little physics about climate change. Or at least a few clarifications about some of the points being raised.)

In the wake of Climategate, a wide variety of mistakes and misapprehensions are being circulated on the Internet (as if that weren’t happening before).
For example, in this article from the Telegraph:
Phil Jones, the 57-year-old director of [...]

Peer Review

By J. Storrs Hall, on November 27th, 2009

Just for fun:

(h/t Roger Pielke, Jr.)

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VRBWLpYCPY)
(h/t Megan McArdle)

Climategate, or, how science works

By J. Storrs Hall, on November 25th, 2009

“Science advances, funeral by funeral.” (often attributed to Timothy Ferris)
The blogosphere has been abuzz over the past week or so with the release of data — emails and program source and documentation — from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, one of the premier climatology research institutions in the world. [...]

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