Posts Tagged ‘economist’
Welcome to the panopticon
None of the recent revelations are a big surprise: we’ve been well on our way to a dystopian panopticon for a while. It’s disappointing to hear that there was no significant change in policy after Obama took over office. It’s a bit corny at this point, but “Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not watching you” is as apt as it has ever been.
Some interesting links:
Climate change and science
When the “Climate Gate” emails were leaked a couple of months ago I did some browsing. I couldn’t find the malicious intent that the scientists involved have been accused of, but there is a worrying lack of transparency as well as some incompetence. I can understand the requirement to have measurement results “cleaned up” in order to be usable, but it should always be clear what the raw source data was and how it has been manipulated.
Last weeks’ The Economist had a nice special about climate change. One of its opinion pieces does a good job of describing the current situation and reflects my views. Global warming is very real and man plays some role in it, but some of the climate research is clearly shoddy and more transparency is necessary. Climate research has never had much appreciation or funding until global warming roared its head; perhaps the fact that it is a relatively underdeveloped field is a factor here?
Aristillus 