Monday, August 19, 2013

Links

The Case against Public Science | Cato Unbound
What would the world look like had governments not funded science? It would look like the UK or the United States did when those countries were the unchallenged superpowers of their day. Most research would be concentrated in industry (from which a steady stream of advances in pure science would emerge) but there would also be an armamentarium of private philanthropic funders of university and of foundation science by which non-market, pure research (including on orphan diseases) would be funded.

And such laissez faire science would be more useful than today’s
Industry reacts to the lack of Green Deal marketing budget
The Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) revealed that there is currently no money available for a marketing campaign for the Green Deal. Utility Week gauged the industry's views.
The Tyee – Is Bill McKibben Making the Climate Change Fight Harder?
McKibben's fight against Keystone XL may appeal to those who believe in firm limits to current economic growth.

Many people, though, feel deeply affronted by that notion. And they may dismiss climate change's urgency, reads a 2011 paper co-written by Kahan, "in part because they associate the issue with antagonism to commerce and industry."

Singing "five times louder" about the evils of fossil fuel companies, then, is unlikely to change those people's minds. It might very well "deepen" their skepticism, Kahan argues, and ultimately make it harder to broker climate solutions.
Leaked IPCC drafts lift confidence in humans' carbon culpability | brisbanetimes.com.au
"We have got quite a bit more certain that climate change ... is largely manmade,"  [Why, specifically?] said Reto Knutti, a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

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