The Closing of The Scientific Mind

That science should face crises in the early 21st century is inevitable. Power corrupts, and science today is the Catholic Church around the start of the 16th century: used to having its own way and dealing with heretics by excommunication, not argument. –David Gelernter, Science Matters, 12 June 2017

Scientists have discovered a population of “super corals” that appear to have become resistant to extreme environmental conditions — being able to survive and thrive in hot, acidic and low-oxygen waters.

And they now plan to search for more climate-adaptable coral populations within the Great Barrier Reef. David Suggett, who will accompany Camp on the expedition, said: “By exploring the very margins — such as reef-neighbouring mangroves that are often ignored by coral surveys — we’re continually finding populations of super coral that are resistant to hot, acidic and hypoxic conditions predicted under climate change. This is a game changer for how we consider coral reef resilience into the future for the Great Barrier Reef.” –Hannah Osborne, Newsweek, 9 June 2017

Enormous hope rests on electric cars as the solution by the motor industry to climate change. However the batteries of electric cars are not environmentally friendly when manufactured. Several tonnes of carbon dioxide are being released, even before electric batteries leave the factory. For each kilowatt-hour storage capacity in the battery, emissions of 150 to 200 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent are generated, already in the factory. The authors calculated how long you need to drive a petrol or diesel car before it has released as much carbon dioxide as an electric car battery. The result was 2.7 years for a battery of the same size as Nissan Leaf and 8.2 years for a battery of Tesla size, based on a series of assumptions. –Johan Kristensson, New Technology, 29 May 2017

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull could be facing a backbench backlash over plans for a Clean Energy Target after a number of government MPs spoke out behind closed doors on Tuesday night. —New Daily, 13 June 2017

The probability of El Nino, a warming of ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific, developing this year has been downgraded by U.S. government forecasters as sea surface temperatures and wind speeds in the area remain close to their long-term averages. –John Kemp, Reuters, 13 June 2017

In spite of decades of sustained government support at the global level, wind and solar, the modern renewables on which the future of current climate policy depend, are still only 1% of world Final Energy Consumption. What is so shocking about this figure is not that simply that it is small. What is so remarkable is the disproportion between this 1% figure and the enormous global effort and cost that has gone into its making. The chemical analogies were not available to Horace, but he had words for this situation: “Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus”. Roughly translated, When governments play at God they make only rats and mice. –John Constable, GWPF Energy, 12 June 2017