Contrary to popular belief, I don’t like to be nasty to people. While it is certainly true that I have a pugnacious side to my nature, I am a generally peaceful and conflict-averse individual. The day that I departed the Netherlands also happened to be election day (I somehow timed my departure from my...
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It’s that time of the year again, and I am once again in a reflective mood about the state of the world in which we live. That state, to put it mildly, is “not good”. We are rapidly headed towards a nasty collision with mother nature and the worst part about it, is that...
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Torrents are wonderful things. For those who are unfamiliar (and it is entirely possible to be unfamiliar yet still be a regular user), torrents are a system by which files are shared over a network of computers. If the Internet is the era-defining black swan of our generation, then torrents are the cargo trucks...
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It has come to my attention that today is Earth Day… or perhaps it was yesterday, or the day before. In fact, it may have been the case that all three days were “Earth Days” which seems a little silly, or perhaps I got it wrong and it is actually Earth Week. When I...
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“The only unchangeable certainty is that nothing is unchangeable or certain”, so said John F. Kennedy once. Every now and then, one passes through an anniversary of a significant event and is forced to reflect on life, and its many unusual twists and turns. I haven’t lived in Australia (which I still consider “home”) for...
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The famed classical economist Thomas Malthus once said: “The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will show the immensity of the first power...
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There is a good reason that our “pale blue dot” is blue, and that is because over 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered with water. It is no surprise that life began in the oceans, and water is still essential to life today. On average, a human can survive no longer than 3...
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In part 1, it was established that warming was taking place, and that the consequences of warming were not good for humans. I wanted to get those points out of the way first because they are the easiest, and are widely accepted as fact, even by most so-called climate change skeptics. The response so...
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(note: Paul Krugman said more-or-less the same thing as I am about to do so in his NY Times Column this morning) The trouble with the Earth, is that it is our home. Because it is our home, it is exceedingly difficult to treat any policy decisions to do with the earth in a...
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So I want to save the world right. Turns out the world is a very complicated thing and, in order to have any hope of fixing its problems, one must understand many different fields at the one time. Due to the amount of time it takes to gain a good understanding of even a...
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