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Icy Truths about Greta’s Message
NZ

Icy Truths about Greta’s Message

James Shaw, co-leader of the Green Party, believes people can reduce the world’s temperature. Perhaps this thinking comes from a Maori legend: How Maui Slowed The Sun. Maui was annoyed that the sun went down too quickly, and he had to eat his meal in the dark. His village

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Was It Really Humans Wot Dun the Mammoths In?

Was It Really Humans Wot Dun the Mammoths In?

Here’s a weird time-perspective for you to consider: we live closer in time to Cleopatra than she did to the building of the great pyramids. The Great Pyramid of Giza was more than 2600 years old when Cleopatra was alive. By contrast, she lived less than two thousand years

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The Oceans of Venus: Science or Fiction?

The Oceans of Venus: Science or Fiction?

From the moment astronomers first trained telescopes on it, Venus was long an enigma. Shrouded entirely in thick white clouds which help make it one of the brightest objects in the night sky, nothing was known of Venus’ surface. That mystery allowed speculation to run riot. C. S. Lewis, in

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‘Peer-Reviewed Science’ Is Broken

‘Peer-Reviewed Science’ Is Broken

In his epic The Winds of War, Herman Wouk refers to the “curious universal smirk of Germans when discussing Jews: condescending, facetious, and cold, with superior awareness of a very private inside joke”. I’ve often noticed a similar look when discussing climate science with alarmists. Mention a scientist or

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Go the F-k to Sleep

Go the F-k to Sleep

Edgar Allan Poe may have loathed “those little slices of death”, but sleep is even more crucial to us than food. We can survive weeks without food — no more than a week without sleep (the record is 11 days). There’s a reason sleep deprivation is classed as torture. But,

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Has COVID Dealt a Death-Blow to Science?

Has COVID Dealt a Death-Blow to Science?

There is little doubt that we live in an age when reason and the scientific revolution are under concerted assault – from all sides. The left like to demonise the right as “anti-science”, but they might want to take a long, hard look in the mirror. The religious right might get

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The Making of a Mad Scientist
NZ

The Making of a Mad Scientist

Thomas Crow particle.scitech.org.au Thomas Crow is an Australian science writer. He has a background in professional writing, biochemistry and genetics. He writes for Australian and New Zealand research institutes and publications like Crikey. He’s a horror and gothic fantasy fan. He thinks of himself as a

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Was the Real Sodom and Gomorrah Destroyed by a Cosmic Bomb?

Was the Real Sodom and Gomorrah Destroyed by a Cosmic Bomb?

Sodom and Gomorrah are perhaps the best known of the five “cities of the plain” which feature so prominently in Genesis — and a byword for God’s destructive wrath. The historic city and location of the cities has long been debated. But, the Biblical and other Hebrew sources are clear

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Was This the World’s First Predator?

Was This the World’s First Predator?

It’s said that “Whenever something eats, something dies”. But this wasn’t always so: the earliest organisms were likely microbes that absorbed nutrients directly from their environment. Even today “extremophile” organisms feast on the chemical soup spewing out of deep-ocean volcanic vents. But, at some point in Earth’s

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yellow and black no smoking sign

Can We Just Lay Off the Vax Wars Now?

Can we just lay off the vax wars now? We’ve got the vaxholes blaming the unvaccinated for rising Covid cases, while the anti-vaxxers shout back that it’s the vaccinated who are the real Covid Marys. Turns out they’re probably both wrong. A new study has examined the

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Shock! Computer Models Wrong! Again!

Shock! Computer Models Wrong! Again!

Brace yourselves, readers, I’m about to deliver some shocking news: pandemic computer models were wrong! Again! Now that you’ve picked yourselves off the floor, let us share our astonishment. The models that were wrong about Covid in Britain, the US, and Australia. The self-same models that were completely

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people inside room

We Need Some Healthy Scepticism about Science and Medicine

Hendrik van der Breggen mercatornet.com Hendrik van der Breggen, PhD, is a retired philosopher who lives in Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada. One of his interests is and has been the history and philosophy of science. He is double vaccinated, is inclined to think vaccinations are wise (depending on, in consultations

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