Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder: ‘There are quite a few areas where physics blurs into religion’

Sabine Hossenfelder is a German theoretical physicist who writes books and runs a YouTube channel (with 618,000 subscribers at time of writing) called Science Without the Gobbledygook. Born in Frankfurt, she studied mathematics at the Goethe Universität and went on to focus on particle physics – her PhD explored the possibility that the Large Hadron Collider… Read More Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder: ‘There are quite a few areas where physics blurs into religion’

Embrace what may be the most important green technology ever. It could save us all

George Monbiot So what do we do now? After 27 summits and no effective action, it seems that the real purpose was to keep us talking. If governments were serious about preventing climate breakdown, there would have been no Cops 2-27. The major issues would have been resolved at Cop1, as the ozone depletion crisis… Read More Embrace what may be the most important green technology ever. It could save us all

The Illogic and Inanity of the Religious Right in India

S.K. Arun Murthi I wrote a short critical article a few weeks ago on the ideas of some ancient Indian schools of thought. My critique was aimed at revealing how such ideas are pseudoscientific and pseudo-philosophical and, therefore, incompatible with that of modern science (I had written this article in the context of ISRO co-hosting the ‘Akash… Read More The Illogic and Inanity of the Religious Right in India

Air pollution: Uncovering the dirty secret behind BP’s bumper profits

By Owen Pinnell Far removed from the world leaders making climate pledges at COP, are people like Ali Hussein Julood, a young leukaemia survivor living on an Iraqi oil field co-managed by BP. When the BBC discovered BP was not declaring the field’s gas flaring, Ali helped us to reveal the truth about the poisonous… Read More Air pollution: Uncovering the dirty secret behind BP’s bumper profits

Apocalypse in the rear-view mirror

Magdalena Taube Krystian Woznicki The planet, as authoritarian capitalism’s plaything, is subject to real-world economic-ecological downward spirals. And yet exorbitant space exploration projects continue to build escapist dreams on extractivism. And the threat of nuclear war continues to push at the limits of tenuous environmental stability. Earthrise reloaded When the Tesla Gigafactory opened in Brandenburg, Elon… Read More Apocalypse in the rear-view mirror

Lee McIntyre. The Attack on Truth and our age of willful ignorance

First posted June 12, 2015 To see how we treat the concept of truth these days, one might think we just don’t care any more. Politicians pronounce that global warming is a hoax. An alarming number of middle-class parents have stopped giving their children routine vaccinations, on the basis of discredited research. Meanwhile many commentators… Read More Lee McIntyre. The Attack on Truth and our age of willful ignorance

Michael Rectenwald: Postmodernism, the Academic Left, and the Crisis of Capitalism

First posted March 11, 2013 Those who are obsessed by language finally come to the conviction that there is nothing but interpretation: Stanley Rosen in Hermeneutics as Politics (1987) It seems almost unnecessary to note that this theoretical perspective is matched by the self-abnegation of its praxis. To be sure, postmodern theory itself arose due to the… Read More Michael Rectenwald: Postmodernism, the Academic Left, and the Crisis of Capitalism

The Dangerous Populist Science of Yuval Noah Harari

The best-selling author is a gifted storyteller and popular speaker. But he sacrifices science for sensationalism, and his work is riddled with errors Darshana Narayanan Watch videos of Yuval Noah Harari, the author of the wildly successful book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, and you will hear him being asked the most astonishing questions. Harari’s… Read More The Dangerous Populist Science of Yuval Noah Harari