Author Archives: Dan Moutal
Taylor Wilson: My radical plan for small nuclear fission reactors
Taylor Wilson, is known as the boy who played with fusion, because at the age of 14 became the 32nd individual on the planet to achieve a nuclear-fusion reaction.
Climate Scientist Andrew Weaver wins the first ever Green party seat in BC election
Andrew Weaver, Newly elected Green Party MLA for Oak Bay-Gordon Head
The British Columbia Green Party just made history, voters in the riding of Oak Bay-Gordon Head elected Andrew Weaver, Canada Research Chair in Climate Modelling and Analysis at the University of Victoria, and a lead author for a chapter of the IPCC AR4, to the Legislative Assembly.
A right wing defence of pure science funding by governments
Recently the Canadian National Research Council has, unfortunately, drastically changed course and abandoned pure science research unless it has clear economic benefits.
Many people have written eloquent criticisms of this move by the Canadian government.
A Space Oddity
A, sadly, earthbound Commander Chris Hadfield in what is definitely the most awesome and extraordinary version of David Bowie’s classic song:
An ideal replacement for Google Reader: Part 2
Inbox vs Stream
It’s been much longer than I intended when I wrote part 1 of an ideal replacement for Google Reader. But I haven’t forgotten that I promised a part 2
As you might recall the first (and probably most important) requirement for an ideal replacement for Google was that the back-end syncing service become an open standard.
Keep Calm and Carry on
Bruce Schneier on the best response to the Boston bombing:
As the details about the bombings in Boston unfold, it’d be easy to be scared. It’d be easy to feel powerless and demand that our elected leaders do something — anything — to keep us safe.
An ideal replacement for Google Reader: Part 1
The IMAP of feed readers
The impending death of Google Reader has got me thinking about what an ideal replacement for would look like. The first and most important feature (of an idealized replacement) is something I alluded to in an earlier post.
The 100 Year Starship
Open the pod bay door, HAL.
What would it take to develop the capability to send humans to another star system? That is the ambitious challenge taken up by the 100 Year Starship project.
The right way to shut down a service like Google Reader
My internet world came to an end today when Google announced they were shutting down Google Reader (the best RSS reader in existence).
The problem is that Google Reader was more than a website, it was a backend that powered a bunch of useful services.
This isn’t the recovery you’re looking for
Simon Donner makes a disturbing point:
If you look at the global fossil fuel emissions data, all of the major disruptions to energy and oil use in the past 60 years caused carbon emissions to drop or level off.
Climate Change Is the Biggest Threat in the Pacific, Says Top U.S. Admiral
Adm. Samuel J. Locklear III is no smelly hippie.
North Korea just annulled the 1953 armistice ending its war with South Korea. China and Japan are locked in a dispute over an island chain.
We ought to be outraged!
From Kevin Trenberth:
China now emits more carbon dioxide per year than any other country. They are changing our atmosphere, and by doing so they are changing our climate. We ought to be outraged!
A new, longer, hockey stick
There is a new hockey stick in town, one with a shaft extending back all the way back to the end start of the holocene about 12,000 years ago when the last ice age ended:
The difference between the warming at the end of the last ice age (left side of the graph) and the current warming (right side of the graph) demonstrates how truly abnormal the current change in climate really is.