Well, here we are in 2017. No colonies on the moon—more on those efforts below—flying cars still a ways away, but we do have a bunch of social media platforms tracking our every nickel and dime, on a giant global interactive network where expert knowledge is available by the gigabit in an instant. Alas, since it’s now so easy to know everything, we no longer have to really know anything. So, what will it take for the ignorati to know and accept modern science?
Whenever I write a piece on global warming, someone will email to call me a "lie-bra-tard," or something similar, and tell me I should be in jail. Sometimes I try to engage these folks and see if they might be interested in how the science of climate change works and what it has to tell us. Mostly, they aren't. Mostly, what they really want is to score some points. What they really want is an argument. That's what climate change and climate science has become after all these years.
The weather vs. climate dodge made a comeback recently. Well, it never really leaves. A decent response: here in Texas it’s a coin flip if Saturday will be hotter than Sunday three weeks from now. But it’s a solid bet Christmas Day will be cooler than July 4 in the year 2027. This is the difference between weather and climate.
- Speaking of willful ignorance, meet Jim Bridenstine, a Republican congressman from Oklahoma who has the kinds of views you’d expect a tea party Oklahoma Republican to have on just about everything, including climate change. Now Jim’s the Trump nominee for NASA director. Because of course he is.
- Speaking of space exploration, here’s a wonderful extreme itinerary of where the Voyager spacecraft will go in the next few thousand millennia.
- Some talented die-hard fans of Peter Watts’ novel Blindsight have been busy creating some amazing graphics. Here’s an eerie teaser of what the alien “spaceship,” called Rorschach, might look like.