Skeptic: Extraordinary Claims, Revolutionary Ideas, and the Promotion of Science

Beginning well before Plato’s allegory of the cave and continuing to modern scientific breakthroughs from relativity to quantum mechanics, as well as to pop cultural icons like Twilight Zone and Star Trek, human beings have imagined, even longed for, alternate realities. (more…)

The impact on climate from 200 years of industrial development is an everyday fact of life, but did humankind’s active involvement in climate change really begin with the industrial revolution, as commonly believed? Dr. William Ruddiman, a climate scientist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and the author of the controversial new book, Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum, argues that humans have actually been changing the climate for some 8,000 years — as a result of the earlier discovery of agriculture. (more…)