ECOSCAM, detail of book cover, re-colored
Enviro-Buzz
Ronald Bailey on Peak Oil
This week, we present a link to an article by Ronald Bailey, one of the speakers at next month’s Environmental Wars conference. In this article (from the current issue of Reason magazine), Bailey investigates the current state of global oil production and makes some suggestions as to what the Bush administration should do about it.
Ronald Bailey is the science correspondent for Reason magazine. He is the author of Liberation Biology: The Moral and Scientific Case for the Biotech Revolution, and his work appears in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2004. He edited Earth Report 2000: Revisiting The True State of The Planet, and is the author of ECOSCAM: The False Prophets of Ecological Apocalypse, Global Warming and Other Eco Myths. Bailey has produced several series and documentaries for PBS television and ABC News, and is a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists.
Join us on the weekend of June 2–4 as we continue to disentangle politics and opinion from the science about our planet’s health. Please note that Sunday’s optional geology tour is now sold out! Register soon, and participate in the dialogue:
The Environment:
How Bad Off Are We?
In a past issue of Skeptic magazine, we presented an excerpt from Bjørn Lomborg’s book The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the Environment (Cambridge University Press, 2001, ISBN 0521010683).
And in the style of next month’s Environmental Wars conference, you’ll also get the flip-side of the story from David Pimentel, who reviews and debunks Lomborg.
ORDER the Skeptic back issue >
Also, you might want to check out our Great Environmental Debate recording between Dr. Bjørn Lomborg and Frank Miele. Lomborg makes his case that the claims of the environmental movement are exaggerated and, in fact, using the same data used by alarmists, argues that the state of the environment is improving. Frank Miele provides an alternative view, particularly focusing on the looming disaster that will be caused by the mass extinction we are currently experiencing. The recording also includes a very lively audience Q & A.
NEW Lisa Randall
lecture available
Warped Passages:
Unraveling the Mysteries
of Hidden Dimensions
The concept of additional spatial dimensions is as far from intuitive as any idea can be. In this lecture based on her book, Dr. Randall employs creative analogies to explain how our universe may have many unseen dimensions. Randall works hard to make her astoundingly complex material understandable, providing a great deal of background for recent advances in string and super-symmetry theory. As coauthor of the two most important scientific papers on this topic, she’s ideally suited to explain these ideas. Although physicists do not yet know if there are extra dimensions a fraction of a millimeter in size, dimensions of infinite size, or only the dimensions we see, Randall shows how these theories will be tested in coming years.
Dr. Randall is a professor of physics at Harvard University and one of the leading theoretical physicists in the world today who works on string theory, particle physics, and cosmology.
