Utopia, you are standing in it!

Cordelia Fine, a professor of the history and philosophy of science at the University of Melbourne, has carved out a niche for herself by attacking the notion that there are any evolved and genetically-based differences between males and females. Her books have been best-sellers (Testosterone Rex won the Royal Society book prize), probably because her conclusions appeal to those of a certain ideology. But those conclusions are flawed (see here, for instance). Fine’s critiques of some studies purporting to show sex differences are often good, but they’re combined with misguided characterizations of other work as well as the ignoring of results that go against her men-and-women-are-pretty-much-the-same thesis. In other words, Fine is tendentious, not objective, and her claims must always be taken with a grain of salt.

This is all on view in her op-ed with Daphna Joel (a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Tel Aviv…

By Andrew Bolt ~

An analysis of delegates by Carbon Brief found Guinea topped the list with 406 delegates, down 86 from last time. The Democratic Republic of Congo is second, with 237. Host nation Polan­d is third, with 211 delegates, followed by Ivory Coast, whose delegation this year has more than halved to 208 people…

Those huge delegations from these poor nations are actually down on last time? Wow.

Graham Lloyd puts it extremely diplomatically:

While some African countries give delegate tickets to non-governm­ental organisations, the make-up gives an indication of how important they consider the talks for securing development and mitigation funds.

Or as our Environment Minister Melissa Price memorably said to a former Kiribati Prime Minister who’d come…

John Stossel highlights a very good movie that is out revealing how Google and Facebook cross The Creepy Line.

Open image in new tab to enlarge.

How climate finance ‘flows’ around the world is an informative article from CarbonBrief.  Excerpts below in italics followed by a comment from Bjorn Lomborg.

Climate finance is one of the bedrocks of negotiations at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), including the “COP24” talks taking place this month in Katowice, Poland.

“Climate finance” refers to money – both from public and private sources – which is used to help reduce emissions and increase resilience against the negative impacts of climate change.

Rich countries have promised they will provide $100bn a year in climate finance to poorer nations by 2020. The UNFCCC’s recent biennial assessment found this sum had reached $75bn in 2016, a step forward compared to the $65bn given in 2015.

The OECD, a Paris-based intergovernmental economic organisation, asks its 36 member countries to report on their foreign aid…

As MPs prepare to vote over whether or not to accept the Brexit deal negotiated by Theresa May, we have the second post in the series on the tumultuous events of 1648-1649, as parliamentarians disputed with each other over a treaty which might end the civil wars.  Dr Vivienne Larminie of the House of Commons 1640-1660 section moves on from 15 November to 6 December 1648, to look at a critical vote and a forcible change of direction…

Over the three weeks since the prime minister announced her Brexit deal, observers might have been forgiven for detecting unprecedented twists and turns in politics at Westminster.  From day to day the balance has seemed to shift between rejection and acceptance of the proposed ‘divorce settlement’ with the EU, and between groups with radically different visions of the best way forward for a country where opinion is sharply divided.  Yet while…

No-one  had ever thought of  him   as  a  potential Olympic  performer  but Iain Lees-Galloway’s  back  somersault with double twist  this  week  would surely have  qualified  him.

If he  doesn’t make  it to Tokyo,  he  still  won  an award from  the  Prime Minister – he retained his job as   Immigration  Minister, despite calls from the Opposition for his resignation.

It  may  be  something he comes to regret,  for   he  now  carries  the   stigma  of a minister  who is little short of  a walking disaster,  one who can’t be left to make a decision on  his own.

He  may be   grateful  that  Deputy PM  Winston Peters  sought to defend him in the  House, although Peters in effect  gave   the  game  away  when he conceded  Lees-Galloway  had  made  a  “mistake”.

Why is one older person dying every seven minutes during the winter? | Dawn Foster | Society | The Guardian

“Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the
equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”
– Prof Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University/Royal Society fellow

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” – Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)

***

SEE now what their panic-making has inspired – symbolic global warming schemes that have hurt us infinitely more than any slight, and most probably beneficial, global warming ever could…

Thousands dying because they can’t afford heating bills | Daily Mail Online

“More than 2,700 people are dying each year in England and Wales because they cannot afford to keep their homes warm, according to an official study.

The spiralling cost of gas…

From the RNZ website – Greg Roughan (formerly editor of Green Ideas)

Opinion – So the Sustainable Business Network (SBN) puts out a 47-page report on New Zealand’s plastic packaging system, and there’s a line that leaps out: recycling won’t fix the plastic crisis.

Geez. No kidding.

This is old news. At least, to the sort of person who reads 47-page reports on plastic. And it should be old news to the rest of us too. I really don’t mean to bag the SBN’s report here. Not even reusable bag it, because it’s excellent. But what I do want to say is, maybe if people are surprised about the whole ‘recycling doesn’t actually help much’ thing, then maybe it’s time for some hard truths?

It’s worth reading the whole piece.

Roughan makes some good points. Do not agree with his solutions, but he raises issues that need discusiing, rather than much…

Nice profile of Prof Goldin in IMF’s Finance & Development:

Born in 1946 in the Bronx, a borough of New York City, Goldin recalls an early fascination with investigation and intellectual discovery, immersing herself in the wonders of Manhattan’s museums as she fell in love first with archeology, then bacteriology. She went to Cornell University initially to study microbiology but came to embrace the humanities and social sciences, especially history and economics, which became her undergraduate major. She completed her doctorate in industrial organization and labor economics in 1972 at the University of Chicago.

Goldin explains why history is important to economics, citing the book The Race between Education and Technology (2008), which she wrote with fellow Harvard labor economist Lawrence Katz, who is also her husband.

“Larry Katz and I looked at changes in income inequality post-1980 versus pre-1980 and investigated the theory that inequality has risen more post-1980 because of…