A eureka moment in the pub could help transform our understanding of the ground beneath our feet. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 5th December 2025 It felt like walking up a mountain during a temperature inversion. You struggle through fog so dense you can scarcely see where you’re going. Suddenly, you break through […]
Science
My new book, Brave New Wild: Can Technology Really Save the Planet? is out and available at/through all fine book stores. And hopefully some disreputable ones too!
The National party has held a press conference over the weekend to tell the Nation that they are committed to bringing back leaded petrol. They have told their junior Coalition colleagues, the Liberals, that this is non-negotiable. ”Australia rest assured... Read More ›
Bit of a joke there. What the paper is about is, we found a new planet, about 18.2 light years away. That means that we’re seeing the planet as it appeared 18.2 years ago, in the summer of 2007. Summer 2007: the first iPhone had just hit the market, the last Harry Potter book was […]
Too many promising breakthroughs in women’s health research stall out due to a lack of funding. I’m trying to remove the roadblock for just one.
The President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, has speculated today that putting sugar back in to coke, instead of high fructose corn syrup, may in fact cure cases of autism. The President raised this point as part... Read More ›
I seem to have become CT’s resident moderate techno-optimist. So let me push back a little: here are five things that we’re not going to see between now and 2050. 1) Nobody is going to Mars. Let me refine that a little: nobody is going to Mars and coming back alive. A one-way suicide mission […]
I do these occasional posts about science papers. Some are just for fun. But sometimes — honest! — there’s an underlying connection to the greater Crooked Timber project. This post is one of that sort, because it’s about the limits of understanding. Unsurprisingly, it involves biology. So we all learned back in high school that […]
Australia will be getting its very own space agency with plans to mount a mission to put astronauts on the surface of Dubbo within two decades. “Due to the high cost of petrol and the dodgy radiator we will have... Read More ›
Australia is set to meet their target of hitting net zero much earlier than 2050 after scientists managed to figure out how to channel the anger generated from low-rating cable channel, Sky News Australia, to power the grid. ”It’s early... Read More ›