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James Lovelock is a world-renowned scientist and environmentalist
Two months ago, James Lovelock, the godfather of global warming,
gave a startling interview to msnbc.com in which he acknowledged he had
been unduly “alarmist” about climate change.
The implications were extraordinary.
Lovelock is a world-renowned scientist and environmentalist whose
Gaia theory — that the Earth operates as a single, living organism — has
had a profound impact on the development of global warming theory.
Unlike many “environmentalists,” who have degrees in political
science, Lovelock, until his recent retirement at age 92, was a
much-honoured working scientist and academic.
His inventions have been used by NASA, among many other scientific organizations.
Lovelock’s invention of the electron capture detector in 1957 first
enabled scientists to measure CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) and other
pollutants in the atmosphere, leading, in many ways, to the birth of the
modern environmental movement.
Having observed that global temperatures since the turn of the
millennium have not gone up in the way computer-based climate models
predicted, Lovelock acknowledged, “the problem is we don’t know what the
climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago.” Now, Lovelock has
given a follow-up interview to the UK’s Guardian newspaper in which he
delivers more bombshells sure to anger the global green movement, which
for years worshipped his Gaia theory and apocalyptic predictions that
billions would die from man-made climate change by the end of this
century.
Lovelock still believes anthropogenic global warming is occurring and
that mankind must lower its greenhouse gas emissions, but says it’s now
clear the doomsday predictions, including his own (and Al Gore’s) were
incorrect.
He responds to attacks on his revised views by noting that, unlike
many climate scientists who fear a loss of government funding if they
admit error, as a freelance scientist, he’s never been afraid to revise
his theories in the face of new evidence. Indeed, that’s how science
advances.
Among his observations to the Guardian:
(1) A long-time supporter of nuclear power as a way to lower
greenhouse gas emissions, which has made him unpopular with
environmentalists, Lovelock has now come out in favour of natural gas
fracking (which environmentalists also oppose), as a low-polluting
alternative to coal.
As Lovelock observes, “Gas is almost a give-away in the U.S. at the
moment. They’ve gone for fracking in a big way. This is what makes me
very cross with the greens for trying to knock it … Let’s be pragmatic
and sensible and get Britain to switch everything to methane. We should
be going mad on it.” (Kandeh Yumkella, co-head of a major United Nations
program on sustainable energy, made similar arguments last week at a UN
environmental conference in Rio de Janeiro, advocating the development
of conventional and unconventional natural gas resources as a way to
reduce deforestation and save millions of lives in the Third World.)
(2) Lovelock blasted greens for treating global warming like a religion.
“It just so happens that the green religion is now taking over from
the Christian religion,” Lovelock observed. “I don’t think people have
noticed that, but it’s got all the sort of terms that religions use …
The greens use guilt. That just shows how religious greens are. You
can’t win people round by saying they are guilty for putting (carbon
dioxide) in the air.”
(3) Lovelock mocks the idea modern economies can be powered by wind turbines.
As he puts it, “so-called ‘sustainable development’ … is meaningless
drivel … We rushed into renewable energy without any thought. The
schemes are largely hopelessly inefficient and unpleasant. I personally
can’t stand windmills at any price.”
(4) Finally, about claims “the science is settled” on global warming:
“One thing that being a scientist has taught me is that you can never
be certain about anything. You never know the truth. You can only
approach it and hope to get a bit nearer to it each time. You iterate
towards the truth. You don’t know it.”
According to research, those who download 'free' music are also the industry's largest audience for digital sales
Are pirates really keeping the music business afloat? Photograph: Fredrik Persson/Scanpix/PA
Piracy may be the bane of the music industry but according to a new study, it may also be its engine. A report from the BI Norwegian School of Management has found that those who download music illegally are also 10 times more likely to pay for songs than those who don't.
Everybody knows that music sales have continued to fall in recent years, and that filesharing is usually blamed. We are made to imagine legions of internet criminals, their fingers on track-pads, downloading songs via BitTorrent and never paying for anything. One of the only bits of good news amid this doom and gloom is the steady rise in digital music sales. Millions of internet do-gooders, their fingers on track-pads, who pay for songs they like – purchasing them from Amazon or iTunes Music Store. And yet according to Professor Anne-Britt Gran's new research, these two groups may be the same.
The Norwegian study looked at almost 2,000 online music users, all over the age of 15. Researchers found that those who downloaded "free" music – whether from lawful or seedy sources – were also 10 times more likely to pay for music. This would make music pirates the industry's largest audience for digital sales.
Wisely, the study did not rely on music pirates' honesty. Researchers asked music buyers to prove that they had proof of purchase.
The paper's conclusions emerge just as Sweden's Pirate Bay trial comes to a close. Pirate Bay's four defendants, who helped operate the notorious BitTorrent tracker, were sentenced to a year in jail and fined 30m SEK (£2,500,000) in damages.
Google has released data from its latest Transparency Report covering censorship and content removal requests. The report features separate presentations of copyright-based removal requests and government requests. Google began publishing this data about two years go.
The report is updated regularly; however government censorship and
removal requests are updated every six months. The number of copyright
removal requests has grown dramatically over the past six months. Most
of these requests involve file sharing domains.
Most of the takedown requests
are coming from entertainment companies or trade groups representing
them. However the top copyright owner requesting takedowns was Microsoft
with more than 2 million URLs requested to be removed in the past year
and almost 500,000 in the past month.
In the government requests category, Google said that the US is the
country with the most activity. Some of these requests are in the form
of court orders, while others from various government and
law-enforcement entities. Overall there were more than 6,000 content
items targeted in just under 200 removal requests in the US during the
past six months.
Google actually complied with those requests a little over 40 percent of the time. That includes court orders, interestingly.
Germany, Brazil, Australia, Argentina, Canada, Turkey and the UK were
other countries with considerable content removal activity. Driven by
local laws, in some cases Google’s compliance was much greater than in
others. An article in the Wall Street Journal goes into some of these legal differences between states and governments and provides some examples.
In addition to the overview and summary information Google maintains the raw data detailing the dates, parties and reasons provided for the removal requests. Google also discusses the chilling effects
of these removal requests in several instances. In a blog post Google
pointed out that political speech is often being targeted in government
removal requests:
And just like every other time before, we’ve been asked
to take down political speech. It’s alarming not only because free
expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from
countries you might not suspect—Western democracies not typically
associated with censorship. For example, in the second half of last year, Spanish regulators
asked us to remove 270 search results that linked to blogs and articles
in newspapers referencing individuals and public figures, including
mayors and public prosecutors. In Poland, we received a request from a
public institution to remove links to a site that criticized it. We
didn’t comply with either of these requests.
It’s significant, indeed important, that Google provides this
information so that the public, third parties and watchdog groups can
take governments and corporations to task where such requests are
unreasonable, overboard or would attempt to stifle public discourse and
debate.
Pioneering female pilot who flew Spitfires during Second World War and became magazine cover girl dies aged 91
By
Lucy Waterlow PUBLISHED:
04:49 EST, 18 June 2012
|
UPDATED:
06:21 EST, 18 June 2012
Maureen Dunlop de Popp, a female
pilot who flew Spitfires, Lancasters and Hurricanes during the Second
World War, has died aged 91.
Dunlop
joined the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) in 1942 and became one of a
small group of female pilots based at White Waltham in Berkshire who
were trained to fly 38 types of aircraft between factories and military
airfields across the country. Her sex meant she was not allowed to fly in combat but her duties were still not without danger.
Cover girl: This picture of pilot Maureen Dunlop
leaving the cockpit of a plane she had just flown in 1944 featured on
the cover of Picture Post magazine
She often had to fly in challenging
weather conditions - which cost the lives of some of her experienced
colleagues including Amy Johnson, who had become famous for setting
world records for flying long-distances, but died in 1941 after bailing
out in cloud over the Thames estuary.
Once Dunlop had to make an
emergency landing when flying a Spitfire as the cockpit canopy blew off
after take off, while another time she had to land in a field after the
engine of her Argus aircraft failed in the air. Dunlop
loved being behind the controls of a plane and while she clocked up
more than 800 hours during her time with the ATA, she lamented the fact
women were not allowed to fly them in combat. 'I thought it was the only
fair thing. Why should only men be killed?' she once said.
Fearless: Maureen clocked up more than 800 hours flying during the Second World War
As well as being an experienced pilot,
Dunlop became a cover girl sensation when she was pictured pushing her
hair out of her face as she left the cockpit of a Barracuda in 1944. The
shot featured on the front page of Picture Post magazine, proving women
could be fearless as well as glamorous - and integral to the war
effort. Dunlop was born in Argentina in 1920 to Eric Chase Dunlop, an Australian farm
manager employed by a British company in Argentina, and Jessimin May Williams, an English woman, giving Dunlop dual nationality. Dunlop
regularly visited England, having her first flying lessons here at the
age of 15, and was taught for a time at St Hilda's College, an English school at Hurlingham in Buenos Aires. Despite
the journey being dangerous, she returned to the UK with her sister via
a ferry in the Forties because she was determined to help the war effort, following in the footsteps of her father who had served with the Royal Field Artillery in the
First World War. Female pilots like Dunlop had to fight hard to prove themselves in a chauvinistic climate. In order to join the ATA, they needed a minimum of 500 hours' solo flying, whereas men could join with 250 hours. They had to fly the fighter aircraft with limited training
and were often looked down upon by the male RAF pilots. However, not
all men saw the female pilots as inferior, as Sir Stafford Cripps
arranged for the female members of the ATA to have the same pay as their
male colleagues.
War effort: Maureen flew fighter planes including Spitfires, pictured, during her service for the ATA
Dunlop's achievements were recognised in 2003 when she was one of three
female ATA pilots awarded the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigator’s
Master Air Pilot Award. After the war, Dunlop returned to Argentina where she continued to fly as an instructor and then a commercial pilot. She married Serban
Victor Poppin in 1955 after meeting him at a British Embassy function
in Buenos Aires and they had a son and two daughters. In 1973, they returned to England and lived in Norfolk breeding pure-blood Arab horses. Her husband died in 2000 but she is survived by their son and one of their daughters.
Google has released data from its 
