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If you are a member of the SMN, you can become a contributor to the blog. To be added to the list of official blog contributors, contact Dr Olly Robinson on: olly@scimednet.org
Currently the blog contains 112 entries.
Is nuclear fusion our best hope?
While climate change and energy reform campaigners focus on the potential of renewable energy sources that come direct from nature, such a wind and solar power, scientists have been quietly making huge strides towards the possibility of nuclear fusion and its potential as an energy source. In the climate change and environmentalist movements, there tends to be a back-to-basics, nature-based sensibility that can prevent focusing on cutting-edge technological breakthroughs as real solution to the energy and environmental crisis. Yet, a news item emerged last week that, for a change, was genuinely GOOD news.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8485669.stm
It seems that scientists have made significant strides towards creating nuclear fusion in a laboratory setting. It is important to grasp the scope of what nuclear fusion as an energy source would bring to our little planet. It would mean an "inelastic" source of energy with abundant source materials, little pollution and no carbon emissions. It has been estimated that with fusion, 100 times the current energy consumption of the world is possible. Therefore not only could it mean energy demands are met, it could also take on the job of fresh water supply, by proving the energy required for large-scale desalination. In 2006 The New Scientists estimated that nuclear fusion power was a century away. With the latest breakthrough, it could be less than that, it could be in our lifetime. It would help usher in a new era of human existence, as for centuries humanity has been defined by meeting energy sources by raping the planet's natural resources. Perhaps our time will be known as the Oil Age. Perhaps nuclear fusion will help to bring about its demise. In another life, I would have loved to have committed my life's energies to helping realise nuclear fusion power. Here is the website of ITER, the international fusion organisation, which gives further information and science on fusion:
http://www.iter.org/default.aspx
Dr Olly Robinson
What's wrong with the world?
Stephen Hester, group chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, stands to pocket £10million this year. British aid to Haiti is £6.1million. This world is not OK.
Idealism East and West - Keith Ward
Keith Ward speaks articulately in this free podcast on idealism - the philosophy that the underlying and fundamental reality is conscious, mental, spiritual. There are parallel traditions of idealism in the East and West, and Ward here discusses their respective nature and their influences on one another. Interestingly, not only did Enlightenment philosophers such as Schopenhauer and Hegel admit to being influenced by Indian philosophy, but Indian philosophy has been influenced by German idealism too - "Neo-Vedanta" is a school of Indian philosophy that has been influenced by this European empirical tradition.
Is Dawkins softening up?
On Sunday 27th, a programme entitled Tsunami: Where Was God? was broadcast on Channel 4. It was an engaging documentary putting a contemporary spin on the arguments surrounding God, religion and suffering. Mark Dowd, the presenter, is a Catholic, and so is arguably not the most impartial of commentators. However overall, he presented an interesting and clear-speaking take on the issue. Towards the end of the programme, he interviews Richard Dawkins, who I was expecting to be as intransigent as ever in his hard-edged atheist position, so I was surprised when Dawkins said:
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