The Upside of Ignorance
When I forget my manners (alas, too often), I sometimes throw the word ignorant around. I apply it to groups of people I don’t much like. Evolution deniers. Trump and Cruz supporters. People who favor the designated hitter. But last night, I read an argument that made me rethink the whole problem of ignorance. The sum of what humans don’t know is so vast that when I compare my personal ignorance to that of, say, your typical homophobic legislator with a potty fixation, the di
Warming gets a cold shoulder
While cable news boiled our blood with political pratfalls this week, several chilling reports about global warming went largely ignored. Here’s a quick recap: Estimates of sea-level rise by the year 2100 have doubled. Huge swaths of coral are dying in the Great Barrier Reef. Arctic sea ice is disappearing faster than expected. Exxon Mobile and other fossil-fuel companies stand accused of deceiving their investors about climate risks. That’s an incomplete sample for just one
