Now that we've gone through the science behind climate change, and knocked down most of the kooks surrounding the issue, it's time to talk about what we're up against. In this episode, I spend a bit under 30 minutes laying out the most likely

GC059 Climate Change Proponents

May 13th, 2007 28m 53s

Since the opponents of the climate change consensus have had their turn, now it's time to give the supporters of the consensus a little working over. Since this is the seventh episode in a series, I'd recommend that before listening to this ep

GC058 Swindled!

Mar 24th, 2007 23m 27s

A couple of Geek Counterpoint listeners (thanks, Travis and Bill!) pointed me to a show recently aired on BBC channel 4 called "The Great Global Warming Swindle." It purports to be a documentary, and is uniformly critical of the science behind

GC057 Climate Change: the Skeptics (part 3)

Mar 13th, 2007 27m 16s

Now that we've simplified things by covering the more common arguments made by climate change skeptics, this episode is devoted to discussing some specific climate change skeptics and their arguments. Since this is the fifth episode in a serie

GC056 Climate Change: the Skeptics (part 2)

Feb 21st, 2007 25m 5s

A continuation of episode 54's treatment of general points used by climate change skeptics. Since this is the fourth episode in a series, I'd recommend that before listening to this episode, you first listen to episodes 45, 47, and 54.

GC055 Space Weapons

Feb 10th, 2007 34m 13s

When the Chinese government demolished one of its aging weather satellites a few weeks ago, they did more than just test out a potentially useful technology. They also cluttered up low Earth orbit with a huge amount of debris, and stirred up a

GC054 Climate Change: the Skeptics (part 1)

Jan 23rd, 2007 37m 46s

It's taken some time to do a reasonable level of fact checking, but my climate cats have now been successfully herded, so it's (finally!) time for another climate change episode.Since (at least in the media) the discussion over climate change

GC053 Sergey Korolyov

Jan 12th, 2007 16m 39s

Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of a giant of space exploration -- Sergey Korolyov (sometimes also transliterated as Sergei Korolev). For much of the 20th century, Korolyov was the prime driving factor behind the Soviet space progr

GC052 Antikythera Mechanism

Jan 4th, 2007 23m 12s

Sure, it's not much to look at -- but this humble lump of corroded bronze completely demolished our previous understanding of the history of mechanical inventions. The Antikythera Mechanism was built late in the 2nd century BC, and is the earl

GC051 Stardust Preliminary Results

Dec 21st, 2006 24m 6s

Yes, I know -- I just talked about Stardust in episode 50. But in the meantime, the first batch of preliminary science papers was released on the 15th of December in the journal Science. There's a full set of material available (currently, at

GC050 News Grab Bag #5

Dec 8th, 2006 34m 17s

Yes, it's time for another "grab bag" episode to get everybody caught up on recent and semi-recent developments in topics I've covered in past episodes. This week's fodder includes updates on the following subjects:Mars -- see episode 41 (Se

GC049 Reactionless Drives

Nov 29th, 2006 17m 14s

It's the holy grail of flight -- propulsion without the expenditure of reaction mass. A practical reactionless drive system would render wheeled vehicles (flying cars, anyone?), aircraft with wings, and rockets as we know them obsolete. But i

GC048 A Tale of Two Caves...

Nov 21st, 2006 21m 10s

I talked at length about the Neanderthals just a few months ago, and then as often seems to happen, a bunch of new Neanderthal news popped up shortly afterwards. Listen in this week, and you'll get caught up with some really interesting recent

GC047 Climate Change and Logical Fallacies

Nov 13th, 2006 28m 15s

This episode, the second in a series on climate change, is intended to give everybody a little background in logical fallacies. In particular, a number of logical fallacies seem to be particularly prone to use in news reports, political debate

GC046 Flying Aircraft Carriers

Nov 1st, 2006 20m 29s

A few weeks ago, researchers finished the first exhaustive study performed of the wreck of the USS Macon, a U.S. Navy airship. What's unique about this particular wreck is that the Macon isn't alone on its piece of ocean floor off the Californ

GC045 Climate Change 101

Oct 24th, 2006 27m 37s

At least in the U.S. (and judging by material on the net, increasingly in Canada and Australia as well), debate about climate change long ago left the scientific arena, and entered the world of politics. As a result, if you're trying to figure

GC044 The 2006 U.S. National Space Policy document

Oct 14th, 2006 20m 50s

A few days ago, the White House released an update to the United States' "National Space Policy" document. In a sense, an update is overdue as this document hasn't been tweaked since 1996, when Clinton was president. It's release got a number

GC043 Social Darwinism and Eugenics

Oct 8th, 2006 23m 15s

So-called social "Darwinism" and eugenics are two intertwined topics that always seem to come up whenever somebody wants to insult, or at least disparage, the scientific community in general. Realistically, though, neither one is really "Darwi

GC042 USAF Museum Tour

Sep 30th, 2006 5m 29s

We recently had a family reunion of sorts in Ohio, and after some pretty stiff negotiations, I managed to finagle some time at the "National Museum of the U.S. Air Force" in Dayton. Anybody who's even slightly interested in military aviation,

GC041 "Mr. O" Goes to Mars

Sep 19th, 2006 28m 35s

MRO, a.k.a. the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, just got into its science orbit. As a result, you should expect to soon see a flood of new images and other interesting data coming back from Mars (adding, of course, to the goodies already coming b

GC040 News Grab Bag #4

Sep 10th, 2006 25m 28s

This week's episode is a "grab bag," including news on three broad topics:* Stem cells -- see episodes 18 and 20 (February 2006), and episode 21 (March, 2006)* Evolution vs. "Intelligent Design" -- see episodes 4 (October 2005) and 11 (Decem

GC039 Politics and Science

Sep 1st, 2006 23m 9s

This episode started as an examination of political interference in science. But while doing research for the episode, I ran across two studies on the brain activity involved in partisan politics, and decided to also look at what science has t

Geek Counterpoint Administrivia

Aug 26th, 2006 1m 26s

Reminder of video episode (for non-iTunes subscribers), announcement of upcoming server swap (may see odd behavior in last week of August)

GC038 Yellowstone Video Tour

Aug 23rd, 2006 5m 5s

We recently got back from a family vacation to Yellowstone National Park, and I thought the park would make a nice subject for a quick video podcast episode -- OK, and it gave me an excuse to test out a new camcorder. Aside from the fun touris