Technology AI, Science and New Things
James Freeman, assistant editor of the Wall Street Journal’s famous editorial page, has a not-too-onerous gig surfing the web’s quality commentary and quoting from it liberally, as in this generous hat-tip to Ulf Büntgen, a Cambridge geographer whom he praises for worrying in Nature about climate scientists becoming climate activists. Büntgen also has a problem with non-scientist climate activists pretending to be more scientifically literate than they are. From Freeman’s sampling of Büntgen’s 8 May article, you might conclude that Büntgen was sceptical about anthropogenic global warming, but he isn’t. He’s also co-author of another Nature article published on 14 May noting that 2023 was the hottest year in 2,000 years and arguing for urgent international agreements on carbon emission reduction. If he’s a climate scientist he seems to be violating his own rule – but maybe, as a geographer, he isn’t.