A couple of days ago Joseph Romm wrote an excellent article in Salon on The Cold Truth About Climate Change. In it he tackles the various arguments that climate change deniers use, including the argument that it’s the sun — and not us — that is causing all this global warming (easily debunked, by the way).

The one he address up front, though, is the argument that there is no “consensus” in the scientific community about climate change. Romm’s counter-argument? Er, there’s no need for consensus when you have the data, stupid:

What matters is scientific findings — data, not opinions. The [U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)] relies on the peer-reviewed scientific literature for its conclusions, which must meet the rigorous requirements of the scientific method and which are inevitably scrutinized by others seeking to disprove that work. That is why I cite and link to as much research as is possible, hundreds of studies in the case of this article. Opinions are irrelevant.

A little later, he continues:

How many studies? Well, the IPCC’s definitive treatment of the subject, “Understanding and Attributing Climate Change,” has 11 full pages of references, some 500 peer-reviewed studies. This is not a consensus of opinion. It is what scientific research and actual observations reveal.

Oh, and you know what? The IPCC report actually underestimates the potential future impacts of climate change because the models used in all those studies are actually simpler than what goes on in the real world (because they “omit key amplifying feedback in the carbon cycle”). Observations over the last eight years have helped clarify that since all the observed changes have been on the high side of model projections.

Ah, yes…we’re in for a wild ride.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd opened this morning’s parliament session with an official apology to the Stolen Generation [BBC]. The Cerebral Mum wrote a great blog post on her views on this topic and also did a good roundup of what the Australian blogosphere has to say about it.

As of today, you can search for local movie sessions and times through Google Australia. Awesome.

And it’s really simple to do, too. For example, type in “sweeney todd in melbourne” and off you go.

Both Gotta Be Mobile and Tablet PC Review have recently published their reviews of the Toshiba M700 tablet PC:

• GBM InkShow: Toshiba M700 Tablet PC Overview — Matt Faulkner
• Toshiba Portege M700 Tablet PC Review — Tiffany Boggs

Both are positive and both have reinforced my decision to buy the M700 as soon I can afford it. Things may, of course, change over the next few months but I doubt any manufacturer will come out with a machine that tops the power, versatility, and customisation options of the M700.

I’m not sure what I was doing today when a snippet of the theme song to The Littlest Hobo floated into my head. Since I hadn’t really researched that show on the web before — even though it was one my favourite shows growing up — I did a quick search and found an incredibly comprehensive website on the show as well as a video of its opening titles:

Ah, brings back memories, that does.

Naturally, Hinckley has a day #13 in his Twelve Days of InkSeine series of posts!

Ken Hinckley (The Alpine Inker) works at Microsoft Research and, over the last couple of weeks, he’s been running an awesome series of blog posts called Twelve Days of InkSeine.

InkSeine (pronounced ink-sane) is a really cool inking application that Hinckley is working on (which is not yet an official Microsoft product). It’s one of the only products around that has been designed for inking and not just a keyboard-and-mouse based product that has inking support. For example, a lot of its commands (like cut, copy, paste, search, etc.) are all pen-flick based and not menu-based.

It’s still in private beta but will released to the public in 15 February. To find out more about it, check GBM’s InkShow on it. Better yet, once it is available, download and try it. Assuming you have a tablet PC, of course.

It costs as much as a high-end tablet PC (AU$3,890) but the 21.3″ Wacom Cintiq is one heck of an LCD screen that also has on-screen pen input capabilities:

Of course, that model is designed specifically for creative uses. I’d probably end up getting the 17″ PC-720 instead (AU$2,195):

Or, at the very least, the 15″ DTI-520 (AU$1,760):

Or maybe I’d compromise and get the 20″ wide screen Cintiq 20WSX (US$1,999), though that’s not available in Australia yet:

Ah, choices, choices.

Of course, all this has to wait till I’ve made my millions.

Soon, soon…

Like me, other power users are finding that the Toshiba M700 has most of they’ve been looking for in a tablet PC. It is:

• Powerful — more so than the Lenovo X61t or the Fujitsu T4220
• Highly configurable — like the X61t but unlike the T4220
• Relatively inexpensive — costing less than an equivalent X61t or T4220
• Feature rich — with more features than the X61t or 4220

And though it suffers a little in the weight department (but only by a couple of hundred grams or so) and its screen resolution isn’t as high as some of us would like it to be (though that’s offset by the wide screen), its has lots of bonus features — like that wide screen, a touch screen, a webcam, and a built-in optical drive — that more than make up for its shortcomings.

Because of all this, we were very surprised when Tiffany Boggs from Tablet PC Review posted its benchmark scores and, strangely, they came out very low. It’s PCMark05 score, for example, was 3,399 while an equally spec-ed t4220 scored 4,171 and a lower spec-ed X61t scored 3,473. Most of us had expected the M700 to score somewhere in the mid-4,000s. Curious and concerned, a number of M700 owners ran the same test and came up with similar, low-3,000 PCMark scores.

Quickly the Tablet PC Review forum participants realized that this wasn’t a hardware issue but a software one. That, fortunately, was when GBM’s Matt Faulkner stepped in. First, he did a clean install of Vista and, lo and behold, the M700’s PCMark05 score jumped to a whopping 4,528. Then, he went a step further and installed each system driver in turn, re-running the PCMark test after each reboot. After doing this for about four hours — and working late into the night since he had to return his review unit the next morning — he found the main culprit.

It turns out that the Intel Robson Technology Driver for Windows Vista — a driver used to run the Turbo Memory that wasn’t even in that machine to begin with — was messing the system up. In fact, with the cleanest possible working install, one of the forum participants managed to get a PCMark05 score of 4,737!

What does all this mean? It means that the Toshiba M700 rocks and that, if you want to squeeze the most out of your machine, it is best to do a clean install. Importantly, it reinforces the fact that we have an awesome tablet PC community. If any of you read this post: thanks a million!

As reported by IT Wire:

According to three U.S. mathematicians, if you are waiting for something, like a ride on a bus, and its late, keep on waiting rather than walk to the next bus stop.

[…]

They developed a mathematical formula that tells you how long you should wait before trying something different. They found that when both options seem reasonable, you should stay where you are and do nothing but continue waiting.

And with the exception of extreme cases:

[Even] if it is frustrating to continue waiting, you are better off doing so.

You learn something new every day, huh?