Slashdot Mirror

jamie found a long and painstaking piece up at The Economist asking and provisionally answering the question: "Does the spirit of scientific scepticism really require that I remain forever open-minded to denialist humbug until it's shown to be wrong?" The author, who is not named, spent several hours picking apart the arguments of one Willis Eschenbach, AGW denialist, who on Dec. 8 published what he called the "smoking gun" — it was supposed to prove that the adjustments climate scientists make to historical temperature records are arbitrary to the point of intentional manipulation. The conclusion: "[H]ere's my solution to this problem: this is why we have peer review. Average guys with websites can do a lot of amazing things. One thing they cannot do is reveal statistical manipulation in climate-change studies that require a PhD in a related field to understand. So for the time being, my response to any and all further 'smoking gun' claims begins with: show me the peer-reviewed journal article demonstrating the error here. Otherwise, you're a crank and this is not a story. And then I'll probably go ahead and try to investigate the claim and write a blog post about it, because that's my job. Oh, and by the way: October was the hottest month on record in Darwin, Australia."

kolchak asks: "As the Australian summer heats up, we are looking at a cooling solution for our computer room. We have 4 racks (almost all full) with around 40 machines, switches, routers, 2 UPSs and 2 monitors. Unfortunately, its located in the middle of the office with no windows available for ventilation. We can vent the exhaust into the ceiling space which in turn is vented outside. Also, since the room is so small, we need to install any cooling device outside the room (a store room backs on which will house the cooling unit and potentially pipe hot / cold air through the wall). All the units we've seen so far need to be in the room, we just don't have the space. Anyone come across and solved this? Any ideas on good cooling units we can install easily and cheaply?"