De omnibus dubitandum (Doubt everything) must be more than a durable Cartesian quote; it must remain the very foundation of the scientific method. Recall how I opened this chapter with a list of nine planetary boundaries whose transgressions imperil our biospheric wellbeing? Keeping them within safe confines seems to be an obvious conclusion because they identify the most important, perennial, existential concerns—and yet a list prepared 40 years ago would have been very different. Acid rain (or, more correctly, acidifying precipitation) would have been, most likely, its top item, because a
...more
