My Love Letter to Late Night Live - Highlights, Critique, Praise

This is the 2nd part of three in this series My Love Letter to Late Night Live. It starts with some Content links to a wide range of topics covered in this eclectic mix of interviews I have listened to and thought they were worthy of letting others know about them. It is a long blog and I don’t expect many will want to read it all. Hopefully, you can skip around from topic to topic, find something that interests you, note down the number in brackets and then find links to any of them in part 3 of this blog, My Love Letter to Late Night Live - 52 Links.

Listenings, Writings, Readings, Musings, Ideas, GemsJames ScottJuly 27, 2025158 Beardy StComment

It’s the electoral system, stupid!

As the Economist (March 1, 2025) writes of its cover: “The Don’s new world order: A mafia-like struggle for global power has begun …”

This chilling image prompted me to review my readings of political opinions and published evidence. Drawing these together, I present a thesis that we should not just focus on how to change voters’ minds but rather explore how we can improve electoral systems across nations to prevent the rise of authoritarians in undemocratic regimes and bring about a more equitable and peaceful world.

Readings, Writings, IdeasJames ScottMarch 10, 2025158 Beardy St Comment

Let’s talk about this elephant in the climate!

Doesn’t everyone want to stop global heating? Perhaps not!

Here I suggest that there is an ‘elephant in the climate’ that no-one discusses: those many people who live at high latitudes, largely in the wealthy, influential global north, who experience really cold winters and who are welcoming a degree or two of global heating.

How can we overcome this obstacle to developing a global consensus? One that accepts that messing with the Earth’s thermostat is a really scary thing to do!

Writings, Musings, IdeasJames ScottJanuary 4, 2024158 Beardy StComment

The questionable value of billionaires

Why would an ordinary scientist blog about billionaires? I claim relevance because I reckon that the world would be a lot better off if we valued careful investments of society’s hard-won wealth on behalf of all citizens and life on this planet more than feathering the nests of a tiny fraction of humanity who use their extreme wealth to pursue their own agendas.

Writings, Musings, IdeasJames ScottOctober 29, 2023Comment

Reflections on CSIRO Larry Marshall's address to National Press Club (July 2022)

My concerns about Marshall’s well-delivered ‘sales pitch’ include trust in science, obstacles to collaboration, the importance of job security and the need for our national research agency to be free from commercial conflicts of interest.

Writings, ListeningsJames ScottSeptember 4, 2022CSIRO, Research funding, Trust in scienceComment

CSIRO needs to be trusted, trustworthy, apolitical and have its long-term strategic research funding provided without political interference

Having created such a valuable national resource 96 years ago, surely it is time that our nation recognises that CSIRO’s strategic research for industry and the public good is of vital ongoing importance to the nation and should be funded accordingly.

WritingsJames ScottMay 10, 2022CSIRO, Research funding, managerialismComment

50 years since graduating, a letter to myself ...

What I might have written to myself 50 years ago about my future career in agricultural science.

WritingsJames ScottApril 30, 2022Comment

Are we rushing headlong towards another environmental debacle?

It is not a question of tilting at windmills! If the blades of a wind turbine absorb some of the wind’s energy, allowing us humans to warm our spa baths, won’t that wind now contain less energy?

WritingsJames ScottApril 19, 2022Comment

Can there be a Magic Pudding? ... towards an understanding of viable farms

If you are interested in food and how it might be produced more sustainably, you might like to read what this ordinary scientist has written …

Why is it that most humans take their food for granted?

Throughout history, societies have behaved as if our food supply will last forever - until it doesn’t!

I argue here that it is perilous for us to have a ‘Magic Puddin’ view of food - and of the agriculture, farming and our precious soils which produce it.

WritingsJames ScottOctober 31, 2019Sustainable farmingComment

Grazing management is complex ...

Grazing management means that the farmer chooses how much and the quality of the diet a grazing animal is offered as they are moved from paddock to paddock over time.

If it is done well - taking into account issues of the climate, grazing animal, pasture, soil and profitability - it can result in good animal and pasture outcomes.

However - if it is done poorly - such as when systems are not flexible, it can reduce the animal’s choice of diet which can have a flow-on effect of lower animal production.

Unfortunately, there are no simple recipes for success that are widely applicable.

WritingsJames ScottOctober 30, 2019Grazing managementComment