If You Deliberately Ask Dumb Questions, People Will Think You're Dumb

On a recent flight with my girlfriend, we shared earbuds and watched a TED Talk interview with Elon Musk, founder of PayPal, Tesla Motors, Solar City, and SpaceX.

In contrast to TED's usual style of assuming a high level of audience sophistication, host Chris Anderson launched into a series of curiously ignorant questions. Aren't electric car batteries heavy? (So are tanks full of gasoline.) Isn't gasoline just thousands of years of solar power compressed into a small space? (Put a dinosaur in your tank!)

My girlfriend reached over to pause the video. "Why is he asking dumb questions? Is he stupid?" Instead of helping a broad spectrum of audience learn more about clean energy, Anderson seemed to be asking questions mostly on behalf of a narrow slice of clean energy skeptics.

What hosts and journalists like Anderson may not realize is that if you ask deliberately ignorant questions, you risk having people wonder if you yourself are ignorant.

Why Settle for the Same Cookie-Cutter Living Space as Everyone Else?

Much of this TEDx Talk displays some of the worst habits of TED Talks - I'm a jetsetter and I'm here to tell you mainstream environmental solutions are like so 5 minutes ago because NIMBLE and other buzzwords.

But the concept at the heart of it is interesting - how many rooms in a typical house go unused for days at a time? Here's a test - if you visit a home with a dedicated dining room, check how much dust is on the dining table.

And it's not just rooms. How much does the average bachelor use the oven he's paying to rent? Wouldn't a toaster oven and/or a hot plate save 10 square feet of floor space for a better use, save money, and be more convenient (faster heating)?

David Roberts: Progressives Shouldn't be Afraid to Talk Climate

Some progressives say they're afraid to talk about climate science and the urgent need for climate action because it's too complicated.

In this TED Talk, Grist's David Roberts says climate science easy to understand, it's simple to communicate the danger of climate inaction, and he'll convince you if you give him 17 minutes of your day:


You can follow David on Twitter and subscribe to his Grist feed on Google Reader.

NASA's James Hansen: Continued Climate Inaction "Immoral"

Here's a new TED Talk from Dr. James Hansen, NASA climate scientist. Dr. Hansen explains how he wrote a paper in 1981 predicting "the 21st century would see shifting climate zones, creation of drought prone regions in North America and Asia, erosion of ice sheets, rising sea levels, and opening of the fabled Northwest passage. All of these impacts have since either happened or are now well underway."



If you're at the office and can't watch video, read a good summary of Hansen's talk from ClimateProgress.org.

It's a stark reminder that while polluters & their allies accuse climate scientists of being "alarmist," the predictions of climate scientists to this point have more often been too conservative. The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just issued its Fourth Assessment in 2007, but many climate scientists already think its predictions were far too cautious given our rapid climate changes and the continued acceleration of global carbon pollution.

By the way, are you familiar with TED Talks? The acronym stands for Technology, Entertainment & Design and the organization describes itself simply as a "nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading." Their podcasts are indispensable - brilliant ideas explained in easy to understand terms in around 15 minutes.