Bob Zimmerman blasts the SLS and the porkers on the Hill, over at the WSJ.
Category Archives: Business
The Latest Grasshopper Test
A little sideways action.
[Via Universe Today]
Will The Hyperloop Work?
Alan Boyle rounds up the discussion since it was formally announced on Monday.
I have to say that I do hope that it kills high-speed rail in CA, even if it never gets built.
ObamaCare And Small Business
OK, now those racists are saying that it’s forcing them to cut workers’ hours.
Hyperloop, Tesla and Musk Bashing
I have some thoughts on the latest nonsense over at PJMedia.
Climate Hypocrisy
Why don’t they give up air travel?
So why, pray tell, do we spend so much time talking about suburban sprawl and sport utilities, and so little time talking about FedEx and European vacations?
The question answers itself, doesn’t it? Giving up air travel and overnight delivery is much more personally costly for the public intellectuals who write about this stuff than giving up a big SUV. If you live in one of the five or six major cities that contain virtually everyone who writes about climate change, having a small car (or no car), is a pretty easy adjustment to imagine. On the other hand, try to imagine giving up far-flung vacations, conferences, etc. — especially since travel to interesting locales is one of the hidden perks of not-very-well remunerated positions at universities, public policy groups, nongovernmental organizations, and yes, news organizations.
Yup.
Lunar Helium-3 Extraction
Is it ethical?
I haven’t read the paper yet, but I’ll be interested in comments from people who do.
But, 97%!!!
A majority of scientists are skeptical about the global-warming crisis:
One interesting aspect of this new survey is the unmistakably alarmist bent of the survey takers. They frequently use terms such as “denier” to describe scientists who are skeptical of an asserted global warming crisis, and they refer to skeptical scientists as “speaking against climate science” rather than “speaking against asserted climate projections.” Accordingly, alarmists will have a hard time arguing the survey is biased or somehow connected to the ‘vast right-wing climate denial machine.’
Another interesting aspect of this new survey is that it reports on the beliefs of scientists themselves rather than bureaucrats who often publish alarmist statements without polling their member scientists. We now have meteorologists, geoscientists and engineers all reporting that they are skeptics of an asserted global warming crisis, yet the bureaucrats of these organizations frequently suck up to the media and suck up to government grant providers by trying to tell us the opposite of what their scientist members actually believe.
As Freeman Dyson has noted, skepticism is exactly the attitude that a true scientist takes.
[Late evening update]
From a comment:
I have added James Taylor to my list of people that I can’t trust a word they say. That article is a travesty, as are the ones he links to about meteorologist. How dare he say “only 36% of scientists” when the study studied geoscientists who work at Alberta petroleum? Pathetic. Or claim in the other links that “only a minority 30% is very worried about global warming”, ignoring that the study said an additional 42% are _somewhat_ worried. I’m not a big believer in AGW, but the man is obviously in the business of fooling people. You shouldn’t link him either.
Noted for future reference. But the point remains that a) the 97% number is bogus and b) the models are broken.
Hyperloop–Tech Trick?
…or political manifesto?
Musk has a long history of political entanglement — usually with people trying to scuttle his various big-think projects. SpaceX has been a target of regulatory concerns from the get-go, most recently from Texas legislators who opposed letting Musk build an airport for spaceships at a site near Brownsville. Tesla has also clashed with lawmakers in New York and other states who have tried to stop the company from selling electric vehicles directly to consumers. These are the kinds of obstacles no tech CEO wants to face — and yet, because of the scope and scale of Musk’s ambitions, he has to climb over them.
For years, government has been a nuisance to Elon Musk. It’s slowed him down. It’s required him to spend his valuable time lobbying his Twitter followers for support in the New York legislature instead of building rockets. It’s required him to explain his mind-bending technical innovations to grayhairs in Congress as if he were speaking to schoolchildren. Over and over, the public sector has convinced Musk that it is hopelessly lost when it comes to matters of innovation, and that anything truly revolutionary must spring from the ambitions of the private sector.
Yup. NASA is an excellent example of that problem.
Harry Reid
Just how devious is he?
I’d go with the “arrogant and honest” theory myself. That would seem to be what’s happening here.