Richard Fernanez has some thoughts on AGW and Challenger. I wonder what Dick Feynman would have thought of the current situation? I can guess.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Take This Paradigm
…and shove it.
Narrow intellectual gatekeeping is omnipresent in academia. Want to know why the government wastes hundreds of millions of dollars on math and science programs that never seem to improve the test scores of American students?[3] Part of the reason for this is that today’s K-12 educators—unlike educators in other high-scoring countries of the world—refuse to acknowledge evidence that memorization plays an important role in mastering mathematics. Any proposed program that supports memorization is deemed to be against “creativity” by today’s intellectual gatekeepers in K-12 education, including those behind the Math and Science Partnerships. As one NSF program director told me: “We hear about success stories with practice and repetition-based programs like Kumon Mathematics. But I’ll be frank with you—you’ll never get anything like that funded. We don’t believe in it.” Instead the intellectual leadership in education encourages enormously expensive pimping programs that put America even further behind the international learning curve.
I hope that Climaquiddick turns out to cause people to question a lot of previously unquestioned institutions and authorities.
The Politicization Of The EPA
Thoughts from an actual scientist at the agency. You know, one who actually believes in science, and that agency actions should be based on it?
[Update a few minutes later]
An open letter to the UN Secretary General, from a long list of scientists and engineers:
Climate change science is in a period of ‘negative discovery’ – the more we learn about this exceptionally complex and rapidly evolving field the more we realize how little we know. Truly, the science is NOT settled.
If the science is “settled” (what an absurd phrase — science is never “settled,” by definition), how can there be so many scientists who disagree that it is settled?
Your Stimulus Dollars At Work
Some supposedly egregious examples. But I wanted to focus on this one:
$4.7 million for Lockheed Martin to study supersonic corporate jet travel
Now, I don’t know much about this money, or what its actual purpose is. Is it to just study the market? It’s not enough money to do anything serious in terms of advancing the tech, unless perhaps it’s for CFD.
But I don’t think that it’s necessarily intrinsically a bad thing for the federal government to be spending money on, though I think that it’s quite likely that the money will be wasted. More efficient supersonic jets are, after all, a green technology, and they could lead the way to cost-effective supersonic transports, so it could in theory be a good federal investment. The question is: is it appropriate for the government to be making such investments, or should we rely on the industry?
Well, the problem is that most of the industry, at least the big airframers like LM, don’t believe in R&D. At least not as a cost of doing business. They view it as a profit center — that is, they see it as simply another source of revenue, whether provided by the government, or some other customer. But they rarely put their own money into it. Neither does Boeing. Because for decades, they have become conditioned and inured to avoid it, instead going hat in hand to Uncle Sugar for R&D funds, which is happy to hand them out, even on boondoggles. I think that this is one of the reasons that we haven’t seen much aviation innovation — because the people who actually build airplanes aren’t willing to spend their own money on it. Of course, the regulatory and liability environment are also significant factors.
[Afternoon update]
I assume that this is what is being referred to:
The work will focus on “systems-level experimental validation activities” and is part of the NASA aeronautics research mission directorate fundamental aeronautics programme’s supersonics project. Managed by NASA’s Glenn Research Center, the supersonics project is to provide proven capabilities that address the efficiency, environmental and performance challenges of supersonic aircraft. The studies also seek to identify potential requirements for future supersonic aircraft, assess the effectiveness of technology today and identify new research opportunities.
As I said, don’t expect much useful to come from the money. I could do a lot more with it.
Reducing His Carbon Footprint
Just as though the left didn’t need another reason to hate Israel, Netanyahu has decided to give Kyopenhagen a pass. A good idea for a number of reasons, not least of which he was likely to be simply abused there, anyway, despite the leadership of his nation in many green energy technologies.
The Real Fat-Cat Party
Thoughts from Jonah Goldberg:
My biggest objection is not to what isn’t true about the claim that the Right is the handmaiden to big business, it’s to what is true. Too many Republicans think being pro-business is the same as being pro-market. They defend the status quo against bad reforms and think they’ve defended economic freedom. The status quo stinks. And the sooner Republicans learn that, the sooner they’ll deserve to win again.
Of course, there are a lot of things they’ll have to learn to deserve to win again.
And You Thought The Science Of Climate Fraud Was Bad?
Check out the economics of it.
Don’t Panic!
Thoughts on global warming, and cooling, from JoSH:
From the perspective of the Holocene as a whole, our current hockeystick is beginning to look pretty dinky. By far the possibility I would worry about, if I were the worrying sort, would be the return to an ice age — since interglacials, over the past half million years or so, have tended to last only 10,000 years or so. And Ice ages are not conducive to agriculture.
What’s the environmental impact of the Great Lakes region being under a mile of ice?
Government By Wishful Thinking
Steven den Beste, on the teleology of the left. And yes, I am in Mojave.
The Fallout Continues
Several physicists are asking the American Physical Society to rescind its 2007 endorsement of AGW:
In 2007 the APS Council adopted a Statement on global warming (also reproduced at the tinyurl site mentioned above) that was based largely on the scientific work that is now revealed to have been corrupted. (The principals in this escapade have not denied what they did, but have sought to dismiss it by saying that it is normal practice among scientists. You know and we know that that is simply untrue. Physicists are not expected to cheat.)
If I were a working scientist, I would be most insulted by the insinuation, which seems to be their current main defense, that “everyone does it,” and “this is the way that science works.” I’ve seen blog commenters try this game, and I think it’s an outrageous slur on the thousands of scientists who actually do science with integrity.
[Update a few minutes later]
Roger Simon has a plausible theory as to why the president delayed his trip to Copenhagen. It buys him time to decide not to go at all, as the whole enterprise (finally and thankfully) begins to unravel.
[Another update a couple minutes later]
Like me, Eric Raymond is popping the corn. I think we’ll see a lot more of this:
My favorite recent entry on the CRU mob is a screed from a professor of mathematics in Canada: “All of my colleagues have had to endure these bullies and criminals for a very long time.”
Now that the curtain has been pulled back, and the great Oz revealed as a fraud, expect a lot of previously cowed people to speak up, and even pile on. It’s not going to be pretty, but it’s no less than they’ll deserve.
[Update a few minutes later]
The (still) faithful gather in Copenhagen:
…it’s already clear that being here during the next few days is going to be very much like attending some kind of massive religious gathering. The faithful — over 16,000 strong — are here, of course, for the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference, a.k.a. COP15 (“COP” as in Copenhagen), at which they supposedly hope to achieve a provisional international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and thus rescue our beloved blue planet from the fate envisioned in any number of bad Roland Emmerich movies.
I say “supposedly” because at this point, lacking a polygraph, it’s hard to know for sure what any of these professional climate folks really think or believe or aspire to.
Oh, I think we can guess.