Category Archives: Science And Society

History, And Consensus

Judith Curry has found an interesting paper:

The participation of historians in the climate debate is critical. This is a topic that I am extremely interested in, and we have all been highly appreciative of the original posts by Tony Brown, at CE and also at WUWT.

Apart from the eloquent comment sense in this Jenkins’ essay, he raises the issue of the Goldilocks Principle – what climate do we want? Does anyone want the cold miserable climate of the 17th and 18th centuries? I’m not even sure we want the climate of the 1930’s or 1950’s. Historians have a huge role to play in articulating what constitutes a desirable climate, both regionally and globally.

Yes, the easiest way to stump a warm monger is to ask them what the ideal climate is, what is the magic year we want to return to?

Fossil Fuels

Matt Ridley on how they’ll save the world.
The conclusion:

The one thing that will not work is the one thing that the environmental movement insists upon: subsidizing wealthy crony capitalists to build low-density, low-output, capital-intensive, land-hungry renewable energy schemes, while telling the poor to give up the dream of getting richer through fossil fuels.

(Yes, behind paywall, but google the headline and you should be able to read it.)

[Update a while later]

I’m very sorry to hear about Piers Sellers’ illness, and hope for the best, but this NYT op-ed seems to me to be delusional:

All this as the world’s population is expected to crest at around 9.5 billion by 2050 from the current seven billion. Pope Francis and a think tank of retired military officers have drawn roughly the same conclusion from computer model predictions: The worst impacts will be felt by the world’s poorest, who are already under immense stress and have meager resources to help them adapt to the changes. They will see themselves as innocent victims of the developed world’s excesses. Looking back, the causes of the 1789 French Revolution are not a mystery to historians; looking forward, the pressure cooker for increased radicalism, of all flavors, and conflict could get hotter along with the global temperature.

Last year may also be seen in hindsight as the year of the Death of Denial. Globally speaking, most policy makers now trust the scientific evidence and predictions, even as they grapple with ways to respond to the problem. And most Americans — 70 percent, according to a recent Monmouth University poll — believe that the climate is changing. So perhaps now we can move on to the really hard part of this whole business.

I hope that will change next January. As Ridley points out (as does Alex Epstein), it is the poor who would be hit the hardest byaabandoning fossil fuels (particularly with plunging prices), much more so than by “climate change.”

New Nukes

A Canadian company has gotten funding to move forward on a molten-salt reactor. I think a lot of sensible people are realizing that if carbon really is a problem, nuclear is the solution, despite the insanity of people like Naomi Oreskes.

But my question is: Would this be a useful tech for space, either for electric power generation or propulsion? The company could do a spin off called Extraterrestrial Energy.