A fascist attempt to silence dissent on climate exposes a huge government-funded science scandal.
My next check from Exxon will be my first.
[Update a few minutes later]
More from Thomas Lifson. Yes, sunshine is a great disinfectant.
Category Archives: Science And Society
The Uncertainty Of Climate Sensitivity
…and its implications for the Paris “negotiations”:
In my previous post Climate sensitivity: lopping off the fat tail, I argued that it is becoming increasingly difficult to defend high values of ECS. However, the uncertainty is sufficiently large that we can’t really identify a meaningful ‘best value’ of sensitivity, or rule out really high values.
A key issue is that emerging estimates of aerosol forcing are considerably lower than what was used in the AR5 determinations of ECS, implying lower values of ECS than was determined by the AR5.
This uncertainty in ECS makes emission targets rather meaningless. It will be interesting to see how this uncertainty is factored into the Paris negotiations
Note, there are other papers on this general topic that are in the review process, I expect a spate of such papers to appear during the next month.
Paris is doomed to failure, thankfully.
Martian Brine
I haven’t had much to say about Monday’s “big” announcement, but Joel Achenbach has the straight scoop. In light of renewed concerns about planetary protection, from Emily Lakdawalla and others, I’m thinking about writing an op-ed on why we’re going to Mars, or sending humans into space at all.
[Update a couple minutes later]
I don’t know if I have the time or energy to properly fisk this right now, but Alana Massey says that sending humans to Mars is a terrible idea.
More Junk Nutrition Science
This is appalling:
While eliminating saturated fats can improve heart health, a new study shows that it makes a difference which foods are used in their place. A study shows that replacing saturated fats with unsaturated fats and high-quality carbohydrates has the most impact on reducing the risk of heart disease. When saturated fats were replaced with highly processed foods, there was no benefit.
You don’t say.
In other words, you’re replacing good stuff with bad stuff, but when you replace the good stuff with less-terrible stuff, your results aren’t as bad. Pro tip to cardiologists: There is zero scientific evidence that eliminating saturated fat improves heart health.
And here’s a chef who’s an idiot.
Yes, restaurants are making you fat, but not because they’re serving you fat.
The Climate Fascists Get Bit
You can imagine the horror on the signatories’ faces when they realised that some very determined people were about to take a close interest in their financial arrangements and those of their colleagues at IGES.
I’m not sure taking the letter down is going to help much though.
Nope. Too late.
Filthy Meatbag Bodies On Mars
As Keith Cowing points out, the Planetary Society is in no hurry to put anyone on the surface of the Red Planet. They want to do Apollo to Mars, but take almost three and a half decades before the first boots on Mars, and almost four decades before long-term habitation. Though Firouz Naderi claims that keeping it under the cost limit makes it more likely, I’d say that it is doomed to failure. Something that takes that long, accomplishes so little, for so much money, is unsustainable in a democratic Republic. This is why Apollo to Mars is doomed in general. I’m discussing this in the Kickstarter project. We need to have a different approach, starting with an end to the phrase “space exploration” as the reason we send humans into space.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Here’s the link to the report. I’m reading it now, hoping it will have some useful cost data from Aerospace.
[Update a while later]
Even Chris Carberry recognizes that we won’t ever get another “Kennedy moment.” I’m not sure, though, how one “stays the course” to Mars, when there is no course.
[Late-morning update]
Over at Sarah Hoyt’s place NASA employee Les Johnson proposes (wait for it) Apollo to Mars.
It is not going to happen, and it should not happen.
Ending The War On Dietary Fat
More and more people are figuring out that the low-fat diet recommendations have been making things worse:
Now when we hold our annual sixteen-week Greater Fall River Fitness Challenge, the longest-running event of its kind in the country that draws over hundreds of people each year, we tell participants that they won’t see any significant weight loss unless they also make substantial changes in what they eat. A low-carb information and support group follows each weekly hour-long work-out, and our cooking demonstrations show people how they can switch to a low-carb lifestyle and lose weight without going hungry as they used to with low-fat, calorie-restricted diets.
Diabetic and overweight patients in a local hospital are already getting terrific results following a low-carb, high-fat approach. While it’s too soon to see measurable changes in overall obesity rates in our city with our new approach, we think we are now on the right track in advising our residents to stay away from low-fat products and diets and to incorporate healthy fats while limiting sugars and refined grains. For those who are already following this advice, we are seeing terrific results.
Interesting that they’re also backing off on the recommendation to exercise, at least with regard to weight loss.
Anyway, someone should tell Michelle Obama, on the slight hope that she’ll end her nationwide industrial-grade low-fat child abuse in the schools.
[Update late morning]
CSPI strikes back. Stupidly (as usual).
In a just world, CSPI would be sued for all of the premature deaths it has helped cause through its long-time promotion of junk science.
Functional Mechanical Gears
This is pretty cool. Of course, the Intelligent Designers will have a field day with it.
Heart-Attack Tissue Damage
Could it be repaired with a protein patch?
Let’s hope.
[Update a while later]
Growing new nerves with 3-D printing.
I think if I can hang in for a few more years, I’ll have an opportunity to live a long time.
[Friday-morning update]
Kidneys have been grown from stem cells that are fully functional in pigs. No obvious reason it won’t work in humans as well. This will save and improve millions of lives, and money for dialysis.
[Bumped]
We Need A War On Termites
Not just because of the damage they cause to our property, but because they generate ten times as much CO2 as all of human fossil-fuel combustion?
If that’s true, the policy implications would seem sort of profound.