Here is the official CEI press release on the motions filed on Friday.
Category Archives: Science And Society
Reducing Violence By The Mentally Ill
Note that most of this is not new federal intrusions, but fixing currently broken federal policy.
The Rebels Strike Back Against The Climate-Change Empire
We’ve filed two motions to dismiss with prejudice Michael Mann’s lawsuit, both under the DC Anti-SLAPP Act, and for failure to state a claim.
The former is a relatively new law whose purpose is precisely to prevent such harassing lawsuits, and strangle them in the cradle before a defendant has to expend considerable resources on a frivolous case. The latter is a blast at his repeated allegations of malice and intention to harm on our part as though those are facts, with no actual facts to support them, and his own filing containing much to contradict. Obviously, I was quite involved with the preparation of both these briefs. As I’ve said all along, he never had much of a case. National Review and Mark Steyn will probably have something up about theirs tomorrow (they were separate filings, because the situations were different, over different postings, though there is also much in common).
Unfortunately, if these dismissals are granted, there will be no “scientific trial of the twenty-first century” over the hockey stick, but it will get the legal issues out of our hair, and we’ll get to go after him for attorney fees, possibly discouraging any future attempts to muzzle the “deniers.”
[Update a while later]
Just to expand on the issues in the second motion, in order to show malice and reckless disregard for the truth on my/our part, he has to show (among other things) that we didn’t really believe what I wrote about his “exoneration.” His logic seems to be:
a) Various investigations have exonerated me (in my not-so-humble opinion).
b) Simberg claims to have read them, and in fact even linked to them, and yet he still claimed that I was not exonerated.
c) Simberg is obviously lying. Who needs more evidence than that?
He doesn’t seem to consider the possibility that, having read the reports on the investigations, our opinions simply differ on whether or not they really exonerated him. Presumably, a judge will be smarter.
Brain Food
If you want to be mentally sharp, lay off the sugar. It’s bad for you in lots of other ways, too.
Autism
The vast number (like 99.999….)% of autistics, and particularly Asperger’s sufferers have not, and will not slaughter kindergarteners. So let’s stop talking about the autistic sociopath?
No Gravity Required
This is good news for space settlement:
The scientists ran their experiment on Arabidopsis plants—a go-to species for plant biologists. The control group was germinated and grown at the Kennedy Space Center (A), while the comparative group was housed on the International Space Station (B). For 15 days, researchers took pictures of the plants at six-hour intervals and compared them. Their results surprised even them: the plants in space exhibited the same growth patterns as those on Earth.
The researchers were looking for two specific patterns of root growth: waving and skewing. With waving, the root tips grow back and forth, much like waves. Skewing occurs when a plant’s roots grow at an angle, rather than straight down. Scientists don’t know exactly why these root behaviors occur, but gravity was thought to be the driving force for both.
So much for that theory. This means the potential for fresh food at ISS, if you’re a vegetarian (or even if not). They should be learning how to do weightless hydroponics. Of course, we still don’t know if animals, and particularly humans, can gestate, or how, and that’s true of partial gravities as well. And we’re not likely to until SSI gets funding for its variable-gravity lab.
Space Crazed
What does space travel do to your mind?
You’ll know that Congress and NASA are serious about deep space missions when they stop pretending that Orion is adequate for them, and start serious work on Nautilus, or collaborate with Bigelow.
Healthier Snacks
This is a step in the right direction, though they persist in the myth that the problem with potato chips is fat. I’d love to try a collard- or cabbage- or kale-based chip.
The FDA
Time for SCOTUS to rein it in.
Moongrabber
No, that’s not the next Bond film, but the clueless fantasy of a physics professor in Coloradoalifornia:
Other concerns bubbling over private space travel are that it will increase the amount of space debris and the potential weaponization and militarization of space.
Williams said that “whatever nation controls the moon controls the Earth.”
“If you had a moon base with space weapons, you could control all the launches on Earth,” she said.
Really? Even the ones when the moon is on the other side of the earth? How would one go about that? What kind of “space weapons” is she talking about? How does one prevent anything from happening on earth from a location that is days away? And this is a professor of physics?
It gets worse:
The Outer Space Treaty states that each nation retains jurisdiction over its citizens should they perform activities in space. So the U.S. would not only govern Golden Spikes’ operations, it would be liable in the event of a catastrophic accident.
“Should the common U.S. man and woman, the 99 percent, pay for the costs and risks of the ‘space happy’ dreams of billionaires?” said Williams, who sits on the board of directors of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space.
A report released this year by the U.S. Government Accountability Office pegs potential federal liability for third-party claims tied to commercial space exploration at $2.7 billion.
“We need to engage in a national dialogue on the risks and costs of commercial space travel before private space corporations and their rich clients can take and make them at U.S. taxpayers’ expense,” Williams said.
What “catastrophic accident” is being fantasized here that isn’t already a risk with other commercial launches? No one would be harmed if there were an accident on the moon, other than members of the expedition. The U.S. is not liable for them — only for uninvolved third parties. The taxpayer isn’t on the hook for this at all, other than the standard launch indemnity. I’m all for a national dialogue, but I don’t expect one, and if there is one, I hope that it’s led by people more informed than Professor Williams.