Category Archives: Science And Society

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

SLAPPing The Mann Again

6 Comments

We filed our final response to Michael Mann’s ridiculous lawsuit on Friday. It’s the last filing prior to a hearing on the motions to dismiss, which will likely occur in April. CEI General Counsel notes:

As our reply demonstrates, while Mann paints himself as a reluctant warrior in the global warming debate, he’s quick to fling epithets at his critics. Mann characterizes his opponents and their positions, variously, as “pure scientific fraud,” “bogus,” “hired assassin,” “shills,” “crimes against humanity,” and the ever-useful smear of “denier.” The professor claims that he’s been exonerated by numerous investigations, but those reports raise more questions than they answer. And his view of First Amendment freedoms is so incorrect that, in addition to the Nobel Prize he wrongly thinks he won, he may now end up with a Pulitzer — but it won’t be for nonfiction.

From the filing itself:

Continue reading SLAPPing The Mann Again →

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

Poisonous Greenery

9 Comments

More unintended consequences:

Recently, many jurisdictions have implemented bans or imposed taxes upon plastic grocery bags on environmental grounds. San Francisco County was the first major US jurisdiction to enact such a regulation, implementing a ban in 2007. There is evidence, however, that reusable grocery bags, a common substitute for plastic bags, contain potentially harmful bacteria. We examine emergency room admissions related to these bacteria in the wake of the San Francisco ban. We find that ER visits spiked when the ban went into effect. Relative to other counties, ER admissions increase by at least one fourth, and deaths exhibit a similar increase.

I’m never surprised when environmentalist policies kill people, because many of them hate people, but in this case, it probably is an unintended consequence. Because they never think these things through. Manhattan Beach passed one of these idiot bans recently, but at least they can still use paper bags. Of course, it didn’t affect Trader Joe’s at all. And I usually shop in Redondo, where Albertson’s still offers plastic.

And yes, I know that the problem is mitigated by washing the canvas bags each time. How many people want to do that (plus having to remember to take them)?

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

Global Warming

47 Comments

Anthropogenic, or not?

Though you wouldn’t know it from the antagonistic nature of public discussions about global warming, a large measure of scientific agreement and shared interpretation exists amongst nearly all scientists who consider the issue. The common ground, much of which was traversed by Dr. Hayhoe in her article, includes:

· that climate has always changed and always will,

· that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and warms the lower atmosphere,

· that human emissions are accumulating in the atmosphere,

· that a global warming of around 0.5OC occurred in the 20th century, but

· that global warming has ceased over the last 15 years.

The scientific argument over DAGW is therefore about none of these things. Rather, it is almost entirely about three other, albeit related, issues. They are:

· the amount of net warming that is, or will be, produced by human-related emissions,

· whether any actual evidence exists for dangerous warming of human causation over the last 50 years, and

· whether the IPCC’s computer models can provide accurate climate predictions 100 years into the future.

Dr. Hayhoe’s answers to those questions would probably be along the line of: substantial, lots and yes. My answers would be: insignificant, none and no.

What can possibly explain such disparate responses to a largely agreed set of factual climate data?

I tend to the latter view. As I’ve noted in the past, I have zero confidence in the predictive power of existing climate models, for very good reason.

Business, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Al Gore’s New Book

1 Comment

A review:

Techno-enthusiast Al’s discussion is interesting, if occasionally heavy-handed in its erudition. With so many facts on display, errors inevitably creep in: Bronze wasn’t chosen over copper in ancient times because copper is too brittle (it isn’t brittle at all) but because bronze tools could hold an edge under hard use, as copper tools couldn’t. Even so, Mr. Gore’s fans will find the book a useful introduction to the future, if not to the past. Yes, he does go on about climate change at some length, but that is hardly news. There is much, much more to the book than a rehash of the global-warming debate.

But then Savonarola Al intervenes, his fondness for high-toned scolding coloring every topic. It’s a pretty monochromatic color. After reading Savonarola Al’s sermons, one might be excused for thinking that all of the evils in the world come from corporations. There is a lot about what Mr. Gore calls “the domineering crimes of the robber barons” and the evils of capitalism, but the actual “crimes” that Mr. Gore mentions, chiefly lobbying efforts that thwart regulation, don’t seem all that bad in comparison with the things that governments are capable of doing. In much of the Third World—think Zimbabwe or Iran—people have far more to fear from the despotic regimes that misrule them than they do from private enterprise. And even in the free world, governments have a coercive power that no corporation can rival. Hence the need for lobbyists as a check on wealth-destroying intrusions into markets and abridgments of commercial freedom.

Want to get money out of politics? Get politics out of money.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Climate-Change Cure

17 Comments

…is like taking chemotherapy for a cold:

I cannot see why this relatively poor generation should bear the cost of damage that will not become apparent until the time of a far richer future generation, any more than people in 1900 should have borne sacrifices to make people today slightly richer. Or why today’s poor should subsidise, through their electricity bills, today’s rich who receive subsidies for wind farms, which produce less than 0.5% of the country’s energy.

As Glenn often says, the poor don’t have the juice (literally, in this case). It’s always about the juice.

Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

James Lovelock

2 Comments

Environmental heretic:

We never intended a fundamentalist Green movement that rejected all energy sources other than renewable, nor did we expect the Greens to cast aside our priceless ecological heritage because of their failure to understand that the needs of the Earth are not separable from human needs. We need take care that the spinning windmills do not become like the statues on Easter Island, monuments of a failed civilisation.

What he doesn’t (or at least didn’t) understand is that they want civilization, and humanity itself, to fail.