Category Archives: Science And Society

What Have They Been Hiding?

We may be about to finally find out, though I expect them to continue to stonewall: a judge has ordered the University of Virginia to release the climate research materials And Michael Mann is his usual smarmy, ad-hominem self:

“I think its very unfortunate that fossil fuel industry-funded climate change deniers … continue to harass U.Va., NASA, and other leading academic and scientific institutions with these frivolous attacks,” he said.

Hey, if I’m funded by the fossil-fuel industry, where the hell is my check?

So Much For That Excuse

The EPA administrator admits that fracking is not a threat to groundwater.

I think that natural gas is going to get very cheap, and here in California, I expect electricity prices to continue to go crazy, particularly with the batshit new carbon law. Probably time to invest in a gas heater for the spa. I think it would pay for itself in a year. In fact, I might look into a gas generator, and not just for emergencies. I’ll probably have to hide it from the carbon police, though.

Praise Be To Jobs

I am completely unsurprised by this:

In a recently screened BBC documentary called ‘Secrets of the Superbrands’, UK neuroscientists found that the brains of Apple fans are stimulated by images of Apple products in the same areas as those triggered by religious imagery in a person of faith. According to the scientists, this suggests that the big tech brands have harnessed, or exploit, the brain areas that have evolved to process religion.

At least they’re not Scientologists. Well, OK, maybe some of them are.

From Climate Alarmist

…to skeptic:

At this point, official “climate science” stopped being a science. In science, empirical evidence always trumps theory, no matter how much you are in love with the theory. If theory and evidence disagree, real scientists scrap the theory. But official climate science ignored the crucial weather balloon evidence, and other subsequent evidence that backs it up, and instead clung to their carbon dioxide theory — that just happens to keep them in well-paying jobs with lavish research grants, and gives great political power to their government masters.

Follow the real money.

Don’t Know Much About Science

One of the many reasons that John Huntsman should not be the Republican nominee:

Huntsman says he opposes cap-and-trade proposals because “this isn’t the moment,” but he buys the climate change argument because “90% of the scientists” say it’s happening.

Leave aside that the climate is always changing, I have no idea where he comes up with that number, or why he thinks that science is a democracy. And cap and tax is OK in general, just not now?

Sheesh.

CO2 Mitigation

Thoughts on the cost ineffectiveness:

As we say on the shopping channels, “But wait. There’s more.” How much would it cost, I wondered, to forestall 1 Celsius degree of warming, if all measures to make “global warming” go away were as hilariously cost-ineffective as the Sandwell Sparrow-Slicer?

We economists call this the “mitigation cost-effectiveness.” You get the mitigation cost-effectiveness by dividing the total warming forestalled by the total lifetime cost of the project. And the answer? Well, it’s a very affordable $13 quadrillion per Celsius degree of warming forestalled.

And remember, this is an underestimate, because our methodology will have tended to overstate the warming forestalled — and that’s before we politicians ask any questions about whether IPeCaC’s estimates of climate sensitivity are wanton, flagrant exaggerations. (Cries of “No!” “Shame!” “Resign!” “What did I do with my expenses claim form?”)

Suppose it was just as cost-ineffective to make “global warming” from other causes go away as it is to make “global warming” from CO2 go away. In that event, assuming — as the World Bank does — that global annual GDP is $60 trillion, what percentage of this century’s global output of all that we make and do and sell would be gobbled up in climate mitigation? The answer is an entirely reasonable 736%, or, to put it another way, 736 years’ global GDP.

But won’t someone think of the children?