Category Archives: Science And Society

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

In Which The Moonbat Gets It Right

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…and by “right,” I mean sort of:

The problem we face is not that we have too little fossil fuel, but too much. As oil declines, economies will switch to tar sands, shale gas and coal; as accessible coal declines, they’ll switch to ultra-deep reserves (using underground gasification to exploit them) and methane clathrates. The same probably applies to almost all minerals: we will find them, but exploiting them will mean trashing an ever greater proportion of the world’s surface. We have enough non-renewable resources of all kinds to complete our wreckage of renewable resources: forests, soil, fish, freshwater, benign weather. Collapse will come one day, but not before we have pulled everything down with us.

And even if there were an immediate economic cataclysm, it’s not clear that the result would be a decline in our capacity for destruction. In east Africa, for example, I’ve seen how, when supplies of paraffin or kerosene are disrupted, people don’t give up cooking; they cut down more trees. History shows us that wherever large-scale collapse has occurred, psychopaths take over. This is hardly conducive to the rational use of natural assets.

All of us in the environment movement, in other words – whether we propose accommodation, radical downsizing or collapse – are lost. None of us yet has a convincing account of how humanity can get out of this mess. None of our chosen solutions break the atomising, planet-wrecking project. I hope that by laying out the problem I can encourage us to address it more logically, to abandon magical thinking and to recognise the contradictions we confront. But even that could be a tall order.

What he understands: there is no crisis in terms of abundant cheap energy.

What he doesn’t understand, and this is understandable, because it would require a renunciation of everything that he’s thought and known for decades, is that this is a good, not a bad thing.

Given that he was one of the first to understand the implications of Climaquiddick, maybe there’s hope that he’ll come the rest of the way over to the side of the light.

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

Heart Muscles And Fat

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Gee, what do you know?

…eliminating or severely limiting fats from the diet may not be beneficial to cardiac function in patients suffering from heart failure, a study at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine reports. Results from biological model studies conducted by assistant professor of physiology and biophysics Margaret Chandler, PhD, and other researchers, demonstrate that a high-fat diet improved overall mechanical function, in other words, the heart’s ability to pump, and was accompanied by cardiac insulin resistance.

How many people has the FDA and the nutrition/industrial complex killed with the fatophobia over the past decades? I’m pretty sure my father was one of them.

And I continue to be amazed at how easy it is to find “low-fat” or “fat-free” products in the interior aisles of the grocery store (especially in the candy aisle…), but almost impossible to find low-sodium products.

Media Criticism, Science And Society

Paula Deen’s Recipes

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Maybe these are the reasons why she has diabetes, but there’s no explanation as to why. While a lot of the dishes are refined-carb intensive, there’s also an implication that fat is involved, but I’m not aware of any link between fat consumption and diabetes. I would think that the jalapeno poppers wouldn’t be that bad for you. I will say, though, that most of them look godawful. I wouldn’t want to eat them even if they didn’t wreck my body.

Humor, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Weird

Trade In Your Steering Wheel

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…for a toilet seat:

As we enter our collective lunch breaks, we thought this number might make you think again before eating and driving: There are nearly nine times as many potentially harmful bugs on your steering wheel as there are on an average toilet seat.

This shouldn’t really be surprising. Toilet seats get cleaned occasionally.

But replacing my steering wheel with a toilet seat probably wouldn’t work out all that well. The rim of the seat is too big to get my fingers comfortably around.

Anyway, if it’s not news you can use, it’s at least news.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Climate Coverup Continues

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Also, there’s a double standard in Virginia when it comes to releasing emails:

UVA and the interest groups have been in Mann’s corner, fighting Ken Cuccinelli’s request for documents for months. But it was that Greenpeace request of UVA for Pat Michaels’ work product that has legs. The environmental group filed similar requests with other institutions seeking the records of climate skeptics, and in a couple of cases, mounted campaigns to have those skeptics fired from their positions. Where were the voices of academic freedom of expression during those campaigns? Sitting on their hands.

Now, though, they have sprung into action because Michael Mann, who shares their climate change beliefs, is under what they deem to be attack. Horner says these groups are “a little bit late to the party,” because, as noted above, UVA has already said it’s willing to release an academic’s emails, “so long as he’s a climate skeptic.”

As Norman Leahy writes, we now have half a million reasons to want to see them.

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

Earth Day Thoughts

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Steven Hayward:

The ultimate reason environmental conditions in the U.S. have improved so much is economic prosperity and technological innovation. Of course regulation has played a role, but the problem is that our style of environmental regulation relates to the improvements in real conditions in much the same way that police brutality pushes down the crime rate (in other words, the EPA is the environmental equivalent of rogue cops). If you drop back and look at the data for the whole world (as I do in the Introduction to the Almanac), you will see that the nations with the best environmental conditions are those with strong property rights, economic freedom, and prosperity — three things environmentalists hate or define so narrowly as to be meaningless. The nations with the worst environmental conditions are poor and without property rights and economic freedom.

They love the “earth” more than they do their fellow humans. And they indoctrinate our children in their religion under the guise of “science.”

[Update a few minutes later]

A penitent CNN reporter confesses to his eco-sins. But don’t call it a religion!

[Update Saturday afternoon]

Breaking up over religious differences:

Sam started writing on my Facebook wall and sent me flirty messages packed with our inside jokes. Soon, we were messaging every other day. It was like old times, except, you know, without the sex.

But one day, I logged on and saw that he had weighed in on a virtual debate and assumed a staunch position.

“Global warming isn’t scientifically proven,” he wrote.

WHAT??? Does he think the world is flat, too? I thought in horror. I’m from California. I’ve been recycling and saving dolphins since I was in the womb. Suddenly, memories came rushing back to me like a horrible movie montage: The arguments we had about hybrid cars—he contended that it didn’t make a damn difference, since car companies still pollute in other ways. I thought he was just defensive about his decidedly not-green race car. And the way he would constantly rib on Al Gore, even after “An Inconvenient Truth” won the Academy Award… He was always so skeptical about the merits of organic food, too. And, hey, did he even have a recycling bin?!

And poof! Just like that, my desire for him zoomed off into the sunset. We’re still in touch, but we’re not going to get touchy-feely again.

He’s better off without her.

[Bumped]