Category Archives: Technology and Society

Site Redesign

You probably noticed a new look here. I just did a WordPress upgrade, and switched to the new standard theme Twenty Fifteen. Not sure I’ll stick with it (for one thing, it’s not clear how to get the column structure I want) but I’ll play with it for a while.

[Update a while later]

Well, it looks like you can have as many columns as you like, as long as it’s not more than two. Only one sidebar. Not sure whether to stick with this.

[Update a few more minutes later]

OK, looks like the only way to get multiple sidebars is to create a child theme with them. Not sure how much time I want to invest in writing PHP.

[Update a few minutes later]

Last time I tried TwentyFourteen, it was kind of a disaster, but I just got the latest version, and am trying that now. I’ll have to tinker with it, but it at least gives me two customizable sidebars. Definitely have to resize sidebars, and play with style sheet. Feedback appreciated.

The Soon Et Al Paper

What is right, and wrong with it.

It’s always worth noting that the notion that CO2 is a greenhouse gas has never been in serious dispute, or even that the planet has been warming, in fits and starts, since the end of the LIA. The issue is feedbacks, and the limits of our ability to model them. We will probably get better at that in the future, but we currently suck at it, and it would be insane to base public policy on the models.

An Anti-Scientific Screed

by a supposed climate “scientist.” Even ignoring the “denier” lunacy, this is wrong headed on multiple levels. No, science is not “an expert trust-based system.”

And then there’s this:

You cannot decide that you believe in penicillin or the principles of flight while at the same time disbelieve humans evolved from apes or that greenhouse gases can cause climate change.

I hope he understands climate better than he does evolution. I suspect he doesn’t.

Feynman wept.

The Grijalva Witch Hunt

Mark Steyn’s thoughts on the “warmish inquisition”:

Judith Curry has never testified before Commissar Grijalva’s committee. But, because she appeared before some or other committee of the Emirs of Incumbistan, Commissar Grijalva claims the constitutional responsibility to know what travel expenses she received in 2007.

I’ve testified to the Canadian Parliament and other legislative bodies over the years, and I can tell you now I would not accept an invitation to testify before the United States Congress under the terms this repulsive thug demands. Of course, they have the power to compel testimony through subpoenas, and maybe they can compel proof of speaking-fee compensation from 2007, too. But, for all Grijalva’s appeals to “constitutional duty”, the men who wrote the US Constitution did not intend that citizens who come before the people’s house should have to endure a career audit going back eight years (even the corrupt and diseased IRS only demands seven). It would be heartening to think all seven recipients of Grijalva’s letter would tell him to take a hike, but I am not confident of that.

…the naked intimidation of Bengtsson, Silver, Pielke, Soon and on and on is evil, and remorseless. And so, even as the gulf between Big Climate’s models and observable reality widens, the permitted parameters of debate narrow and shrivel.

Yes.

[Update a few minutes later]

Professor Curry has a lot of links from the past week. It’s been an interesting one.

Space Development And Settlement

A new alliance. This is long overdue.

I’m not sure about the prize idea, though. I’d rather the government actually purchase bulk items (e.g., water) on orbit. The goal should be a low cost per pound, not reusability per se. I’m pretty sure that reusability would naturally fall out of that. And reusable vehicles will have to be reliable to hit the cost goal.