It turns out that classical liberals (i.e., libertarians) are smarter than both.
The Space-Policy Teddy Bears, RIP
Temporarily, anyway. Things had gotten sufficiently absurd recently on the space-policy front that a new video would have almost written itself, but sadly, Xtranormal went tits up last summer, with all user info. Fortunately, there wasn’t much money in my account to lose, and all my videos are preserved on Youtube, but I’m not sure how I’ll be making any new ones.
Climate Science And Conservatism
Some thoughts from Judith Curry on Steven Hayward’s latest essays (including this one). I think that “climate cultists” is certainly no more derogatory a phrase than “deniers.”
Bill Watterson
…(briefly) returns to the comics page.
Environmentalists
Thoughts on their inhumanity.
Obama’s Student Loan Subsidies
Expect them to cause college costs to soar even more.
It’s a shame that the president doesn’t seem to have even taken Econ 101.
[Update a few minutes later]
Universities are one of America’s many failed dinosaurs.
The Polar Bears
Are doing just fine. Idiocy from the usual suspect notwithstanding.
Iraq
Is it the beginning of the end?
As he notes, it’s really become a regional war. The borders don’t mean much any more, and Kurdistan may finally be its own nation, which won’t thrill the Turks.
Dads Are Stupid
A disturbing advertising trend:
The ads tell you that fatherhood – indeed, any sort of domestic entanglement – turns you into a dullard, a dope, a neutered clueless dork who can be reduced down to oversized tools and stammering befuddlement at Important Things. Why would any man want to be that? What rewards does the culture offer in return?
Not much, sadly.
Climate Change
…and hot air:
In other words mitigation to slow or halt GHG emissions will be costly today with little payout over the next 100, if not 1000, years, making it unlikely that large mitigation projects have a positive net present value. And for these results to occur, the United States would have to be joined by the rest of the industrialized nations as well as the developing ones, something that is not going to happen.
Given that mitigation has gained little policy traction, many climate scientists seem to be paying more attention to adaptation. Indeed, the subtitle of the IPCC’s 2014 report is Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. In contract to earlier IPCC reports, the press release in April mentioned mitigation only once and adaptation 12 times. According to Chris Field, chairman of one of the IPCC working groups, “The really big breakthrough in this report is the new idea of thinking about managing climate change.”
What a concept.
[Noon update]
Math is math: “(100,000′s of Jobs + Billions of Taxpayer $’s) x 85 years = 0.018° C.”