Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space, Technology and Society

Solar System Day

10 Comments

Regular readers know that I hate the earth and the environment.

Well, not really, but I’d imagine that some of the more deluded among them believe that. And I am opposed to many so-called environmentalists. But it’s not an anti-environment position so much as an anti-anti-humanity and anti-anti-free market position.

So I do have trouble getting into Earth Day. I find the notion far too blinkered and unimaginative.

Yes, earth is special and, as we learned over forty years ago (shortly before the first Earth Day), looks like a very precious and fragile jewel against the black background of an unimaginably vast, sterile and hostile universe.

But it’s just one planet of uncountably many, and we don’t just live on a planet, we live in a solar system, a galaxy, a universe. In fact, while there’s an implicit recognition of this in the worship of the sun by the renewable energy types, they’re insufficiently open minded about the use of the rest of the system as a source of resources whose harvesting would be much gentler on the planet than mining them here, if it could be done cost effectively.

I’d like to see Earth Day used as a platform to focus a lot more attention on the environmental benefits that space technology has brought us over the past half century, from data gathering on deforestation and pollution, communications that allow less business travel and more telecommuting, to space-based navigation that saves fuel and lives. I’d also like to see consideration of the even greater future potential for saving the planet via space.

I actually do share the goal of the anti-humans of wanting to reduce the environmental burden of humanity on the planet, and I don’t even necessarily object to the goal of reducing the terrestrial population, as long as we can dramatically increase the extraterrestrial human population, because I’m one of those people who think that human minds are the ultimate resource, and that you can’t have too many of them. But the way to achieve that goal is to open up space, not to simply reduce the human population on earth, by whatever means necessary (and many of these folks think that end will justify any means).

Back in the seventies, many of the L-5ers were hippies who recognized the peaceful potential of space colonization to gently depopulate the earth and make it into a giant natural park, with the vast bulk of humanity living and producing off planet the wealth, via industrial-intensive processes, that would make such a thing affordable. I wasn’t a hippy, but I thought then, and still think, that a wonderful ultimate goal.

But the means to achieve it are not more constraints and taxes on current energy use, or population. It is to deploy technologies that can actually achieve the goal — nuclear, molecular manufacturing, fusion (if we can do it), and low-cost space access, which might eventually make space solar power and extraction of other extraterrestrial resources for use on earth economically feasible.

Golda Meir once said that there would be peace in the Middle East when the Arabs started to love their children more than they hated the Jews. Similarly, the planet will be saved when many of the watermelons who claim to care for it start to love it more than they hate humans, freedom, individualism and technology.

[Thursday morning update]

Save the humans:

Last week the Environmental Protection Agency did bravely move forward by finding that things like smokestacks and breathing — or anything related to greenhouse gases — endanger the public health and welfare. And since the EPA can now regulate CO2, it can have a say in nearly everything we do with little regard for silly distractions like economic tradeoffs…

…What’s worse than the EPA grabbing power over CO2? Well, leading Luddite and Congressman Henry Waxman is worse. His proposal sets carbon reduction goals of 20 percent by 2020, 42 percent by 2030 and 83 percent by 2050, and, with cap-and-trade, effectively nationalizes energy production.

This incremental destruction of prosperity is probably going to have to be modified as soon as citizens get a taste of reality. But how could any reasonable or responsible legislator suggest an 83 percent cut in emissions without any practical or wide-scale alternative to replace it, or any plan to pay for it all?

Well, that assumes that Henry Waxman is reasonable or responsible, when the available evidence indicates otherwise.

[Bumped]

Political Commentary

Takes One To Know One

2 Comments

I missed this one. Apparently the Fidel pot said that the kettle was black:

…At the press conference, as well as in the final meetings of the Summit, Obama looked conceited. Such attitude by the US President was consistent with the abject positions adopted by some Latin American leaders. …When the US President said, in answering to Jake, that thousands of years had elapsed since 2004 until the present, he was superficial. Should we wait for so many years before his blockade is lifted? He did not invent it, but he embraced it just as much as the previous ten US presidents did.

…Leaders just pass through; peoples prevail. There would be no need to wait for thousands of years to pass by; only eight years will be enough so that a new US President — who will no doubt be less intelligent, promising and admired in the world than Barack Obama- riding on a better armored car, or on a more modern helicopter, or on a more sophisticated plane, occupies that inglorious position.”

Of course, it’s been half a century since Cuba has had a real new leader. This is one of the down sides to life extension.

Political Commentary

I Hope He’s Right

80 Comments

Thoughts on Kathleen Sebelius:

The mere presence of Sebelius at the top of HHS will be enough to push millions of pro-life Americans into adamant opposition to the whole health-care reform enterprise. The president and his team may think it won’t matter — that they can pass their bill anyway. But passing a massive and expensive health-care bill was going to be complicated enough without a fight with social conservatives. The president didn’t need to alienate a sizeable portion of the electorate with a controversial selection for HHS — but he did. He has made his choice, and I think he will come to regret it.

I really think that the president imagines that his political views are mainstream. That’s what happens when you live in a leftist cocoon your entire life. It’s a problem that many journalists have as well.

[Update Thursday evening]

Well, that expains it. I was wondering why I was getting so many moonbat comments on this post. Apparently, it was linked by Firedog Lake.

Science And Society, Technology and Society

The Achilles Heel Of Aging

15 Comments

Most people aren’t aware of the recent scientific breakthroughs in life extension technology, but here’s a good update:

In 2004 my lab teamed up with Dr. Rafael de Cabo at the National Institutes of Health to see if resveratrol could improve the health and extend the lifespan of mice. When middle-aged mice were fed a low-fat diet, resveratrol delayed diseases of aging but did not extend lifespan. When fed a high-fat diet, mice on resveratrol got chubby but stayed healthy — they were less susceptible to diseases we associate with obesity, like type II diabetes. And with a sufficient- win a Nobel Prize. ly high resveratrol dose, they burned enough fat to stay lean. What’s more, the resveratrol mice on the high-fat diet ran twice as far on a treadmill as their unmedicated counterparts, and their remaining lifespan after treatment began increasing by an average of 25 percent compared with the high-fat controls. Notably, in both the obese and the lean mice on resveratrol, there was the clear physiological signature of calorie restriction.

The trouble is, while resveratrol is found in many foods, it is present only in very low concentrations. Someone wanting to get a resveratrol dose equivalent to what we used in our mice studies would need to consume hundreds of bottles of red wine each day. Resveratrol has served its purpose, proving the possibility of inducing the physiology of dieting and exercise with a small molecule. Now pharmaceutical companies are working on synthetic molecules that are thousands of times as potent as resveratrol: The race to develop a drug that targets sirtuins is on, though the longterm effect of activating sirtuins in humans requires further research. If the mice studies are anything to go by, the side effects of these drugs could include protection from multiple illnesses, including heart disease, osteoporosis, cataracts, and Alzheimer’s.

Bring it on. I’m all in favor of this, which is one of the reasons that I’m not a conservative.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Defending The EPA

Jonathan Adler thinks they have no choice:

By all means conservatives should object to the regulatory nightmare that the control of greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act will create. But this is a result of the Supreme Court’s reinterpretation of the Clean Air Act in Massachusetts v. EPA and the failure of Congress to amend the law or enact an alternative, not the Obama Administration.

I’m perfectly happy to blame Congress for it.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Confidence Building

17 Comments

Appropriately frightened CEOs are hampering the recovery:

The yield curve predicts growth. Check. Consumer sentiment is ticking up. Check. But CEO confidence is lousy, and CEOs are (not) spending accordingly. Whoops. This begs the question: Why are CEOs in such a low mood?

Answer: If you are a CEO in financial services, manufacturing, energy production and health care, you are going to be more regulated. Period, end of story. Your response to forthcoming regulation of yet-to-be-determined complexity will be to hunker down. Keep your name out of the news, improve the balance sheet and hold tight.

This is why the U.S. economy, which wants to turn the corner, is still stuck in the intersection as it decides which way to go.

In her book The Forgotten Man, Amity Shlaes (now a Forbes columnist) wrote that the 1937-38 “depression within a depression” occurred when “capital went on strike.” President Roosevelt’s willingness to “try anything”–including retroactive taxation, laws against discount pricing and an attempted Supreme Court packing–had businesses and their backers so confused about Roosevelt’s rules that they simply withdrew.

This is the risk of Obama’s willingness to “do what it takes.” The words sound positive and action-oriented. But in practice, “do what it takes” really means “anything can happen.” Tearing up of legal contracts … that can happen. Limits to salary and travel … that can happen. Bullying by the Environmental Protection Agency … that can happen. Nationalization of General Motors and Citigroup … that can happen. Nobody knows for sure. Government is sorting it out, day by day.

I’d be happy to triple Congressional salaries, if they wouldn’t come in to “work.”

Media Criticism, Space

Confusing

4 Comments

Andy Pasztor has an article at the Journal today about NASA’s budget problems that is very misleading in its use of the word “Constellation.” For instance:

By casting doubt on Constellation’s progress, the report may provide ammunition for lawmakers and others hoping to extend the life of the shuttle past its current retirement date of 2010. Extending the life of the shuttle could reduce the gap between the last shuttle flight and the initial operation of Constellation. Lockheed Martin Corp. is the prime contractor for the project.

No, Lockheed Martin is not the prime contractor for Constellation, which consists of a number of system elements, starting with the Ares 1 launcher and Orion capsule. LM is only prime for the Orion. ATK is the lead for the Ares 1.

And then he writes:

Accelerating Constellation to 2013, as some inside NASA have advocated, would require significantly larger budget hikes, according to the report. NASA officials project the total cost for Constellation at around $30 billion

It’s not “accelerating Constellation,” which won’t be complete for many years, as it includes things like the Ares V heavy lifter, earth departure stages, the Altair lunar lander, etc., development of which haven’t even begun. It’s only accelerating Ares/Orion, which is what is required to close the dreaded “gap” (assuming that they don’t instead just do COTS D and hope that SpaceX comes through with Falcon 9 and Dragon).

And there’s no way that the total cost for “Constellation” will be only thirty billion. The GAO recently estimated that Ares 1 alone is going to cost at least seventeen billion, and Orion was going to cost at least twenty, with top estimates of twenty and twenty-nine respectively, which would mean close to fifty billion for Ares/Orion alone (and that’s just development costs — it excludes operations).

With all the numbers floating around out there, it’s easy to get things confused, but the words do mean things. Ares/Orion are not Constellation — they are a subset of it and only the first planned elements.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!