Lance on Aug 02 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Environment, Lance's Page, energy
Pelosi says, “I’m trying to save the planet; I’m trying to save the planet.”
Charles Krauthammer points out the incoherence of this:
Does Pelosi imagine that with so much of America declared off-limits, the planet is less injured as drilling shifts to Kazakhstan and Venezuela and Equatorial Guinea? That Russia will be more environmentally scrupulous than we [...]
Peg on Aug 01 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Environment, Peg's Page, science
Do you ever find yourself holding views that are mutually exclusive? If so, do not despair. My experience is that virtually all of us do this, even if very rarely. With the thousands of issues and millions of details pertaining to those issues, it would not be shocking to note that at times, some [...]
Lance on Jul 28 2008 | Filed under: Economics, Environment, Lance's Page, energy
I know that many of you think that global warming, at least anthropogenic global warming, is a fraud. I am not so sure. Either way though, I think Peter Huber has the broad contours of any attempt to address it correct.
So does the climate computer have a real audience, or is it really just another [...]
peter on Jun 15 2008 | Filed under: Environment, Peter's Page, regulation, science
Or more specifically it’s the soot, from our tailpipes, our industries, most of our electricity generation—and also from forest fires, volcanoes, and the wind. Black carbon soot is causing most of the loss of polar ice according to this recent piece from Scientific American. Yes, that Scientific American. The same Scientific American that seems to [...]
ChrisB on May 21 2008 | Filed under: Chris' Page, Domestic Politics, Environment, energy, regulation
From Congress and the unintended consequences of their actions. Bruce over at QandO has a post discussing an excellent piece by Walter Williams.
Most of the great problems we face are caused by politicians creating solutions to problems they created in the first place. Politicians and much of the public lose sight of the unavoidable fact [...]
MichaelW on May 15 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Environment, Law, MichaelW's Page, energy, regulation, science
The march of the watermelons towards control of US policy continues apace:
Polar bears will now be listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act.
But in announcing the listing, Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne said the decision should not be “misused” to regulate global climate change.
“Listing the polar bear as threatened can reduce avoidable [...]
Peg on Apr 25 2008 | Filed under: Economics, Environment, Peg's Page, energy, science
Sooner rather than later.
And this:
Perhaps turning food into transportation fuel would make sense if massive amounts of grain spoiled every year from a lack of demand, but that certainly isn’t the case. Farmers love the higher prices that come from the new demand to fill gas tanks, but higher prices have consequences for poorer nations [...]
Lance on Apr 25 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Environment
Over at Green Tech we get some figures that should be rather sobering for those who wish for alternative energy to be a significant source of energy in the near future:
Put another way, we’d need to equip 250,000 roofs a day with solar panels for the next 50 years to have enough photovoltaic infrastructure to [...]
Peg on Apr 23 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Environment, Peg's Page, regulation, science
One of the toughest tasks to master is to keep an open mind. We work hard to discover what we ultimately believe to be the truth. After all that effort, often the last thing we wish to do is have to re-analyse, check - and toss out what we have labored so long to achieve.
Nevertheless, [...]
MichaelW on Apr 21 2008 | Filed under: Environment, MichaelW's Page, Technology, energy, science
Hoystory poses a thought-provoking question with potentially dramatic consequences for the concept of “peak oil”:
What if “fossil fuels” weren’t made of fossils at all? What if the earth naturally made petroleum? What if gasoline was a renewable resource?
Imagine the howls from the environmentalist left if there was no such thing as “peak oil.”
In answer of [...]
Lance on Apr 19 2008 | Filed under: Environment, Lance's Page, Technology, energy
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ChrisB on Apr 04 2008 | Filed under: Chris' Page, Environment, Humor
Pirates Take French Cruise Ship and Gobal Temperatures to ‘Decrease’
It seems we have more correlation between pirates and global warming now. It may be time to update this graph with a downward and backward turn.
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Keith_Indy on Feb 26 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Environment, Keith's Page
Brrrr… it sure is cold out there. And now the data is in to prove it.
Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with [...]
Peg on Feb 13 2008 | Filed under: Environment, Peg's Page
Please, if you have any humanity in you - do your part to add just a bit to global warming today.
It’s important.
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Keith_Indy on Feb 11 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Economics, Environment, Keith's Page, Technology, energy, regulation
And by eventually, they mean decades down the road.
This is a perfect example of government getting in the way of the innovation we need to dig ourselves out of our fossil fuel dependency.
http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1362/1/
If you want to build a wind farm in Minnesota right now, you’re in for a nasty surprise. A 612-year nasty surprise in [...]
Lance on Feb 02 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Election 2008, Environment, Foreign affairs, Lance's Page, Media
Bill got a lot of heat over a video released by ABC News and an accompanying news story:
Former President Bill Clinton was in Denver, Colorado, stumping for his wife yesterday.
In a long, and interesting speech, he characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: “We just [...]
Lance on Jan 24 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Environment, Lance's Page, Media
Some highlights:
We have covered Antarctica many times in past essays, and despite literally thousands of websites claiming that some calamity is occurring in Antarctica related to global warming, we side with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in this matter. Magazine covers have wonderful pictures of melting of the Antarctic, but IPCC [...]
Keith_Indy on Jan 24 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Environment, Keith's Page
Let’s see if I have this straight…
that means “global warming may decrease the likelihood of hurricanes making landfall in the United States,” according to researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Miami Lab and the University of Miami.
No, it doesn’t…
Critics say Wang’s study is based on poor data that was rejected by scientists on [...]
MichaelW on Dec 21 2007 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Economics, Environment, Foreign affairs, MichaelW's Page
According to the press release (my emphasis):
Over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called “consensus” on man-made global warming. These scientists, many of whom are current and former participants in the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), criticized the climate claims made [...]
MichaelW on Dec 05 2007 | Filed under: Environment, Libertarianism, MichaelW's Page, Philosophy, Religion and theology
Amen.
One of the reasons I abhor communitarianism (and tend to see my political philosophy as the opposite of that) is because it vests communitarian thinkers with the self appointed power to tell me (and others) what to do. Provided, of course, that they come up with a claim to do so in the name of [...]
Lance on Dec 05 2007 | Filed under: Economics, Environment, Lance's Page
Why? Because it is good for the environment:
Divorce can be bad for the environment. In countries around the world divorce rates have been rising, and each time a family dissolves the result is two new households.
“A married household actually uses resources more efficiently than a divorced household,” said Jianguo Liu, an ecologist at Michigan State [...]
Lance on Nov 08 2007 | Filed under: Environment, Hugo Chavez, Lance's Page
Part I is here, but in The Ruin of Venezuela I wrote:
As we have seen with Mugabe and many others, once you go down this road it is very difficult to turn things around. As the situation gets worse, in order to keep socialism in place, more force is needed. A Revolutionary ideology cannot allow [...]
Lance on Nov 06 2007 | Filed under: Environment, Lance's Page, Technology, Urban planning and development
Very Cool:
The City Car, a design project under way at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is envisioned as a two-seater electric vehicle powered by lithium-ion batteries. It would weigh between 1,000 and 1,200 pounds and could collapse, then stack like a shopping cart with six to eight fitting into a typical parking space. It isn’t [...]
Keith_Indy on Oct 31 2007 | Filed under: Culture, Domestic Politics, Environment, Keith's Page
So says Harry Reid and other environmentalists, so it must be true. No doubt they have checked with everyone who agrees with them and they have a consensus about it.
So, what caused them way back when…
If there was a “worst fire season” in the last century or so, Berlant said, it would probably be [...]
Lance on Oct 28 2007 | Filed under: Developmental economics, Economics, Environment, Hugo Chavez, Lance's Page, Libertarianism
It hasn’t been all that shocking. Why not? Greg Mankiw supplies a few possibilities. My favorites? Well let us start here:
In contrast to much rhetoric to the contrary, capitalism is the most powerful weapon to achieve energy efficiency we have.
He provides us with some things I am fond of, conjectures. So I will call this [...]
Lance on Oct 17 2007 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Economics, Environment, Lance's Page, Libertarianism
While over at Megan’s I noticed a discussion she has about Bjorn Lomborg and her main criticism of him. That is that he doesn’t give enough weight to low probability, but catastrophic events. That is in fact a weakness (and she notes in his defense that it is a very contentious and difficult issue) and [...]
Lance on Oct 14 2007 | Filed under: Environment, Lance's Page
Bjorn looks at this in much the same way I do:
This year’s Nobel peace prize justly rewards the thousands of scientists of the United Nations climate change panel (the IPCC). These scientists are engaged in excellent, painstaking work that establishes exactly what the world should expect from climate change.
The other award winner, former US vice-president [...]
Lance on Oct 12 2007 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Environment, Lance's Page
This just confirms what a bogus award the Nobel Peace Prize has become. Past winners have often been inappropriate, such as when murderous thugs such as Yasser Arafat were awarded for claims and intentions rather than their murderous actions. At least in past cases, as deluded as they often were, the claim is it had [...]
Joshua Foust on Oct 05 2007 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Environment, Foreign affairs, Military Matters, Notes on the war
Cross-posted at The Conjecturer
Defense & The War
Mountain Runner makes the case for why mercenaries aren’t all bad, and that the real sunk costs of their use should be handled. It’s similar to David Dryer’s case for their usefulness, which is framed as a counter to P.W. Singer’s point that their use obscures political costs. I [...]
Joshua Foust on Sep 14 2007 | Filed under: Environment, Foreign affairs, Notes on the war
Cross-posted on The Conjecturer.
Defense & the War
Reading the Instapundit and his minions, you’d think the one reason Bush wasn’t more popular is because he’s not bombing the shit out of Iran. Luckily, most people don’t think as they do.
How will the bombing-murder of Sattar Abu Risha, the Sunni Sheikh most visibly associated with the progress [...]
Keith_Indy on Sep 12 2007 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Economics, Environment, Keith's Page
The sky is falling, the sky is falling…
Oh wait, no it’s not.
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/news_press_release,176495.shtml
A new analysis of peer-reviewed literature reveals that more than 500 scientists have published evidence refuting at least one element of current man-made global warming scares. More than 300 of the scientists found evidence that 1) a natural moderate 1,500-year climate cycle has produced [...]
Joshua Foust on Sep 08 2007 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Environment, Foreign affairs, Notes on the war
Stewing in his own juices over at The Conjecturer.
Defense & The War
The Republicans are refusing to ponder any troop withdrawals. Does that now make General Petraeus a Defeatocrat? Maybe not, as he still wants troop levels to remain high—the progress, after all, isn’t yet permanent.
A face-wasted Just For Men’d Osama Bin Laden is set [...]
Keith_Indy on Aug 30 2007 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Economics, Environment, Keith's Page
The “reality based” ideologues often decry when politics get in the way of science, but that certainly seems what they are doing with regards to global warming. But then, hey, making overblown claims based on the scantiest of evidence, real or anecdotal, gets them in the press, and makes them seem caring.
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=b35c36a3-802a-23ad-46ec-6880767e7966
Of 528 total [...]
Lance on Aug 22 2007 | Filed under: Culture, Domestic Politics, Environment, Humor, Lance's Page, Society
I sauntered over to Instapundit today and noticed this story:
Norway is concerned that its national animal, the moose, is harming the climate by emitting an estimated 2,100 kilos of carbon dioxide a year through its belching and farting.Norwegian newspapers, citing research from Norway’s technical university, said a motorist would have to drive 13,000 kilometers in [...]
Joshua Foust on Aug 21 2007 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Environment, Foreign affairs, Military Matters, social science
Would much rather be back at The Original Conjecturer.
Defense
How to make an EFP.
The difficulty of sea mines.
These two takes on the SCO exercises (covered in sometimes much greater depth here, at Registan.net, and Bonnie Boyd’s Central Asia blog) have some interesting tidbits: the PLA has never performed a distance deployment before, and it’s a [...]
Joshua Foust on Aug 17 2007 | Filed under: Culture, Environment, Foreign affairs, Military Matters, Notes on the war
Defense
Phillip Carter has some choice things to say of the Scott Thomas Beauchamp affair: “Anyone who finds Beauchamp’s story incredible merely because it’s upsetting has no idea what war can do… How, then, should journalists tell the story of what happens in wartime? At best, the American public is getting a filtered picture of the [...]
MichaelW on Aug 14 2007 | Filed under: Environment, Media, MichaelW's Page
As an ideal follow up to my most recent post on Anthropogenic Global WarmingTM, Keith forwarded me an interesting tidbit from the Washington Times’ “Inside the Beltway” round-up:
D.C. resident John Lockwood was conducting research at the Library of Congress and came across an intriguing Page 2 headline in the Nov. 2, 1922 edition of The [...]
MichaelW on Aug 13 2007 | Filed under: Environment, Media, MichaelW's Page, Technology
My favorite class of all time was a course on chaos theory that I took my senior year in college. I think it was listed as part of the Chemistry Department’s curriculum (hey, whaddya know, it still is!), but it also involved physics and statistics (and thankfully, little math). My fondness for [...]
Joshua Foust on Aug 08 2007 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Environment, Foreign affairs, Military Matters, Notes on the war
Cross-posted on The Conjecturer.
Defense
DARPA wants many outrageous things—an oil-free Air Force, invisibility cloaks, piezoelectric bodysuits, kill-proof animal-esque soldiers, and so on. For the latter, my quite serious question is: at what point do these enhanced soldiers cease being human, and are reduced to machines? It’s all very Ghost in the Shell.
Calling Kevin Drum: Legacy of [...]
Joshua Foust on Aug 07 2007 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Environment, Foreign affairs, Military Matters, Notes on the war
Defense
As usual, Cathy Young chimes in on the Beauchamp debate with several highly cogent points: “I think there are good reasons to question Beauchamp’s accuracy, and neither TNR nor liberal bloggers are doing themselves any favors by coming uncritically to his defense. But conservative bloggers aren’t covering themselves in glory either when they stridenly insist [...]
Keith_Indy on Jul 16 2007 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Economics, Environment, Keith's Page, Technology
The increase in the amount of bio-fuel production, specifically ethanol, is driving up the costs of anything that feeds or is produced with grain. This is leading to higher prices for milk, ice cream, cereal, and a host of other staples. The UN is also having a harder time buying grain to feed [...]
The Poet Omar on Jul 12 2007 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Economics, Environment, The Poet Omar's Page
Since the entire concept of carbon credits emerged a few years ago, I’ve constantly found myself questioning not only the actual effectiveness, but also the underlying motivation behind them. Donating or purchasing carbon credits basically seemed, to me at least, to be the designer way for rich (or wealthier than average) people to buy [...]
Keith_Indy on Jun 25 2007 | Filed under: Developmental economics, Domestic Politics, Economics, Environment, Keith's Page, Technology
Instapundit links to an article in Reason about how the increased production of ethanol is leading to higher prices for food.
I also think it could lead to increasing reliance by America on foreign grain. Which, as we saw with the pet food recall, could mean a riskier supply. You can poison grain, but [...]
Joshua Foust on Jun 22 2007 | Filed under: Developmental economics, Domestic Politics, Economics, Environment, Foreign affairs, Notes on the war
Cross-posted on The Conjecturer.
Defense
Follow up to the story on the pathetic number of fluents in Arabic currently stationed at the Baghdad Vatican-Embassy (and shame on me for not noticing this): the 3/3 proficiency level is virtually useless—both because it is not advanced enough for technical or legal matters, and it of a sort not actually [...]
MichaelW on Jun 18 2007 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Environment, MichaelW's Page, Religion and theology
“Kyoto, we have a problem.”
Few things annoy me more than the modern Lysenkoism of Anthropogenic Global WarmingTM and its rapturous congregation who viciously condemn any who dare challenge their scriptures. Each day it seems that we are bombarded with yet more bald-faced propaganda designed to scare us (and especially our children) into submission to [...]
Lee on May 29 2007 | Filed under: Environment, Interviews, Lee's Page
A few weeks back I posted a facile little rebuke aimed at the national security implications of Green Party presidential candidate Alan Augustson’s political platform. Alan responded to this in such a way that I realized I had little idea what the Green Party’s position on security matters was, relative to its environmental policies. Indeed, [...]
Keith_Indy on May 16 2007 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Economics, Environment, Keith's Page, Technology
I’ve often commented that I don’t really trust computer climate models because they’ve seemed to me to be missing a lot of variables. So, it’s a little satisfying to see this article, which shows that MIT researchers are enhancing the model to more accurately account for a significant variable.
Global climate models are missing a [...]
Lance on May 13 2007 | Filed under: Environment, Investing, Lance's Page, Technology
To get rich is glorious in China nowadays. Scientists are no exception.
A top home-grown inventor, 41-year-old Ma Xin, is currently engineering a reverse takeover of a small Singapore-listed investment company, Rowsley, in a deal worth 2.7 billion Singapore dollars ($1.6 billion) that would bring a small part of his high-tech corporate empire, Sinocome Group, to [...]
Joshua Foust on May 03 2007 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Economics, Environment, Foreign affairs, Media, Military Matters, Notes on the war, Technology, social science
Cross-posted at The Conjecturer, where you’ll find an explanation for the edition name. I’m sorry.
The Pentagon
I think Lance should have highlighted Blackfive’s major point about the stupid restrictions on war blogs: the Pentagon has already lost the information war in the public arena. The supreme importance of competing narratives was chillingly highlighted in the [...]
Joshua Foust on May 02 2007 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Environment, Foreign affairs, Law, Military Matters, Notes on the war, Technology, social science
Cross-posted on The Conjecturer.
The Pentagon
The Post today slams Bush for his “rush to failure” in deploying missile defense to Europe—rightfully so, as the system is far from useable, and needlessly expensive and provocative. Here’s the best part, though: A Democrat, Ellen Tauscher, wants to give the Pentagon, not the White House, control of when and [...]
