Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in high respect, as we should, we must be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific elite.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address, 1961
How should scientific reports be valued as input to public policy formulation? The beginning point must define advocacy and science from a considerable range of definitions as starting points.
Advocacy: active support or public recommendation of a cause.
– Collins English Dictionary (combining the terms advocate and advocacy)
… Continue ReadingScience: the investigation of natural phenomena through observation, theoretical explanation, and experimentation, or the knowledge produced by such investigation. Science makes use of the scientific method, which includes the careful observation of natural phenomena, the formulation of a hypothesis, the conducting of one or more experiments to test the hypothesis, and the drawing of a conclusion that confirms or modifies the hypothesis.
“If good and evil are measured by the standard of human well-being and human progress, we must conclude that the fossil fuel industry is not a necessary evil to be restricted but a superior good to be liberated.”
“We don’t need green energy–we need humanitarian energy.”
“The 2016 election presents us with a once-in-a-lifetime energy opportunity–and energy danger. There is no middle ground. There can be no more standing down. It’s time to stand up.”
– Alex Epstein, “At CERAWeek Fossil Fuel Leaders Should Make A Moral Case For Their Industry,” Forbes.com., February 18, 2016.
For many years, make that decades, I have noted Daniel Yergin’s political bias at the annual CERA conference here in Houston. Nonindustry speakers have routinely been climate alarmists and anti-fossil fuel proponents, picked from both the government and the nonprofit sector.…
Continue Reading“Granted, the acoustic pollution caused by sonar – particularly powerful navy systems – is greater than that from wind turbines. But wind turbine noise is nearly constant, lasts as long as the turbines and comes from multiple directions, as in the area where the whales were recently stranded.”
“We would be far better off simply ending wayward, wasteful offshore wind energy programs. The free market can neuter wind short of the assessing the environmental damage.”
Between January 9 and February 4, 2016, twenty-nine sperm whales got stranded and died on English, German and Dutch beaches. Environmentalists and the news media have offered all manner of explanations – except the most obvious and likely one: Offshore wind farms. Indeed, the area has Europe’s and the world’s biggest concentration of offshore wind turbines, and there is ample evidence that they can interfere with whale communication and navigation.…
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