Earlier this week, President Obama signed an administrative directive to ensure that scientific fact – not ideological fancy – informs federal policy. Well, good for him. Now that he’s overturned the Bush administration’s prohibitions against using federal money to undertake some forms of research associated with embryonic stem cells, up next should be an administrative about-face on corn ethanol as a means of addressing climate change. Alas, the possibility that Obama will admit error on this matter is only slightly better than the possibility that Jessica Simpson will someday win the Nobel Prize for physics. Ideology trumping science? Bad. Politics trumping science? Business as usual.
Regardless, let’s quickly review the literature on ethanol and climate change.…
Continue ReadingI have previously posted on NASA scientist and leading climate alarmist James Hansen as a “scientist behaving strangely.” His mixing of politics and science–controversial science at that–has raised eyebrows among friend and foe.
But then there is the old, more moderate Jim Hansen. Below, I offer some quotations for the historical record. There are undoubtedly other quotations that can be added–and should be in the “comments” section, whether by Hansen or by colleagues of Hansen.
Perhaps Dr. Hansen can say that his thinking has evolved toward greater alarm. But if so, with temperatures little or no higher today than when he wrote a decade or more ago, the question must be asked: why has his alarm gone up rather than down?…
Continue ReadingMarch is women’s history month. In recognition, the Cato Institute’s post, “Three Women Who Launched a Movement: Celebrating Liberty in Women’s History Month,” brings attention to Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, and Ayn Rand–each of whom wrote a powerful book in the 1940’s that helped launch the modern libertarian movement.
Each recognized energy as the master resource in different ways.…
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