I ran across this post over the weekend, and found it to be disappointing, simply because the writer chose to spin and distort someone else’s words, rather than deal with the validity of his target’s assertions. From the post: Questioned yesterday at an AEI-sponsored discussion of green jobs, Smith admitted that her modeling actually shows that even [...]
“…promoting science isn’t just about providing resources. It’s about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology… because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth, and a greater understanding of the world around us.”
In May 12th’s Wall Street Journal, the Science Journal feature considered how “Scientists Explain How They Attribute Climate-Change Data”. Subscribers can read the article online. It’s short, but fascinating for two reasons: it’s a succinct rebuttal to a few of the popular arguments used to try to convince people that the science of climate change [...]
Some time ago, an acquaintance related a story to me that captures a lot of the thinking in environmental circles. Forgive me all the details, but it apparently happened something like the following. She was in an environmental engineering course, and the professor invited in a mid-level executive from Ford to speak with the class. [...]
Yesterday’s Washington Post reported that scientists at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies have reported a record high global average temperature during the first nine months of this year. This is a good time to note one of the best resources for discussions of the science behind global climate modeling, RealClimate. It “is a commentary [...]
At Orlando Weekly, there is a story about an underground restaurant that serves manatee. In addition to the descriptions of how manatee tastes (indistinguishable from possum, apparently), it offers a view into how some anti-environmentalists view the world. Interestingly, the poachers seem to like the idea of a free-market system for manatee protection: “‘It works [...]
After Hurricane Katrina, Tyler Cowen posted a link to a post on Peter Gordon’s weblog, which quoted extensively a Randal O’Toole article, titled “Lack of Automobility Key to New Orleans Tragedy”. The thrust of this post was that the automobile is key to evacuations, and that Katrina proved that car-free cities are a bad idea. [...]
As a follow-up to Tavis’s post on Global Warming and Hurricanes, it’s worth pointing out the research covered in a St. Petersburg Times story, which suggests that the increase in hurricane numbers that has occurred over the past decade is caused not by global warming, but by a phenomenon known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. [...]
Hurricane Katrina has unleashed a fury of misinformation over the link between global warming and hurricanes. Many reporters, politicians, and academics have wrongly asserted that the frequency of hurricanes has increased due to global warming. Their oft-cited “proof” is the high number of hurricanes that ravaged the Florida coast last year. The reality is no [...]
The Bush administration’s proposed revisions of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards have been met with rather vocal scorn, and rightly so. Michael Giberson’s criticism is particularly interesting; he raises some good points, but it’s worth a critical analysis, as useful information can be teased out of the process. He argues: “Of course, American [...]