Nation-Building

This is the second part of my series in anticipation of the upcoming Copenhagen conference. The previous post in this series was a defense of the scientific method . So, what do I think about global warming? The consensus is a powerful one, and it's not built upon one tree ring or one temperature reconstruction, it's been built upon thousands of independent studies by thousands of different authors. That said, there are some valid critiques on methodological issues. Even if those critiques are fully accurate, that isn't enough by itself to warrant throwing out the entire body of literature, which over the years of reading both Climate Audit and Real Climate I've seen extends far beyond just one paper by Mann et al or one set of trees at Yamal . The very fact that there is a controversy, and both sides are able to endlessly rebut the other in a seemingly-never ending cycle of rebuttal, proves that there is indeed more to the story. Like blind men in a room with an elepha...

The Senate testimony of Steven Chu for Secretary of Energy in the Obama Administration gave a very specific, detailed look at how the new Administration will treat nuclear energy as a priority. The NEI Nuclear Notes blog , which follows the commercial energy industry, has compiled a list of excerpts from the testimony in which Chu is questioned on specifics about how he would promote nuclear power. Chu answered a number of questions from Senators, Republicans and Democrats alike, about the various issues including waste storage and loan guarantees. I think this final back and forth with Senator Mary Landrieu served as a good summary: Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA): My question is, to follow-up, and I ask this, because, not because it hadn’t been asked ten times to you this morning, but I think, in asking, you’ll understand how many of us feel about nuclear. You’ve had a least six or seven questions. Mine’s going to be the eighth. It’s just apparent to us, mainly based on the great leader...

at RedState , where else? Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, and Rachel Carson: Legacies of Mass Genocide Genocide? Rachel Carson woke up one morning, thought, there are way too many sons of Cain in the Dark Continent, let's see if we can scrub it some... and voila a plan was born? Unreal. And yes this is a Recommended Blog at RedState... par for the course. As always, those with the patience for reading the actual history of events will find that the reason that millions died from malaria in Africa was due to a number of reasons, none involving Rachel Carson . Rather, more due to lack of public health infrastructure, exploding population growth, and increasing resistance to DDT and other insecticides: Overseas, DDT was being phased out of the fight against malaria, but Carson and budding environmentalists were not the reason. In the 1950s, when the Global Malaria Eradication Program was launched, the U.S. had been a major financier of it. But as the years ticked by,...