Middle America has awakened, and its slogan appears to be “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” At least, that seems to be the meaning of the Tea Party movement and the recent elections in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Virginia.
But other than being “mad as hell,” what are the Tea Party’s positions on issues such as the environment?
There is no simple answer to this question because there is no “Tea Party.” There are, rather, a multitude of Tea Parties. The Tea Party is a movement and not an organized, monolithic political party. Tea Parties may support some candidates, and conservative candidates will claim they have Tea Party endorsement, but they will most likely be running as Republicans or Independents rather than as registered members of the Tea Party. …
Continue ReadingMy post the other day on nuclear power prompted a number of comments – most of them hostile. Because the comments offered were fairly standard-issue arguments that one often hears in the debate about nuclear energy, it’s worth surveying them seriously.
Markets Schmarkets
One argument often heard is that market actions are not indicative of economic merit. Rod Adams, for instance, writes:
… Continue ReadingMarkets dominated by people whose only motive is making more money are not the best decision makers – the people making the decisions in that situation will often decide to influence the law of supply and demand by keeping their hands on the levers that they can use to keep supply restrained. If their hands are “invisible” it is because they work at keeping them hidden or because observers and academic study producers do not work very hard to find them.
[The other parts of this series on the activism of Texas A&M climatologists are here: Part I, Part II, and Part III]
“If the models are as flawed as critics say … you have to ask yourself, ‘How come they work?'”
– Gavin Schmidt [NASA], quoted in David Fahrenhold, “Scientists’ Use of Computer Models to Predict Climate Change is Under Attack,” Washington Post, April 6, 2010.
“We do not know much about modeling climate. It is as though we are modeling a human being. Models are in position at last to tell us the creature has two arms and two legs, but we are being asked to cure cancer.”
– Gerald North (Texas A&M) to Rob Bradley (Enron), November 12, 1999
A Washington Post piece last week, “Scientists’ use of computer models to predict climate change is under attack,” has brought attention to the importance of climate modeling in the current debate over climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases (GHGs).…
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