The August 9, 2021 edition of Chemical and Engineering News (C&EN) featured a story in the field of structural biology entitled “How Transcription Gets Its Start.” Transcription is the biochemical process that occurs in every cell in the human body when protein synthesis is initiated. It is a complex series of steps that begin in the nucleus when a gene—a section on a strand of DNA—expresses instructions for a specific protein to be produced. In … [Read more...]
Don’t Lose Sleep Over the Latest UN Climate Report
It’s not “code red for humanity.” The philosopher G.F. Hegel is notorious for having said that if facts contradict theory, then “um so schlimmer für die Fakten”—“so much the worse for the facts.” Not surprisingly, the idealist Hegel had a huge influence on another idealist philosopher, Karl Marx, whose “scientific socialism” was socialist but decidedly not scientific. Facts have never seemed to matter much to socialists—it’s theory that counts. Perhaps that underlies the propensity for … [Read more...]
Should we trust science?
Naomi Oreskes’s book Why Trust Science? (2019) has been described as a defense of science, but it is nothing of the sort. The cornerstone of her thinking is total consensus determining truth in the natural world. Her approach is a scorched earth epistemology. 1. Science and the Oscars I write this while my wife is watching the Oscars. The music of professional musicians and overwrought thank-yous drift to me along with the dependably-boring, routinely inappropriate political … [Read more...]
New Climate Report Got You Shakin’ in Your Boots?
Every year like clockwork, starting in late July and running through to November, mainstream media around the world start hyping the message: your sinful use of fossil fuels to heat or cool your home, cook your food, power your car or truck, make and market and use your food, clothing, shelter, communications, transportation, health care, and all the other things that keep you alive and healthy will make the world overheat, and then you'll be sorry! And this year, the United Nations' (UN) … [Read more...]
Swiss Scientist: Play My Way or I’ll Take My Ball and Go Home!
That's the gist of what Swiss climate scientist Sonia Seneviratne told CBC News about why she may refuse to participate in any future assessment reports from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It's not that the reports don't let her say what she wants to say. She's been a lead author about extreme weather in three of the six assessment reports. No, it's that policymakers around the world don't just take her word for it and do what she says must be done. "There is … [Read more...]
Why “Follow the Money” Doesn’t Cut It
Dr. David Kreutzer, an economist formerly with the Heritage Foundation and now with the Institute for Energy Research, was Cornwall Alliance's livestream guest July 27 to discuss why President Joe Biden's "Net Zero by 2050" plan not only won't succeed but can't. (You can watch it on Facebook or YouTube.) When I announced this on Facebook, a friend from back in high school days---a fellow Christian and sincere person---commented, "No, thank you. I prefer to hear and read people with expertise … [Read more...]
Climate Models: Worse Than Nothing?
Guest column by Robert L. Bradley Jr. “Climate modeling is central to climate science….” (Stephen Koonin, below) When the history of climate modeling comes to be written in some distant future, the major story may well be how the easy, computable answer turned out to be the wrong one, resulting in overestimated warming and false scares from the enhanced (man-made) greenhouse effect. Meanwhile, empirical and theoretical evidence is mounting toward this game-changing verdict … [Read more...]
The Lazy Man’s Way to Avoid Grappling with an Argument
Today I received this via email: I have seen a meme going around on Facebook that says: "Just so you know, Legitimate scientists tend to publish their research in academic journals, not on YouTube." What is your take on this? Is does come from a very strong Democrat supporter. The truth is that legitimate scientists publish in both places. However, scientists closely associated with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the central figures of which are alarmists (and … [Read more...]
The Final Years of Majuro—Are a Long Way Off
Refuting climate alarmists’ counterfactual claims is like playing whack-a-mole. Smack this one here, and ten others pop up there, and there, and there, and …. In the climate apocalyptic video propaganda category, the newest seems to be The Final Years of Majuro, posted to YouTube August 4. The film tells us, with all the authority of “science,” that the Marshall Islands (of which Majuro is the capital city), will disappear if global average temperature (GAT) rises beyond 1.5°C above … [Read more...]
Test All Things, Hold Fast What Is Good—But How?
A reader recently forwarded to us an email from a fine Christian ministry that bemoaned the proliferation of "fake news" and other bad thinking on the Internet in the novel Coronavirus pandemic. She asked, "The very thing I've been thinking, and one of the reasons I dislike watching the news — too many lies. Who do you believe? What do you believe? Your thoughts?" Ah, the perennial questions: Whom do you believe? What do you believe? But better is the question, How do you decide what to … [Read more...]
