Tag Archive
Nuclear Power
As the memories of the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear power plant accidents recede and as the price of oil rises, interest in nuclear power rekindles. Understandably, there is considerable and well justified opposition to this technology based on safety concerns and additionally after September 11, 2001, concern that radioactive waste might fall… »
Our Economy
“I’m more worried than I have ever been about the future of the U.S. economy. The challenge is unique: poor and diminishing growth, a sticky unemployment rate, sky-high deficits and a sovereign debt that makes us one of the most fiscally irresponsible countries in the world.” Allen Sinai, co-founder of the consulting firm Decision… »
Entropy
“What an organism feeds on is negative entropy.” Erwin Schrodinger, What is Life (1956)
“The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations — then so much the worse… »
Peer-Review
“Science is what we do to keep from lying to ourselves.” Richard Feynman.
I assume that everybody knows at least what I know. I talk about entropy, not to show off but simply with profound humility. If I know the importance of the Entropy Law then surely everybody else must know as well. … »
Nothing
“Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.” Dick Cheney to Paul O’Neill, November 15, 2002, (Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty, 2004).
“… a philosophy is influenced by facts. So there is a constant interplay between what do I think and why do I think it….Now, if you gather more facts and have more experience,… »
Open Letter Request for Information
“To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous.” Ken Caldeira, Climate Scientist [1]
“You’ve all seen articles saying that global warming stopped in 1998. With all due respect, that’s being a little bit unfair to the data.” Pat… »
Cuccinelli Verses
Everybody Else
“Everything we know is only some kind of approximation, because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet. Therefore, things must be learned only to be unlearned again or, more likely, to be corrected.” Richard Feynman Lectures in Physics [1].
Our Humanity
Both whales and elephants have larger brains than Homo sapiens…. »
Heartland Institute Part 2
“To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous.” Ken Caldeira, Climate Scientist [1]
“The Climategate scientists, for example, falsified temperature data to keep the warming scare alive” Diane Carol Bast, Heartland Institute [2]
“We wish to solve this equation for m…. »
Loudoun County Regional Science and Engineering Fair
Energy and Environmental Sustainability Awards
“The goal of science is to make sense of the diversity of nature.” John Barrow, New Theories of Everything, 2007.
“The basis for the definition of taxa has progressively shifted from the organismal to the cellular to the molecular level. Molecular comparisons show that life on this planet divides into… »
SCOTUS
“Science is what we do to keep from lying to ourselves.” Richard Feynman.
“Global warming is real (conservatives secretly know this).” David Brooks, New York Times, December 8, 2005.
David Brooks is a congenial, affable, and articulate conservative commentator. If he is right then conservatives are lying to us about global warming. I don’t… »
Climate Factors
Here is a brief summary of those physical factors which influence a planet’s climate and in the case of Earth, make life possible. These are included in the anthropogenic global warming theory presented in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports [IPCC, 2007].
Solar luminosity
Atmospheric greenhouse effect
o Carbon dioxide
o Methane
o Ozone
o Water vapor
o Nitrous Oxide
o Others…
Earth orbital… »
Snowmageddon
“Come wander with me,” she said,
“Into regions yet untrod;
And read what is still unread
In the manuscripts of God.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The woman in Longfellow’s poem is Nature and the man she is addressing is Louis Agassiz, the discoverer of the Ice Ages. And of course God’s manuscripts are the rocks from which we humans have… »
Supply-Side Economics
“Nature cannot be fooled” Richard Feynman, Lectures on Physics
Toulouse, France, February 6, 2010 – The reason I’ve been in France all week is business. Toulouse, in the south of France nestled beneath the Pyrenees, is the hub of the French aerospace industry.
The reason I’m still here is the historic snow storm you all are… »
Germany
“I believe the green economy is coming. That’s not a question of if it’s going to happen, it’s just when it’s going to happen. The sooner the better for me, because the jobs of the future lie in energy independence and cleaning up the environment…. Why can’t America have the cleanest air?”… »
Solar Energy
“[Nobel Laureate Wilhelm] Ostwald’s energetic imperative – Waste no energy but value it – is relevant as humankind makes the inevitable transition to a permanent economy based exclusively on solar radiation.” - Vaclav Smil
“My own preference is to fill the Mojave with solar concentrating plants, and save some of this wonderful stuff [oil] for our… »