I thought I’d write about some interesting things I’ve read over the past few days.
The first seems to be a simmering controversy. It has not yet reached critical mass, but it should as soon as someone in the mainstream press catches on.
Is someone else fudging when it comes to global warming? Last week there were questions about a pro-industry push. This is just the opposite.
It starts with some comments on global warming from a respected scientist representing a respected organization
“Trends in human-influenced environmental changes are now evident in hurricane regions,” Trenberth said. “These changes are expected to affect hurricane intensity and rainfall, but the effect on hurricane numbers remains unclear. The key scientific question is how hurricanes are changing.”
All well and good, except this is a conclusion and a report steeped in controversy.
Dr. Chris Landsea is from the National Hurricane Center. He’s the guy who wrote the Hurricane Center’s FAQ. He is not a happy camper.
Landsea goes on to say global warming will have minimal impact (if any) on tropical systems down the road. In fact, Landsea has resigned from this board in protest of the books being cooked.
Earlier today Matt Drudge was linking to an article which quoted Dr. Trenberth with no opposing viewpoints or perspective I was upset, so I wrote the author of the story.
I appreciate you pointing this out. Unfortunately, the article was
published before I was finished with it. It was pulled off our site (but
not before it was picked up in other places), and I have now added some
context.
http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/050616_hurricane_warm.html
I apologize for this mixup.
Michael Schirber
LiveScience
How much damage has been done? Who can tell. Even bad or retracted research sometimes takes on a life of its own. I’ll wait and see what’s quoted later.
On to the second bit of reading which concerns the space program. It’s not often I see something in the National Review I agree with (in fact it’s not often I see the National Review). Today was the day.
This time it’s an article by John Derbyshire about the space program and its dubious current value. This is something I’ve written about before here in the blog. It’s not a popular thing to say the space program is a total waste… but it is.
I wrote John (whom I’d never heard of before this evening) and he wrote back.
Doyle — he’s a big shuttle fan & has swallowed all the NASA guff about
microgravity manufacturing & the rest.
I think of the Shuttle program as a sort of Brasilia of the skies — pure
1950s thinking. Who else, today, is riding a vehicle designed by slide
rule?
Best,
John Derbyshire
A Brasilia analogy – wow!