Category Archives: Business

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Wooden Stake

11 Comments

Senator Inhofe says that Copenhagen and cap’n’tax are deader than doornails:

Following the worldwide attention on the leaked CRU e-mails, Inhofe says that he still plans to go to the Copenhagen conference on climate change next month. He also says that cap-and-trade legislation is “dead in the Senate.”

“I’ll be going to Copenhagen to expose the truth,” says Inhofe. “I’ve been ridiculed for the past six years, yet we were right all along.” (The Oklahoman led a similar “truth squad” in 2003, during the U.N.’s climate-change negotiations in Milan, Italy.) Supporters of cap-and-trade who also plan on attending, such as Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.), “are in denial,” he adds.

“My message will easier to deliver, that’s for sure,” says Inhofe. “When I was in Milan, it was kind of humorous. I had put out a statement calling anthropogenic global warming a hoax and they put up my picture on ‘Wanted’ posters around the city. I tore them down, brought them home, and auctioned them at fundraisers.”

“It’s different this time,” says Inhofe. “We went to Milan with little credibility, saying that this thing is rigged, that the science is cooked. We didn’t have much to back us up in 2003. I know that Boxer and Kerry would try to misrepresent the state of cap-and-trade in the Senate. I can hear their speech now saying it’s not dead — that’s it’s passed out of a committee. But look, it’s dead. It’s not going to pass. It’s dead because regardless of what you think of the science, which these e-mails certainly don’t help, you know that the costs are simply too much. Jobs would go elsewhere if we introduced harsh carbon regulations.”

I think this could end up killing health care too. As I said earlier, people are going to start asking, with good cause, “What else are they lying to us about?”

Business, Economics, General Science, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

The Science Is Unsettled

7 Comments

My thoughts on the climate-change fraud, over at PJM.

[Update a few minutes later]

All the news that’s fit to bury. I liked this: “If Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe are done tormenting ACORN maybe they can figure out how to pose as underaged climate researchers…”

[Update about 8:30 PST]

The ugly side of climate science.

[Late morning update]

Lord Monckton speaks: They are criminals.

[Early afternoon update]

Another “blue dress” moment for the media — the BBC has had some of this info for weeks.

[Update mid afternoon]

I like the comment that offered this code snippet over at McIntyre’s place:

void function fubar(void); {

if dataset == hockeystick then plot(dataset); else fudge(dataset);

return; }

I assume that it’s recursive, in that fudge calls fubar…

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Betraying Science

73 Comments

Here’s a nice summary of the significant contents of the email dump. Regardless of the validity of the science, these people have thoroughly discredited themselves, and given AGW skeptics a vast arsenal. Thankfully, this is going to make it much more difficult for the warm-mongers to implement their anti-free-market agenda. I suspect that if cap’n’tax wasn’t already dead in the Senate, it will be now.

[Update mid afternoon]

Powerline has been going through the emails. The picture that emerges is not that of scientists seeking truth, but of partisans, protecting (at the least) their own pet theory, and possibly a broader agenda as well, at the expense of truth and the reputations of anyone who dares to question them..

[Sunday morning update]

When in doubt, delete:

These emails appear to show that, when faced with a legitimate request under Britain’s Freedom of Information Act, these global warming alarmists preferred to delete their emails with one another about the crucially important IPCC report–the main basis for the purported “consensus” in favor of anthropogenic global warming–rather than allow them to come to light. This is one of many instances in the East Anglia documents where the global warming alarmists act like a gang of co-conspirators rather than respectable scientists.

I don’t think it’s an act.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Entrepreneurs Go On Strike

7 Comments

Thoughts at The American Thinker:

For many decades, the American dream has been undergirded by the faith that regardless of its current state, the economy would come back around thanks to the greatness of ordinary people being free to do extraordinary things. Thus the bold gunslinger mentality many business owners have had in previous recessions, refusing to participate, and even expanding cheaply to grab market share in the next recovery.

But it’s different now, and there is no denying it. The dream itself is being killed by legal and regulatory micromanagement. Washington is determined to employ policies to cure something that can be cured only by government getting the hell out of the way.

A small business summit in the White House will accomplish nothing unless the invitees include unions and lawyers and bureaucrats, in which case it will be devastating. When did a union or a lawyer or a bureaucrat ever start a business? How many times a day do they kill one?

And that’s the climate entrepreneurs see. Unions, lawyers, and bureaucrats gain more power and leverage every day. The big opportunity now is to spend government money: an eighteen-million-dollar government contract to create an awful Recovery.org website, SEIU union jobs in ObamaCare, bankruptcy lawyers, and perhaps carbon credit trades coming. There are ACORN-style crony contracts to be had, not to mention all the jobs created by the David Axelrod astroturfing media escapades. If you are connected or if your dream is to enrich yourself by killing the dreams of others, then the field is ripe for you.

Ayn Rand saw this coming.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Quoteworthy

26 Comments

On mandates:

In the primaries, Obama distinguished himself from Clinton on health care by opposing an individual mandate. In the general election, he distinguished himself from McCain by opposing taxes on health benefits. So now he is trying to pass bills with both an individual mandate and taxes on health benefits—and his supporters are saying that Congress should go along because he won the election.

“I won” is not a substitute for substantive policy discussion.

Business, Economics, Space

The Suborbital Refueling Dance

9 Comments

Jon Goff has an interesting variation on a concept that’s been around for a long time, but never implemented: refueling a suborbital vehicle in space to allow it to get to orbit. It’s in between Black Horse, which did an aerial fueling (or rather, oxidizing, since the propellant transferred was the oxidizer rather than the fuel), and standard orbital refueling. There’s an up side and a down side to it, relative to aerial refueling.

The down side is that unless the suborbital trajectory is fairly high, at least in velocity, you don’t have a lot of time for the operations before entering the atmosphere. You’d only have a few minutes, but that might be enough to transfer several thousand pounds of propellants. You’d have a trade as to whether to transfer just fuel, or just oxidizer or both. The latter would increase the likelihood of failure, since you’d have to mate two transfer booms, and simultaneously transfer two fluids.

The up side is that, out of the atmosphere, it’s easier and safer to fly in formation, because there are no wind gusts to worry about, and the physics is much more predictable (gravity doesn’t tend to vary much over non-astronomical times).

In a sane world, NASA would have long ago built an X-vehicle to prove out the concept, but that’s not the world in which we live. What I’d like to see is a prize for the first demonstration of such a propellant transfer operation, which all of the suborbital folks – Scaled (or VG), XCOR, Masten or Armadillo or others — could go after. You could have tiers of total propellant transferred, or total propellant transferred in a given time.

The other appealing thing about it is that, as Jon notes, it has benign abort characteristics. Which brings to mind another prize that NASA could offer (again, in a sane world). If reliability is really valued (the focus on heavy lift in general, and Ares in particular, would indicate that it’s not particularly, despite the advertisements), like low cost, it will only be achieved through high flight rates, and no one will really believe it until it’s been demonstrated. Fortunately, reusable suborbital vehicles are capable of lots of flights for low marginal cost per flight. So all they need is funding to do lots of flights. I would propose a prize for a consecutive number of successful deliveries to orbit (you could even start off with suborbital missions). Or, rather, consecutive number of non-failures, where failure is defined as losing the payload. In other words, you wouldn’t be penalized for an intact abort. The prize would be won when the requisite number of missions were flown with no losses. Abort rate could be a tie breaker for multiple winners.

If you wanted to have a demonstrated reliability (defined as non-payload loss, not mission success) of 0.999, you’d have to fly a thousand flights. If the marginal cost of a suborbital flight is, say, $10K, this would cost ten million, about the same as the X-Prize. So offer a fifty-million dollar prize, and see who goes for it. Once that’s won, offer half a billion for orbital.

Business, Media Criticism, Space

The Latest Smear On Space Tourism

10 Comments

Clark Lindsey responds.

[Update a while later]

You know, when supposed captains of the European space industry are both able and willing to submit such an ignorant and illogical piece to a major industry publication, and it’s willing to run it, it tells us something about how screwed up that industry is, and explains why we’ve made so little progress in opening up space after over half a century.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

George W. Hoover

4 Comments

Ilya Somin says that George Bush should, finally, stop giving a bad name to free markets:

Bush’s belated support for free markets follows in Hoover’s footsteps. After leaving office in 1933, Hoover wrote books and articles defending free markets and criticizing the Democrats’ New Deal. Some of his criticisms of FDR were well-taken. Many New Deal policies actually worsened and prolonged the Great Depression by organizing cartels and increasing unemployment. But by coming out as a free market advocate, the post-presidential Hoover actually bolstered the cause of interventionism because he helped cement the incorrect impression that he had pursued free market policies while in office, thereby causing the Depression. Bush’s post-presidential conversion creates a similar risk: it could solidify the already widespread impression that he, like the Hoover of myth, pursued laissez-faire policies which then caused an economic crisis.

What should Bush now do if he genuinely wants to help the free market cause? The best thing would be to take up economist David Henderson’s half-joking suggestion that he “express his regret at nationalizing airport safety, carrying out illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens, raiding medical marijuana clinics, bailing out General Motors, AIG and other companies, and socializing prescription drugs for the elderly [the biggest new government program from the 1960s until the present financial crisis].” Bush could also point out that he advocated an ideology of “compassionate conservatism” that included vastly expanded government, and an “ownership society” that (in his own words) involved “us[ing] the mighty muscle of the federal government” to incentivize dubious mortgages of the kind that helped cause the financial collapse of 2008. The greatest contribution Bush can now make to free market policies is to dispel the impression that he pursued them while in office.

Unfortunately, as Somin points out, the likelihood that he will admit his perfidy to markets, or the disastrous nature of many of his domestic policies, is pretty low, so the best thing he can do for free markets now is to just shut up.