Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian-British philosopher and professor. He is generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century.
“The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finallyverified, retires from the game.”
Port Angeles is a quaint town on the Strait of Juan de Fuca, in Washington State. It now sports three state-of-the-art wind turbines. Which were purchased with more than just generating electricity in mind.
“They were also meant to educate folks about wind power,” City Councilwoman Sissi Bruch said recently.
And the activists, politicians and bureaucrats responsible for the $107,516 purchase achieved that, surely. Just not the way they intended.
You see, based on current Bonneville Power Administration rates, the turbines — described by Paul Gottlieb of the local Peninsula Daily News as “windmill-like” — are expected to “produce $1.50 a month in savings.”
The city council members express regret about that, and admit these monuments to enviro-consciousness are a boondoggle. But they insist: they never expected the generated electricity to pay back the investment. From what I can tell, the generated electricity won’t even pay back their maintenance cost, though Mr. Gottfried did not clarify that in his Daily News report, mainly because the maintenance costs are as of yet unknown.
Further, as a result of Port Angeles’s wet, salty-air environment — they are located in a park by the Strait — they are not expected to last past 25 years.
But it gets worse! They are not even running yet. They await Underwriter Laboratories inspection and approval. They stand motionless.
Monuments to the futility of wind power.
OK, the futility of wind power in most locations.
The turbines do look cool. I like their vertical design. I merely suggest one alteration (for efficiency of message): the blades should be shaped as dollar signs.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Florida’s inland waters are clogging up with algae. You can now see the “algae bloom” from space.
What’s the big deal? Well, it stinks. “The blue-green algae, also known as cyanobacteria, contain toxins that are highly dangerous to humans,” explains Harry Sayer at the Orlando Weekly. “Ingestion may cause nausea, vomiting, and liver failure.” No wonder, then, that the State of Florida is in alarm mode, preparing to spend millions of dollars to fight it.
The problem is: fighting water plants is not easy.
Easy or no, it’s a crisis. Animals are “in distress, some are dying,” says a resident of a beach town to which the algal mess has spread. Tourism? Gone. Who wants to smell that mass of green gunk? Gov. Rick Scott has declared a state of emergency. Understandable.
Over at ClimateProgress, Samantha Page has found something else to attack: “Climate Denier Marco Rubio Tries To Tackle Toxic Florida Algae, Is Baffled By Cause.” Now, Florida Senator Marco Rubio ® is not a “climate denier” — a term of art that should make everyone, including environmentalists, cringe. He doesn’t deny the existence of climates. Or climate change. Page quotes him as being skeptical of the effectiveness of proposals to turn the direction of climate change around, back to its previous conditions, to which we have comfortably adapted.
Well, that’s his job.
Still, it is almost certain that increased CO2 in the atmosphere has aided algae growth here and elsewhere. It’s nature’s response. Algae converts the gas to biomass and oxygen.
But Page is also right: the state should look into industrial and agribiz pollution, too, as causes. That is, after all, a basic function of law and government.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
In politics, we’re used to being lied to. But in science?
Revelations coming out of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit spark such questions, and more.
Hackers have released onto the Internet confidential emails of the CRU climatologists largely responsible for the “global warming” conclusions in the famous report by the International Panel on Climate Change, known as the IPCC.
The emails include ugly stuff, like researchers’ fantasies about beating up catastrophe skeptics. They also include the tricks catastrophists used to cook up their numbers.
In particular, scientists reported temperatures in the Medieval Warming Period as cooler than they were, and more recent cooling trends as warmer. Anthropogenic global warming catastrophists have engaged in a massive public fraud.
Now, you might not bat an eye were you to learn that economists associated with, say, our recent bailouts, had been fudging numbers. Trillions of dollars to spend!
But when climate scientists get caught lying — as well as conspiring to keep their basic data secret, and hijacking the peer review process — it’s hard not to feel a bit abused. Natural scientists are supposed to be above this.
Public, open criticism is the hallmark of science. Climate researchers who stonewalled to keep their actual data hidden from critics were scuttling science.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.