Tag: politics

Texas responds to EPA’s effort to regulate CO2

11:07 pm

In a letter response to the EPA’s effort to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, Texas has essentially told the EPA to go to hell. Three key quotes from the letter:

In order to deter challenges to your plan for centralized control of industrialized development through the issuance of permits for greenhouse gases, you have called upon each state to declare its allegiance to the Environmental Protection Agency’s recently enacated greenhouse gas regulations — regulations that are plainly contrary to United State law. ….. To encourage acquiesence with your unsupported findings you threaten to usurp state enforcment authority and to federalize the permitting program of any state that fails to pledge their fealty to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) [emphasis mine]

The State of Texas does not believe the EPA’s “suggested” approach comports with the rule of law.

Texas will not facilitate EPA’s apparent attempt to thwart these established procedures and ignore the law.

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The disconnect between Israelis and elites

12:56 pm

This long and fascinating interview about the Israeli-Arab conflict is quite eye-opening. Key quote:

Most Israelis are here because they fled from Muslim and European countries. They don’t feel that either of those blocs have the right to lecture them about anything. Why should a country where your parents were expelled or killed have the right to tell you how to conduct yourself in a war against people who are trying to kill you today? This is something hardly any non-Israelis understand. They don’t understand how galling we find this.

Israelis are often accused of being arrogant, but they find it extremely arrogant for Europeans and Arabs to lecture them about morals, especially during a war. What has Israel ever done that is as brutal as what Europe did to the Jews, or what Arabs routinely do to even each other during armed conflicts?

Read it all.

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The great disconnect

12:25 pm

The recent history of NASA illustrates a fundamental problem with how our political class thinks.

In 2004 George Bush announced that NASA would have a new goal, that of the exploration of the solar system. The shuttle would complete construction of the International Space Station and then be retired in 2010. NASA would meanwhile build a replacement for the shuttle, designed to return to the Moon and beyond, and have it flying by 2014.

Notice the gap? The shuttle retires in 2010, four years before its replacement is available. Notice also that the plan insisted that ISS would be finished, fully occupied, and in need of significant resupply and maintenance during this entire time, when neither the shuttle or its replacement would be on hand.

Yet, as obvious as this seems, no one at NASA, in the Bush administration, or in Congress, seemed to notice this gap. The Bush plan was implemented exactly as described, so that today we are about to be left with a space station in orbit and no way to reach it for at least four years. (That other countries can reach the station changes nothing: the United States has been left hanging, lacking a method for transporting its crews to its own space station.)

It was as if, among the political and elite class that runs the government, there was great disconnect between the fantasy of the intended plan and the reality of its implementation. » Read more

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The failure of the past and a hint of the future

9:40 pm

The coolant system failure on the International Space Station this weekend and the upcoming spacewalks being planned to fix it is a dramatic and fascinating story, capturing the interest of the general public while causing some news pundits to express fear and dread about science fiction scenerios of disasters in space.

The situation is hardly that death-defying. The station’s cooling systems have a lot of redundancy, all of which are being used to good effect. Moreover, the spacewalk repair to install a replacement pump module, though challenging, is exactly the kind of thing the astronauts have been trained to do. I expect them to do it with few problems. I would be far more surprised if they have serious difficulties and fail to get it done.

What this failure foreshadows, however, is the future on ISS. As the years pass and systems age, » Read more

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Closing out debate on climate

10:35 pm

It appears that McCarthyism and the blacklist are both alive and well, thriving happily in the field of climate research. Key quote:

It is disturbing, to say the least, that organisations and persons who would be quick to claim professional status consider that it is their current duty to disparage, or to refuse to debate with, or to muzzle scientists whose views on climate change they apparently disagree with.

Read the whole article.

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Elites vs everyone else

10:18 am

War between the elites of our society and everyone else. Key quote:

If this election has a theme, it’s going to be the rejection of the elites and a return to a form of populism with a long streak in American history — the demand of citizens to their government to get the hell out of their lives.

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