
The Real War on Science - cicero
http://www.city-journal.org/html/real-war-science-14782.html
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jarjoura
TLDR; A conservative essay full of interesting anecdotes where liberal
scientists have stifled businesses with regulations that later turned out to
be debunked. It ends on the topic of climate change and insists that liberals
are once again over regulating businesses when the only data they have come
from models that seem to continually be proven inaccurate.

I appreciate that the author spent the time to construct an opposing
viewpoint, but it never answers one lingering question. What's wrong with
solar, or wind farm investments? Why shouldn't we switch to battery powered
vehicles? The left gets shamed for believing in renewable energy, but there's
never a compelling argument against it.

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code5fun
You have to understand the world to answer that question. Energy is the food
of nations and keeping them tied to oil gives you power over them. Why do you
think we still use a 150 old technology of combustion engines whereas
basically every other aspect of civilization has come so far? It's a choice,
not a misfortune.

What's wrong with solar, wind and basically everything that would solve the
problem? - Power. Humanity would cut the strings attached to it, nobody wants
that.

~~~
wolfgke
> Why do you think we still use a 150 old technology of combustion engines
> whereas basically every other aspect of civilization has come so far?

Because with current technologies (this might change in the future) it is far
simpler to store combustibles than energy in other forms (electric, kinetic
(in form of fly wheel)).

Specifically for cars it is much faster to fill the tank with combustibles
(petrol, diesel, natural gas, LPG) than to recharge the accumulator. Also
specifically for electric cars the accumulator has a limited number of charge
cycles. Since the accumulator is a (relatively) very expensive part of an
electric car this can easily reduce the value of a used electric car by a lot.

The storage of electric energy is IMHO indeed the fundamental problem solar
and wind has: While we can get (law(s) of large numbers) good large scale
estimates how much energy we can harvest, it is not always there at the time
that wee need it. So we have to find a way to store large amounts of it to be
able to apply the law(s) of large numbers. This is where the problem lies.

Of course we can hope for large breaktroughs that will solve these problems,
but I'm talking about current technology.

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SticksAndBreaks
The question is how can academia be cleansed of the biases? Secession of the
scientific faculties from the unscientific? I think its not possible to make a
"safe space" without politics and publics for research. So the only way to
archieve a equality is to have funding be totally independent from political
"standing". It must be voted in by anonmyous Scientists, based upon the
quality of cross-faculty-peer-reviewed process that generated it. I wonder how
much this censor-ship has damaged the left cause actually. Imagine if a ethnic
group of equal intelligence (I firmly believe that any group can bring forth
high intelligence- or if it could not should be enabled too for mankinds
benefits) inherited a stress activated gene that allowed for a prolonged
"zombie" mode upon crisis and conflict. To not search a cure for that gene,
would be a unbearable crime.

The problematic part comes, when the research on this would be only
represented as a "fact" of gods design and not a call to action aka a research
for a remedy.

TL,DR; Anybody screaming for In-Action, is on the wrong side in science.
Explore all the allys!

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kahrkunne
A very good article about a point rarely made.

