Technology

Global Warming Madness: New White House report considers blocking the sun to cool the planet

Featured image The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released a report on Friday about a relatively new technology called solar radiation modification that could be used in the fight against climate change.  According to the report, SRM is a form of “geoengineering” that “offers the possibility of cooling the planet significantly on a timescale of a few years.” The University of Oxford defines “geoengineering” as “the deliberate large-scale intervention »

Guest Post: Emina Melonic on False Wombs, Real Wounds

Featured image Emina Melonic joins us again to amplify a number of key issues dilated recently by another friend of Power Line, Daniel McCarthy, writing in The Spectator: In a recent article in The Spectator, Daniel McCarthy reflects on some of the bioethical problems of our age: surrogacy and the frightening possibility of artificial wombs. He writes that “The technology [for artificial wombs] doesn’t exist yet, but there is already a market »

Musk for the Win

Featured image I’ve long thought that the categorical criticism many conservatives have of Elon Musk and Tesla was overdone. The Tesla is a great product, and unlike the rest of Silicon Valley, Musk is actually trying to manufacture something tangible, and not just another app, or a fraudulent medical device.  My criticism of Musk was limited to the lavish government subsidies—especially the $7,500 tax credit that goes overwhelmingly to the rich and »

The Moon @ 50

Featured image Lots of deserved recollections on the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing over the last few weeks and months. There’s not much need to repeat the main themes of the scientific marvel or adventurous spirit of that glorious enterprise. Some political aspects of Apollo, however, have not received sufficient attention. Specifically, the liberal attitude toward the moon landing is emblematic of how American liberalism had lost confidence in itself »

An Emetic for Gore

Featured image Ten years ago, after An Inconvenient Truth appeared, I produced my own 48-minute video lecture on what’s wrong with Al Gore’s account of the whole matter, which I called An Inconvenient Truth—Or Convenient Fiction? (It’s still up on YouTube, along with a short update I did one year later, but both are way out of date now, so I don’t especially recommend them.) I just haven’t got it in me to suffer »

Hans Rosling, RIP

Featured image I’ve got a heavy class schedule today, but I just saw the sad news that the great Swedish demographer and statistician Hans Rosling has died at the too early age of 68. He’s not called “the Jedi master of data” for nothing. Among other great creations of his is Gapminder, where you can visualize all kinds of data. I’ve used the site a lot in the classroom with students to »

Follow the Science, They Say

Featured image When it comes to the climate uber alles crowd, environmentalists insist we “follow the science.” Well let’s see whether Greenpeace follows this science. This morning in Washington DC there will be a press conference where a petition by 107 Nobel laureate scientists will call on Greenpeace to cease its reactionary opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The Washington Post reports: 107 Nobel laureates sign letter blasting Greenpeace over GMOs By »

Conservatives and Climate Policy

Featured image Not long ago the journal Issues in Science and Technology (a consortium publication of the National Academy of Sciences, Arizona State, and three other institutions) challenged me to write a piece about “Conservatism and Climate Science,” and the long piece is just now available online.  But it’s really not about climate science, but rather climate policy, and the heart of the article is a lengthy consideration of the problem of »

This Is What A Disruptive Technology Looks Like . . .

Featured image . . . in its first moments.  Hat tip to FB pal and Power Line reader Kate Pitrone for flagging this old video from 1981, showing the earliest experiments with online news gathering and transmission.  I vividly recall seeing the earliest version of FAX technology back in 1981, when my mentor M. Stanton Evans would send his syndicated column to the Los Angeles Times by wrapping each page of the »