Science

Obama’s Distraction Syndrome

Generally speaking, it is a bootless enterprise to try to psychoanalyze a President, or any politician. But it certainly appears that President Obama must be frustrated by his failures in the fight against ISIS and other terrorists, not to mention his looming catastrophic and bogus deal to deter Iran’s nuclear ambitions (they really do want and will get a nuke soon). So perhaps he feels that the thing to do in this circumstance is to change the subject to something more manageable. That would be climate change. The extent to which he can go is found in his strange address to the Coast Guard Academy.

Well, of course, the Coast Guard has almost nothing imaginable to do with causing or curing any climate change, to the extent there is much human caused climate change. Indeed, it is hard to see that President Obama, after six and a half years in office, has done anything significant to improve the world’s climate, despite 2008 campaign promises. But he certainly does have the authority and the power to talk about it. And talk about it.

The President told the Coast Guard Academy graduates, “Climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security, and, make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country…And so we need to act — and we need to act now.”

The graduates must have mentally scratched their heads trying to figure out the relevance to them. So the President helped them: the kidnappings of Boko Haram in Nigeria were triggered by “crop failures”! There has been flooding in streets in South Carolina and Florida. Really. Setting aside the tenuous nature of the connection these matters to “climate change”, just what the Coast Guard was supposed to do about it the Commander in Chief did not say. Read More ›

Israeli Tech Can Slake World’s Water Thirst

Nursery flowers watered with drip irrigation in Israel

Nursery flowers watered with drip irrigation in Israel

California wastes water and blames the drought for the resulting shortages. Arizona is better off. Israel is the world leader, however, in water-related technology. Most of the Middle East exports terrorists; Israel exports technology to create a more verdant and abundant future.

Here is a series of connected articles that explain Israel’s innovations in drip-irrigation (much discussed also in George Gilder’s The Israel Test), drought resistant crop development, desalinization, squeezing water out of dew and creating winter-fed cisterns like the Nabateans used 2000 years ago in the “rose red” city of Petra. Read More ›

Detective Columbo of Chemistry: “I Don’t Understand Evolution”

A renowned chemist says he doesn’t “understand” evolution. What he means, he subsequently makes clear, is that Darwin’s theory doesn’t make sense to him. His humility, like that of Lt. Columbo in the famous TV detective series, covers a tough, analytical mind.

Dr. Tour

Dr. Tour

Dr. James Tour of Rice University, regarded as one of America’s 50 top scientists, is quoted by Christian News about his innocent-sounding discussions with fellow scientists in private. “‘Let me tell you what goes on in the back rooms of science—with National Academy members, with Nobel Prize winners,’ Tour stated. ‘I have sat with them, and when I get them alone, not in public—because it’s a scary thing, if you say what I just said—I say, ‘Do you understand all of this, where all of this came from, and how this happens?’

“The answer he inevitably receives, Tour explained, is: ‘no.’

Read More ›