The Opinion Blog

Solar tape the key to clean, affordable power?

In response to Daniel Cochran's solar-power comments on THURSDAY OPEN FORUM:

"Konarka is focused on developing and advancing nano-enabled polymer photovoltaic materials that are lightweight, flexible and more versatile than traditional solar materials." http://www.konarka.com/index.php

Badmouth Al Gore and you've got real trouble

Rippped from the wires .. Skeptic-comic-magician Penn Jilette tells how he got hosed down in the media for publicly admitting he doesn't know if global warming is real while bagging on Al Gore:

By Penn Jillette

My partner, Teller, and I are professional skeptics. We do magic tricks in our live show in Las Vegas, and we have a passion for trying to use what we've learned about fooling people to possibly get a little closer to the truth. Our series on Showtime tries to question everything -- even things we hold dear.

James Randi is our inspiration, our hero, our mentor and our friend. Randi taught us to use our fake magic powers for good. Psychics use tricks to lie to people; Randi uses tricks to tell the truth.

POINT: Planet will suffer unless U.S. acts

Ripped from the wires ... Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair explains why Americans must embrace and attack global warming:

By Tony Blair

The climate change bill that senators are to begin debating next week is a hugely important signal of intent on behalf of U.S. legislators. Yes, negotiations could still alter the legislation. But the bill's core proposition is correct: Unless the United States radically reduces its greenhouse gas emissions, along with other major emitters, the damage to the climate will be irreversible.

Radical reduction is unlikely to happen through voluntary action alone. Measures in the bill, through a mandatory cap-and-trade scheme, would reduce emissions 70 percent from 2005 levels by 2050. These cuts would be based on a carbon market incentive system that moves with the grain of action around the globe.

COUNTERPOINT: Global warmists talk through their hats

Ripped from the wires ... Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer shows how the "Church of the Environment" promulgates its faulty global-warming dogma:

By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

I'm not a global warming believer. I'm not a global warming denier. I'm a global warming agnostic who believes instinctively that it can't be very good to pump lots of CO2 into the atmosphere, but is equally convinced that those who presume to know exactly where that leads are talking through their hats.

Predictions of catastrophe depend on models. Models depend on assumptions about complex planetary systems -- from ocean currents to cloud formation -- that no one fully understands. Which is why the models are inherently flawed and forever changing. The doomsday scenarios posit a cascade of events, each with a certain probability. The multiple improbability of their simultaneous occurrence renders all such predictions entirely speculative.

Uh oh: McCain joins global warming cult

Ripped from the wires ... Cal Thomas takes issue with John McCain's recent declaration that humans are influencing climate change and must help fix the problem:

By CAL THOMAS

In an effort to win over those "moderates'' who believe that global warming is about to destroy the planet, Republican presidential candidate John McCain spoke Monday at a Portland, Ore., training facility for Vestas Wind Technology. He claimed, "The facts of global warming demand our urgent attention, especially in Washington.''

There certainly is more "hot air'' on this and a lot of other subjects in Washington, but that isn't what he meant. The era of big government is so not over, as Bill Clinton claimed it was in 1996. It is just beginning and increasingly the political contests seem to be about who will manage its growth, not who will reduce its size, cost and reach.

Kowtowing to the telecom industry?

Today editorial notes that the S.C. Senate would make it harder for South Carolina to capitalize on its wireless broadband (WiMax) opportunity:

Senate puts politics ahead of science

S.C. House members will decide this week whether they can live with the Senate's byzantine proposal for thrusting South Carolina to the global forefront of wireless broadband service. In the Senate's hands, the House's sensible proposal to repurpose the state's 67 S.C. Educational Television licenses toward throwing up a wireless cloud over the state has become needlessly complex.

But the House is in a bind on fixing this problem. Senate leaders seem dug in on the issue, and legislative stalemate this year could eventually cause the loss of those licenses.

Drat! My brainwaves gave me away

Ripped from the wires ... Ethics writer Nita Farahany discusses some scary research in the world of science. Another TL-DR candidate but for those interested in the growing clash between science and privacy, it's a worthwhile read.

By Nita Farahany

Imagine a world of streets lined with video cameras that alert authorities to any suspicious activity. A world where police officers can read the minds of potential criminals and arrest them before they commit any crimes. A world in which a suspect who lies under questioning gets caught immediately because his brain has given him away.

Though that may sound a lot like the plot of the 2002 Tom Cruise movie "Minority Report,'' it's not science fiction: We're not so far away from that world. But does it sound like a very safe place, or a very scary one?

It's a question we should be asking as the federal government invests millions of dollars in emerging technology aimed at detecting and decoding brain activity.

Technological 'Palookaville' a scary place to be

Ripped from the wires ... Joel Achenbach explains why it's so hard to predict a future that flies at us with terrifying speed. Warning: The piece a TL-DR candidate (in Daniel Cochran's parlance). But it's great, so I'm posting it for those folks with an interest in the subject and three or more minutes to spare. dc

By Joel Achenbach

The most important things happening in the world today won't make tomorrow's front page. They won't get mentioned by presidential candidates or Chris Matthews or Bill O'Reilly or any of the other folks yammering and snorting on cable television.

They'll be happening in laboratories -- out of sight, inscrutable and unhyped until the very moment when they change life as we know it.

Science and technology form a two-headed, unstoppable change agent. ... We vaguely understand that this stuff is changing our lives, but we feel as though it's all out of our control. We're just hanging on tight, like Kirk and Spock when the Enterprise starts vibrating at Warp 8.