by Donna Rachel Edmunds. Study reveals another inconvenient truth. Wind power is too variable and too unpredictable to provide a serious alternative to fossil fuels, a new study by the Scientific Alliance and the Adam Smith Institute has confirmed. The researchers concluded that, although it is true that the wind is always blowing ... MORE
by David Downs. The U.S. government claims marijuana is a dangerous, addictive drug with no medical benefits. But that claim will be up for debate Monday in California when a federal judge is scheduled to hear testimony from doctors that conclude the opposite. Doctors Carl Hart, Associate Professor of Psychology at Columbia University ... MORE
What's going on here? Earlier this week, the federal government's National Science Foundation, an entity created to encourage the study of science — encouragement that it achieves by awarding grants to scholars and universities — announced that it had awarded a grant to study what people say about themselves and others in social media. The ... MORE
Curious incentives on display. The Food and Drug Administration just granted permission for “expanded access” to an experimental medicine for Ebola. It’s OK as far as it goes, but it’s an exception to the FDA’s reluctance to approve the use of life-saving products. Safety and efficacy testing of the drug, designated TKM-Ebola, has barely ... MORE
by Steven E. Koonin. But government proceeds as though it is. The idea that "Climate science is settled" runs through today's popular and policy discussions. Unfortunately, that claim is misguided. It has not only distorted our public and policy debates on issues related to energy, greenhouse-gas emissions and the environment. But it also has ... MORE
The incandescent ignorance of a Hollywood star. In the runup to the Sept. 23 UN Climate Summit in New York, Leonardo DiCaprio is releasing a series of films about the “climate crisis.” The first is “Carbon,” which tells us the world is threatened by a “carbon monster.” Coal, oil, natural gas and other carbon-based forms of energy are causing ... MORE
Al Gore's predicted it would be ICE-FREE by now. The speech by former US Vice-President Al Gore was apocalyptic. ‘The North Polar ice cap is falling off a cliff,’ he said. ‘It could be completely gone in summer in as little as seven years. Seven years from now.’ Those comments came in 2007 as Mr Gore accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for his ... MORE
Where is the warming? As I start to write these words, I am on my Manhattan balcony savoring a Friday evening. It normally is oppressive this time of year. Stifling humidity and sweltering temperatures relentlessly squeeze New Yorkers in a brutal vice. The infernal stickiness typically keeps it from cooling down, even at night. It is not unusual ... MORE
On perspective. Wars, plane crashes, mass murder — it's easy to report news that happens suddenly. Reporters do a good job covering that. But we do a bad job telling you about what's really changing in the world, because we miss the stories that happen slowly. These are usually the more important stories. Recently, President Barack Obama ... MORE
Mencken-Rand-Tesla-Mises-Solzhenitsyn. In a time dominated by flashes of celebrity, screaming talking heads on
TV, and cities that don’t sleep, introverts and loners have few places
to fit in. But as Laurie Helgoe argues in Psychology Today, those that are slightly uncomfortable with a noisy culture often have the biggest impact on society. ... MORE
by Christopher Booker. A very cold truth. When future generations try to understand how the world got carried away
around the end of the 20th century by the panic over global warming, few
things will amaze them more than the part played in stoking up the scare by
the fiddling of official temperature data. There was already much evidence ... MORE
As U.S. politicians try to ban the device ... A group of 53 leading scientists has warned the World Health
Organization not to classify e-cigarettes as tobacco products, arguing
that doing so would jeopardize a major opportunity to slash disease and
deaths caused by smoking. The UN agency, which is currently assessing its position on the
matter, ... MORE
Don't be afraid of your food. It's easy to scare people about what's in their food, but the danger is almost never real. And the fear itself kills. Take the panic over genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Ninety percent of all corn grown in America is genetically modified now. That means it grew from a seed that scientists altered by ... MORE