I am puzzled by NASA's open funding proposal. In short it says, please ask this president to not cut our funding. This is all great and the space program definitely is an important pursuit for humanity.
That said, the proposal doesn't really answer the question - should I support it? The arguments in favor:
"It is critical to our country's success to remain the leader in human spaceflight"; "No other nation has ever placed a person on the moon." are kind of one-sided and don't give ground for any understanding of the decision.
Are we weighing one man on the moon (40 years ago) v.s. universal healthcare for 300 million people? Does leadership in the space exploration means there we need no peers?Is it worth an eventual garage-sale of the whole country (through excessive debt)?
I'm still puzzled.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Price on carbon, cap-and-trade. Remind me, why do we want that?
There has been plenty of talk recently about reducing emissions. The main suggestion is to put a price on carbon or introduce some cap-and-trade system to force the well-off countries to stop using fossil fuel. A side-effect of that is that we'll push the development of arguably better source like solar and wind.
There is plenty of doubt that reducing carbon emissions will actually affect anything. There are plenty of dissenters who question the science, question the motivation and question the solutions. There are newspaper articles, research studies and books written to rebuke the man-made global warming theory and political agenda.
I totally agree with the goal of developing more solar, wind, nuclear energy, investing in more efficient ways to do things and great new ways to avoid commute. I think these are the technologies of the future and we should push for them as hard as we can.
Now what about CO2 and emissions? What if US, EU and Japan all went renewable in 10 years. Would that cut the emissions to 0??? No. There's another 5 billion people who can't afford fancy gadgets and expensive energy sources. They wouldn't mind cheap oil though. If demand for oil and gas drops in developed countries, will the OPEC substantially cut the production to keep the prices high? There're still non-OPEC countries that sell stuff. Will the developing countries sacrifice their right for better life in favor of reduced carbon emissions? I doubt.
If anything, I believe we should get much much more involved into the well-being of the poorest on our planet. How do we build an economic system to integrate 6.5 billion people? How do we make it fair? How do we make sure that kids whose siblings die in infancy feel safe having only 2 children? How do we ensure that every person on Earth has a path to modern economic system, modern education, proper mentoring and guidance?
These are much-much more urgent questions compared to the man-made global warming "what-ifs".
There is plenty of doubt that reducing carbon emissions will actually affect anything. There are plenty of dissenters who question the science, question the motivation and question the solutions. There are newspaper articles, research studies and books written to rebuke the man-made global warming theory and political agenda.
I totally agree with the goal of developing more solar, wind, nuclear energy, investing in more efficient ways to do things and great new ways to avoid commute. I think these are the technologies of the future and we should push for them as hard as we can.
Now what about CO2 and emissions? What if US, EU and Japan all went renewable in 10 years. Would that cut the emissions to 0??? No. There's another 5 billion people who can't afford fancy gadgets and expensive energy sources. They wouldn't mind cheap oil though. If demand for oil and gas drops in developed countries, will the OPEC substantially cut the production to keep the prices high? There're still non-OPEC countries that sell stuff. Will the developing countries sacrifice their right for better life in favor of reduced carbon emissions? I doubt.
If anything, I believe we should get much much more involved into the well-being of the poorest on our planet. How do we build an economic system to integrate 6.5 billion people? How do we make it fair? How do we make sure that kids whose siblings die in infancy feel safe having only 2 children? How do we ensure that every person on Earth has a path to modern economic system, modern education, proper mentoring and guidance?
These are much-much more urgent questions compared to the man-made global warming "what-ifs".
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)