From this NPR segment on climate science:
Michael Mann, a professor of earth and environmental science at the University of Pennsylvania, has been awarded more the $1 million in damages after a trial in D.C. court.
Michael Mann, among the world’s most renowned climate scientists, won a defamation case in D.C. Superior Court against two conservative writers.
Mann, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, had sued Rand Simberg, a policy analyst, and Mark Steyn, a right-wing author, for online posts published over a decade ago, respectively, by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the National Review.
Mann is partly responsible for one of the most consequential graphs in climate science, one that helped make the steep rise in global average temperatures from fossil fuel use understandable to a wide audience.
One doesn’t have to look hard on social media to find people with no scientific training claiming that climate change is a hoax, and, in particular, that the folks who have spent their entire adult lives studying the subject are charlatans and grifters.
I attended a lecture at the University of California at Santa Barbara a few years back at which the keynote speaker claimed that “what was once science now is politics, where people with ‘PhD’ at the end of their names are sucking down grant money to study a phenomenon that they know does not exist.”
This would have been an outrageous claim if it were made anywhere, but in front of hundreds of people at UCSB’s physics building?
Perhaps the case here reminds us that defamation is not covered as free speech. If you make baseless and slanderous claims about another person, be prepared to fork across some serious damages.
My doctor, who knows that I understand physics and renewable energy in particular, asked me today what I thought about wind turbines on boats.
I explained that, since boats need their own ways to generate electricity, what is called “small wind” may make sense. Most ships have diesel-powered generators, and that’s an option for smaller craft as well, and solar is not an attractive option because of the small area.
Doctors generally don’t have time to kill, but he asked me further about small wind, to which I explained:
Because the area of a circle is proportional to the square of the radius, big is better. If you can build a turbine with a radius 100 times larger than a small one, you’re going to generate 10,000 time more power.
Because the power generated by a turbine is proportional to the cube of the wind’s velocity, if you can site a turbine in wind conditions that are 10 times those on your rooftop, with trees and other buildings slowing the wind down, you’re going to generate 1000 times more power.
So, as usual, the answer resides in physics and math. 1000 times 10,000 is 10 million, which is why we see huge turbines on structures that lift huge turbines high above the ground, and it’s why the small wind industry has essentially disappeared.
If you don’t understand elementary school math and high school science, and you have money to burn, the investment offered at left may be right for you.
It’s interesting that there is no Fox News (or equivalent) in Canada.
The Canadians have protections of free speech that are very similar to ours in the States, and, like the U.S., these rights are not absolute. One difference is that Canada prohibits gross misrepresentation, which, in this case means that presenting opinions and calling it “news” is against the law. Lies are fine; calling them “news” is not.
A possible name for a show with the same content might be “Conservative Viewpoints” or “The Way the Right Wing Sees the World.”
Where Canada protects its people from malicious bullshit, in America we say, “Money talks.”
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich makes an excellent point at left.
The constant onslaught of distractions coming out of Trump’s mouth is calculated make us give up striving for truth, honesty, and environmental responsibility.
We mustn’t quit.
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