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May 23, 2025
Heavy Metal
More than 7,000 years ago, humans first began mining copper. Since then, humans have mined more than 700 million tonnes. According to a fascinating study of the metals requirements of a net zero energy transition, the world will need to produce another 700 million tonnes of copper over the next 22 years. The study, by Simon Michaux of the…
May 19, 2025
Ten Provocative Graphs
The figures and data below are all hot of the press and shared to help get your weekend off to an intellectually stimulating start. Enjoy! The Earth is Darkening In a new posting, climate scientist James Hansen calls our attention to a “BFD”: Earth’s albedo (or reflectivity) is the portion (percent) of incoming solar radiation that…
April 17, 2025
The New Rules for Experts
My friend and AEI colleague Tony Mills — director of the AEI Center for Technology, Science, and Energy — has been on a tear lately. Today, I share four of Tony’s essays published in the past month on public trust in science, reform of NIH, COVID’s long-term costs, and how virologists lost the gain-of-function debate. Enjoy, and see you…
April 3, 2025
How Virologists Lost the Gain-of-Function Debate
For years, scientists kept the debate about risky virus research among themselves. Then Covid happened. As President Trump prepares to crack down on virology research, the expert community must face up to its own failures. Read the full essay in The New Atlantis.
March 27, 2025
We Still Haven’t Reckoned with Covid’s Costs
Five years ago, a new coronavirus to which no one was yet immune was sweeping the globe, shutting down schools and sporting events. In March 2020, masks had not yet become a partisan lightning rod — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had not yet even recommended them. And according to the Pew Research Center,…
March 20, 2025
Is Single Extreme Event Attribution Even Possible?
The U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) currently has a study committee on Attribution of Extreme Weather and Climate Events and their Impacts. In this series — Weather Attribution Alchemy — I have previously discussed the committee’s many conflicts of interest. Today I discuss a crucial scientific question at the center of the committee’s work,…
March 12, 2025
“In Bad Faith”
The DC Court that heard the defaation case brought by climate scientist Michael Mann against two bloggers has ruled today that Mann and his lawyers acted in “bad faith” during the case, by presenting false claims on multiple occasions related to Mann’s grant funding: Here, the Court finds, by clear and convincing evidence, that Dr. Mann, through…
February 27, 2025
Is the EPA “Endangerment Finding” Endangered?
Earlier today, The Washington Post reported that head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Lee Zeldin, has urged the Trump administration to rescind the EPA’s 2009 “endangerment finding” on greenhouse gases. The Post reports: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin has privately urged the White House to strike down a scientific finding underpinning much of the federal government’s push to combat…
February 24, 2025
Why We Do the Research
One of the wonderful things about science is that research results cannot be consistently anticipated. That’s why we do the research. That research doesn’t always come out how we expect is particularly problematic for partisans who expect research to provide results in alignment with their political commitments. So you think hurricane landfalls have become more…
February 18, 2025
The Dilemmas of Democracy
In his classic 1960 book, The Semisovereign People, political scientist E.E. Schattschneider identified a dilemma of democracy: All of us are ignorant about most things, making each of us unsuitable to govern — yet we also have a belief that everyone should be allowed to participate in governance, with our political leaders chosen from among the…