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September 3, 2024

How Testosterone and Culture Shape Behavior

In this TED Talk, evolutionary biologist and AEI nonresident fellow Carole K. Hooven delves into how testosterone impacts the body and brain, interacting with culture to create differences in human behavior — starting with why boys tend to prefer rougher play than girls.

August 30, 2024

Data Center Electricity Use V: Implications

Yesterday’s earnings announcement from Nvidia brings my data center electricity use series full circle: Its now-dominant data center segment increased revenue to $26.3 billion—more than 2½ times what that business generated a year earlier. Adjusted operating income for the quarter more than doubled year over year to $19.9 billion. Nvidia’s overall top and bottom lines beat Wall…

August 30, 2024

Lost in Space

More than 30 years ago I wrote a master’s thesis that evaluated NASA’s Space Shuttle program (you can read the publications that followed here and here). As I turned to my PhD dissertation, I decided to move on from human space flight. Over the years that followed I felt like there was something left unfinished from my work…

August 26, 2024

Bring Digital Twins Back to Earth

Abstract We reflect on the development of digital twins of the Earth, which we associate with a reductionist view of nature as a machine. The projects of digital twins deviate from contemporary scientific paradigms in the treatment of complexity and uncertainty, and does not engage with critical and interpretative social sciences. We contest the utility…

August 26, 2024

What Future for U.S.-China Science and Technology Collaboration?

On Tuesday this week the U.S.-China Science and Technology Agreement (STA) is due to expire unless the U.S. and China can agree on its extension. Today I provide some background on the agreement, why it is now being debated, and my view on what should happen next. STAs are a common tool of science diplomacy. The…

August 24, 2024

A RealClearEnergy Conference Well Worth Your Time

The Biden administration is a full-employment act for energy/environment policy analysts, in particular those interested in defending the market allocation of resources, the national wealth and freedom inherent in expansion of efficient energy technologies, and resistance to the diktats and impoverishment—the central anti-human stance—favored by the environmental left, the bureaucracy, and many “experts.” It is…

August 22, 2024

Data Center Electricity Use IV: Unrealistic Emissions Targets?

Large-scale, dynamic social and economic change is often more difficult, incremental, and slower than anticipated. Consider James Watt and Matthew Boulton in Birmingham in 1776, having invented and refined the double-acting steam engine. Watt patented the invention that year, a breakthrough that would ultimately become a hallmark of the British Industrial Revolution and propel its…

August 21, 2024

Billion Dollar Disasters: Not the Highest Standards

Last January, upon submission of my paper (since published) — Scientific integrity and U.S. “Billion Dollar Disasters” — I submitted a “request for correction” to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) under the agency’s policies for scientific integrity and information quality. Today, I heard back from NOAA and they largely agree with my concerns: “NOAA will…

August 19, 2024

What Did You Expect?

About 20,000 years ago, the world was in an ice age. The era is called the Last Glacial Maximum and had global sea levels more than 120 meters (~400 feet) lower than they are today, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). There was no North Sea, English Channel, or Persian Gulf, and Australia…

August 9, 2024

Joe Biden is the “Drill, Baby, Drill” President

I would guess that we are going to hear the phrase “drill, baby, drill” a lot in the next three months. Here at THB, one goal is to ensure that whatever our politics or views on policy, that we work hard to share a common understanding (or at least a shared understanding of disagreement) of…