Category: Science

Trump Decriminalizes Carbon Dioxide.  photog Claims He Never Inhaled

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Trump, you magnificent bastard.  You did it!!!

Read this Headline:

Trump’s EPA revokes scientific finding that underpinned US fight against climate change

Do you hear that sound?  It’s the sound of rejoicing as sanity is restored to the American economy.  And probably also the sound of a million climate activists crying as their funding disappears.

“The Trump administration on Thursday revoked a scientific finding that long has been the central basis for U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change, the most aggressive move by the Republican president to roll back climate regulations.”

“President Donald Trump called the move “the single largest deregulatory action in American history, by far,” while EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin called the endangerment finding “the Holy Grail of federal regulatory overreach.””

He’s right.  There is such a thing as too much winning.  But it’s too late I’m addicted to it now.

“Trump called the endangerment finding “one of the greatest scams in history,” claiming that it “had no basis in fact” or law. “On the contrary, over the generations, fossil fuels have saved millions of lives and lifted billions of people out of poverty all over the world,” Trump said at a White House ceremony.”

Can’t you just feel the leftist rage boil?

“The endangerment finding “led to trillions of dollars in regulations that strangled entire sectors of the United States economy, including the American auto industry,” Zeldin said. “The Obama and Biden administrations used it to steamroll into existence a left-wing wish list of costly climate policies, electric vehicle mandates and other requirements that assaulted consumer choice and affordability.”

The endangerment finding and the regulations based on it “didn’t just regulate emissions, it regulated and targeted the American dream. And now the endangerment finding is hereby eliminated,” Zeldin said.”

This will have so many effects on lowering the cost of living for Americans.  Gas prices and fuel prices will decline as regulation will be lifted over many parts of the production cycle.  Automobile prices will decline as all the regulation can be stripped out of the process for selling cars with regular gasoline engines.  When Trump ends the CO2 emissions requirements for power plants, the cost of electricity will also decline.  Well, except in places like California and New England where they punish fossil fuel plants just for the sake of virtue signaling.  This is despite the fact that places like New York State have recently admitted that their citizens just cannot afford to pay the energy bills their state has mandated in the absurd goal of eliminating everything but “renewables.”

And most importantly, Barack Obama will be sad.  This monstrous law was his baby.  He foisted it upon us and trillions of dollars were wasted in trying to fulfill the insane dream of powering the world on solar panels and windmills.  Hopefully this revocation will help revive this country and educate people about how a modern industrial civilization works.  It’s based on power density and not virtue signaling.  Boy, I can’t wait for summer to fire up the grill and broil some rib-eyes.  Man, those are good.

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 12FEB2026 – LOR OR VOR

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There are 3 basic strategies to get to the moon. Direct is the is the first, the ship/capsule takes off from Earth goes to the moon, lands and then some part of that capsule/ship takes off from the moon and returns to earth. Because you’re carrying LOTS of weight you don’t need at various points (e.g. the reentry shield on the capsule is dead weight as you land on the moon) the whole thing is VERY heavy. The rockets to do this are immense (e.g. the early NOVA concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_(NASA_rocket) later repurposed but never used for mars exploration). The other two alternatives are Earth Orbit Rendezvous (EOR) or Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR). In EOR, you go up to a waiting lunar specific lander board it and use it for the earth to moon trip land and return to your Earth/space vehicle. This is the Von Braun/2001 model. It’s one weakness is it usually requires in space refueling of your lunar transit/lander vehicle. This is kind of what I suspect the initial SpaceX model SEEMS to be headed for with a combination of Dragon Crew, Starship cargo/fuel ferry, and Lunar Starship for transit and landing. The Apollo (and current Artemis) use LOR, with Apollo sort of used a mixed model to keep the LEM as light as possible (for a great dramatiztion of this find episode 9 of From the Earth to the Moon, also good discussion of LOR vs EOR). I think SpaceX/Musk have realized lunar Starship is overkill for the task presented, thus making EOR more feasible. They also know Starship overall depends on refueling; if they can’t do that it is kind of game over for Starship for any purpose other than LEO delivery of cargo/ satellites.

Tom’s World – 11FEB2026 – Red Planet Blues

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Tom | Flickr

TomD

Getting to and from Mars is easy as long as you have Delta V. You need a velocity of approx. 7 mile/second to break earth orbit and around 20m/s to get to mars and more to match mars orbit. And that’s minimum energy, you’d probably want to double that at minimum to get the total ET down to something humans could handle.

I’ll leave it up to you to calculate the total energy requirement in joules or whatever to accelerate that much mass and fuel to a total Delta V of around 50-60 miles/second and how to do that with chemical reactions.

We got Voyager out of the solar system and up to 25-30 miles/second total energy but that’s when you have years to hop from planet to planet sling shotting around each to gain velocity.

Practical Mars will have to wait on fission at minimum or fusion and you still need reaction mass.

The moon is cool.

Back in the Apollo days of the early 70’s, I met a couple of students from U of Wisconsin on sabbatical traveling around the country and working odd jobs for cash. They were only here (Atlanta) for a couple of months before moving on and we got along save several heated debates on the Apollo program. It was their position that Apollo and all similar projects be immediately defunded until human perfection was achieved, though they didn’t state it in such stark terms, the implication was such had they the desire and ability to extrapolate. Even at the time I knew that was absurd and the purest fairyland fantasy because that condition would never be met and the net effect would be to condemn the planet to the darkness. It was my 1st exposure to hard-hard idealistic leftism. I had already left the Marine Corps but that train of thought and logic not common there then or now, I suspect.

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 10FEB2026 – The Lunar Option

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And now he should change his name to D. D. Harriman. I’ve also always felt the Moon was a better choice. Mostly because with basic chemical rockets, it’s 3-5 days away and there are LOTS of windows to reach it. Mars is 140+ days, and that window is only roughly every two years. If you have a small initial Mars colony, no matter how many ships you have and the Stuff hits the fan, you’re on your own for on average 18 months away from outside help. With Luna its 3-5 days depending on lunar phase and you may be able just to lifeboat back to earth orbit.

Looking the 140 day or so timeline is like the early Europe to American colonies distance from Europe and America had air and food and water. And yet we still had Roanoke and lost 1/2 of Plimouth Colony the first year. Luna lets you learn in a slightly harsher environment with at least some safety net. Mars really has to wait until there are constant thrust engines (be they Nuclear Thermal, Fission/fusion pulsed or straight up fusion) so we can have .01 or .1 g constant and not have to use Hohmann (minimal energy) orbits and have 14 or 4 day transits to Mars/ Nearly every thing Elon (pardon me Delos) had planned for Mars is useful on the moon and can be further refined for future Mars work.

Also, if we’re going to do this, it should be done as G*d, Von Braun and Arthur C. Clarke intended with an orbital station to fuel lunar Starship-like beasts and send them on to the moon. We need the infrastructure. Maybe not immediately but once we try to start moving large quantities back and forth. the division of labor would help.

Elon Musk Bows to the Scientific and Economic Wisdom of photog and Pivots to Luna City Goal

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Last June I wrote a post called Moon Mining in which I made a lot of hyperbolic statements about my future as a miner of precious metals on the Moon.  But in a more serious vein (no pun intended?) I said, “But seriously, I think there is a lot more likelihood of the Moon becoming economically useful to humans than Mars.  The difference in distance alone makes Mars almost impossibly difficult for manned flights.

The Moon on the other hand was reached more than fifty-five years ago by men whose technological capabilities were rudimentary compared to what we have at our disposal today.  Imagine what improvements modern computing power and automation could do to make reaching and working on the Moon safer and easier.”

And then there’s this post from last week, “It’s Shiny and New” where I talk about Luna City.

And here we are a few days later and this headline appears:

“In a reversal, SpaceX prioritizes ‘city’ on the moon over Mars project, Musk says”

In the article it says, “Elon Musk said on Sunday that SpaceX has shifted its focus to building a “self‑growing city” on the moon, which could be achieved in less than 10 years.

SpaceX still intends to start on Musk’s long-held ambition of a city on Mars within five to seven years, he wrote on his X social media platform, “but the overriding priority is securing the future of civilization and the Moon is faster.”

What else do I need to say.  Elon, there’s no shame in admitting you’re wrong when someone gently reminds you that wisdom is still a higher authority than Midas-like wealth.  Well, he’s still relatively young and there’s time for him to learn what’s really important, namely building Luna City and naming the main street Neil Armstrong Blvd.

Seriously, I was starting to doubt whether he wasn’t just blowing smoke with all the Mars mission talk.  That stuff is a generation away.  Building and maintaining a permanent Moon base is an achievable goal that will show us whether human habitation beyond the Earth is feasible and profitable.  If it isn’t it’s better to learn that from a place where retreat takes a couple of days rather than a year.  Trillions of dollars and, more importantly, lives would be saved.

So, get going Mr. Musk.  Sell the boys in Washington a plan to build something like a town on the Moon.  You’ll make a whole lot of money and you’ll spark the imagination of a generation of boys whose grandfathers thrilled to the Apollo landings.  Just make sure you do a good job on the accounting so it won’t come back to haunt you when the Democrats come back into power.  They’re a vindictive bunch and they love to punish people whom they hate and from everything I’ve read they hate you now even more than they hate people like me.  And that’s a whole lot of hate anyway you stack it.

I have to confess I’m actually kind of excited to hear this goal.  I think he can get this done.  I’m guessing Trump would like to have his name involved in it too.  That quite a combination.

Roger Penrose’s Book

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I’m reading a book called “Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe” by mathematical physicist Roger Penrose.  Penrose won the 2020 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on black holes so he’s a pretty big brain.  But so far, the whole book has been a sort of no mathematics discussion of entropy and how the existence of the second law of thermodynamics relates to the Big Bang theory.  We spent a whole chapter talking about mixing blue and red paint in a bucket becoming purple and then how an egg falling off a counter on the floor is basically an irreversible process.  So far, I guess I follow him on time being a one-way affair.  As far as the red shift of very distant galaxies proving the Big Bang theory, I’m waiting to see if he has something a little less mundane to say.

I’ve watched a few YouTube videos with Penrose as one of the speakers and I will say he comes across as a very lucid speaker (at least as far as Nobel laureates go).  I just hope by the end of this book it will live up to the title.  But already he said something that I found interesting.  He said that the estimates of the age of the universe are based on taking the expansion rate of the universe and back calculating how long it took to get to where we are now from an initial condition where the size of the universe was a single point.  At the same time, I see how that seems like a straight forward idea and also a ridiculous one.  So, the whole universe is a single point.  What in the hell does that mean?  I’ve read that the conception of the conditions at slightly after the Big Bang has a universe that is almost infinitely hot and at the same time completely devoid of matter.  So, everything is photons?  But somehow this spawned the universe we see around us today.  None of that makes any sense to me.

I’ll admit I have a tiny brain compared to these mathematical geniuses but I have to wonder if they know what the hell they’re talking about.  I can sort of believe in black holes and neutron stars and gravity waves.  The predictions that have been made in the past seemed to have been confirmed with instruments that have measured gravity waves associated with merging neutron stars.  The measurements and behaviors seem to match exactly the theoretical modeling.  But when it comes to the cosmological models and how they correlate with observations of the universe we see very large deviations and no convincing evidence for the patchwork fixes like dark energy and dark matter.  I think we’re waiting for a new generation of physicists that won’t just sit around spinning unprovable theories and instead actually figure out ways of getting additional data.

So come on Roger, give me something in the second half of this book that I can point to and say, “That’s an Extraordinary New View of the Universe!”

It’s Shiny and New

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So, it hasn’t snowed in a week and I’ve got a good four or five days to relax.  I guess, life is good.  The news kind of bores me at the moment.  The courts are going back and forth on the ICE arrests and the protest riots.  I guess it’ll take a while for that stuff to get sorted out.  I’ll let Trump get on with his work.  He doesn’t need my applause to do his job (I hope!).

So what else is going on?  Well, we’re sending a rocket around the Moon I hear.  They’re sending four astronauts and one of them is a girl.  Well, what can you do?  She can make sandwiches for the return trip, I guess.  I’m glad they’re planning missions to land on the Moon again.  I think the Moon is a better location for space missions than either the space station or Mars.  Mars is currently too far for our current capabilities to be attempted safely and effectively.  The space station doesn’t seem to be very interesting or useful.  A moonbase on the other hand has definite possibilities.  I think they can start by using robot equipment to transport lots of equipment to the lunar surface and then have a few manned missions to set up a permanent base.  Using unmanned flights to accumulate fuel before humans begin inhabiting a base would provide more of a safety factor.

As for what purpose the base would fulfill, I’d say it would be almost completely scientific experimentation.  Personally, I have a theory that somewhere below the surface of the Moon we’ll find bacterial life.  Specifically, it will be terrestrial life that reached the Moon as spores.  There is supposed to be frozen water on the Moon and below the surface there may be more moderate temperatures.  Of course, there is no atmosphere but I’ve got this feeling that somehow all the life on Earth must leak out into space over time.  Of course, Mars is a better place to look for wandering terrestrial micro-organisms.  But I want to put in my claim for Moon bugs early.  Maybe they’ll even name them after me; E. coli photogiensis.  But I think the Moon would also make a great location for astronomical observatories.  And in terms of the astronauts, having one sixth gravity on the Moon would be many times better for them than the micro-gravity of the space stations.

Finally, they could call the base Luna City.  Robert Heinlein based a number of his short stories and one of his best novels on the Moon (“The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”) I think Luna City is an excellent name.  Of course, when it gets big enough for a main street, that should be Neil Armstrong Boulevard.  Of course, it may turn out that living on the Moon isn’t healthy for humans.  If that’s the case we’ll know soon enough.  Then the Moon will be the domain of robots.  And since it’s so close that will someday happen.  It’s a very large rock that’s very close to Earth and eventually we’ll think of lots of things to do with it.  But right now, it’s shiny and new and waiting for us to walk on its surface again.  Maybe even girls.

Europan Trilobites

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I was watching a YouTube video about the material that a NASA probe brought back from an asteroid.  This asteroid apparently is in a near Earth orbit and so this mission was able to reach and return from this tiny world in just a few years with its cargo of sand and gravel.  By the look of the asteroid, it’s not even a solid piece of rock but a bunch of space junk that gravitated together out in the lonely stretches of interplanetary space.

But as unpromising as this locale seems to me, apparently, it was a bonanza for science.  This one kilometer flying gravel pit somehow contains an astonishing collection of organic molecules that hint shockingly about being the precursors or even the aftermath of life.  A slew of amino acids and even some precursors of the RNA molecule showed up in this sampler that NASA recovered.

Now, reading this I immediately began to question in my own mind whether these organic molecules started out on Earth and were ejected into space during one of the asteroid collisions that befall this planet every once in a great while.  After all, if rocks from Mars have ended up on Earth (as has been claimed by geologists) then surely debris from Earth could have contaminated nearby space and ended up on this neighboring rock.  But the writers of this report have information that dates this asteroid to very ancient times.  In fact, they claim it’s older than the planets and could possibly contain material from completely outside the solar system.  Well, who knows?  Despite assurances I think it’s fifty/fifty whether it’s originally terrestrial organic material they’re looking at.

But suppose it really is extraterrestrial in origin.  In that case, I think that eventually we will find that life existed on Mars in the past when it possessed abundant water.  In fact, it’s entirely possible that life exists cryptically below the surface of Mars at a depth where temperature is higher and reservoirs of water exist.  And if organic molecules are floating around the solar system, it seems likely that some of the larger Jovian and Saturnian moons with their liquid water oceans will also turn out to contain life.

Now here’s the thing.  I would make a small wager that when these life forms are found, they will be shown to have a relationship to terrestrial organisms.  I say this because I think they will be descendants of microorganisms that have managed to be ejected from Earth and drifted through the solar system until they reached environments that they could adapt to.

Of course, it’s possible that life on Earth also came from space.  Experimentation with hardy terrestrial lifeforms has shown that they can exist in the vacuum of interplanetary space for surprisingly long periods as spores.  I guess the interesting question is just how advanced is the life that we will find in the rest of the solar system.  There is a big difference between finding bacteria, algae, lichen or moss on Mars or a jellyfish swimming in the oceans of Titan as opposed to finding the xenomorph.  Well, I won’t be greedy.  I’ll split the difference.  I’ll settle for a Europan trilobite.

COVID Investigation

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We may be getting close to proving that the CIA and the US Health agencies were an important part of the COVID pandemic.

Ralph Baric, the world’s top coronavirus researcher, discussed “human adaptation” of coronaviruses with the CIA before Covid began

“Years before Sars-COV-2 emerged from China, Dr. Ralph Baric — a North Carolina virologist who worked closely with the Chinese lab that is the likely source of the virus — met with American spies to discuss the “human adaptation” of coronaviruses.

Emails released by Kentucky senator Rand Paul reveal the meetings, which again raise the question of whether American spies are protecting Baric and covering up their own possible role in risky Chinese lab work that likely caused Covid.

Now Paul is pushing the agencies for more documents that may finally offer an answer — nearly six years after Covid began.”

You might say, “Does it matter anymore?”  I think the answer is yes.

Now, let me be clear.  I doubt that anyone will go to prison.  I’m sure the spooks and their Democratic partners have scrubbed all the really damning documents and all that’s left is a trail of crumbs leading to Anthony Fauci.  But I still think that a Congressional Investigation report followed by a DOJ report naming as many names as possible would go a long way to vindicating all the suspicions we felt during the COVID scam.

The article stated, “Although Baric has publicly dodged making definitive statements on his view of Covid’s origins, the emails that Paul released show that Baric worried from the first that a lab leak might have been responsible.

In late January, he warned a secret American intelligence group of the risk of “accidental release,” noting that the Wuhan lab had worked on highly infectious coronaviruses in “BSL2 [Biosafety Level 2] conditions” — laboratories not designed to handle such transmissible viruses.”

Reading this article it’s utterly clear that Fauci was completely aware of the lab leak origin of COVID and that the Biden administration did everything in their power to suppress the truth about COVID’s origin and the culpability of American government agents (including the CIA) with the Wuhan disaster.

I hope that Rand Paul does his utmost to keep this investigation from being squelched.  Being a medical doctor he’s familiar with the scientific and medical facts about virology and the kinds of research that is normally performed as a part of vaccine production and can differentiate it from the malpractice that we saw with the “gain-of-function” modification of bat corona viruses.

I’m convinced that what was going on was the production of a bio-weapon by either the CIA or some other entity involved in Wuhan.  Luckily the weapon was a dud.  Probably the RNA vaccine that was created to counter it was more dangerous than the original COVID virus but what’s really important is that such research is going on in places like Wuhan and at the behest of the US federal government.  Whether you are comfortable with the idea of the CIA building bioweapons, it can’t be good policy for it to be going on in a third-rate laboratory under the control of the Chinese Communist party.

I don’t have high hopes for this investigation but in a better world, those responsible for this fiasco would be exposed to the light of day and then sent to prison for decades for what they’ve done.

Lost World

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The “Age of Mamdani” is upon New York City.  And anyone who frequently reads this site knows that I expect the bottom to drop out of the city in a way that will make the previous Democrat mayors’ terms look positively idyllic by comparison.

But as much as I indulge in seeming schadenfreude, it’s gallows humor.  New York City used to be a world-class city.  Even in its ruins there still exist some absolutely astonishing resources hidden among the squalor.

I’ll say something.  When I lived in New York my favorite indoor space was the American Museum of Natural History.  Ever since I was a kid barely old enough to walk I would wander around mesmerized by the dinosaurs and all the other creatures to be found in that magical place.

American Museum of Natural History, New York City, Sony NEX 5N, Sony 24mm F\1.8 APSC lens
American Museum of Natural History, New York City, Sony NEX 5N, Sony 24mm F\1.8 APSC lens
American Museum of Natural History, New York City, Sony NEX 5N, Sony 24mm F\1.8 APSC lens
American Museum of Natural History, New York City, Sony NEX 5N, Sony 24mm F\1.8 APSC lens

And almost as fascinating was the Hall of African Mammals.  With the huge exhibit of a small herd of African Elephants and the other monumental creatures like the rhinoceroses a small boy could be transported to another world.

American Museum of Natural History, New York City, Sony NEX 5N, Sony 24mm F\1.8 APSC lens
American Museum of Natural History, New York City, Sony NEX 5N, Sony 24mm F\1.8 APSC lens

But now this incomparable citadel of knowledge and wonder will be held hostage by people who hate the culture that produced it and made it into a legacy for all New Yorkers.  Already they removed the statue of Teddy Roosevelt that had stood for a century in front of the entrance.  Its motif with the “great white hunter” on horseback walking with the third world natives in their primitive costumes enraged the George Floyd crowd.  So it had to go.

Next thing you know some exhibit of primitive aborigines will outrage some woke group and that exhibit will be banned.

American Museum of Natural History, New York City, Sony NEX 5N, Sony 24mm F\1.8 APSC lens

And after that someone will decide that there just aren’t enough Palestinian exhibits or somewhere on a sign there is some vestigial reference to Christianity.  Probably someone will be triggered by a date still using B.C. or A.D. and more scrubbing will be needed or some other facet of third world life will need to be reinforced for the good of the public.

I guess I don’t anticipate dinosaurs becoming controversial but I guarantee something in the African exhibits will offend someone in the New York African American community and the wholesale purge will begin.

And when push comes to shove, I think I will feel worse about the loss of the American Museum of Natural History than about the whole rest of the city and its inhabitants put together.  I know that’s an awful thing to say.  But it’s true.  I guess murdering magic is a terrible thing to the little kid that’s still inside of me.