Finally, Part I or our Grand Finale podcast (Part II to come today, along with @is_OwenLewis explaining the Eternal Promise of Fusion). Then @robert_zubrin makes the case for nuclear power:
None of this is paywalled, so enjoy. Behind the paywall, we've set up forums to debate this propositions--they're the posts marked "PROPOSITION," with a debate logo. The winner will receive a Grand Prize, and it will be *very grand indeed.* claireberlinski.substack.com
If you haven't yet subscribed to the Cosmopolitan Globalist, please do. That way we can keep publishing things like this debate.
(What happened to 8 and 9? I'm not sure. Did I miscount?)
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
I should stress that I don't disparage the effort to learn as much as one can about virology, or complex human conflicts. To the contrary. There is, however, a specifically modern personality who drives me berserk: Someone who isn't humbled by what he doesn't know.
e.g., people who venture bold new theses in virology without grasping that never having so much as looked at an organic chemistry textbook probably forms an impediment to their ability to improve on the consensus view.
I have nothing against autodidacts, and arguments from authority are fallacious. But people who don't realize they're not yet in possession of the tools they need fruitfully to add to the store of human knowledge--but who insist upon trying anyway--really are a public menace.
Okay, I think I'm figuring this out. The cool resides in split-second micro-expressions that are dissonant from the body-language, overall. Let me show you what I mean. I'll present them first without commentary. Look first at this, A on the left, B on right.
And @robert_zubrin makes the extended case for nuclear in our essay of the day, and it's a humdinger:
"Per unit of energy, there is no safer source. Nuclear power is not only safer by far than fossil fuels—even excluding the claim that fossil fuels will wipe out the human race—but safer than wind, safer than hydropower, and safer than solar."
"Well, maybe the thing that just leveled San Francisco was an earthquake, or maybe it was a nuclear bomb. What difference would it make? There's nothing left here but a smoking crater, anyway."
Come on. Depending on the scenario, the implications are *massively* different.
If this leaked from a lab, and if this can be demonstrated even to a preponderance-of-evidence standard, it demonstrates that we must urgently prioritize the creation of a global biosecurity regime, one organized around laboratory safety.
There should be one anyway. But if he's right, and if the world were widely to understand that the pandemic emerged from a laboratory mishap of the kind Wade describes, there would be overwhelming public pressure on governments everywhere:
This is true, and as @hlshaken said, the implications of this for our society are devastating and go far beyond this. If we now undergo some kind of Kuhnian Revolution and reevaluate our understanding of the pandemic's origins,
everyone who was involved in trying to obfuscate or delay the issues has some serious explaining to do. At least to him or herself. There's only so much pressure we can put on our institutions before they collapse, and we can't have much by way of a modern liberal democracy--
if collapse in scientific probity and journalistic integrity (or at least diligence) completely collapses.
I did not finish this, and it seems it was a bit too technical to interest anyone, but man, it is in the technical parts that the interest lies, and again, if there's a #virologist out there who can rebut this, I am very eager to hear why this is wrong.
Wade writes: "of all known SARS-related beta-coronaviruses, only SARS2 possesses a furin cleavage site. All the other viruses have their S2 unit cleaved at a different site and by a different mechanism." True? False?
He then writes, "A string of amino acids like that of the furin cleavage site is much more likely to be acquired all together through a quite different process known as recombination." This seems to me alas very likely to be true.