Science v Freedom

Friday, December 5, 2025

Some years ago I told a friend that was very high on EVs that he could have my (multiple) V-8’s when he “could pry them from my cold, dead hands.”  Growing up in Indianapolis, IN – the center of the motorsports universe – my affection for the internal combustion engine runs deep.  It is about more than speed  it is about wrenches.  Today’s IC engines with their heavy computerization are bad enough, but at least you can still customize, power-add, tweak and fiddle.  With an EV, no such luck – they are a black box.  So it is with great joy that I note the news that the Trump administration has rescinded the ridiculous CAFE standards the Biden administration attempted to put into place and the Senate has voted to block California’s attempt to outlaw IC engine powered auto sales.

Those of us that lived through the implementation of the first CAFE standards can testify to how they took the fun out of motoring for years.  The muscle car, the ultimate dream of guys like me, disappeared altogether.  Cars became grossly underpowered and therefore grew small and uncomfortable.  Getting on the freeway became a life-challenging experience as getting up to highway speeds took forever.  The SUV was born as the first were on a truck chassis and therefore operated under a different set of rules, allowing power.  Moms that once flocked to the station wagon now found themselves driving SUVs.  Fortunately, technology eventually solved a lot of the problems and power came back to cars – hence all that computerization I complained about above.  Unsatisfied, the Biden administration threatened to steal all the fun from cars yet again, leaving us little option but to join the soulless EV crowd.  Thank goodness for the Trump administration.

And all of this comes as a major science “OOPS!” is announced:

Leading scientific journal Nature has retracted a 2024 study published that predicted climate change would wreak havoc on the global economy, prompting apocalyptic headlines from mainstream media outlets.

The irony is so, so rich.  “Climate change” would wreak economic calamity all while the government created artificial automotive marketplaces that threatened general market health?  Claims such as were made by that paper were absurd on their face, given the “solutions” proposed.  It is good to see reality take a grip once again.

In the wake of this announcement, David Strom took to HotAir to examine the degradation of science the paper represents.  As I read through his piece I recalled my 1989 visit to the Soviet Union.  I was a part of a scientific delegation and therefore listened to a lot of speeches wherein the superiority of Soviet science was declared.  It should be remembered that communism was “sold” as the scientific society – designed scientifically, controlled scientifically and simply scientifically superior.  And then along came Chernobyl wherein politics compromised science and well, the results were disastrous to say the least.  Science had been and always will be subject to human frailty.

That’s why the marketplace has to win.  That’s why these moves by the Trump administration make sense, even if the are “bad” for the climate (a highly debatable contention in its own right.)  There are a lot of ways to deal with “climate change.”  People do not want to do so by sitting in little electric boxes powered and driven by computers.

Finally, government is getting with the program.