Climate
January 14, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Given that half of the Power Line team resides in Minnesota, fergawdsake, where 24 degrees this time of year qualifies as balmy, kudos to Jimmy Kimmel for assembling these truly ridiculous clips of LA TV newswers bloviating hysterically about how cold it is because it’s only getting up to 50 degrees in LA right now in the daytime, and down to as little as 34 degrees at night: Really, is
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January 14, 2013 — Steven Hayward
The steady, relentless collapse of the climate campaign proceeds apace, notwithstanding the sugar high climate campaigners enjoyed after Hurricane Sandy and Obama’s re-election. Obama promises that a price on carbon is a main objective of his second term, but given that it is an Obama promise, climate campaigners should understand they’ve just been given the kiss of death. The media is slowly starting to give up on the whole game.
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January 8, 2013 — John Hinderaker
You’ve certainly seen the news stories trumpeting data from the National Climatic Data Center purporting to show that 2012 was the warmest year on record in the continental United States. This AP story, to note just one example, is headlined “US roasts to hottest year on record by landslide.” And news reports invariably try to link this claim with human-induced global warming, even though the U.S. represents only 2% of
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January 7, 2013 — Steven Hayward
So far most of the critical discussion about Chuck Hagel for SecDef is that he said mean things about homosexuals, or is hostile to Israel, if not in fact anti-Semitic. So far I’m curious that people on the Left in particular are forgetting Hagel’s key role in derailing the egregious Kyoto Protocol in its infancy. He was the key person behind the “Byrd-Hagel” resolution in the Senate in 1997 denouncing
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January 5, 2013 — John Hinderaker
At the journal Earth System Dynamics, M. Beenstock, Y. Reingewertz, and N. Paldor have published a paper titled “Polynomial cointegration tests of anthropogenic impact on global warming” which Anthony Watts describes as a potential bombshell. The authors conducted an exhaustive statistical analysis of data from 1850 through 2007, applying the technique of cointegration, which the authors describe as follows: Cointegration theory is based on the simple notion that time series
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January 3, 2013 — Steven Hayward
America’s tax system wasn’t the only thing that went over a cliff at midnight on December 31. The Kyoto Protocol on climate change—the treaty I’ve called the most feckless and unserious act of international diplomacy since the Kellogg-Briand Pact—expired on December 31. Despite all the best efforts of the worst people, there was no 11th hour rescue, no climate “grand bargain,” and not even a tax increase on the top
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December 26, 2012 — Steven Hayward
In the course of doing some background research for yesterday’s decision on the winner of the first annual Power Line Green Weenie of the Year Award, I discovered that the fun people at DeSmogBlog—the folks who “broke” the story of the Heartland Institute back in February that actually turned out to be about Peter Gleick’s theft of Heartland documents—have compiled a “global warming disinformation database” of the leading “deniers”—a veritable
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December 23, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Michael Mann is the climate scientist who invented the now-notorious “hockey stick” graph, which purported to show unprecedented warming in the 20th century. The hockey stick has come and gone, but Mann lives on as one of the principal figures in the world of climate alarmism. Currently, climate realists have gone to court to try to obtain email communications that Mann, who teaches at Penn State, authored as a public
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December 19, 2012 — Steven Hayward
John reported here the other day about the leaked portion of the forthcoming report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which admits the possible role of cosmic radiation in cloud formation. This may be the first time the IPCC has acknowledged this as a possible factor, even though the hypothesis has been around for more than 20 years. But the big ball game all along in climate science
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December 17, 2012 — Steven Hayward
While analysts will argue for a long time what effect Hurricane Sandy had on the outcome of the election (some people think it tipped the close race to Obama), a question not getting enough attention is whether Sandy was a hurricane at all when it made landfall. The answer, it turns out, may depend more on insurance regulation than science. The question is additionally important because hurricane warnings were never
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December 14, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Global warming hysteria has been driven largely by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has issued four politically-driven and, in crucial ways, inconsistent reports. The IPCC is now working on report number five, and the current draft has been leaked. It contains a bombshell that may or may not survive in the final product; but in the meantime, the cat is out of the bag. This is
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December 10, 2012 — Steven Hayward
Did no one at the UN think that a meeting in Doha might bring up unfavorable comparisons to Homer Simpson’s favorite exclamation? Both John and I have raked this farce over the coals, but it’s always worth doing more. Benny Peiser of the Global Warming Policy Foundation rounds up the dour media conclusions. Like Reuters: [Headline] Despair after climate conference, but U.N. still offers hope At the end of another
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December 9, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Steve Hayward has done an admirable job of covering (i.e., ridiculing) the latest United Nations climate hysteria-fest in Doha, Qatar. The global warming phenomenon is all about money–Al Gore making off with a hundred million dollars, hundreds of scientists who are willing to abandon the scientific method raking in many billions in government funding, poor nations demanding vast amounts of money to “compensate” them for the world’s allegedly warming climate.
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December 9, 2012 — Steven Hayward
The latest UN climate change meeting has followed the predictable script laid out here a week ago: the meeting had to go into overtime to “save” the talks from collapse. I especially like reading the weenie-friendly UK Guardian‘s coverage of these meetings, because their attempt at earnest coverage ironically underscores what a complete farce the whole thing is. From the latest dispatch: Poor countries have won historic recognition of the plight
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December 3, 2012 — Steven Hayward
The annual UN Climate Change farce circus conference is meeting again right now over in Doha, and once again all the talk is about how the talks are on the “brink of collapse,” but once again you can be sure that an 11th hour agreement will be reached that promises to save the planet, but in reality just means we’ll all keep meeting because. . . well, what else do
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December 2, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Well, it wasn’t exactly a headline, but it did get reported by the Science and Environmental Policy Project. It happened in Doha, Qatar, where the latest global warming gabfest is taking place: On Monday, November 26, the 18th annual Conference of Parties (COP 18) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) opened in Doha, Qatar, for a two-week session to try to reach an agreement for the
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November 28, 2012 — Steven Hayward
Lefties try to change the subject when you point out that in the war on terror, President Dronestrike’s policies—though not his rhetoric—represent a continuation or extension of the policies of George W. Bush. (I wonder if Obama will renew his pledge to close Guantanamo at the beginning of his second term?) But there’s another area where Obama has come round to the Bush approach: climate policy. Yesterday Obama signed a
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