Climate
June 16, 2013 — John Hinderaker
There is a certain irony in the fact that statists are trying to get people riled up about global warming. History’s warm eras–Roman times, the Medieval Warm Period, and the current warm cycle that follows the Little Ice Age–have been good times for humans and for the vast majority of animals. It is cold periods that we should dread, which is why the statists’ first choice, back in the 1970s,
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June 16, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Let’s review the climate diplomacy story so far. The elephant in the room at the UN negotiations has always been China, India, and other developing nations who have steadfastly refused to agree to future limits on their use of affordable hydrocarbon energy, which they rightly see as the path to becoming fully middle class nations as we and Europe did. The Chinese told Al Gore in Kyoto in 1997 when
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June 12, 2013 — Steven Hayward
The latest chapter in our climate change endgame series comes courtesy of the New York Times, which struggled mightily on Sunday to cope with the inconvenient news that temperatures have been flat for more than a decade now. In “What To Make of a Warming Plateau,” Times reporter Justin Gillis leads with the most compelling scientific argument yet: “luck.” As unlikely as this may sound, we have lucked out in
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June 11, 2013 — Steven Hayward
John observed here a couple days ago about the rapidly collapsing case for catastrophic global warming, and courtesy of the NoTricksZone, we can take in one of the most devastating and comprehensive critiques of the standard alarmist model by Prof. Murry Salby, who is a climate scientist at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and author of the textbook Physics of the Atmosphere and Climate, published by Cambridge University Press (last
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June 8, 2013 — John Hinderaker
The curtain is coming down rapidly on global warming alarmism, as evidence of the AGW theory’s falsity accumulates on nearly a daily basis. Of course, the global warming machine grinds on, like a dead frog whose legs are still kicking. My 10th grade daughter had her last day of school yesterday. A teacher gave her a sheet of instructions on how to lead a “green,” low-carbon summer. The sheet included
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June 7, 2013 — Steven Hayward
There are two items of interest in the otherwise dreary and repetitive world of climate change in the last few days—one about causation, and the other about potential remedy (if necessary). Let’s take the “remedy” item first, which can be summarized with the image of giving the oceans a really really big Alka Seltzer tablet. Some background: I’ve always been ambivalent about the idea of “geoengineering,” or what is sometimes
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June 6, 2013 — Steven Hayward
In its desperation the climate campaign resorted to calling climate skeptics “denialists” for quite a while now, with some going so far as to make an explicit comparison with holocaust deniers, just in case anyone didn’t get the point. Well, who are the “denialists” now? Our friends at CFACT (Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow) are on hand this week at the latest round of UN climate talks in Bonn. What?—you
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May 30, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Day after day comes more news of the gradual collapse of the climate campaign. Between the embarrassing lack of continued warming and the reckoning with the unsustainably (heh) high cost of renewable energy to displace hydrocarbon energy, you can hear politicians slowly backing away from the whole scene, especially over in Europe. Yesterday, for example, Tim Yeo, one of the leading advocates of climate action in the UK, took a
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May 27, 2013 — John Hinderaker
The answer to that question apparently is No, although you may need to be a statistician to fully appreciate Doug Keenan’s explanation. You don’t need any expertise in statistics, however, to follow the entertaining story of how the British government has bobbed and weaved in response to the Parliamentary Question, “whether they consider a rise in global temperature of 0.8 degrees Celsius since 1880 to be significant.” The important news
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May 27, 2013 — Steven Hayward
It is well worth the ten minutes or so it takes to read this American Thinker post by Norman Rogers from a couple of weeks ago that reviews the work of Roy Spencer, John Christy, and others on the question of climate sensitivity, which we have covered here several times in the past. And while this review of the devastating findings of Spencer and company, and how the climate establishment
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May 23, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Leaders of the 27 European Union countries met yesterday to discuss energy issues. The meeting, as described by AFP, represents a turning point in European energy policy. Europe’s leaders are ready to join the shale oil and gas revolution to avoid being left behind economically: EU leaders agreed Wednesday to face up to the challenge posed by the shale oil and gas revolution which has slashed US energy prices, undercutting
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May 21, 2013 — Steven Hayward
The news broadcasts of the Oklahoma tornado disaster that I saw last night and this morning were thankfully free of speculation that this tornado is proof of—wait for it—global warming, and therefore one more reason to hand over control of our energy sector to environmentalists. I am certain this will come from the usual people starting today, but for now, note the New York Times’ Andrew Revkin discounting the thesis:
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May 11, 2013 — John Hinderaker
2013 featured the winter that wouldn’t end. Here in Minneapolis, the snow has finally melted and leaves are starting to come out on the trees. Farther north, though, the lakes are still largely frozen. This weekend is the opening of Minnesota’s fishing season, one of the most important dates on the calendar. But it’s hard to go after those walleyes when you’re dodging ice on the lake. The Minneapolis Star
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May 4, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Alarmists have been quick to blame weather extremes of all kinds on global warming. The claim that “climate change” is responsible for extreme weather events has been repeated countless times. But what can the alarmists make of the fact that weather, here in the U.S., at least, is the least extreme in history? Currently, there are fewer tornadoes in the U.S. than ever. This chart, created by Harold Brooks of
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May 2, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Ben Boychuk of City Journal California (and the fine InfiniteMonkeys blog) has been after me for a while to write for its pages now that I’ve been foolish enough to move back to the less-than-golden state, but I’ve been too busy to oblige. But when he pointed me to the latest nonsense from the climate capos about how California’s wine industry was imperiled, I had to swing into action. The result
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April 28, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Carbon dioxide does influence the Earth’s climate, but it is just one variable among a great many, and its impact is small. Scientists agree that if you double the CO2 in the atmosphere, it will cause an increase in the Earth’s temperature of around one degree Celsius. Nearly all scientists also agree that an increase of that magnitude would be good, not bad, for humans. The minor role played by
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April 26, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Just in time for the Weekly Winston comes the fabulous news that the Bank of England has decided to put Churchill on the five-pound note. Now, can we please put Reagan on the twenty, or something? Speaking of Winnie, who according to legend (surely apocryphal) was the inspiration for A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh, loyal Power Line reader RS sends along this adaptation of Milne to remind us of why
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