Climate
September 17, 2018 — John Hinderaker
The Science and Environmental Policy Project produces a weekly newsletter on climate-related subjects, The Week That Was. I highly recommend subscribing to TWTW as the easiest way to keep abreast of climate news. This week’s edition begins, not for the first time, with a famous quotation from Richard Feynman, one of the greatest of 20th Century scientists: It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart
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September 13, 2018 — Steven Hayward
• As has already been noted here in the latest Green Weenie Award, the climatistas are all spun up to say that Hurricane Florence proves that catastrophic climate change is upon us and that we need to hand over our car keys to Al Gore right now. If you pay attention to extreme weather trends, you’ll know that the period between Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and last year saw no
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September 12, 2018 — John Hinderaker
I am a week late with this one, but that probably is OK because more likely than not, you missed it too. A week ago, it was reported that President Trump was naming Princeton atomic physicist William Happer to the National Security Council as senior director for emerging technologies. CNN, at the link, performed the expected hit job: William Happer, a Princeton atomic physicist and prominent skeptic questioning whether humans
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September 12, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Competition for Power Line’s Green Weenie Award this week is the most intense it has ever been. This week the climatistas are holding a climate hootenanny in San Francisco call the “Global Climate Action Summit,” whose carbon footprint remains unstated as of the moment. And in the same week that Gov. Jerry Brown, the summit’s host, signed into law a King Canute-style bill requiring California to get 100 percent of
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August 11, 2018 — John Hinderaker
The Corrections section of today’s New York Times includes this howler: FRONT PAGE An article on Friday about rising global temperatures described incorrectly an aspect of the average temperature for the United States between May and July. While that temperature, 70.9 degrees Fahrenheit, was 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit above average, it was incorrect to describe it as “almost 5 percent above average” because Fahrenheit temperatures are not absolute quantities and therefore
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July 21, 2018 — Steven Hayward
It’s not just here in California and New York that climate change lawsuits are being dismissed. Over in Britain a similar lawsuit has just been dismissed: Environmental campaigners lose High Court battle over carbon target Environmental campaigners have lost their High Court challenge against the Government over its policy for tackling climate change. Charity Plan B Earth brought legal action against the Government’s stance on the 2050 carbon target, set under
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July 19, 2018 — Steven Hayward
We reported here last month that a California lawsuit brought against major oil companies for their role in climate change was dismissed by a federal judge, and a different federal judge has today dismissed a similar suit brought by the city of New York. The judge, John Keenan, a Reagan appointee, ruled on similar grounds, namely, that climate change is not an issue suitable for remedy through litigation: The court
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July 11, 2018 — Steven Hayward
So this is rich—Nature magazine is editorializing against “bullying” in the scientific community. It seems there’s a problem with bullies (and sexual harassers) at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, which gave rise to this chin-stroker: No Place for Bullies in Science Picture the scene: You are an enthusiastic young scientist, with, you think, the world at your feet. You have an exciting offer to join a world-leading research institute
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July 5, 2018 — Steven Hayward
As we’ve pointed out here many times, developing nations that need a lot of cheap, abundant energy have resisted the demands of the climatistas that they agree to be poor forever, or subsist on the equivalent of an energy starvation diet, which is what some obscure UN forecasts actually assume. But developing countries are usually willing to go along with international charades so long as they are given wealth transfers
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June 25, 2018 — Steven Hayward
We’ve reported here previously on the frivolous lawsuits the climatistas brought in California courts against major oil companies, and especially how California cities claimed imminent harm from climate change while telling prospective bond buyers that they couldn’t estimate possible future risks from climate change. In any case, late today Federal district court judge William Alsop—a Bill Clinton appointee—dismissed the lawsuits with a strongly-worded opinion that is quite clear about how
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June 11, 2018 — Steven Hayward
One of the ideas floating around from time to time about how to deal with prospective catastrophic climate change from greenhouse gas emissions is “air capture,” which is exactly what it sounds like: extracting carbon dioxide from ambient air, and therefore reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere. There have been some small-scale technological demonstration projects, but the technology has appeared difficult to scale up because of high cost and very
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June 6, 2018 — Steven Hayward
It seems my Wall Street Journal article referenced yesterday, “Climate Change Has Run Its Course,” has upset the climatistas. It was the second-most read article in yesterday’s WSJ, generating, at latest count, nearly 1,400 comments. It blew up Twitter. The biggest revelation from the climatistas who expressed their dismay on Twitter is that apparently the epithet “climate denier” isn’t sufficient to demonize anyone who dissents from climate orthodoxy. Perhaps because
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June 5, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Those of you with subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal may enjoy my op-ed appearing this morning on “Climate Change Has Run Its Course,” which is causing indigestion amongst the climatistas. It’s already up to more than 600 comments, which is rather a lot before I’ve even finished my second cup of coffee out here on the Left Coast. As the article is behind the Journal‘s robust paywall, I’ll summarize
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June 3, 2018 — John Hinderaker
Liberals often claim to be proponents of evidence-based policy, but when it comes to climate change, that formula has been reversed. This is from the Science and Environmental Policy Project’s The Week That Was: Australian Don Aitkin, former Chairman of Australia’s National Capital Authority and former Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Canberra, comments on “The unfolding saga of Peter Ridd.” Professor Ridd is a “well-published academic whose fields
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May 25, 2018 — John Hinderaker
For eight years, Barack Obama’s EPA coordinated constantly with left-wing groups, in particular climate alarmists. One of his EPA administrators, Lisa Jackson, used an email address in her dog’s name to communicate with these groups, off the books. As far as I can recall, this never bothered the Associated Press. But now that we have a Republican administration, and an EPA administrator who takes a more skeptical view of global
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May 13, 2018 — Steven Hayward
As I’ve pointed out many times before, a large part of the international climate change racket is the way in which it can be turned into just another way of effecting a wealth transfer from wealthy nations to the poorer developing nations of the world, even though most foreign aid often turns developing nations into corrupt kleptocracies. Most developing nations are increasing their use of oil and building coal-fired power plants
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May 8, 2018 — Steven Hayward
I don’t think I will be venturing into spoiler territory if I point out that the galactic villain of The Avengers: Infinity Wars, whose name is Thanos (close to or perhaps derived from the ancient Greek word thanatos, for rule of death), is a Paul Ehrlich-style Malthusian. In the movie Thanos expresses his ruthless determination to reduce the population of the entire universe dramatically because of “scarce resources.” What a
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