Climate
September 21, 2017 — Steven Hayward
Further to my item here Wednesday on the new Nature Geoscience article that admits the climate models have been “running hot” for more than a decade (about which the usual climatistas are unsurprisingly silent), Dr. Roy Spencer weighs in with this comment on his website: I’m still trying to process my feelings about how the two authors, Myles Allen and Michael Grubb, might have been allowed to wander so far
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September 19, 2017 — John Hinderaker
Liberals want us to turn control of our economy over to them, not because their stewardship has been successful in the past–heh–but because if we don’t, the Earth faces imminent climate catastrophe in the form of global warming. Some (e.g., liberal reporters) accept such claims uncritically, while the rest of us want to see evidence. In this debate, there are two types of evidence. The first is the raw material
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September 19, 2017 — Steven Hayward
The climatistas really are a fun and lovable bunch to watch. Also pathetic. They are victims of their own doomsday scenarios of inexorably rising greenhouse gas levels and the parade of horribles soon to follow. The Paris Accord, even if fully implemented, will barely slow any future warming accord to the standard climate orthodoxy (better known as “The Consensus”). That’s why the former NASA chief climatista James Hansen called the
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September 11, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Our Florida hurricane correspondent provides this brief update from Fort Myers and Cape Coral: Irma passed very slightly to the east of Fort Myers, which was actually worse for the city, since it saw nothing but eyewall for several hours instead of getting a respite in the eye. Still there is little major damage – uprooted trees, a few houses damaged by falling trees, localized flooding, signs damaged or knocked
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September 10, 2017 — John Hinderaker
The coincidence of hurricanes Harvey and Irma striking in rapid succession has naturally caused global warming hysterics to react hysterically. As usual, Ken Haapala of the Science and Environmental Policy Project contributes a dose of common sense and scientific knowledge: Last week’s TWTW discussed Hurricane Harvey, which ended a lull of almost 12 years without a major hurricane making landfall in the US. A major Hurricane being defined as category
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September 9, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Last night a faithful Power Line reader answered Steve’s call for reports on dealing with Hurricane Irma. This report was current as of 8:30 p.m. (Eastern) yesterday evening: You asked for news from Southern Florida readers. I’m on the southern coast of Cape Coral, Florida. Cape Coral is on the landward side of Sanibel and Captiva Islands, and is just to the west of Fort Myers. More saliently, it is
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September 8, 2017 — Steven Hayward
It’s a good thing for the climatistas that this extraordinary hurricane season has come along to provide more signs and wonders to point to as proof that the world will be four degrees hotter a century from now unless we give over our car keys to Al Gore, because one of their previous favorite talking points—that climate change caused the Syrian civil war—has gone poof. From the University of Sussex
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September 8, 2017 — Steven Hayward
We still don’t know the exact track Hurricane Irma will take, but most forecasts have it coming close to a direct hit on Miami or nearby environs. There has been talk over the years of what a Cat 5 hurricane strike on Miami might do, mostly because the Miami area has built up so much since the last time it received a direct hit almost 90 years ago, when the
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August 28, 2017 — Steven Hayward
I’m sure if only President Trump had kept America in the Paris Climate Accord Hurricane Harvey would have blown back out to sea or not been as severe. That’s just about how the climatistas are predictably reacting to the flooding and devastation in Houston. Once again we have Roy Spencer on the case. While the media is rushing to make “unpredecented” the most overused word in their vocabulary, Prof. Roy
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August 25, 2017 — Steven Hayward
Ten years ago, after An Inconvenient Truth appeared, I produced my own 48-minute video lecture on what’s wrong with Al Gore’s account of the whole matter, which I called An Inconvenient Truth—Or Convenient Fiction? (It’s still up on YouTube, along with a short update I did one year later, but both are way out of date now, so I don’t especially recommend them.) I just haven’t got it in me to suffer
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August 20, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Al Gore has been prophesying our imminent doom for lo, these many years. Starring Al Gore, the 2007 Davis Guggenheim documentary An Inconvenient Truth pulled down an Academy Award from the industry whose stars and executives must rank among the chief contributors to our death by anthropogenic warming. The film played perfectly into the eve of destruction mood that our arbiters of taste promote so ardently during Republican administrations. Roger
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August 17, 2017 — Steven Hayward
I sometimes like to muse that nearly all the trouble and confusion of the modern era comes from the obfuscations of nomenclature. Actually I think I heard George Carlin explains this first, but it goes something like this: it used to be swamps were for draining, until we started calling them wetlands, and now they are sacred—and don’t you are even think of draining a wetland! We used to throw
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August 17, 2017 — Steven Hayward
Almost ten years ago, not long after Al Gore’s first entry into the slasher/horror film genre (An Inconvenient Truth), I had occasion to ask a straight-shooting “mainstream” climate scientist I know slightly what he thought of Gore’s film. I was fishing to see whether he’d comment on some of the more obvious howlers that Gore included in the film, but instead after a long pause he said, “I wish he’d
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August 14, 2017 — John Hinderaker
Dr. Judith Curry is one of the leading realist voices in the climate science community, even though she has now moved on from what she considers a hopelessly politicized field. This 12-minute interview is a good introduction to some (by no means all) of the reasons why global warming alarmism is wrong, and why politics has badly compromised, if not completely ruined, a nascent scientific discipline. Again, this is an
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August 8, 2017 — Steven Hayward
One of my guilty pleasures is the silly Sharknado “movies,” so naturally I had to take in Sharknado 5 (“Make America Bait Again!”) on Saturday night. Seriously, just how did this movie series get green-lit by any movie production company in the first place? I’d love to hear a recording of the original pitch. “Yeah, we’re going to make a movie starring a washed-up lead from Beverly Hills 90210 where he
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August 2, 2017 — Steven Hayward
There are lots of reasons to be skeptical of our headlong rush to legalize recreational use of marijuana, especially the increased potency of marijuana products in recent years (this is not your hippie father’s weed!), to new research that it has serious effects on cognitive functions, and possible real psychological harm. But what’s the real reason people are having second thoughts about marijuana legalization? It’s not compatible with energy efficiency!
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August 2, 2017 — Steven Hayward
David Victor of UC San Diego, who was one of the authors of the important PNAS paper we recently highlighted that debunked the renewable power fantasies of David Jacobson, appears today in Nature with an article pointing out the farce of the Paris Climate Accord: Wishful thinking and bravado are eclipsing reality. Countries in the European Union are struggling to increase energy efficiency and renewable power to the levels that
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