Climate
September 23, 2019 — John Hinderaker
There is something uniquely fatuous about holding demonstrations against the weather. On Friday, children world-wide played hooky tried to save the planet by marching. Save it from what? From its imminent demise due to “climate change.” Here in Minnesota, our friends Kyle Hooten and Christian Schlaefer interviewed demonstrators at St. Olaf College for The College Fix. The conversation was on a high scientific plane. “Hey hey, ho ho! Climate change
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September 21, 2019 — John Hinderaker
This twelve-minute video by Tony Heller of Real Climate Science, released just yesterday, does a great job of exposing the deceptive use of data on which climate alarmism depends. Heller begins with the National Climate Assessment that recently went out to journalists and policymakers. It included a set of charts and graphs that superficially seemed to support the claim that we are experiencing alarming changes in the Earth’s climate, as
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September 18, 2019 — Steven Hayward
I gather this Friday there is going to be a climate jamboree at the United Nations, and I know what you’re thinking: bor-ing. Yes, indeed. It’s not even worth filling out a Climate Doomsday bingo card with hits on “only 12 years left,” “climate crisis/emergency,” “the ice is melting,” etc. I may or may not have more to say about it depending on whether there is some original stupidity to
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September 9, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
I believe that all of the leading Democratic candidates for president have endorsed a carbon tax. Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren did so during CNN’s town hall on climate change last week. Down a tier or two, Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg endorsed it, as well. Bernie Sanders has endorsed a carbon tax in the past. The carbon tax was a bridge too far for Hillary Clinton during the 2016
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September 6, 2019 — John Hinderaker
This paper by John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center and Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and the Alabama State Climatologist, is highly interesting. Christy describes work that he and Dick McNider have done to check the accuracy of the climate models that are the source of frenzy over global warming. His technical analysis is clear and comprehensible, but for now
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September 6, 2019 — Scott Johnson
It used to be that those who peddled apocalypse sporting their placards in the service of some cult on a flyblown city corner were an object of amusement. One could compile a book of cartoons with variations on the theme. Now the theme has become Democratic Party orthodoxy. The Democratic presidential candidates must all bow before it, as they did earlier this week in the course of CNN’s “climate change
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September 5, 2019 — John Hinderaker
Last night the Democratic presidential candidates and CNN held a “town hall” on climate change. I saw somewhere that it was scheduled to last for seven hours. Is that possible? One wonders what ratings it got–even lower than CNN’s usual dismal totals, I suspect. Of course, it probably took seven hours for the candidates to list all the things they intend to ban. Our friends at Grabien put together this
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September 1, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Back in May I wrote here about the newest celebrity among the climatistas, the Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg who was adorning the cover of Time magazine, giving TED talks, appearing at the World Economic Forum, and, soon, speaking at UN climate change summit of some kind. This, after sailing across the Atlantic to get to New York to avoid the carbon footprint of a plane flight, never mind that she
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August 31, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Overnight Hurricane Dorian took a right turn and now appears headed up the Florida coastline, with the eye possibly making landfall now on Tuesday in Georgia or South Carolina. The eyewall may stay far enough offshore to maintain most of its strength, yet be close enough to the Florida coastline to do considerable storm damage all the way up. Stay tuned for updates, and certain Power Line readers I know
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August 30, 2019 — Steven Hayward
News item: CNN’s ratings for its “town hall” meetings with Democratic candidates are in the tank. CNN’s town hall featuring 2020 Democratic presidential candidates Montana Gov. Steve Bullock and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Sunday night registered just 402,000 total viewers, including 82,000 in the coveted 25-54 demographic, according to early Nielsen Media Research. The Bullock-de Blasio event marked an all-time ratings low for town hall events on
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August 28, 2019 — John Hinderaker
One of the problems in assessing global climate is that the surface temperature record is terrible. There are very few weather stations world-wide, and fewer all the time. Seventy per cent of the world is ocean, and therefore hard or impossible to measure accurately. Most temperatures that go into calculations of a global average are not even measured: they are interpolated, assumed temperatures based on records at other stations. Even
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August 27, 2019 — John Hinderaker
It isn’t entirely a fraud–there are indeed fires in the vicinity of the Amazon rain forest. But the hysteria that has been induced by those fires, which occur every year at this time, is ridiculous. Wildly exaggerated claims have been repeated uncritically in the press, and celebrity ignoramuses and politicians have avidly circulated photos of pretty much every forest fire that has occurred anywhere in the world over the last
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August 26, 2019 — Steven Hayward
“Fire in the minds of men” is a phrase from Dostoyevsky’s great novel about revolutionary madness, The Possessed, and certainly it appears the climatistas are possessed by a panic that proceeds from their monomania. Once again last night I saw a segment on one of the network news broadcasts about how the Amazon “rain forest”—the “lungs of the earth,” don’t you know!—are burning up! With a record area on fire! There
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August 24, 2019 — John Hinderaker
Some years ago, Dr. Tim Ball wrote that climate scientist Michael Mann “belongs in the state pen, not Penn State.” At issue was Mann’s famous “hockey stick” graph that purported to show a sudden and unprecedented 20th century warming trend. The hockey stick featured prominently in the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (2001), but has since been shown to be wrong. The question, in my view, is whether it was an
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August 22, 2019 — John Hinderaker
Three stories in today’s news–none of them the type of story I would normally write about–illustrate a common theme. The first is from Britain, where eco-crusaders Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are being accused of hypocrisy for repeatedly zipping back and forth to Nice on a private jet. Meanwhile, Prince William booked his family on a £73 commercial flight to Scotland, in what is viewed as a rebuke of his
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August 21, 2019 — John Hinderaker
This story is a few days old, but worth noting nevertheless. This account is from the Science and Environmental Policy Project’s The Week That Was: Solar physicist Nir Shaviv reluctantly granted science journalist Doron Levin an interview, although Shaviv was skeptical that it would be published. A similar interview to a reporter for Bloomberg was reject by its editorial board. Leven assured Shaviv that Forbes would publish the interview online.
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August 18, 2019 — John Hinderaker
Steve wrote on Thursday about Nature magazine publishing a blacklist of prominent global warming realists. Steve and I were both happy to be on the list. Others have responded in various ways. Australia’s Joanne Nova created this hilarious parody of the cover of Nature, “The International Journal of Fashions In Science.” Click to enlarge: Lord Monckton, on the other hand, is not amused. He has written to various parties threatening
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