Climate
October 1, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Hurricane Ian is moving up the Atlantic seaboard and apparently passing into history. It was tremendously destructive as it hit the Gulf coast of Florida, and Democrats didn’t even wait for the hurricane to make landfall before politicizing it. Democrats hope Ian will bring down, or at least put a chink in the armor of, the heretofore invincible Ron DeSantis. But I am confused: didn’t we learn during Katrina that
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September 9, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Collin Anderson reports at the Washington Free Beacon that, in his capacity as President Biden’s climate prince, “John Kerry Has Flown More Than 180,000 Miles, Emitting 9.5 Million Pounds of Carbon.” Although Kerry’s air travel supposedly endangers the future of humanity, Kerry is in the air to save the world from the “existential crisis” of climate change caused by carbon emissions. Collin cruelly quotes Kerry: “If you offset your carbon,
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August 25, 2022 — Steven Hayward
This classic format edition features a conversation between me and Alex Trembath, the deputy director of Breakthrough Institute, about the climate provisions of the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” (IRA), namely the massive increases in subsidies for “green energy” that normally summon a gag reflex from conservatives. I’ve written about the “Breakthroughvians,” as they are known, many times before on Power Line. They are progressives who dissent from or critique much of today’s progressive orthodoxy,
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August 25, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Our pal Mackubin Owens, emeritus professor at the Naval War College, posted a link to our report here yesterday on “What Climate Crisis?” But here’s what Facebook did: This as an odd claim, as the post merely reported on the new group in Europe and quoted what they said. Once upon a time this kind of thing was called “news.” But such is the extent of enforced orthodoxy on climate
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August 23, 2022 — Steven Hayward
A new group called Climate Intelligence (Clintel for short) has been founded in the Netherlands with the express purpose of combating the extremism of the climate change campaigners. One of their early efforts is a statement, signed by 1,100 scientists and policy experts from around the world, that argues “There Is No Climate Emergency.” This link goes to the complete PDF, but the summary of their case is worth noting
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August 16, 2022 — Steven Hayward
When I made a government-sponsored junket to Germany in 2008 to tour their ambitious energy and environmental plans, every expert and government official our delegation met said the same thing: to have any chance of making Germany’s ambitious carbon-emissions reduction targets, they’d have to keep their nuclear power plants, despite the determination of the previous Social Democrats to phase them out. It seemed possible that Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrat-led coalition
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August 15, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Democrats quickly gave up on the Inflation Reduction Act, since they couldn’t sell the idea that another $700+ billion in deficit spending would somehow reduce inflation. So now it is alleged to be a climate control act, instead. But the bill won’t affect the climate any more than it would have reduced inflation. Even if you assume the UN’s inflated estimate of the impact of CO2 emissions on global warming,
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August 9, 2022 — Steven Hayward
I’ve discovered a wonderful energy data tool, ElectricityMaps.com, that offers interactive real-time and historical maps of electricity production and consumption around the world (insofar as data exist, which it doesn’t for China and other key places). Check it out for yourself. I want to draw a contrast between “green energy” Germany and France as of this morning (though use the time-slide in the lower left hand corner of the site
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July 28, 2022 — Steven Hayward
One of my failings and regrets is not getting to know Pat Michaels better. Pat’s passing about 10 days ago, at the too early age of 72, ago shocked his many friends. I met him several times and knew his work, and we once had a long and very convivial evening together in a New York bar about 15 years back. But I didn’t keep up with him as I
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July 22, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Steve has mentioned the brief heat wave that brought unprecedented high temperatures to much of England, and elsewhere in Northwestern Europe. The heat wave didn’t last long–the high today in London was 79 degrees–but it prompted an outpouring of global warming hysteria. I was reminded of visiting London around 27 years ago, in April. Then, too, the city was in the midst of an unprecedented heat wave–in April! With temperatures
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July 21, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The Biden administration tells us that we are in the midst of a rapid transition from fossil fuels to wind and solar energy, and Pete Buttigieg says he can’t understand why so many Americans haven’t gotten on the bandwagon. This author reminds us of what the Biden administration seems to have forgotten, but many Americans understand: [W]ithout fossil fuel, nothing separates us from the pre-modern era. For 99% of the
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July 21, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The presidency of Joe Biden has brought on a series of emergencies since the first day of his administration: the erasure of our southern border and a horde of illegal immigrants. Historic levels of inflation. The suppression of our homegrown energy production. The demoralization of the armed forces. New lows in gender dysphoria and the culture wars. All this in 18 months and we’ve only just begun. Yet Biden rattles
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July 20, 2022 — Scott Johnson
I believe in the climate, but I am a climate apocalypse denier. Do the apocalypse believers really believe? The politicians make me wonder. They don’t appear to live their lives one bit differently than the rest of us — except insofar as they do so on a far greater scale of indulgence and luxury than we can imagine. The apocalypse believers are living out something like the state of mind
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July 3, 2022 — John Hinderaker
It isn’t just the U.S.: around the world “green” fanatics are destroying livelihoods and dragging down standards of living. This instance comes from the Netherlands: “Dutch farmers protest livestock cuts to curb nitrogen.” In one of their largest-ever demonstrations, the farmers demanded the scrapping of recently announced plans by the Hague-based government, which could see a 30 percent reduction in livestock. The Netherlands, the world’s second-largest agricultural exporter… I was
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June 30, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Liberals are gnashing their teeth over today’s decision by the Supreme Court in West Virginia v. EPA, in which the Court found that Congress has not delegated to the EPA power to reduce CO2 emissions by rearranging the country’s electricity producing system. The case, and the Left’s reaction to it, have several interesting features. First, the Court has erected a barrier, at least in this instance, against the seemingly inexorable
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June 30, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Can the left amp up the hysteria past 11 to 12 or 13? The Supreme Court ruled against the EPA this morning in a 6-3 decision written by Chief Justice Roberts. The case is West Virginia v. EPA. Politico offers this brief summary: The Supreme Court dealt a major blow to President Joe Biden’s climate strategy, ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency has only limited authority to regulate carbon dioxide
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June 29, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Each summer, whenever there is a heat wave, we are likely to see headlines touting the weather as evidence of global warming. But what do the data actually look like if you take a historical perspective? This Watts Up With That post provides a good overview of U.S. heat wave data. Here are some of the charts. This is from the EPA, the U.S. Annual Heat Wave Index from 1895-2020:
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