Climate
June 24, 2019 — John Hinderaker
The Science and Environmental Policy Project is one of the best sources of information on the climate debate. Its The Week That Was is a great way to stay current on developments. This week, along with much else, Ken Haapala, President of SEPP, addresses the fiendishly complicated, and still not understood, role of clouds: One of the disturbing characteristics of many politicians, “experts” on climate science, and even established scientific
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June 21, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Tomorrow marks the 50th anniversary of one of the iconic moments of modern environmental history—the infamous Cuyahoga River fire in Cleveland. Things were so bad, the legend goes, that rivers were catching fire! But most of what you think you know about that story is incomplete or inaccurate, argues Jonathan H. Adler, the Johan Verheij Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. In a now-famous article,
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June 19, 2019 — Steven Hayward
“The Empty Radicalism of the Climate Apocalypse” is the title of an article in the latest issue of the National Academies of Science journal Issues in Science and Technology by my very smart and sensible progressive (not always an oxymoron!) pal Ted Nordhaus of the Breakthrough Institute. While Ted agrees with the standard or “consensus” view of climate change risk, that’s about all he agrees with the climatistas about. That’s
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June 15, 2019 — John Hinderaker
One of the things that make climate science interesting is that it is in its infancy. It is a Wild West era in which hardly anything is settled, and just about everything is up for grabs. I wrote here about the fact that the impact of water vapor, CO2 and other greenhouse gases on global temperatures is logarithmic, which means that their effect declines rapidly as concentrations increase. That is
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June 12, 2019 — John Hinderaker
One of the many problems with the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming theory–now disguised under the anodyne title of “climate change,” which includes both drought and floods, among other things–is that the impact of a greenhouse gas like CO2 on the Earth’s temperature is logarithmic. That is to say, the effect is largest with the first molecules of CO2, and diminishes as the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere grows. The
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June 8, 2019 — John Hinderaker
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the fact that Lake Superior and other Great Lakes were nearing record high levels this year. Which was bad, of course–flooding and so on. Was it due to climate change? Perhaps. But just a few years ago–in 2013–the Great Lakes were low. That, too, was bad, and as the headlines linked in my prior post indicate, that definitely was due to climate
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June 6, 2019 — John Hinderaker
One of the contemporary Left’s more annoying traits is its insistence on labeling those who disagree with leftist dogma as “anti-science.” This from the people who apparently don’t know about X and Y chromosomes. Or maybe they think an X can “identify” as a Y, and vice versa. Climate hysteria is, of course, the arena where “anti-science” accusations are thrown around most promiscuously. At the same time, advocates of Catastrophic
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June 4, 2019 — John Hinderaker
That is the deep question asked by the New York Times: The glaciers are melting, the coral reefs are dying, Miami Beach is slowly going under. Quick, says a voice in your head, go see them before they disappear! You are evil, says another voice. For you are hastening their destruction. To a lot of people who like to travel, these are morally bewildering times. Because travel emits CO2! Of
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May 25, 2019 — Steven Hayward
This claim is so stupid that I can’t even give it one of our coveted Green Weenie Awards: Racial Resentment May Be Fueling Climate Denial After Barack Obama took office, white Americans were less likely to see climate change as a serious problem, according to a recent paper published in the journal Environmental Politics. The study further finds evidence of a link between racial resentment and climate change denial. This is
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May 22, 2019 — John Hinderaker
I’m so old, I can remember when global warming caused droughts. Or, put another way, climate change was making the Earth–in particular, the Great Lakes–drier. Thus, as I noted here: National Geographic: “Climate Change and Variability Drive Low Water Levels on the Great Lakes.” The National Resources Defense Council: “Climate change is lowering Great Lakes water levels.” It’s no secret that, partially due to climate change, the water levels in
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May 12, 2019 — John Hinderaker
That is the conclusion of a study reported on at Watts Up With That?. Experimenters used middle-school children in North Carolina to try to influence their parents to believe in climate change hysteria: The collective action that is required to mitigate and adapt to climate change is extremely difficult to achieve, largely due to socio-ideological biases that perpetuate polarization over climate change. Also due to the fact that the arguments
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May 6, 2019 — John Hinderaker
One of the several problems with the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming theory is that it rests on data that are bad, and in some instances essentially fabricated. This video from the Clear Energy Alliance is a good introduction to the issue, although it doesn’t cover some of the most egregious abuses. Bad data give rise to bad policies:
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May 5, 2019 — John Hinderaker
You might think that after decades of wrong predictions, global warming alarmists would back off and try to make their claims more realistic. But you would be wrong. The Science and Environmental Policy Project explains: [E]fforts by politicians to control carbon dioxide emissions, based on climate model projections / predictions, require models that well describe the greenhouse effect that is occurring now, and how it may change with increasing carbon
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April 28, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Having gone to the trouble of selecting a Grand Champion Carbonator of 2019 for his Earth Week Challenge, Iowahawk deserves all the attention he can get for the work performed. It can’t have been easy to have found such a deserving winner among all the contenders. Hats off to the British actress Emma Thompson. Dame Emma Thompson, for her 5,400 mile private jet joyride to London to join the Extinction
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April 26, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Back when I was writing a book with Joel Schwartz on conventional air pollution around 2005, we were struck how the media everywhere covered the issue with a reverse Lake Woebegone effect: our local area has “some of the worst” air pollution in the whole country! Of course, even without looking at the actual data, this is obviously nonsense—if everywhere has “some of the worst” air pollution, then nowhere is
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April 25, 2019 — Steven Hayward
It is long past time to revisit the Green Nude Eel, or whatever fantasy the climatistas have in mind. My pal Ben Zycher has a comprehensive analysis of it out this week from AEI, The Green New Deal: Economics and Policy Analytics. Ben is a superb quantitative analyst of these matters, to which he adds a refreshing and blunt directness in his conclusions: The GND’s central premise is that such
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April 19, 2019 — Steven Hayward
I’m fond of referring to the climate campaigners as the “climatistas” because they remind me of the Sandinistas and their fellow-traveling fans back in the 1980s. But someone writing as “Will” over at The Medium has done me one better in calling attention to how the climate change fanatics resemble nothing so much as a full-blown religious cult. Read the whole thing, but here are the ten signs and his
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