Climate
August 9, 2023 — Steven Hayward
There are hundreds of jargon-filled academic articles published every day, and as such are not worth noting. But once in a while a special effort at ideological academic babble deserves notice when it is indistinguishable from parody. Such is this article from Ethnos, an anthropological journal, published yesterday: That Which They Will Not See: Climate Denial as a Vector of Epistemological Crisis in the Contemporary United States Susannah Crockford, University
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August 8, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Now that snow ski season is finally over in California, everyone will get back to surfing, and will be shooting the curl instead of shredding the bumps while exclaiming “cowabunga!” Which brings me once again to climate change and Hunga-Tonga, the volcano that erupted to spectacularly in the South Pacific last year. In my latest column for The-Pipeline about the climatista hysteria over summer heat, I referenced several recent studies
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August 5, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Along with “The oceans are boiling!” the latest global warming hysteria relates to fire tornadoes: A massive fire burning across both California and Nevada is generating extreme fire behavior, spawning “fire whirls” and creating dangerous conditions for firefighters, authorities said. *** The blaze is among dozens of wildfires burning around the country as some areas swelter under unrelenting heat – including one fire raging on both sides of the US-Canadian
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July 30, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Here is our “climate envoy” John Kerry, explaining that since agriculture—food production in general—is responsible for as much as 33 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, agriculture “has to change.” Frequent private jet passenger, John Kerry, admits that destruction of the farming industry is essential to achieving 'Net Zero': "Agriculture contributes about 33% of all the emissions of the world. And we can’t get to net zero—we don’t get this job
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July 30, 2023 — John Hinderaker
One of the climate alarmists’ most intractable problems is the disproportion between the problems their models forecast and the solutions they propose. That is, if you believe the models, there is no remotely plausible course of action we can follow that makes a perceptible difference. So our impoverishment is pointless. The hero of the Senate, John Kennedy, made this point while questioning Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk. The exchange occurred
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July 27, 2023 — Steven Hayward
They story arc of the climatistas goes as follows: It started out as “global warming” in the 1980s. But that term was abandoned in favor of “climate change,” since it enabled the climate campaign to account for inconvenient things like cold weather. (Aside: initially not everyone was on board with “climate change.” I distinctly recall Robert F. Kennedy Jr. calling “climate change” “the deceptive language of anti-environmentalism” about 20 years
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July 24, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Last Saturday’s TWiP included this sensible t-shirt suggestion: There have been several videos of fed-up motorists dragging Just Stop Oil protestors who block roadways, but today someone decided to punk the Just Stop Oil nuts at one of their own meetings. Enjoy: Just Stop Oil gets a taste of their own medicine. Counter activists tie rape alarms to balloons and let them go in a Just Stop Oil meeting. pic.twitter.com/GbyI8CPj09
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July 18, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Every summer we are now treated to “Shark Week” on one of the cable channels, just in time for our beach vacations. And we’re also now treated to “Thermageddon Week” by the climatistas. Every summer it seems someone discovers that it gets hot. “How hot is it?” (as the crowd would ask Johnny Carson). Always the same answer: Record heat! Climate change. Thermageddon is upon us! These headlines are not
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July 16, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Those were the topics for my appearance last night on Sky News Australia’s excellent Outsiders program, as I continued my effort to explain the inexplicable to Aussies. Note the frequent Power Line plugs:
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July 15, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Our pal Ken Green, currently conducting our Power Line University short course based on his new book, The Plague of Models: How Computer Modeling Corrupted Environmental, Health and Safety Regulations, had the genius idea to ask ChatGPT to write a 750-word essay based only on the prompt, “Write 750 words about the limitations of mathematical climate models.” The result was a lucid and cogent summary of the problems with climate
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July 14, 2023 — Scott Johnson
My vocabulary of opprobrium is insufficient to do justice to Biden administration climate czar John Kerry. There is no leftist bromide he can’t spout with suffocating self-regard. He emits hot air in quantities sufficient to warm the planet. We remain proud of our small role in saving the planet from a Kerry presidency in 2004. Yesterday Kerry testified before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Accountability. C-SPAN has
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July 2, 2023 — Elizabeth Stauffer
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released a report on Friday about a relatively new technology called solar radiation modification that could be used in the fight against climate change. According to the report, SRM is a form of “geoengineering” that “offers the possibility of cooling the planet significantly on a timescale of a few years.” The University of Oxford defines “geoengineering” as “the deliberate large-scale intervention
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June 26, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Most DC-based trade associations end up becoming advocates for the administrative state within their sector or individual member companies (the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is a prime example of a “pro-business” group going native inside the Beltway), so it is good to see a trade association bluntly push back against the conventional wisdom. Let’s start with the nitwit who runs the United Nations: The U.S. Oil and Gas Association decided
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June 20, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Every day we see new predictions of doom due to “climate change.” Of course, we are pretty well inured to such prophecies since we have lived with them for decades and they haven’t come true. All of the current climate hysteria is based not on observation of actual temperatures, which are benign, but on projections from models that are generated by people who make a living by scaring other people
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June 20, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Turns out the world’s energy consumers aren’t the only people the climatistas are bullying. From the Financial Times: Female delegates at UN climate talks allege they were bullied, abused and sexually harassed by male negotiators, casting a deeper shadow over this year’s COP28 summit. Delegates at the UN talks in Bonn this month told the Financial Times of several instances where female delegates faced intimidation or harassment from male counterparts,
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June 16, 2023 — Steven Hayward
There are a number of lawsuits in various states of play around the country with plaintiffs, typically kids fronting for environmental groups, demanding that a judge issue an injunction to curtail fossil fuels (or find energy companies liable for climate change damages), but a parallel case hit the wall at the DC Circuit Court of Appeals today. In Maine Lobstermen’s Association v. National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the court reviewed
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June 10, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Paul Driessen has an excellent piece at Watts Up With That? He discusses the pernicious “sue and settle” practice that left-wing activists and government agencies are pursuing, and argues for venuing climate-related litigation in the federal courts. But I want to focus on his comments on the environmental evils of “green” technologies: he litigants and courts will also encounter the bitter reality that the “fundamental transformation” they so earnestly seek
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