Climate
October 5, 2024 — John Hinderaker
In Memories of Hurricane Katrina, I contrasted press coverage and Democratic Party hysteria over Hurricane Katrina, which effectively destroyed George W. Bush’s second term and contributed to the Democrats’ 2006 election victories, with the muted (if not altogether silent) reaction to Hurricane Helene and the vastly more problematic governmental response thereto. It is a theme worth returning to. On CNN, Scott Jennings makes the point effectively: Joe Biden was at
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September 27, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Hurricane Helene has been tremendously destructive, mostly, I believe, on account of flooding. Areas as far from the coast as Asheville, North Carolina, are seeing what is described as a 1,000-year flood. Why is Helene depositing so much water across several Southeastern states? One possibility is Hunga Tonga, the underwater volcano eruption of early 2022 that shot something like 100 million tons of water vapor into the air. Some sources
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September 23, 2024 — Steven Hayward
The Washington Post has published a possibly major story about how climate scientists have recreated the earth’s temperature record for the last 485 million years. Paleoclimatology, as it is called, is based on a wide range of ingenious “proxy” measures (fossil records, ice core samples, geology, astrophysics, etc) to estimate temperatures in the distant past up to the present. How solid are these measurements? I have no idea, and I
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August 18, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Our government, and a number of other Western governments, are committed to a goal of “net zero.” That is, our countries will add nothing further to the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. Any emissions of CO2 (e.g., breathing) will be balanced by absorption of CO2 by, e.g., plants. Various dates are specified in these aspirational statements, none of them realistic. And of course, the world’s main sources of atmospheric
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July 25, 2024 — Steven Hayward
As a follow up to my post last night with the video of my Breakthrough Dialogues presentation last night, I thought I might as well post up my complete text, about half of which I had to leave out of my talk for time reasons, and most especially the point I make at the very end, which I wasn’t able even to hint at in my summary talk. Remarks
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July 18, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Here’s your Feel Good Story of the Day: Just Stop Oil co-founder Roger Hallam is jailed for five years and four other activists for four years over plots to block the M25 motorway Five Just Stop Oil protesters, including one of its co-founders, have been jailed for conspiring to organise protests that blocked the M25 motorway. Roger Hallam, an environmental activist who was one of the founding members of the
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July 2, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Remember how we’ve been told for years now that climate change, and hence rising sea levels, were an imminent threat to islands and island nations around the world? Well, the New York Times reported a few days ago, oops: The Vanishing Islands That Failed to Vanish [W]hen the world began paying attention to global warming decades ago, these islands, which form atop coral reefs in clusters called atolls, were quickly
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June 23, 2024 — John Hinderaker
I know, the competition is stiff. But this is definitely a contender: Six climate protesters stormed the 18th green while the leaders were lining up their putts for the final hole of regulation at the PGA Tour’s Travelers Championship on Sunday, delaying the finish for about five minutes. The protesters came from all directions around the green and waved smoke bombs that left white and red residue on the putting
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June 19, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Time for a periodic reminder from P.J. O’Rourke that “At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child — miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats.” Today’s news brings fresh evidence of this, as a pair of climate cultists defaced the Stonehenge monument in England. (I admit to being a little confused by this gesture, since returning us all
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June 10, 2024 — Steven Hayward
We’ve often cited the work of Roger Pielke, Jr. of the University of Colorado, whose science Substack, The Honest Broker, is essential reading. What you should know about Roger (whom I know quite well) is that he is a centrist-liberal Democrat, believes climate change is a genuine future risk, and supports a carbon tax and other measures to fight it. But he also calls bull—- on a lot of climate
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June 9, 2024 — John Hinderaker
As Steve noted earlier, today’s elections to the European Parliament were a disaster for the Left and a triumph for the Right (the “far right” in European parlance). And as Steve said, the Greens were hardest hit. The consequences could be far-reaching. This article in the Telegraph preceded but predicted the conservative victory. It focuses on the consequences for Europe’s climate policies: “Rise of the Right threatens EU net zero
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June 3, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Not much, actually. A number of arguments relevant to the global warming debate are raging, and generally, the realists–as opposed to the hysterics–are winning. There simply isn’t a sound scientific basis for the claim that CO2 threatens our civilization (not that liberals like our civilization, but that is another matter). A good example of how the global warming debate is going comes from Watts Up With That?, where Andy May
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May 26, 2024 — John Hinderaker
This CBS News report from 1982 features a mini-rogues gallery: Dan Rather and Al Gore. It gives a crude account of the greenhouse effect, without mentioning that the greenhouse effect makes life on Earth possible. It is a relatively early version of the false predictions we have been seeing for close to 50 years now: 1982 CBS News report—featuring a 34 year old Al Gore—predicts the "widespread disruption of agriculture",
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May 21, 2024 — John Hinderaker
The Biden Administration is determined to limit America’s production of fossil fuels, of which we have the largest supply in the world. This will transition us from a position of energy independence, and potentially energy dominance, into a position of subservience to the Chinese Communist Party, on which we will depend for the vast quantities of materials that are needed for wind turbines, solar panels and batteries–which we will not
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April 30, 2024 — Steven Hayward
It turns out that Dan Rather isn’t the only beneficiary of revisionist documentaries and feature films that pervert the truth. I somehow missed it, but two years ago a British drama attempted to reverse the narrative of the famous “climategate” scandal of 2009, when a trove of internal emails from the tight-knit circle of scientists clustered around East Anglia University in the UK revealed some serious weaknesses of the standard
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April 26, 2024 — John Hinderaker
There is no doubt about the fact that various gases have a “greenhouse” effect. They trap radiation leaving the Earth’s surface, thus warming the atmosphere. The chief greenhouse gas, by a wide margin, is water vapor. Carbon dioxide and methane are two more minor greenhouse gases. We owe these substances everything: without the greenhouse effect, there would be no life on Earth. The fact that some gases absorb radiation that
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April 18, 2024 — Steven Hayward
As I have been half-joking for months now, it must be discouraging for the climatistas to turn out to block a road, deface a museum, or commit some other nihilistic act, only to find the pro-Hamas protestors got up earlier and beat you to the bridge or the airport. That will teach the climatistas to sleep in! So the climatistas have had to step up their game, in today’s case,
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