“If you won’t play my way, I’m going to take my ball and go home!” One expects such behavior from 7-year-olds. Not from grownups. But that’s the behavior of 60 scientists, journalists, politicians, activists, and others who signed an open letter published in the (dependably sympathetic) Guardian Sunday saying, “we will no longer debate those who deny that human-caused climate change is real.” Why didn’t they just come right out and say, “Nya-nya-nya-nya-nya!” But they offer some … [Read more...]
These Are the Ten Most Polluted Cities in the World—Really?
Environmental scientist and activist James Conca, writing in Forbes, reports on a study by an organization called Eco Experts that these are the world's 10 most polluted cities: I knew the instant I saw Paris and Los Angeles as numbers 9 and 10 that there must be something terribly wrong with the methodology of whatever “study” lay behind these “findings.” When I went to the source, I found this and instantly knew what was wrong: There are two big problems here: (1) limiting the … [Read more...]
Does the San Francisco Jury Verdict against Monsanto Spell Doom for Roundup?
Now that jurors in a San Francisco court have awarded a man $289 million in damages in his lawsuit against Monsanto (and its parent company Bayer) claiming that his exposure to Monsanto's Roundup weedkiller gave him cancer, some people wonder whether the Cornwall Alliance will reverse its view that Roundup (the brand name for the active ingredient glyphosate) is not a carcinogen. The answer: No. The reason: Because the case provides no convincing evidence that glyphosate causes … [Read more...]
Are Western Wildfires Driven by Global Warming—Manmade or Otherwise?
The news media have made the number and intensity of wildfires in western states this summer a household topic: as of August 14, there were hundreds of them, and of major ones, 17 were burning in Alaska, 11 in Arizona, 10 each in Oregon and Colorado, and 9 in California. The media and many environmentalists blame them on global warming. The numbers sound bad to people not studied in the field, but in actuality they're not unusual. In fact, the number of fires has been decreasing since the … [Read more...]
YouTube Is Fighting against Scientific Inquiry and the Expansion of Human Knowledge
This article was co-authored by E. Calvin Beisner. Curiously, the mainstream media seem to have ignored the story, but it’s an important one. Buzzfeed reported August 7 that “YouTube Is Fighting Back Against Climate Misinformation.” As of July 9, “YouTube is now adding fact checks to videos that question climate change … as a part of its ongoing effort to combat the rampant misinformation and conspiratorial fodder on its platform.” But neither YouTube nor Wikipedia, the source … [Read more...]
Import Tariffs: Good, Bad, or a Mixed Bag?
A friend wrote me today asking what I thought about President Donald Trump's recent steps to impose new or higher tariffs on some imports. He appreciated my response, so I thought readers here might appreciate it as well. The justification of import tariffs as protecting domestic employment is an age-old fallacy rooted in what Frederic Bastiat called the problem of the things that are seen and the things that are not seen. Imports threaten domestic employment only if the total cost of the … [Read more...]
Cornwall Alliance Statement on EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s Resignation
On July 5, President Donald Trump announced the resignation of Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt. The Cornwall Alliance was pleased to support Mr. Pruitt’s nomination in 2017, and we have valued his service to the American people since then. He has brought to the EPA, which in past years frequently overstretched the statutory limits of its authority, a strong commitment to our Constitutional order. Mr. Pruitt has honored the separation of powers and worked … [Read more...]
How Do Hard Data and Computer Climate Models’ Dire Predictions Compare?
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman explained “the key to science” this way: In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is … [Read more...]
Defending Scott Pruitt from Scurrilous Journalists and Politicians
Last year, the Cornwall Alliance produced an open letter supporting Scott Pruitt's nomination to become EPA Administrator. We rested our judgment on the facts that As Oklahoma Attorney General Pruitt had demonstrated his legal expertise in successful litigation to require corporations—including the energy corporations so prominent in his state’s economy—to abide by environmental laws and regulations. He had publicly expressed his conviction that the EPA’s role is not to create law through … [Read more...]
History 1, Hansen 0
In 1988, James Hansen confidently predicted that the world would be about 1 degree Celsius warmer today than it was then. Actually, he offered three scenarios: A, "business as usual," with rapidly rising carbon dioxide emissions, which would bring that 1 degree; B, "most plausible," with emissions remaining constant at 1988 levels, which would make the world 0.7 degree warmer today; and C, with emissions rising from 1988 to 2000 and then stabilizing, which would make the world about 0.3 … [Read more...]
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