Just a brief note to recommend the reading of Tim Worstall's Chasing Rainbows: How the Green Agenda Defeats Its Aims. For fullest enjoyment, understand from the start that you must imagine its whole text being said aloud by an Englishman in a tone riddled with sarcasm. Think of Fawlty Towers or some such. Worstall, a Fellow of the Adam Smith Institute, is an economist and businessman. His "Introduction" actually teaches some basic economic principles, such as comparative advantage and the … [Read more...]
Should Government Take Steps to Curb Acquisitiveness?
Recently when I posted an item to Facebook that applauded America's growing economy under President Donald Trump, a friend challenged the notion that economic growth is a good thing. He and I have discussed the subject various times. He thinks that for countries already as wealthy as the United States growth is bad because it entails depleting resources and doesn't actually enhance human well being or happiness. I have responded to both ideas in my chapter refuting the idea that "Capitalism Is … [Read more...]
Pope Francis Is Wrong. Climate Craziness, Not Climate Change, Threatens to ‘Destroy Civilization’
At a conference at the Vatican Saturday, Pope Francis told oil executives "climate change" could "destroy civilization." The Pope's warning ensues from his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si', in which he called climate change "a global problem with grave implications" and "one of the principal challenges facing humanity." He warned that it would most gravely impact the poor, many of whom "live in areas particularly affected by phenomena related to warming, and their means of subsistence are largely … [Read more...]
Ah, the Complexities of Liberal Environmentalism!
Laugh? Scream? Cry? What's the proper reaction to a letter from liberal Democratic Senators Charles Schumer (NY), Maria Cantwell (WA), Ed Markey (MA), and Robert Menendez (NJ) to President Donald Trump decrying the harm rising gasoline prices does to American families. (It's always about the family, you know! Whatever a "family" might be.) All four Senators have supported raising federal taxes on gasoline as a way to fight global warming by reducing consumption. The tax increase would, of … [Read more...]
Keeping People in the Dark is Easy—Just Keep Them in the Dark
It's long been clear that electricity, by putting enormous power at the fingertips of billions of ordinary people, has been crucial to their conquest of poverty. Just now, though, a short article by energy journalist Robert Bryce turned a new light on for me: Electricity is crucial to keeping people free, too. Why? Because information and its rapid, unrestricted sharing feed freedom. And electricity facilitates that rapid sharing of information---through telephones, radio, television, the … [Read more...]
An Unlikely Ally for Scientists who Question Climate Alarmism
The "closest thing to a celebrity scientist in Seattle" is what the Seattle Times calls Cliff Mass, "a meteorologist who specializes in weather prediction and modeling," according to his faculty bio at the University of Washington's College of the Environment. Mass, a Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at UW, wrote The Weather of the Pacific Northwest—one of the best-selling books from the University of Washington Press. He firmly believes that Earth has been warming for about the last 130 years, … [Read more...]
Why Climate Doomsday Won’t Happen This Summer
As we head into another summer, the clarion call for climate action from environmentalists is expected to grow louder. But are we really at the tipping point of a global climate catastrophe? Not all environmentalists are worried about the climate doomsday. In fact, even amongst the climate scientists, there is no clear consensus regarding the possibility of a climate state that would cause global catastrophe. Nevertheless, the mainstream media have been pushing the climate agenda on full … [Read more...]
What Is Man, that We Are Mindful of Him?
The Associated Press's report today on the continuing volcano eruption on Kilauea, the main island of Hawaii, which has destroyed hundreds of homes, included the sentence, “Those who live or vacation in the area were mourning the loss of popular tide-pools where kids enjoyed swimming," which got me thinking: If, as they do, natural processes routinely replace one habitat with another, why is it, as so many environmentalists think, wrong for humans to do so? Is it because humans aren’t … [Read more...]
Flaky forecasts of certain climate disaster
Weather observing 160 miles above the Arctic Circle leaves a lasting impression. In the beginning of my atmospheric science career, I observed weather for a season at an isolated military outpost on Alaska’s west coast. Although snow fell on July 5, the temperature in the summer of 1977 later reached 70 degrees Fahrenheit on two days. More typically, the Arctic air was quite cool and the sky cloudy. Rain and mist were frequent. Since then, my decades of work in meteorology have been within … [Read more...]
No More Secret Science, Needs No More Secret Economics
Controversial Administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Scott Pruitt, said in a press release on April 24th that: “The era of secret science at [the] EPA is coming to an end.” This is in the context of him signing a proposed rule to strengthen the science used in regulations issued by EPA. This is also in the context of Executive Order 13777 (issued in March 2017) which provides for regulatory reform of “those regulations that [do not] meet the standard of reproducibility.” The … [Read more...]
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