I just received word from Joe Bast at the Heartland Institute that Dr. Robert M. Carter, a palaeontologist, stratigrapher, marine geologist and environmental scientist with more than 30 years professional experience and one of the world's leading experts on climate change, died today, several days after suffering a heart attack. I met Bob first through correspondence, finding him always ready and patient to educate me, a non-scientist, in the ins and outs of climate science. Over the past few … [Read more...]
To Magnify Apparent Climate Risk, Magnify Temperature Data
In the early 1990s, working partly as a freelance book editor, I had the privilege of being the main managing editor of Julian L. Simon's (edited) The State of Humanity (Blackwell, 1995). One of my responsibilities was turning raw data from the book's 60 authors into graphs so people could grasp them better. But the graphs could enhance understanding only if they handled the data objectively, and one of the things Julian drummed into me was that whenever possible a graph should have a zero … [Read more...]
Why Christians Don’t Impose Veganism
Veganism is the lifestyle philosophy of people that avoid eating, wearing, or using animal products or their by-products. They don’t eat meat or the products that derive from animals, even when the animal is not killed, such as milk. Now the rationales for adopting this lifestyle vary. Some do it for alleged health benefits, others for supposed environmental reasons, and other still on the basis of some ethical theory about not wanting animals to suffer (cf. Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation). Of … [Read more...]
Ding, Dong, “The Pause” Is Dead—Or Is It?
In the midst of a strong El Niño, Lord Christopher Monckton of Brenchley reports that the "pause" in global warming, last counted at 18 years 9 months (through October 2015), shortened by December's end to 18 years 8 months. "The Pause" may continue to shorten through 2016 if, as usual, the second in a pair of El Niño years is warmer than the first, and 2016 turns out to be, as Roy Spencer predicts, the warmest in the satellite record (which excludes the probably warmer 1930s and the definitely … [Read more...]
Study Attributes to “Climate Change” what Really Came from a 2012 Greenland Weather Event
Chelsea Harvey in reported in the Washington Post: “Rising global temperatures may be affecting the Greenland ice sheet — and its contribution to sea-level rise — in more serious ways tha[n] scientists imagined, a new study finds.” What’s up with this? The concern is about the “firn”—a porous sheet of snow that slowly freezes into ice over time as more and more snow accumulates atop it but can absorb melt water in the meantime. According to the study, a layer of ice several meters thick has … [Read more...]
What’s the Real Motive Behind German Green Party’s Plan to Ban Petrol-driven Vehicles?
Der Spiegel reports (partial English translation here, courtesy of the Global Warming Policy Foundation) that the German Green Party has announced that it intends to get petrol-driven (gasoline and diesel) vehicles off German roads, aiming to have no more such vehicles registered from 2036 onward. "'We Greens want to get away from oil on the road over the next 20 years. We want to give cities, cyclists and pedestrians enough room that is free of toxic emissions,' it says in the draft of their … [Read more...]
A Keystone of Obama’s Green Legacy Faces Serious Legal Challenge
Late last year, after years and years of dilly-dallying, President Obama nixed the planned Keystone XL pipeline extension, though he'd admitted that "This pipeline would neither be a silver bullet for the economy, as was promised by some, nor the express lane to climate disaster proclaimed by others." Indeed, the U.S. State Department and EPA had found no significant environmental threats in the planned pipeline, which would have created thousands of short-term and some long-term jobs in … [Read more...]
Why Greens Hate Nuclear Energy
Indian policymakers, having made "commitments" to slow (sometime) the growth of their CO2 emissions from power generation (while continuing to build new coal-fired plants at break-neck speed), are casting about for ways to do that. Some call for more nuclear energy plants---the only realistic, affordable path. But others, guardians of Green ideology, oppose it, leaving their counterparts mystified. Why would they do that when the Indian people desperately need abundant, affordable, reliable … [Read more...]
Is Global Warming to Blame for Spread of “Tropical” Diseases?
The New York Times has just published an article claiming that global warming is (partly) to blame for the spread of various "tropical" diseases to the U.S. and other areas where previously they had been eradicated or had never existed. Donald G. McNeil Jr. begins his article titled "U.S. Becomes More Vulnerable to Tropical Diseases Like Zika" thus: Tropical diseases---some of them never before seen in the United States---are marching northward as climate change lets mosquitoes and ticks expand … [Read more...]
Are the Roots of Anti-Capitalism in the Evolution of the Human Mind?
No, I don’t think so. But Why We Bite the Invisible Hand: The Psychology of Anti-Capitalism, by Peter Foster (Pleasaunce Press, 2014), argues that it is. He’s wrong there, but despite that there are many valuable insights in the book, which I began reading a few days ago. Foster argues that often intuitive ideas are the root of resistance to free markets. Where those intuitive ideas come from is a distinct question—he thinks from millions of years of evolution, I think from simple confusion and … [Read more...]
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