Ken Cohen at ExxonMobil has just published an article summarizing some of the basic things we know about the safety of "fracking" (hydraulic fracturing in drilling for oil and natural gas). The gist: It's not a significant source of either air or water pollution, and its record, good from the start, has been improving consistently. There will of course be those who write it off just because Cohen works for, and the article was published by, ExxonMobil. Sigh. Logical fallacies (genetic fallacy, … [Read more...]
Bringing a Little Sanity to the Environmental Protection Agency
Scientist and economist Dr. Alan Carlin was a model civil servant for nearly forty years, serving as a science analyst in the federal Environmental Protection Agency. But in 2009, he made a bad career move. He told the truth. As one of the EPA staff members assigned to assess the warming effect of added CO2 in the atmosphere preparatory to formulating emissions regulations, Carlin deviated from the EPA's play book of accepting as gospel the pronouncements of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on … [Read more...]
“Global warming really has become a new religion”–Nobel Physicist Ivar Giaever
Ivar Giaever explains in this video lecture why he rejects global warming alarming. "It's ridiculous," he says, to think we can measure global average temperature (GAT) accurately, and that we should consider an increase in GAT from ~1880 to 2015 from ~288 degrees Kelvin to ~288.8 degrees Kelvin (an increase of only 0.3%) frightening. There's much more in this brilliant lecture. But who cares what he thinks? He's just a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. And after all, he's not a member of the … [Read more...]
How Fossil Fuels Benefit People and the Planet
Indur Goklany is one of my favorite scholars on the interplay of people, resources, and our natural environment. Few are more thorough and careful to root their ideas in solid empirical research. And what his research reveals, again and again, is that people's creativity is making the world a better and better place to live, not just for people but also for plants and animals. In a day when Greens everywhere demonize people's use of fossil fuels as imperiling the planet, Goklany demonstrates, … [Read more...]
Is There a “Balance of Nature”?
Environmentalists, including the advisors responsible for the content of Pope Francis's encyclical Laudato Si', and even many of their critics, routinely refer to a "balance of nature," a concept that elicits visions of fragile nature knocked off balance by crossing "tipping points" that lead to catastrophes--concepts fundamental to global warming alarmism. Veteran ecologist Daniel Botkin finds that thinking common in Laudato Si' and niftily nullifies it from a scientific standpoint. Botkin … [Read more...]
Validation of IPCC’s Global Warming Forecasts would Require More than Tripling Warming Rate
At +0.11C per decade rate, Global Average Temperature would rise 1.1C in a century, not the ~3C generally predicted by IPCC without CO2 emission reduction. Actual increase in the 36.5 years since 1978 is 0.407C. To wind up with 3C increase in the century from 1978 through 2077, we'd need to add another 2.593C in the remaining 63.5 years, i.e., 0.41C per decade, 3.7 times the rate so far. Anybody got a good idea what's going to drive that more-than-tripling of the rate of increase? Or might it … [Read more...]
What Planet Does Pope Francis Live On?
Steven W. Mosher expresses dismay at Pope Francis's encyclical Laudato Si' not because it embraces fears of dangerous manmade global warming (though he points out those baseless fears in it, too) but because many of its ecological claims are just plain wrong. "Having read through Pope Francis’ new encyclical, I am dismayed at how many groundless assertions it makes. From a strictly scientific point of view, Laudato Si is an embarrassment." Examples: On the issue of water, for example, the … [Read more...]
Bishop’s “Call to Action” on Climate and Fossil Fuels May Be Less than Meets the Eye
Paul Etienne, Catholic Bishop of Cheyenne, with jurisdiction over the Diocese of Wyoming, was cited recently in Inside Energy as calling Pope Francis's encyclical Laudato Si' "a call to action" for Wyoming, the nation's largest coal-producing state. But there might not be quite so much to what Bishop Etienne said as Inside Energy would wish. The sole quote from him is this: I know this document is going to disturb many people in this state," he said, "because it is very much an energy-driven … [Read more...]
Getting Down to Nitty Gritty: Why Wind and Solar Threaten Electricity Grids and People’s Health and Safety
Rud Istvan has a very instructive article at Judith Curry's Climate Etc. blog about the challenges of bring wind and solar power into use through electricity grids. Bottom line: Their intermittency greatly increases the costs of electricity while reducing its reliability, bringing threats to people's health and safety wherever they begin to make up a significant percentage of total power supplied to the grid. The higher the renewable penetration, the greater this intermittency burden becomes. … [Read more...]
Why Capitalism?
No one makes a trade unless he considers what he will receive more valuable to him than what he will pay. That’s why voluntary trades are always win-win: each party ends up with something more valuable than he’s traded away. Sometimes the benefit is simply a good feeling, such as when someone buys something from a poor salesman just to encourage him, or when she donates money. Here the good feeling and personal benefit are worth more than the money given. This helps us answer the question, … [Read more...]
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