In 2005, Congress and President Bush created a “renewable fuels standard” (RFS) This is a rule that requires that fuels such as ethanol be used as a substitute for petroleum-based fuel. The idea was supposedly to reduce oil imports, though it also had other effects. For one, it created a huge benefit for corn farmers, since corn is the primary ingredient in ethanol. And, as corn has been used for fuel instead of food for humans or animals, the RFS has driven up food prices. Lately, there has … [Read more...]
Total Takedown on Paul Ehrlich and Fears of Overpopulation
Stunning that the reliably liberal and alarmist NYT runs an article, "The Unrealized Horrors of Population Explosion," with equally stunning video demonstrating that Paul Ehrlich, author of the uber-alarmist The Population Bomb (1968), was totally, totally wrong. The full case for Ehrlich's idiocy on the economics of demography is far, far stronger than the article and video show, but even so, they're a total take-down of Ehrlich. Why ANYONE has ever considered Ehrlich even simply a … [Read more...]
Europe’s Appetite for Wood Pellets Instead of Coal Threatens Forests
In its Quixotic quest to fight global warming, Europe is switching many coal-fired electric generating plants to wood pellets. Not a good idea. One of the most important advances for both humanity and the environment was our move from using wood as primary energy source to coal, natural gas, and oil. That led to a reversal of the deforestation that was happening all over the Northern Hemisphere as population rose. The higher-density fossil fuels allowed us to generate far more energy while … [Read more...]
Coral Reefs and Global Warming: Another Eco-disaster Dwindles
As so often happens, eco-doomsters notice that one factor puts stress on some ecosystem, and they sound the alarm, but further study indicates that other factors balance out the stress. In this instance, researchers find that coral reefs aren't so sensitive to water temperature changes as some global warming alarmists had claimed. Instead, they respond to a variety of factors and are more robust than feared. The study, sponsored in part by the Wildlife Conservation Society, was published in the … [Read more...]
Is NOAA Lying to US (and Us) about US Climate History?
In an article titled "The 'Trick' to Controlling the Climate Agenda," energy physicist Michael W. Brakey accuses the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of systematically falsifying historical temperature data to create the appearance of more warming than has actually happened. His argument: NOAA has applied an algorithm (a bit of computer code that applies itself repeatedly to a set of data) that systematically lowers observed temperature data more and more the farther back into … [Read more...]
World Magazine Exposes Evangelical Environmentalists’ Growing Dependence on Green-Left Funding
Many environmentalists are fond of accusing all critics of their alarms of being in the pocket of industry. World magazine has just turned the tables. In a three-page article, World environment reporter Daniel James Devine reports that evangelical "creation care" organizations like the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN), its daughter organization Young Evangelicals for Climate Action (YECA), and the once-conservative now moderate-to-Left-leaning Christian Coalition receive a major share of … [Read more...]
Defense of Climate Models Fails–Just as the Models Do
Critics of CAGW alarmism have for several years had fun pointing out the large and growing discrepancy between computer climate model simulations of global average temperature and real-world observations, with this graph being one of our favorite exhibits: Now Alex Sen Gupta, Senior Lecturer, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences at UNSW Australia, has come to the models' defense, and John Cook, Climate Communication Research Fellow (note that this doesn't make him a … [Read more...]
Why One Conservative, Evangelical Republican’s Case for Climate Alarm Fails—Part 2
Yesterday I began a multi-part critique of a recent blog post by Evangelical Environmental Network board chairman Scott Rodin titled "As a Conservative, Evangelical Republican, Why Climate Change Can't Be True (Even Though It Is)." In that piece I pointed out that scientific data point the opposite direction from where Rodin thinks they do. I also mentioned that Rodin was using logical fallacies and rhetorical tricks to precondition readers to accept his conclusions despite his lack of sound … [Read more...]
Oh, No! Polar Sea Ice Extent Is …
... pretty much stable. That's according to the most recent NASA data on polar sea ice extent, shown in this graph, posted by the University of Illinois's Department of Atmospheric Sciences: James Taylor comments: Updated NASA satellite data show the polar ice caps remained at approximately their 1979 extent until the middle of the last decade. Beginning in 2005, however, polar ice modestly receded for several years. By 2012, polar sea ice had receded by approximately 10 percent from … [Read more...]
New Observational Evidence Supports Old “Infrared Iris” Theory
About seven years ago I read a fascinating paper by Roy Spencer et al. that argued that clouds respond to Earth's surface temperatures in ways that moderate them--cooling the surface in response to warming, warming it in response to cooling. It led me to an earlier paper by Richard Lindzen that argued that, at least in a major region above the Pacific, clouds respond to surface temperature changes in a way analogous to how the human eye's iris responds to light. In response to dimmer light, the … [Read more...]
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