Some BackgroundI will admit that the legal profession mystifies me. Every time I say anything related to environmental law, one or more lawyers will correct me. But I suppose “turnabout is fair play”, since I will usually correct any lawyers about their details describing climate change science.Lawyers aren’t like us normal people. Their brains work differently. I first suspected this when one of my daughters took the LSAT and gave me examples of questions, most of which my brain was not wired … [Read more...]
Budget-Busting Climate Provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act Must Go
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden on August 16, 2022. The bill was badly mistitled and intentionally so.The Biden administration and Democrats in Congress took advantage of Americans’ desire for a response to high and rising prices for food, fuel, and other basic consumer goods. The people of the United States wanted federal leadership to take steps to alleviate inflation. Of course, the inflation itself was an artifact of federal … [Read more...]
Reasons Why Regulating CO2 Emissions Needs to be Reconsidered
March 7, the Washington Post reported the EPA Administrator is considering recommending to the White House that the EPA’s 2009 CO2 Endangerment Finding be rescinded. Let’s look at a few of the reasons why this might be a good thing to consider.The ScienceThe science of human-caused climate change is much more uncertain that you have been led to believe. The globally-averaged surface temperature of Earth seems to have warmed by 1 deg. C or so in the last century. The magnitude of the warming … [Read more...]
UAH v6.1 Global Temperature Update for February, 2025: +0.50 deg. C
The Version 6.1 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for February, 2025 was +0.50 deg. C departure from the 1991-2020 mean, up a little from the January, 2025 anomaly of +0.45 deg. C.The Version 6.1 global area-averaged linear temperature trend (January 1979 through February 2025) remains at +0.15 deg/ C/decade (+0.22 C/decade over land, +0.13 C/decade over oceans).The following table lists various regional Version 6.1 LT departures from the 30-year (1991-2020) average for … [Read more...]
False Pretense of Energy Transition: Long on Facts, Short on Truth
While listing many of the barriers to abandoning fossil fuels for “green” energy, three writers in Foreign Affairs magazine skip over an important truth: The once ballyhooed but now moribund “energy transition” was and remains unnecessary and undesirable.Instead, the article’s title, “The Troubled Energy Transition: How to Find a Pragmatic Path Forward,” suggests (1) that the so-called transition has legitimacy and (2) that it still somehow should happen. Both are false.The writers are … [Read more...]
Much Harm and No Good from EPA Greenhouse Rule: Kill It
Empowered to impose sweeping restrictions on GHG emissions from all manner of human activity, the EPA has been free to impose unreasonable demands on electric generation, transportation, manufacturing and agriculture – just to name more prominent targets. Under the Obama and Biden administrations, with CO2 emissions being the focus, fossil fuels in general and coal in particular were hammered by this regulatory cudgel.In the last decade, regulations have contributed to the closing of more than … [Read more...]
Hydrogen Energy: Not Clean, Not Green, and Not Cheap
If only it were that simple!Hydrogen. The first element in the Periodic Table and the most abundant element in the Universe. It is also the simplest element—the most common isotope has only one proton and one electron. It has been called the “Future of Energy”; after all, the Sun relies on hydrogen to keep emitting light and, if it is good enough for our Sun, why isn’t it good enough for us?No doubt you have heard all the clamor associated with a hydrogen-based energy economy. Jeremy Rifkin … [Read more...]
CO2 Endangerment Finding on the Chopping Block—At Last!
On December 7, 2009—“a day that will live in infamy”—the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued what is known as the “CO2 endangerment finding,” which has been the linchpin of practically all federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, especially carbon dioxide.Over the past 15 years, the EPA, other federal agencies, and various states have issued regulations restricting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, power plants, and other sources, all rooted in the … [Read more...]
The Future of Clean Energy Looks Increasingly Nuclear
When New York Governor Kathy Hochul, whose state has banned natural gas pipelines because “climate change,” goes all in for nuclear energy, you know the revolution is under way. For decades, the anti-nuclear movement moved from protesting nuclear weapons to oppose nuclear energy as well.But not today. Gov. Hochul, in an adjunct to her state of the state speech in January, said her administration supports a grant request by Constellation Energy for federal funding to build one or more small … [Read more...]
Paris Climate Treaty Is Going Down
With history as a guide and two months to prepare for the announcement, there was relatively little wailing and gnashing of teeth when President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement (for the second time; the lamentations were much greater in 2017) on his first day back in office. Despite efforts by politicos and influentials within the United States and internationally to encourage Trump to stay in the Paris agreement, the writing was on the wall.Trump has … [Read more...]
