During my three decades as a reporter, I’ve seen plenty of hype and poor news coverage about renewable energy. But two recent pieces—in the Washington Post and National Public Radio, respectively—are particularly egregious. These reports demonstrate, yet again, that some of the biggest media entities in the world have no clue about—and apparently no sympathy for—the rural Americans, from Maine to Hawaii, who are fighting to protect their homes and neighborhoods from large wind and … [Read more...]
Standing Up to Putin Means Ditching Net-Zero
Vladimir Putin’s inflammatory speech, in which he set out his aim to reconstitute the Russian empire and blamed Lenin for its demise, and his decision to back this up with a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, signals the return of geopolitics. Until now, Western leaders have been saying that the biggest threat to the world is climate change. Now comes Putin armed with nuclear weapons, tanks, and thousands of troops declaring his intent to overthrow Europe’s post-Cold War order. The dilemma for the … [Read more...]
Will Young Conservatives Embrace the Ideology of Climate Change?
I came of age politically in the age of William F. Buckley, Jr, and Ronald Reagan, which means I escaped being indoctrinated into the progressive ideology behind John Maynard Keynes’ economics and Rachel Carson’s environmentalism. So I was baffled by a recent article in World Magazine discussing how many of today’s young “conservatives” embrace the ideas I avoided 40 years ago. The article, Young Republicans embrace climate care, begins with a profile of the 24-year-old … [Read more...]
Do wind farms change the weather?
The effect of lots of wind turbines on weather and climate is a small but active research area. Wind power converts wind energy into electricity, thereby removing that energy from the air. The research issue of how taking a lot of energy out might affect weather or climate seems to have emerged as early as 2004. Studies range from the global climate impact down to the local effects of a single large wind facility. Here is a nontechnical article on a key global climate scale paper in 2011: … [Read more...]
Poor Economies Experience the Worst of Oil Price Hike
The fighting in Ukraine has intensified and residents are fleeing cities with Russian forces showing no signs of retreating. What does this have to do with the lives of billions of people living far away from the war? Oil price increases. The conflict has caused an increase in international oil prices, which have now crossed $130 per barrel, a 13-year high. As a result, gas prices at pumps across the globe are set to rise even further. Being the largest consumers of automobile fuels, … [Read more...]
The Untold Story of the Vladimir Lenin Nuclear Power Plant Disaster (Chernobyl)
In their 1992 book, Ecocide in the USSR, Murray Feshbach and Alfred Friendly Jr. stated that “no other industrial civilisation so systematically and so long poisoned its land, air, and people.” A well-known example of the parlous and perilous state of environmental protection in the USSR is the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which occurred on April 26, 1986, in reactor four of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. What most people probably don’t know is that this nuclear power plant proudly bore the … [Read more...]
Carbon Cutting: Saving the Planet or Virtue Signaling?
Recently, many companies have pledged to go “net-zero.” “Net-zero” means the greenhouse gases a company emits are balanced by the greenhouse gases it removes from the atmosphere. The Paris Agreement suggests such goals. Although former President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from it, many companies feel the need to demonstrate they are pursuing the targets set in Paris, as we rejoined it under President Biden. In theory, net-zero can be accomplished by reducing emissions or … [Read more...]
Endangered Species Act: Turning Species Extirpation on its Head
The Endangered Species Act, first enacted by Congress in 1973, has since become a poster child for bureaucratic ineptitude. By 2021 it had fully redeemed from the impending extinction only 3% of the hundreds of endangered species initially added to the list. Our national symbol, the again flourishing bald eagle, is an outstanding exception. The birds are commonly seen soaring above our rivers and lakes wherever the fishing is good. But whooping cranes are holding onto existence by the skin … [Read more...]
How a Mindless Climate War on Energy Surrendered Ukraine
Delusional Western nation anti-hydrocarbon energy policies premised upon combating climate change as the "greatest existential threat" are being exploited by far more immediate and formidable adversaries. We are currently witnessing tragic consequences play out in failures of Russian oil and gas-dependent NATO allies — Germany in particular — to dissuade and counter savage Putin aggression against Ukraine. Add to this, a concurrent Biden administration policy disaster which has … [Read more...]
“Green” Media Misrepresents World’s Energy Reality
Fossil fuels are out. Coal is no longer king. The Middle East faces an oil crisis. These are typical headlines in the mainstream media. Unreported is the hard reality of the world’s fossil-dependent developing economies. This story goes untold because media in the developed West seek to create a perception of an inevitable transition to energy markets free of hydrocarbons. Whatever is behind the media’s ignorance — or neglect — of the proliferation of coal, oil, and natural … [Read more...]