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, motorists in … [Read more...]
The Right Way to Impose Energy Sanctions on Russia
In the face of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the idea of expanding sanctions on Russian energy is starting to gain bipartisan traction in Congress.This is a complicated issue. Although freedom-loving nations should be ready to use every tool available to push back against the authoritarian greed of Putin, energy sanctions are a double-edged sword.It’s worth thinking through the implications in order to come as close as possible to … [Read more...]
EPA’s Victims Looking to Prayer and Judicial Relief
Providing sustenance to the Biden administration’s “green” push to replace the use of the U.S.’s abundant reserves of fossil fuels with unreliable and expensive wind and solar are regulators armed with a specious notion that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are pollutants.The government’s attack on hydrocarbons goes back to the Clinton administration’s Environmental Protection Agency, which produced a legal opinion that it could regulate greenhouse gases even though Congress never … [Read more...]
Do Fossil Fuels Really Account for CO2 Added to the Atmosphere?
Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the concentration of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere has risen from about 280 to about 417 parts per million. Most scientists studying the issue think most of the increase has come from burning fossil fuels. Some people, however, question that.For instance, one person wrote to us:From a basic calculation I have carried out, my estimate is that of the over 200 gigatons[gt]-C CO2 increase of CO2 in the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution … [Read more...]
Federal District Court Enjoins Use Of The “Social Cost Of Carbon”
In the U.S. so far, efforts to enact legislation in Congress to “save the planet” by restricting fossil fuels and transforming our energy economy have gone almost entirely nowhere. President Obama’s big idea of “cap and trade” legislation died early in his first term and was never resurrected. President Biden’s “Green New Deal” has so far suffered a similar fate. If the Republicans retake even one house of Congress later this year, prospects for legislation on this subject may be dead for many … [Read more...]
Thinking Biblically about Earth Stewardship & the Conquest of Poverty in the Age of Climate Change
We have created an updated version of this page to reflect changes made for 2023. You can visit the new page here. … [Read more...]
As coal use surges, America finds it’s hard to unplug from carbon
So much for the myriad claims about going “beyond coal.” According to a new report from the Rhodium Group, U.S. coal consumption jumped by 17 percent last year compared to 2020 levels. That’s a huge increase, which Rhodium says was “largely driven by a run-up in natural gas prices.” Rather than burn gas, which averaged about $4.93 per million Btu last year — more than two times the price in 2020 — many electricity producers chose to burn coal instead.The surge in domestic coal use is … [Read more...]
Two More Contributions On The Impossibility Of Electrifying Everything Using Only Wind, Solar And Batteries
My previous post highlighted the work of Ken Gregory, who has attempted to quantify the costs of fully electrifying the U.S. energy system using as sources only wind, solar, and batteries. My post got circulated among my excellent colleagues in the CO2 Coalition, two of whom then provided me with links to their own work on closely-related subjects.The two pieces are: (1) “How Many km2 of Solar Panels in Spain and how much battery backup would it take to power Germany,” by Lars Schernikau and … [Read more...]
California’s Zero Carbon Plans: Can Anybody Here Do Basic Arithmetic?
In California, as we all know, the inhabitants and their elected officials are far more sophisticated and virtuous than the rest of us rubes who inhabit the other parts of the country. This particularly goes for the arena of climate change, where California is leading the way to saving the planet by rapidly eliminating all of the carbon emissions coming from its electricity sector. California’s CO2 emissions are about 1% of the world annual total, and its electricity sector accounts for about … [Read more...]
More Snow Hits the Fan this Week: Climate Change Alarmists Still Want it Both Ways
As I predicted, climate change has been blamed for the recent New England blizzard (e.g. from Bloomberg here). During that storm, Boston tied its 24-hr snowfall record at 23.6 inches.Yet, as recently as January 6, we were told by USAToday that Boston’s lengthy 316-day streak *without* one inch of snowfall as of January 1st was caused by global warming.So, which is it? Does global warming cause less snow or more snow?When science produces contradictory claims, is it really … [Read more...]
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