Approximately 1.3 billion Indians have been informed that their cooking gas price will go up by 65 cents per liter. In a country like India, higher fuel prices can have quick and dangerous repercussions, resulting in greater morbidity and mortality.The situation is similar in other developing countries and the poor economies of the African continent. Unfortunately, the establishment media does not sufficiently report on how hostility toward fossil fuels has contributed to the current energy … [Read more...]
What Solution Do Renewable Energy Advocates Offer For The Problem Of Storage?
Most comments at this site tend to have a perspective generally consistent with my own. But sometimes a post will attract comments from people with a very different point of view. That occurred on a post earlier this week titled “Two More Contributions On The impossibility Of Electrifying Everything Using Only Wind, Solar, And Batteries.”That post and the one immediately preceding it (“Calculating The Full Costs Of Electrifying Everything Using Only Wind, Solar, And Batteries”) had both focused … [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...]
Fossil Fuels Surge After U.N. Conference
It has been a little more than a month since the United Nations climate meeting at Glasgow, yet global use of fossil fuels has increased rapidly. For instance, U.S. President Joe Biden canceled domestic oil projects and vowed to stop funding for international fossil fuel projects. But as fuel prices rose, Biden responded to his self-induced energy insecurity by releasing 50 million barrels of oil from the reserves and even called for an increase in domestic oil … [Read more...]
Were Devastating Kentucky Tornadoes Related to Climate Change?
The heart-wrenching devastation in Kentucky and surrounding regions due to several tornadoes has caught everyone’s attention. Fortunately, meteorologists have been increasingly capable of issuing tornado warnings and have greatly reduced tornado-related death tolls.But despite adequate warning, one tornado took direct aim on Mayfield, Kentucky, causing buildings to collapse and a horrible death toll.The USA experiences more tornadoes than elsewhere, suffering, on average, over 1100 tornados a … [Read more...]
Louisiana Religious Climate Activists Might Want to Check the Data
One can't help admiring the motives of many religious leaders alarmed about human-induced climate change. From the Pope to the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury to leaders of the Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jewish faiths, many express their angst that climate change is an "existential threat" to humanity, especially the poor, and to all life on Earth.But sometimes one wishes they would combine some knowledge of basic data with their good intentions.An AP story published today, "Faith groups … [Read more...]
The Tide-Theory of Climate Change
Guest article by Joakim BookI was watching the tide today and thought of climate change. Yes, they are different phenomena; the tide is predictable, well-known, and reverses itself like clockwork roughly every six hours, whereas climate change is unpredictable, uncertain, and (still) irreversible. Nevertheless, it serves as a relevant illustration of what we are often overlooking in the climate debate. The tide moves continuously; slowly and gradually, not suddenly or … [Read more...]
Playing Fast and Loose with Numbers
Guest article by Joakim BookJournalism is hard. To portray the world accurately to a layman audience without delving into the complexities and nuances of the universe we inhabit, writers must always simplify, explain, and make difficult content relatable for their readers. You can do this well and comprehensively, and you can do it poorly. Often, writers simplify and give concrete examples with the best of intentions, even though I don’t put it past some of the activist writers out there to … [Read more...]
How to Scare and Deceive without Lying: JPL Cries Wolf about Polar Glacial Melt
Yesterday NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory published "The Anatomy of Glacial Ice Loss." For the most part it's an interesting, though not particularly revolutionary, discussion of the various forces that add to and subtract from glacial ice. Nothing wrong with that.But its authors took the opportunity to insert a poison pill, a little bit of fearmongering, in a video caption:Did you catch that little trick? "Combined, the two regions also contain enough ice, that if it were to melt all at once, … [Read more...]
The Final Years of Majuro—Are a Long Way Off
Refuting climate alarmists’ counterfactual claims is like playing whack-a-mole. Smack this one here, and ten others pop up there, and there, and there, and ….In the climate apocalyptic video propaganda category, the newest seems to be The Final Years of Majuro, posted to YouTube August 4.The film tells us, with all the authority of “science,” that the Marshall Islands (of which Majuro is the capital city), will disappear if global average temperature (GAT) rises beyond 1.5°C above pre-industrial … [Read more...]
