Contrary to the incessant bleating of office-based Great Barrier Reef “experts” (who visit the Reef a couple of weeks in a year), the reported incidents of coral bleaching are nothing new, unusual or threatening. They are common natural events no more threatening than trees shedding their leaves with the changing seasons, or occasionally in response to a dry spell. Some readily verifiable relevant facts: 1/ Tropical ocean waters are generally nutrient-poor and the symbiotic algal … [Read more...]
The climate scaremongers: An open letter to the Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph regularly publishes articles by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, its International Business Editor, which eulogise renewable energy and claim that fossil fuels will soon be a thing of the past. But they never seem to tell the other side of the story. Here is that other side. *** Fossil Fuels v Renewable Energy? Let me start by stating that I am not pro or anti anything. In a free market, the best technologies, solutions and products automatically come to the fore … [Read more...]
America’s Natural Gas Juggernaut
America can fuel the world’s needs for clean-burning natural gas for many decades and have plenty left over for our own domestic requirements. The vast majority of our nation’s undeveloped gas supply is found in the Appalachian Basin of the eastern United States. The size of the resource is stunning and largely unknown outside of the teams of geologists and engineers that are responsible for its discovery and ongoing development. Gas fields with more than 3 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of … [Read more...]
Electric Cars Are Not Ready for Showtime
It seems that no one can ever do quite enough to satisfy the demands of professional complainers. Not even Elon Musk, a world-famous promoter of electric vehicles. He was met rudely by protesters at the grand opening of his Tesla assembly plant, just outside Berlin, during recent ceremonies: "...it [the plant] has faced opposition and some environmental activists blocked the factory’s entrance while displaying banners flagging its high water use…” All said and done, it should … [Read more...]
New Federal Fuel Economy Standards Wrongly Calculated, Says Petition
Based on a recent court ruling and the law, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) says updated nationwide corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards imposed by U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in December 2021 relied on an invalidated metric. Because of this the CEI filed a formal request in February with Michael Regan, EPA administrator, to place the new standards on hold and reconsider them. The new CAFE standards, which apply to vehicles from model years 2023 … [Read more...]
The Battle for 1.5 Degrees of Warming Is Already Lost, So What’s Plan B?
Climate activists’ current stated goal is to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. To achieve this goal, according to the latest IPCC report, atmospheric CO2 levels must peak by 2025. But this battle is already lost, so what is their Plan B? The above statement is not a critique of the desirability of the 1.5-degree goal, which I am not competent to evaluate. The unhappy truth, though, is that not all good goals are achievable. Not even … [Read more...]
Supreme Court Should Cancel the Latest “Witch Hunt”
In the 1690s, a mass panic at Salem, Massachusetts, led to 20 people being executed for witchcraft and 150 being jailed. Then in the 1950s, another mass panic gripped the United States and thousands of lives were wrecked as many were falsely accused of being communists. Yet another in the 1990s wrecked the lives of many preschool teachers with false accusations of sex abuse in the classroom. Having written about these sad episodes in an engineering journal a few years ago, I would … [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 … [Read more...]
How About A Pilot Project To Demonstrate The Feasibility Of Fully Wind/Solar/Battery Electricity Generation?
At this current crazy moment, most of the “Western” world (Europe, the U.S., Canada, Australia) is hell-bent on achieving a “net-zero” energy system. As I understand this concept, it means that, within two or three decades, all electricity production will be converted from the current mostly-fossil-fuel generation mix to almost entirely wind, solar, and storage. On top of that, all or nearly all energy consumption that is not currently electricity (e.g., transportation, industry, heat, … [Read more...]
Are Climate Lockdowns Coming Because of a ‘Climate Emergency’? (No, It’s Not a Conspiracy Theory)
In early December, the Washington Post reported that because of climate change, snow in the Mountain West "may vanish for years at a time." The headline did not age well. Only days later it started to snow in the West. And snow. And snow. An incredible photo on Twitter showed a towering wall of snow on Donner Summit in California around Christmas. Lake Tahoe got 18 feet of snow in December, an all-time record. In Virginia, some motorists were stuck on … [Read more...]