The following is a guest article by Jane Shaw Stroup. Chances are, you haven’t heard of RFS, RINs, eRINs, RVOs, or maybe even RNG. I hadn’t. But if you are part of the agricultural and waste-industry interests that promote “biofuels,” you know all about them. They are the means by which fuel generated by corn, wood, waste from a landfill, or other “natural” biomass gets into your gasoline in the form of ethanol (at one time called gasohol)—or into other fuel like jet fuel. As economists … [Read more...]
The EV Kool-Aid Acid Test
In his 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, author Tom Wolfe portrayed Ken Kesey as a man seeking to create a new religion. Kesey’s followers and peers – the “Merry Pranksters” – sought to create a new society based on psychedelic transcendence. But it all started thanks to a CIA-sponsored drug study in which Kesey was given LSD. Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors, apparently finds driving an electric vehicle (EV) to be as thrilling as one of Kesey’s LSD trips. In a … [Read more...]
Senate Budget Committee Hearing: JC responds
The recent Senate hearing was a sad example of what passes for debate and deliberations by the U.S. Senate. In any event, it provides an interesting case study of why the U.S. cannot bridge the partisan divide and figure out how to deal sensibly with the climate change issue. In case you missed it, the Chair of the Senate Budget, Sheldon Whitehouse, has immortalized on youtube his questioning of me at the end of the Hearing: Chairman Whitehouse Presses GOP Witness in … [Read more...]
Epic Fail in America’s Heartland: Climate Models Greatly Overestimate Corn Belt Warming
For the last decade, I’ve been providing long-range U.S. Corn Belt forecasts to a company that monitors and forecasts global grain production and market forces. My continuing theme has been, “don’t believe gloom and doom forecasts for the future of the U.S. Corn Belt.” The climate models relied upon by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are known to overestimate warming compared to observations. Depending upon the region (global? U.S.?), temperature metric … [Read more...]
Italy Returns to Nuclear Sanity. Shouldn’t We?
The Italian parliament, demonstrating confidence in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, this week formally backed her plan to reintroduce nuclear power plants into Italy’s energy mix, reversing the nation’s 1987 moratorium on nuclear power. Meanwhile, energy-starved Germany is feeling the pinch from shuttering all of its 17 nuclear power plants. Image: Creative Commons under Unsplash The U.S. has closed 11 nuclear reactors since 2013, with another eight of the 94 remaining reactors … [Read more...]
A Powerful Defense of Capitalism
When Forbes editor Steve Forbes calls a book “one of the most important … in decades defending capitalism,” it’s time to sit up and take notice. Rainer Zitelmann’s In Defense of Capitalism: Debunking the Myths (USA, Republic Book Publishers, March 2023) fully deserves Forbes’s praise. In 10 relatively short chapters constituting the first half of the book, Zitelmann conclusively debunks ten myths, e.g., that capitalism is responsible for hunger and poverty or for environmental … [Read more...]
Why Can’t Renewables Power Modern Economies? Physics
Image: Creative Commons under Unsplash To understand why wind and solar power, even with battery backup, will not be sufficient in the near future to supply the electric power needs of any modern industrial economy, much less an economy the size of the United States, one must first understand how the electric power system works. Note: I’m not talking about costs. Although the media regularly reports demonstrably false claims that wind and solar power are cheaper than traditional power … [Read more...]
The Practical Impossibility of Large-Scale Carbon Capture and Storage
The Environmental Protection Agency is working on a new rule that would set stringent limits on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from US power plants. Utilities would be required to retrofit existing plants with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology or to switch to hydrogen fuel. Others call for the use of CCS to decarbonize heavy industry. But the cost of capture and the amount of CO2 that proponents say needs to be captured crush any ideas about feasibility. Carbon capture and storage … [Read more...]
NOAA Proposes Hammering 208% of Vanishing Right Whales
Okay, it is a trick headline because they can only hammer 100% of the severely endangered North Atlantic Right Whale population. The point is that NOAA is proposing, for offshore wind development, to authorize a horrific 706 cases of physical harassment of Right Whales, whose dwindling population is down to just 340 magnificent critters. Image: Creative Commons under Unsplash The average whale will get hammered roughly twice. The Right Whales migrate along the coast twice a year. … [Read more...]
Using the Climate Change Scare to Promote Abortion
A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to speak to Campaign Life Coalition Ottawa about climate change and the potential threat that climate alarmism poses to the objectives of pro-lifers. The title of the event is “Why global warming alarmism is a threat to unborn children… and the pro-life movement.” In preparation for the event, I researched whether climate activist groups had anything to say about abortion and were surprised to see they do indeed. While their position is usually cloaked in … [Read more...]
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