Once again, as nearly every year, officials at NOAA and other agencies called for 2022 to be a "very active" hurricane season. In its May 24 release, NOAA predicted "an "above-average hurricane activity this year — which would make it the seventh consecutive above-average hurricane season." It's like the old joke that everyone's grandkid is "above average": for some reason, every hurricane season, the risk is now "above average." I don't know how every … [Read more...]
Calculating The Full Costs Of Electrifying Everything Using Only Wind, Solar And Batteries
For several years now, advocates of “decarbonizing” our energy system, along with promoters of wind and solar energy, have claimed that the cost of electricity from the wind and sun was dropping rapidly and either already was, or soon would be, less than the cost of generating the same electricity from fossil fuels. These claims are generally based on a metric called the “Levelized Cost of Energy,” which is designed to seem sophisticated to the uninitiated, but in the real world is … [Read more...]
A Brief History of the Cornwall Alliance—Part 2: A Withered Seedling
The Cornwall Alliance, the roots of which we saw in Part 1, almost got its start in 2000, though with different name, constituency, and mission. That was when the short-lived Interfaith Council on Environmental Stewardship got its start. It grew out of a meeting of 25 Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish theologians, economists, environmental scientists, and policy specialists in October 1999, at a retreat center in West Cornwall, CT. Sponsored by the Acton Institute for the Study of … [Read more...]
Protect Endangered Species on Valentine’s Day?
Valentine's Day. A day for lovers. But according to the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), it could be a very bad day for biodiversity. That's because, so goes the argument, what lovers (heterosexual lovers, anyway) do---not just on Valentine's Day but all year long---threatens to increase human population. And, as everyone knows, growing human population leads to more species extinctions. The CBD, citing Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson, claims that "30,000 species per year (or three … [Read more...]
Ending ‘Sue-and -Settle’ Extortion
Last week, federal Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt issued a directive aimed at reducing “sue-and-settle” lawsuits. For those who like voters to have input in the creation of environmental regulation, this is a great move. For decades, environmental advocacy groups have exerted outsized influence—and profited financially—from “friendly” lawsuits against the EPA. These lawsuits have been a conduit for activists inside and outside the EPA to get new regulations in … [Read more...]
Greenpeace lies about forest destruction
The radical environmentalist group Greenpeace has been claiming that a Canadian company, Resolute Forest Products, has caused extensive forest loss. Resolute sued for defamation and, in court proceedings, offered convincing that it had caused no forest loss whatever. Greenpeace's reply? As summarized by Resolute President and CEO Richard Garneau, its "accusations against Resolute were 'hyperbole,' 'heated rhetoric,' and 'non-verifiable statements of subjective opinion' that should not be taken … [Read more...]
Caring for Creation: A Book of Good Intentions but Poor Science
As an evangelical Christian, I believe we should be good stewards of God’s planet. We should strive to reduce pollution to protect human health and the natural environment. We should explore new alternative energy sources, always seeking to maximize benefits and minimize harms. We should prioritize providing electricity for the 1.2 billion people who don’t have it—and consequently suffer high rates of disease and premature death. For these and many other reasons I applaud Mitch Hescox and … [Read more...]
Sierra Club pushing abortion as population control to ‘save the environment’
FOX News host Tucker Carlson interviewed the Sierra Club’s Executive Director, Michael Brune, on Tucker Carlson Tonight, Feb 2, 2017. Carlson, a former Sierra Club member himself, dove right into asking Brune the tough questions. Puzzled by some of the Sierra Club’s recent position statements on such varied topics as President Trump’s border wall, the women’s march, abortion, and transgender bathrooms, Carlson asked Mr. Brune why the Sierra Club was veering away from protecting the … [Read more...]
Unelected, Unaccountable Greens Dictated Clean Power Plan to EPA
Emails obtained by the Energy & Environment Legal Institute under FOIA demonstrate that EPA almost certainly violated federal law by using private email to correspond with the Natural Resources Defense Council, correspondence in which NRDC essentially drafted critical parts of the "Clean Power Plan," or even, as the Wall Street Journal puts it, "the rule," not just critical parts. Imagine if some pro-coal organization(s) had done the same in the preparation of an EPA regulation. The Left … [Read more...]
Green Climate Fund Gets a Slow Start
The $100 billion slush fund---er, Green Climate Fund---created at the COP17 climate summit in Durban, South Africa, is supposed to redistribute money from wealthy developed countries to poor developing countries (or at least to the thugs who run them). Call it a kind of penalty for the developed countries' having overcome poverty before the developing ones, raising atmospheric CO2 concentration along the way, igniting sudden and catastrophic global warming (absent for the last 18 years and 8 … [Read more...]
