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...]
Whale Death Confusion Abounds, and Some is Deliberate
Press coverage of the tragic whale deaths is a supreme study in confusion, especially the foolish attempts to somehow exonerate offshore wind development. Here are some prominent examples. The evergreen New York Times wins the race for worst coverage by claiming to explain the numerous recent whale deaths as due to online shopping. I am not making this up. Their headline promises an explanation: “Why 23 Dead Whales Have Washed Up on the East Coast Since December”. The primary reason … [Read more...]
Those Attacks on Gas Stoves Aren’t Really about Health
Image: Creative Commons under Unsplash Earlier this year, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) announced that indoor gas stoves emitted harmful pollution. Several studies claim that the use of gas can cause respiratory illness. The CPSC is considering restrictions on gas stoves, including possible bans in new residential construction. But attacks on gas stoves are based on questionable science and are largely driven by concerns not related to health. The CPSC has reportedly been … [Read more...]
California Charges Forward with Energy Disasters of Biblical Proportions
On August 31, just days after Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a mandated switch to electric vehicles (EVs), the California Independent System Operator, which runs the state’s power grid, called for a Flex Alert asking residents to voluntarily reduce their power consumption by avoiding “large appliances and charging electric vehicles” during peak usage hours of 4 to 9 pm. The unforeseen problem, it seems, in addition to increasing power demands and anemic, unreliable wind and solar … [Read more...]
How Terrified Should We Be of Hurricane Season This Year?
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...]
Will SCOTUS Rein in the EPA?
Back in 1970, Congress passed the Clean Air Act (CAA), and for the next two decades or more actions taken under it significantly improved the quality of America’s air. In 1990 it passed significant amendments to it, and some of these also had salutary effects. But, combined with an increasing tendency to allow administrative agencies, especially the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to impose regulations without a clear statutory basis, and a tendency of courts to defer to agencies’ … [Read more...]
Being a Climate Alarmist Means Never Having to Admit You’re Wrong
A mountain of evidence shows climate alarmists never learn from their mistakes, be they clear misstatements of facts or repeatedly failed prognostications. Why should they? The press lets climate alarmists get away with making more false claims than any other group on any other topic, including the efficacy of the COVID vaccines in keeping people from catching the disease or requiring hospitalization. Climate alarmists have nothing to fear from so-called fact-checkers in corporate or social … [Read more...]
Why “Follow the Money” Doesn’t Cut It
Dr. David Kreutzer, an economist formerly with the Heritage Foundation and now with the Institute for Energy Research, was Cornwall Alliance's livestream guest July 27 to discuss why President Joe Biden's "Net Zero by 2050" plan not only won't succeed but can't. (You can watch it on Facebook or YouTube.) When I announced this on Facebook, a friend from back in high school days---a fellow Christian and sincere person---commented, "No, thank you. I prefer to hear and read people with expertise … [Read more...]
EU’s Carbon Border Taxes and Joe Biden’s Clean Energy plans: A double threat for developing countries
The introduction of the European Union’s Carbon Border Taxes and Joe Biden’s announcement of Clean Energy plans has raised double alarm in developing countries. The new European Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) law will impact all countries exporting to EU, especially those countries without carbon pricing mechanisms. Countries like India, China, Indonesia, Philippines, and even developed ones like Australia, Poland are likely to significantly affected by the CBAM. Climate Justice … [Read more...]
Rescuing Science from Itself: How to Restore Rationality to an Increasingly Irrational Endeavor
“You can give respectability to mythology if you couch your myth in sufficiently academic language.” —Dr. R.C. Sproul Who in twenty-first century America would say that “science … our one source of objective knowledge, is in deep trouble” because “much of [the] supposed knowledge” it brings us “is turning out to be contestable, unreliable, unusable, or flat-out wrong”? Obviously an anti-intellectual, benighted holdover from the Dark Ages. Right? Wrong. It’s Dr. Daniel Sarewitz, … [Read more...]
