In its Quixotic quest to fight global warming, Europe is switching many coal-fired electric generating plants to wood pellets. Not a good idea. One of the most important advances for both humanity and the environment was our move from using wood as primary energy source to coal, natural gas, and oil. That led to a reversal of the deforestation that was happening all over the Northern Hemisphere as population rose. The higher-density fossil fuels allowed us to generate far more energy while … [Read more...]
Search Results for: climate gate
New Observational Evidence Supports Old “Infrared Iris” Theory
About seven years ago I read a fascinating paper by Roy Spencer et al. that argued that clouds respond to Earth's surface temperatures in ways that moderate them--cooling the surface in response to warming, warming it in response to cooling. It led me to an earlier paper by Richard Lindzen that argued that, at least in a major region above the Pacific, clouds respond to surface temperature changes in a way analogous to how the human eye's iris responds to light. In response to dimmer light, the … [Read more...]
Words Matter—and So Does Honesty
Some folks just don’t play fair. Instance? Media Matters and ForecasttheFacts.org have just teamed up to pressure the media to not to characterize scientists who doubt claims of dangerous manmade global warming as “skeptics.” Their preferred term? “Deniers.” Why? Two reasons: First, because skepticism is a scientific virtue, which they don’t want to attribute to those who dare question them. Second, because “denier” smacks of Holocaust denial, anti-Semitism, and Nazism and so is the … [Read more...]
If they Could Put a Man on the Moon …
A couple of years ago a group of engineers and other scientists involved in the Apollo space program took interest in the debates over global warming. They called themselves The Right Climate Stuff, and they set out to make as objective assessments as they could of the arguments pro and con on global warming, human influence on it, and proposals to mitigate it. Lots of folks wondered why astronautical engineers should have thought they had anything special to contribute to the debate. Over the … [Read more...]
Hydrocarbon Use and Human Material Wellbeing: A Case Against Mitigating Global Warming by Reduced Fossil Fuels Use—Talk Given in Rome, Italy April 28, 2015
I have a very simple point to make for you today: that because human material wellbeing depends heavily on access to abundant, affordable, reliable energy, and because fossil fuels are and for the foreseeable future will be, along with nuclear, our best source of such energy, the demand to reduce our use of fossil fuels to reduce our CO2 emissions to reduce manmade global warming amounts to a demand to reduce human material wellbeing. I’m going to illustrate that with 8 simple slides … [Read more...]
Dr. Beisner’s Remarks at Press Conference in Rome April 27
Having read some 50 books on the science and over 30 on the economics of climate policy, plus thousands of articles, including hundreds of peer-reviewed ones, I could talk on those topics. I could point out that computer climate models on average simulate twice as much warming as observed over the relevant period, and none simulated the complete absence of warming over the past 18+ years. That means the models are wrong, and therefore they provide no rational basis to fear manmade warming, and … [Read more...]
We Pray for the Honorable Scientists Who Are Being Attacked for Speaking Truth
Heavenly Father, Your Law clearly commands us not to bear false witness against our neighbors. Right now eight courageous people weigh heavily on my mind—eight climate scholars targeted by a politically motivated and baseless attack on their personal integrity because they are so intrepid as to stand against a powerful tide driven by enormous political and financial interests. Father, please vindicate Dr. Robert C. Balling of Arizona State University, Dr. John Christy of the University of … [Read more...]
Oppressing the Poor In the Name of Fighting Global Warming
"No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change." So said President Barack Obama in his State of the Union message last week. That he spent under 5% of the speech on the subject—about one-ninth as much as on the economy, one-fifth as much as on our need to overcome cynicism, and a little less even than on affordable college education—and tucked it away in a section about two-thirds of the way through suggests that the President doesn't really believe it … [Read more...]
Castrate All Boys at Age Ten to Save the Planet?
A friend posted on Facebook responses she had received when she announced she was pregnant with her second child. “Already?!” “Was this pregnancy an accident?” Reading many of them made me sad. Some chided her for having her children so close together, others for having them when she’s so young. (But she’s in her mid-twenties and happily married). Reading Katie Herzog’s “Why I’ll never have kids, and why you shouldn’t either” later that day made me even sadder. She thinks neither she nor … [Read more...]
Why 2014 was, and was not, the ‘hottest year in recorded history’
Media all over America and around the world have trumpeted the news: “2014 Was Hottest Year on Earth in Recorded History,” to quote the New York Times headline. The Times’s lead paragraph touted this as “underscoring scientific warnings about the risks of runaway emissions and undermining claims by climate-change contrarians that global warming had somehow stopped.” But it’s time to look below the surface—or, as you’ll see in a moment, above it. Let’s dispense with the simplest error … [Read more...]
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