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Environmentalists versus Enviromentalists

December 13, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Here is an interesting situation. Environmentalists that want to protect birds are flying in the face of environmentalists that favor alternative energy. Specifically, eagles are stalling wind farm developments and costing the projects billions of dollars.

Because rotating wind turbines might injure protected golden eagles, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has indefinitely suspended issuing wind permits on public lands. Fast track approvals will now not be issued in time to qualify for hundreds of millions of dollars in stimulus funds.

Less than one percent of 250 currently proposed wind projects have been approved and none has been built. Estimates are that $68 billion in investment is being held up.

One solution would be to build eagle-friendly coal-fired power plants instead. Other than that, the answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.

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Show Me The Catastrophe

June 7, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Newsweek magazine this week, in writing about the Gulf oil spill, had this to say about oil companies:

And the list above doesn’t even include the fact that what the oil companies sell is one of the major contributors to catastrophic climate change.

There is a very specific error with this sentence. Can you see what it is?

If you said it is “climate change” being substituted for “global warming” you would have a point. If you take the stance that CO2 causes global warming then why alter the name to climate change? CO2 doesn’t cause global cooling so what else is left if the climate is not warming or cooling? So unless you want to hide something, say what you mean and call it global warming.

But that is not the error I speak of. It is the use of one word — catastrophic. There has been no catastrophic global warming. Where is the catastrophe? There is none. But the Newsweek sentence states the fact that oil is the major contributor to this fictional catastrophe.

No wonder The Washington Post wants to sell Newsweek magazine.

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Economic Leakage in California

May 19, 2010 by Leave a Comment

A May 13, 2010 report from the California Legislative Analyst’s Office says this:

California’s economy at large will likely be adversely affected in the near term by implementing climate-related policies that are not adopted elsewhere. This is in large part because such policies will tend to raise the state’s relative prices for energy, such as electricity. This, in turn, will adversely impact the state’s economy through such avenues as causing the prices of goods and services to rise; lowering business profits; and reducing production, income, and jobs. These adverse effects will occur in large part through economic leakage, as certain economic activity locates or relocates outside of California where regulatory-related costs are lower. While it is true that there will be both winners and losers under the scoping plan, including gains in so-called “green” jobs, the net economy-wide impact in the near term of implementing the scoping plan in the absence of like policies in place elsewhere will in all likelihood be negative.

It is official. As California is already skilled in chasing jobs out of the state, they intend to continue doing what they know best.

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Spanish Solar Subsidies Suddenly Shrink

May 1, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Spain wanted to be a world leader in solar power and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs. So they implemented generous subsidies and in 2008 Spain installed half the world’s solar-power installations by wattage.

But the Spanish subsidies were unsustainable and were drastically scaled back, contributing to an unemployment rate of 20%. Spain’s jobless rate is the highest in the eurozone and their economy shrank 3.6% in 2009.

The Spanish subsidies are not unlike the U.S. model for alternative energy. The fundamental problem is that, without subsidies and mandates requiring municipalities to buy a percentage of renewable energy, the solar power industry is not economically viable. Unless support is continued almost indefinitely, solar power cannot sustain itself with current technologies.

The Congress of the United States knows this and still opted for solar subsidies, though on not as grand a scale as in Spain. To make up the difference the plan is to cause fossil fuels to be more expensive, thus making solar more attractive economically. This is done by Congress mandating mechanisms like Cap and Trade or a Carbon Tax. To justify these new subsidies and taxes it was necessary to cook up anthropomorphic global warming, or at least pin the blame on climate change.

The real surprise in all of this is that much of the populace actually buys it. Which just leaves me one alternative — start a carbon credit agency.

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My Blog Is Carbon Committed

April 22, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Today Earth Day is taking place all over the world. Some bloggers are joining the initiative to “Make your blog carbon neutral” by having a tree planted in their behalf.

This doesn’t really work for me. In the past I have cut trees down on my property to make room for more cars. I also think that leaving coal and natural gas in the ground is such a waste. All that stored energy waiting for us to unleash it and improve our lives — strategically created for us by the hand of Providence.

So on Earth Day I am certifying that my blog is Carbon Committed.

Please plant a tree on my behalf so that I will have fuel for my wood-burning stove in my old age.

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Global Warming Law Means Lost Jobs

March 15, 2010 by Leave a Comment

California’s nonpartisan legislative analyst’s office reports that job losses can be expected from California’s global warming law. Apparently the California Air Resources Board has overstated the number of jobs that would be gained in a future implementation of the 2006 climate law.

The Los Angeles Times writes that the report said:

On balance, however, we believe that the aggregate net jobs impact in the near term is likely to be negative, even after recognizing that many of the . . . programs phase in over time.

The report comes at a bad time when employment is Americans’ top concern. A ballot initiative is circulating that would delay the law, known as AB 32, until unemployment drops to 5.5% for at least a year.

Senator Cogdill put it best, “It’s obvious that the quest for ‘green’ jobs will only take more cold hard green cash from Californians’ wallets.”

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Bloggers Keep Climate Scientists Honest

March 7, 2010 by Leave a Comment

For several years the fight between climate scientists and amateur climatologists has raged on blogs. Bloggers have demanded supporting data from scientists, sometimes using the of Freedom of Information Act. Scientists have steadfastly refused to release the requested information.

Science is not helped when the IPCC falsely states that Himalayan glaciers will melt entirely by 2035; that Al Gore based his whole argument on a totally inaccurate “hockey stick” graph; that Michael Mann’s data only went as far as 1980 and had to be massaged; and the e-mails from the University of East Anglia revealed very questionable scientific objectivity of several prominent researchers.

Newsweek reports that some climate scientists are calling for an entirely different change:

Climate science, they say, needs to open its books and be more tolerant of scrutiny from the outside. Its institutions—notably the IPCC—need to go about their business with greater transparency. “The circle-the-wagons mentality has backfired,” says Judith Curry, head of Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

As watchful bloggers continue to force scientists to be honest in their research, the “threat” of global warming is losing ground with the public. No more are Americans at the mercy of renegade scientists misleading them through a biased press.

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Anthropogenic Global Warming Less of a Threat

February 28, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Now we hear from a George Mason University study that Americans who view global warming as a serious threat has dropped from 18 percent to 10 percent. This change occurred from October 2008 to January 2010.

The reasons for this significant change include high unemployment, frustration with Washington, errors in IPCC reports, and the infamous Climategate.

If politicians use climate as the basis of costly legislation they need to be aware that as the economy falters the people believe less in anthropogenic global warming. Ross Perot said it best in 1992:

When your kids are hungry, you’re gonna shoot that spotted owl.

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Overestimation of Sea Level Rise

February 22, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Anthropogenic global warming is feeling the heat these days. Recently we have had scientific consensus overstated, inaccurate climate forecasts, faulty computer models, misguided climate legislation, and telling emails.

Climate scientists that have cooked the books are having to cool their claims.

For example, consider climate scientists Siddall, Stoker, and Clark. Yesterday they retracted their claim that the sea level would rise by up to 82 cm by century’s end. Apparently there were two separate technical mistakes in the paper, which were pointed out by other scientists after it was published.

Said Siddall:

One mistake was a miscalculation; the other was not to allow fully for temperature change over the past 2,000 years. Because of these issues we have retracted the paper and will now invest in the further work needed to correct these mistakes.

I predict that there will be more forced retractions on global warming “miscalculations.”

And I don’t need a computer model to reach that conclusion.

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A Carbon Tax of $300 a Ton

February 21, 2010 by 2 Comments

The New York Times, in a recent article, wrote about the IPCC carbon tax of $80 a ton. Except that the NY Times wanted to “assume a tax of $300 a ton, just to be safe.” Huh? Is this the same discredited IPCC that I have been reading about? Perhaps a little history, mixed with a pinch of common-sense, and mingled with reality is in order. Pay attention.

In the fifties I didn’t know what was going on because I was only 8 years old at decade’s end.

By the end of the sixties I’d been told all about the catastrophe of over-population that was about to befall humanity, unless nuclear annihilation struck first.

The seventies brought predictions in England of mass starvation in twenty years and warnings of permanent oil shortages in America. And an ice age was imminent, so the scientists said.

In the eighties I was much too busy getting married and fathering five children, thus adding to over-population, mass starvation, and the depletion of oil. I didn’t get blamed for the ice age that never happened.

The nineties arrived and there were butter mountains and milk lakes in Europe and Americans had so much cheap food available that many of them got fat. And global warming was the latest scientific scare to occupy the masses.

In the 00′s, when of course all the computers still ran, there wasn’t much of me that you could scare any more. Seems like I have heard it all before. It’s the same old stage with the scenery being changed from decade to decade.

No doubt the powers that be will get their carbon tax, to “save the earth”, which obviously is in no need of saving. Our grandchildren will arrive at adulthood accepting a carbon tax just as we have been trained to view the income tax as normal.

Because I didn’t starve, freeze, or radiate and can still drive in wide open spaces I have high doubts that the planet will soon go supernova over a little plant food in the stratosphere.

But I really would like to know why we have an income tax.

Filed Under: Environment · Tagged With: ,
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