On May Day, Noah Keenlyside of Germany's Leipzig Institute of Marine Science, published a paper in Nature forecasting no additional global warming "over the next decade."
William Yeatman
In an effort to win over those "moderates" who believe that global warming is about to destroy the planet, Republican presidential candidate John McCain spoke Monday at a Portland, Ore., training facility for Vestas Wind Technology. He claimed, "The facts of global warming demand our urgent attention, especially in Washington."
The decision announced yesterday by the Secretary of the Interior, to list the polar bear as "threatened," removes all doubt that the Endangered Species Act is broken and in need of urgent repair. It is the environmental movement that must take responsibility for breaking it.
Here in the department of the painfully obvious we're pleased to announce that polls suggest people are strongly in favour of paying carbon taxes, until they actually have to pay them.
E.ON AG. Chief Executive Officer Bernotat said the European Union will probably not meet the 2012 carbon dioxide emission targets of the Kyoto Protocol because consumers are using too much energy, Die Zeit reported.
Terry Corcoran of the National Post has a good column (when has he ever had a bad one?) up today on what the polar bear listing means for North American energy policy:
“Between environmentalists and state planners and controllers, plus animosity toward the energy industry, keeping a lid on supply is the name of the game in energy these days. Pathetically, the Bush administration's polar bear release hailed the government's wind and solar energy strategy as the alternative.”
Quite right. This was nothing to do with the polar bear and everything to do with advancing a ludicrous "alternative energy now" agenda. Meanwhile, I have further reflections over at The American Spectator.
What will it take for Americans to realize that we are in the midst of an energy crisis?
Much of our dilapidated electricity infrastructure—power plants, transmission towers, transformers, utility poles, etc.—was built generations ago. Thanks to the stifling hand of government regulation, investment has lagged, and today the system is buckling under ever greater demand for juice. Capacity margins (the difference between how much electricity a utility can produce and how much it uses) historically has hovered around 20%, but now are as low as 3% in many parts of the country. According to a report by Nathanial Gronewold in yesterday’s Climate Wire, industry experts predict demand-driven blackouts as soon as this summer!
Paradoxically, rolling blackouts across America might be just what the doctor ordered.
For too long, the citizens of this country have taken energy reliability for granted. We assume that a flick of the switch will turn on a light. So there is no sense of urgency, even as a full blown electricity crisis gathers steam with each passing day.
A rude awakening—say, a prolonged blackout in mid summer—might jar Americans out of complacency and get them to pay attention to the needs at hand.
The decision on Wednesday by the U.S. Interior Department to declare the polar bear a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act is a major victory for environmentalists who have been looking for a back-door legal mechanism to limit carbon-dioxide emissions.
If Republicans are going to be stampeded by phony environmental alarms and propose terrible public policies in the name of these scams, what the hell do we need Democrats for?
The climate-change issue has divided conservatives, with presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain leading the charge for a cap-and-trade energy-rationing scheme and Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe spearheading the opposition — which includes my group, Americans for Prosperity, and most movement conservatives. Building a consensus on the issue looks complicated, but it’s as simple as one word: taxes. We should build from the premise that climate policy must not be used as a cover for raising federal revenue.
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