Swiss Re, one of two global re-insurance titans, yesterday issued a report, “The hidden risks of climate change: An increase in property damage from drought and soil subsidence in Europe,” suggesting that global warming could “magnify” the risks of property damage caused by soil subsidence. In 2010, the other global re-insurance titan, Munich Re, concluded that, “The only plausible explanation for the rise in weather-related catastrophes is climate change.”
The above claim made by Munich Re is a favorite of global warming alarmists. For example, it was cited by former Vice President Al Gore in a high-profile Rolling Stone article published two weeks ago. No doubt, yesterday’s Swiss Re study also will prove to be an oft-mentioned talking point for green special interests. Environmental extremists dismiss virtually all science that is skeptical of catastrophic climate change as being “industry funded,” so it is interesting that they are quick to embrace “evidence” produced by insurance companies, for which there is a clear profit motive at stake. After all, insurance is the business of pricing risk. Swiss Re and Munich Re therefore have an incentive to incorporate into their assessments an allegedly significant, yet amorphous, source of risk like global warming. By doing so, they can jack up premiums and make a mint.
Energy & Environment News (subscription required) reported this morning that Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-WA) purchased 21 iPads for senators and committee staff, in an effort to cut down on paper use. According to the story, “Each is loaded with all the relevant documents” necessary to legislate effectively.
When I read this news, I couldn’t help but think how great it would have been if the House of Representatives had one such iPad, “loaded with all the relevant documents,” on the evening of June 26, 2009*. At the time, the Democrat-controlled House was about to pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act, a cap-and-trade energy-rationing scheme, despite the fact that no one had read the bill. Indeed, it would have been impossible for anyone to have read the bill, because there wasn’t a copy of the legislation available.
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When it comes to global warming mitigation, the European Union is full of sound and fury, but signifies nothing.
Leaders and officials from the 27-nation bloc frequently claim to occupy the moral high ground on climate change policy, due to the fact that the EU has adopted unilateral targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. While it is true that the EU is more than halfway to achieving this goal, a close look at the numbers shows that the EU’s emissions cuts to date are largely the byproduct of historical happenstance. Also dubious is the EU’s contention that it is implementing “unilateral” emissions reductions. In fact, the EU is trying to coerce international burden-sharing before it makes any real sacrifices of its own on behalf the climate.
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Last week the American Society for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) board issued a statement decrying “attacks on researchers that question their personal and professional integrity.” As an example, the AAAS board cited the American Tradition Institute’s recent Freedom of Information Act request for thousands of emails from Dr. Michael Mann, creator of the disputed “hockey stick” reconstruction of historical global temperatures. Notably, the AAAS board omitted mention of a new Greenpeace report noting that all of the research funding received since 2003 by Dr. Willie Soon, a Harvard astrophysicist and climate skeptic, came from hydrocarbon industries, information that was obtained by a FOIA request. Nor did the AAAS board mention that Greenpeace filed a FOIA request for the financial records of climate skeptic Dr. Patrick Michaels.
The Science and Environmental Policy Project had an interesting take on the AAAS board’s statement in the July 2nd edition of its weekly newsletter, The Week That Was:
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Is Al Gore Bad for Big Environmentalism?
Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, 7 July 2011
Chinese Coal Blamed for Global Cooling
Andrew Orlowski, The Register, 5 July 2011
Nic Lewis on IPCC Sensitivity
Steve McIntyre, Climate Audit, 5 July 2011
The Quiet Case for a Rail System of Some Speed
Charlie Cooke, Planet Gore, 1 July 2011
Obama Mandates a Market for His Own Market “Investments”
Henry Payne, The Michigan View, 27 June 2011
This calculation comes from Ken Glozer’s opinion piece in last Thursday’s Washington Times. Here’s the pertinent paragraph:
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On Friday near midnight, a 12-inch pipeline operated by Exxon Mobile ruptured under the Yellowstone River near Billings, Montana, releasing an as yet undetermined amount of crude oil into the river. Read news reports here, here, and here.
It seems to me that there is no shortage of juicy angles for journalists to work on this developing story: Exxon Mobil, a favorite target of the left, is the responsible party; oil is visible miles downstream; aquatic wildlife is endangered; 140 people living near the break in the pipeline were temporarily evacuated due to fumes and the risk of an explosion; and the Yellowstone River, like many in the region, is swelled with snow melt and rain, which has rendered difficult the cleanup. For the Associated Press, however, the story wasn’t juicy enough. Otherwise, the AP write-up would not have included this sensationalist paragraph:
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First, They Came for My Light Bulbs
Matt Patterson, Washington Times, 1 July 2011
Private Oil and Gas for the Public Good
Robert Bradley Jr., Master Resource, 1 July 2011
Corn Ethanol Fiction
Ken Glozer, Washington Times, 30 June 2011
Global Welfaring
Henry Payne, The Michigan View, 28 June 2011
An Inconvenient Fallacy
Bob Carter, Sydney Morning Herald, 27 June 2011
On Friday, the New York Department of Environmental Conservation issued proposed regulations for hydraulic fracturing, a.k.a. “fracking,” the technological breakthrough in natural gas drilling that has roughly doubled known North American gas reserves in the last five years. Much of New York is within the geologic area known as the Marcellus Shale, which contains enormous gas deposits that became recoverable only with the advent of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling. New York lawmakers imposed a moratorium on the process, due to unsubstantiated fears fanned by environmentalist special interests that the technique could contaminate New York City’s water supply. The drilling regulations are unnecessarily onerous, such that they might make gas extraction uneconomic, but they potentially could open up to 85% of the state’s Marcellus Shale deposits to hydraulic fracturing.
Across the pond, the French Parliament this week voted to ban hydraulic fracturing, making it the first country to enact legislation to outlaw the practice. However, the prospects for the gas drilling technique remain excellent in much of the rest of the European Union. Unlike France, which generates the preponderance of its electricity from nuclear and therefore has less of a need for expanded gas supplies, Central and Eastern Europe are embracing the technique. For countries in these regions, expanded domestic production of gas is preferable to relying on Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned gas export company.
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