Category: Energy

Americans Serious about Climate Change? Tell Me Another Whopper

[WARNING: many readers may find the following a downer—but if you care about facts, you must be willing to look at all kinds of Inconvenient Truths.] 

U.S. public on climate change: a crisis in name only

The September 20th Global Climate Strike has been inspiring—for those seriously concerned about global warming and climate change.

It’s less inspiring to read of how not-serious most of the American public is. A week before the Climate Strike, the release of a Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation poll headlined “Americans increasingly see climate change as a crisis” appeared to portend a sea change (pun partially intended) in attitudes toward climate change.

Read on for what underlies appearances.

The takeaway from the poll is that the public says, big problem—let somebody else take care of it. Consider that 38% describe climate change as “a crisis,” and another 38% describe it as “a major problem but not a crisis.” However, to combat climate change only 37% say major sacrifices will be required, 48% say minor sacrifices, 14% “not requiring much sacrifice,” with 1% having no opinion.

Next we read that “nearly half of adults say they would be willing to pay a $2 monthly tax on electricity to help combat climate change.” If that sounds promising,  the report says just 27% would pay $10 extra a month. Meaning that at best 27/38 (71%) is the fraction of those saying the threat is “a crisis” would also pay $10 extra a month. $120 a year. Hmmm . . .  33¢/day = a bit more than 1/6th the price of a “tall” cup of Starbucks coffee.  Now that’s what I call a major sacrifice!

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A Cooler Look at Global Warming: Bjorn Lomborg Runs the Numbers

Skewed Priorities? Another AGW Perspective

Bjorn Lomborg is a thorn in the side of many a climate change warrior. As a self-described environmentalist (onetime Greenpeace member), he’s been accused of global warming heresy, largely  on account of his book, The Skeptical Environmentalist (1998, English editon 2001).  In that book, Lomborg accused climate alarmists of making mountains out of climate molehills, forecasting doom when we had much more urgent needs to address. Fast forward to 2011, and he was taking a more modest tack, admitting that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) had progressed further, and its impacts were likely to be more severe, than he had previously forecast. Nevertheless, he maintained the future progression, and potential harm, were far less urgent than claimed by climate hawks, when compared with other threats.

Fast forward to 2019, and he has come to admit that climate change is a problem of daunting dimensions. Where he parts ways with most environmentalists and climate scientists is how he ranks climate change against other threats to the well-being of most people and natural systems: e.g. malnutrition, disease, air and water pollution, war, subsistence agriculture, habitat destruction, unsustainable exploitation of natural resources, and failing infrastructure. The last is most glaring in the Third World, where the state of roads, bridges, power delivery systems, flood containment, and the resistance of buildings to earthquakes, high winds, flood, and fire, are all woefully inadequate by the standards of the developed world. He disagrees with climate warriors who overwhelmingly prioritize the elimination of fossil fuel use as soon as possible, regardless of the consequences to other economic activities.*

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Watch out for the other GAO! Another Weapon of Science Denial

Surprise! More sneaky public relations by Big Fossil.

When you hear “GAO,” don’t you think the Government Accountability Office—the federal watchdog group that is tasked with keeping government officials honest?

I do.  Or at least I did, until I read about The Other GAO—the “Government Accountability and Oversight” non-governmental organization.  The IRS has given public charity status to this group that is “promising to publish documents about the people and groups behind ongoing court cases against the energy industry and its impact on the global climate.”

Thanks to DeSmog Blog, we hear that part-founder of “GAO,” and Competitive Enterprise Institute lawyer, Chris Horner, announced that the bogus GAO isn’t “going to get into the science debate and other arguments. . . . ”  Instead, they are going to lift the veil off those treacherous, subversive environmental groups, lawyers, and climate scientists who are suing the fossil fuel industry.

See: DeSmog Blog exposes the “GAO”

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Electrical Energy Generation: More Inconvenient Truth

It is with great trepidation that I am coming out of the closet on energy generation policy, because my position rubs a lot of greens the wrong way.  One ex-friend stopped talking with me on account of it. But this has to be said, because the CO2 emissions problem is becoming increasingly dire. Unfortunately, one belief strongly held by many greens is simply, and dangerously, mistaken.

I advocate nuclear power.  65% of the members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science support nuclear power.  See:Pew poll of AAAS members

That’s quite a switch from my anti-nuclear position five years ago.  Then, browsing through the new release science section at Barnes & Noble, I happened to pick up a book by Michael H. Fox, Why We Need Nuclear Power.  Michael H. Fox is professor emeritus of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences at Colorado State University. Given his area of study—principally, the effect of radiation on biological tissue—I figured this guy might have something significant to say about radiation, nuclear energy, human health, and climate change. He did. His explanations of what ionizing radiation does and does not do to the body, and how the body repairs itself, were eye-openers. I recommend his book for those seeking scientific facts, rather than gross exaggerations, concerning the health hazards of radiation.

What Fox said turned me around 180 degrees in my thinking about nuclear energy.  Once you start questioning anti-nuclear dogma, you soon find out that there are many people with strong environmental credentials who support nuclear power—not that they (most of them, anyway) love it, but they see it as a practical necessity in the fight against CO2 pollution. For a taste of their view, check out this piece in the Washington Post (if you are barred by a paywall, let me know in the comments and I’ll write you a summary): environmentalists, nuclear energy, and climate change

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Pruitt Gets Pushback from Freight Industry

Pruitt EPA: Serving a VERY Special Interest

Let’s not assume that the transportation and freight industries are all on board with every environmentally hostile move made by the Trump administration—in particular the moves of that mendacious boot-licker of fossil fuel interests, Scott Pruitt.

Check out this January 28 piece from The Energy Collective on backlash from the freight industry at Pruitt’s proposal to exempt certain heavy polluters from existing emissions regulations:

Pruitt offers loophole to “glider trucks”

Note especially  the comment of one experienced heavy duty truck dealer referring to “days years ago when our truck shop was so thick with the exhaust from the trucks you could not see the other side of our shop.”  Here’s a guy (I assume a guy) who had first-hand, concrete visual evidence of the damage from heavily polluting vehicles of the past in his own shop—someone for whom environmental unfriendliness is more than a mere leftist catchphrase.  Imagine what he’s telling his grandchildren about Scott Pruitt. (And maybe the entire Trump administration.)

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Confirmed beyond a Reasonable Doubt: ExxonMobile Lied Big-Time

Researchers measure disconnect between science and public relations at ExxonMobil

Most readers of this blog are aware of a discrepancy between what ExxonMobil scientists have been reporting for decades, in a purely scientific context, and the company’s position as reflected in public statements and media “advertorials.”

But how big is the discrepancy? How about, enormous.

Two Harvard researchers undertook to pin down the magnitude of the discrepancy quantitatively—chiefly by content analysis—and the results surprised even me.  The thrust of the analysis rested on the frequency with which ExxonMobil scientists published scientific papers supporting the hypothesis of Anthropogenic Global Warming and Climate Change, versus the public statements and advertorials in media such as the New York Times.

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Uncertainty Part Two: When Comes the Big Shock?

Another scary crapshoot: Coronal Mass Ejection

The dice are loaded against Earth from the activity of that warm and friendly object that bestows most of the energy we use, our Sun. The worst effect of the Sun will be its roasting to death all life on earth a billion or so years hence. But that warming is nothing to worry about for the next few million years (this warming has virtually nothing to do with climate change on a scale of centuries, such as 2,000-10,000 A.D).

Short-term, the biggest wallop the Sun has in store for us is a Coronal Mass Ejection.

Just do a web search on Coronal Mass Ejection and you’ll get, along with a fascinating description and analysis, an eyeful of bad news about what CME’s could do to Earth–and what they have already done, the most dramatic recent manifestation being the 1859 “Carrington Event” (named after the astronomer who witnessed the flare accompanying the CME). In 1859, telegraph wires were jolted to a degree that knocked wireless operators off their chairs, ignited fires, and took down the entire telegraph network.

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Uncertainty Part One: Climate and Loaded Dice

Here’s a little different slant on the old subjects of climate change and coronal mass ejections.
Climate: the Known Unknowns

Will the Earth be hotter in 2050 than today?  What does the science say?

The simplest answer is, probably.  A more complicated answer is, we don’t know.

We do know it is almost certain, that absent a 50% drop in carbon emissions within the next ten years, and a still steeper drop afterwards, Earth’s temperature will continue to rise dangerously fast on account of the enormous quantities of carbon dioxide we have already pumped into the atmosphere. But a 50% drop in ten years would be ruinous to the global economy and is, if not technically impossible, then politically so—even more the case now that the leaders of the world’s second worst carbon polluter have turned their backs on mitigation, and even adaptation. Furthermore, even a 50% drop leaves 50% still going, with the promise of (net) zero emissions still decades away.

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How to Slow Global Warming, for Real

Failure and More Failure: Time to Get Real

If you are a typical reader of this blog, much of what you’ll see below is not news . But my hope is to frame questions about climate change and its remedies in a coherent way. . . and also to make the argument that. . . you’ll see.

As much as climate change believers have attempted to rein in the combustion of fossil fuels to reduce CO2 emissions, they have largely failed. It doesn’t matter what accord or protocol we’re talking about—Paris, Copenhagen, Kyoto—economic considerations (especially in India and China), and the slow development of zero carbon technologies are preventing us from meeting the goals.

That’s even without the worsening of U.S. emissions we can expect for the next four years—at least.

The good news is that CO2 emissions worldwide have ceased growing—we may be at a plateau with some promise of  reduction.

Slowing CO2 Emissions

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Holy Coal

Who would have known that fossil fuels are a special gift to humanity from the Divine?

Fred Palmer, that’s who. The Heartland Institute’s holy warrior senior fellow has revealed his elegant chain of reasoning: “Because it’s easy to get to, it’s here and more people live better and longer for it,” therefore “fossil fuels [are] part of a divine plan.”.

This is a guy who says that global warming science is “sophistry. It’s an agenda driven by lawyers who make their own facts. . . . ”

I ought to note here that if you are a Deist—which is the most minimal religious belief this side of atheism—of course all Creation is divine by definition. No argument here. But that’s not the sense in which Palmer makes claims about fossil fuels. He means to elevate fossil fuels above other objects of Creation, special gifts to humankind. Which seems to me a bit dismissive of stuff like oxygen (without which, incidentally, coal, oil, and gas would not burn; oh, but oxygen is used by other animals, so it’s not so special).

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