As we mourn the human toll taken by the tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri, some are using the disaster as an opportunity to warn about the dangers of climate change. Al Roker recently suggested that climate change is bringing tornadoes from the country to the city. Environmentalist Bill McKibben, the same guy who blamed the Washington, D.C., snowstorms on global warming, penned a snarky op-ed in The Washington Post saying that those who ignore these weather events are ignoring a much bigger problem in climate change. Despite these claims, what …
The City of Chicago is preparing for the absolute worst. No, it’s not the financial crunch they’re worried about. While cities across the country are considering closing libraries, cutting services and even pleading for bankruptcy in order to avoid economic Armageddon, the Windy City is preparing for a global-warming-induced environmental apocalypse. The New York Times reports on the dire predictions and what Chicago plans to do about it: If world carbon emissions continued apace, the scientists said, Chicago would have summers like the Deep South, with as many as 72 days …
Acid rain. Expanding deserts. Global cooling. As Reason.tv explains in its video “The Top Five Environmental Disasters That Didn’t Happen,” all of the above were moments of environmental hysteria that led to nothing. Others they cite? Frankenfoods, the end of biodiversity (the claim that 70-80% of the Earth’s species would be extinct by 1995), running out of energy, a “silent spring” (an apocalyptic prediction about pesticides), and Malthusian famine (hundreds of millions of people starving to death by the 1970s). Under the Obama Administration, concerns over the environment — and …
Today the Supreme Court took up the case of American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut, reviewing a Second Circuit decision finding that states and private parties could sue electricity generators for global warming under the judge-made law of nuisance. To the Second Circuit, this was just a “garden-variety” claim, despite pitting all the world (those affected by warming) against all the world (those of us who breathe) and asking a court to make some unusual judgments—for example, contriving a national energy policy that permits only the “right amount” of carbon …
The Senate is expected to vote today on several amendments that would affect the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ability to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D–NV) told reporters that it’s now or never and voting on the amendments will “get rid of that issue one way or the other.” Policymakers have introduced a number of legislative fixes, both bad and good, to address the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. A temporary fix by means of a two-year delay is no fix …
There is no limit to the amount of distortion the enviro-left is willing to deploy to accomplish their policy goals. Last month, the Obama Commerce Department issued a report finding that the “scientists at the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration did not manipulate data or otherwise engage in wrongdoing.” But as University of California at Berkeley Professor of Physics and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Faculty Senior Scientist Richard A. Muller explains in the accompanying video, this does not mean that what these scientists produced on global warming can be considered science: …
Last Friday, House Republicans re-introduced legislation that would fund the federal government for the remainder of fiscal year 2011. This iteration included deeper cuts that would reduce spending for the rest of the year by a total of $100 billion compared to the President’s budget proposal. Though the new proposal includes $16 billion in unwise cuts to security spending, taking their initial spending reduction proposal back to the drawing board for more cuts shows lawmakers’ commitment to putting the federal budget on a sustainable path, and is a promising step …
The American people didn’t want it and Congress couldn’t do it, but don’t let that stop the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Despite Congress’s inability to pass cap-and-trade legislation that would have increased energy prices dramatically, the EPA is moving forward with its own regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, most notably carbon dioxide (CO2). The EPA will start regulating emissions from new power plants and major expansions of large greenhouse gas emitters and set the schedule for the next two years: By midyear 2012, refineries and fossil-fuel-fired electric utilities will be …
“What do you say to people who are losing patience with gas prices at $3 a gallon? And how much of a political price do you think you’re paying for that, right now?” This was a question asked of the president at a press conference in August…of 2006. The president was George W. Bush. In fact, it was a question that was asked in one way or another regularly during the entire eight years of the Bush presidency, regardless of where energy prices stood at that moment. In May 2004, …
There she goes again. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano just can’t speak in public without destroying any remaining confidence Americans have left in her agency. CNS News reports that at a conference devoted to “environmental justice”, Secretary Napolitano announced that the Department of Homeland Security would be creating the “Climate Change and Adaptation Task Force” to mitigate the affects of global warming on security and response operations. No…really. According to CNS, Napolitano said the task force would examine: 1) “How will FEMA work with state and local partners to plan for …
