Bjorn Lomborg wins a prize for having the most misrepresented position on climate change. In a recent interview with The Guardian, Lomborg reveals he believes that climate change is a problem. The Guardian refers to this as an “apparent U-turn.” It might appear to be a U-turn, but it isn’t. In his book Cool It!, Lomborg states that “global warming is real and man-made. It will have a serious impact on humans and the environment toward the end of this century.” But he remained a global warming skeptic because he …
The EPA recently proposed a new grading requirement for new car stickers. The A–D grading system would rank cars according to their fuel efficiency and carbon dioxide emissions to help consumers make better choices. In the new grading scheme, the Ford Focus gets a B and the Toyota Prius gets an A–. What does this tell consumers? As it turns out, not much. Already on the new car sticker are two more useful bits of information. The first is the EPA’s estimate of annual fuel cost. For the Focus it …
Much of the justification for subsidies, tax credits, and mandates for increasing wind energy production in the U.S. is that it will create jobs and help cool our planet’s fever. We’ve explained in detail how subsidized green jobs destroy jobs elsewhere, but it also turns out that increased wind power decreases carbon emissions much less than previously thought, and in some instances, could increase emissions. The Manhattan Institute’s Robert Bryce explains why in his recent Wall Street Journal op-ed. First, wind power displaces power from natural gas more than it …
In the three months since President Barack Obama released his first National Security Strategy (NSS), the news has been dominated by his responses to domestic problems—from the economy to the Gulf oil spill to more stimulus spending. And that focus on traditionally domestic issues is reflected in the 2010 National Security Strategy. At 34,314 words, the document is nearly twice as long as Bush’s 2006 edition (19,731 words) and nearly three times as long as Bush’s 2002 edition (12,745 words). The 2010 NSS is notable in that it dramatically changes …
What would you do if the government forced you to turn off your air conditioning? Could you still live where you live or work where you work? Probably not. But that’s not just a bug in the enviro-left’s high energy cost future, its a feature! Stan Cox makes the case in yesterday’s Washington Post: In a country that’s among the world’s highest greenhouse-gas emitters, air conditioning is one of the worst power-guzzlers. … A.C.’s obvious public-health benefits during severe heat waves do not justify its lavish use in everyday life …
New evidence on the melting Pine Island Glacier (PIG), one of the melting Antarctic glaciers that some scientists feel may pose a threat to sea level increases, suggests that it is not climate change that is causing the glacier to melt. From the UK’s Register: “Many scientists have theorised that the PIG’s accelerating flow is due to global warming. However, recent research – including surveys beneath the bottom of the floating, projecting ice sheet by Blighty’s Autosub robot probe – indicate that this may not be the case. “The discovery …
President Obama has a solution to the Gulf oil spill: $7-a-gallon gas. That’s a Harvard University study’s estimate of the per-gallon price of the president’s global-warming agenda. And Obama made clear this week that this agenda is a part of his plan for addressing the Gulf mess. So what does global-warming legislation have to do with the oil spill? Good question, because such measures wouldn’t do a thing to clean up the oil or fix the problems that led to the leak. The answer can be found in Obama Chief …
A college graduation is a great achievement that is the culmination of years of hard work, feverish paper writing, and the occasional all-nighter. So when college students get to their graduation ceremony, they are usually greeted with a great celebration. They are also very positive affairs with well-known speakers giving a speech that makes it an unforgettable day. As well it should be. Former Vice President Al Gore seems to have not gotten the memo. You see, he used a commencement speech at the University of Tennessee as a political …
Another one of the standout presentations at the Heartland Institute’s fourth International Conference on Climate Change was the one by Nils-Axel Morner, former emeritus head of the paleogeophysics and geodynamics department at Stockholm University. His talk focused on sea level increases and the difference between observed data and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) model’s predictions. Morner was a former reviewer on the IPCC report and when he was first made a reviewer he said he was “astonished to find that not one of their 22 contributing authors on …
