Posted on July 23rd, 2008 by admin
Phoenix Business Journal - June 25, 2008
John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for US President, is deriding the Executive branch for their suggestions to curb energy prices as well as the Democratic leadership for its plans. (Follow the feed link to read the rest of the story).
Mr. McCain is proposing more aggressive investment in “clean” coal plants and nuclear energy. Personally, I am not sure there is such a thing as a clean coal plant but I am all for it if we can make one! I also think that we need to step up our reliance on nuclear energy and deal with the disposal issue which haunts that technology.
This is a preview of
McCain wants $30B for clean-coal research, 45 new nuclear reactors
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Click here to read the full post (270 words, estimated 1:05 mins reading time)
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Filed under: Getting warmer, Greenhouse gas, Politics, Technology
Posted on July 20th, 2008 by admin
www.tech-know.eu - July 14, 2008
A group of 13 prominent scientists have written a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon requesting him to “redress the lack of scientific integrity of the UN’s Climate Change Panel (IPCC) and to stop making reactionary and futile ‘Climate Change’ recommendations that hold back the developing world.”
I am not going to reproduce the entire letter here as it is freely available in PDF format. I will point out that these are not lightweight scientists. Evidently the signatories are below and they include at least one Nobel Prize winner.
- Piers Corbyn Astrophysicist & forecaster, WeatherAction, UK
- Vincent Gray IPCC Expert Reviewer, Climate Consultant, NZ
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Filed under: Natural, Not getting warmer, Politics
Posted on July 19th, 2008 by admin
Washington Post - July 17, 2008
Mr. Al Gore recently gave a speech in Washington DC regarding energy. While many in the blogosphere will call Mr. Gore “Pope Gore” and refer to environmentalists as a religion, in this case, I don’t think that Mr. Gore makes many of the outlandish comments which I have chastised him about. Most of his comments are regarding energy independence, the status of the technology of alternative fuels, and the balance of power.
He does make a few global warming references which are a little hard to defend. He implies that the fires in California are caused by manmade global warming - this is probably not true since California has been enjoying an unusually wet climate for several decades and it appears that this current drought is simply going back to status quo.
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Filed under: Getting warmer, Human fault, Politics, Technology
Posted on July 16th, 2008 by admin
July 12, 2008 - Wall Street Journal
The Bush administration continues to struggle with what to do with global warming and carbon dioxide as a pollutant. The Supreme Court ruled that carbon dioxide is a pollutant resulting from the burning of several fossil fuels. This has caused the EPA to try to figure out what to do with this new authority without destroying the economy.
As with most issues that revolve around Washington DC, this one is embroiled in politics with both major Presidential candidates chiming in.
The Bush administration published a government blueprint to reduce the U.S. output of global-warming gases, but at the same time rejected the document out of hand — saying it relied on “untested legal theories” and would impose “crippling costs” on the U.S. economy.
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Filed under: Getting warmer, Greenhouse gas, Human fault, Politics
Posted on July 15th, 2008 by admin
I originally found out about Chuck Norris and his crusade for drilling on US land and territory by reading an article on The Chilling Effect. As my frequent readers know, I regularly make fun of celebrities that use their “star status” to promote the reduction of global warming influences (Laurie David, Live Earth, Al Gore). Other blogs have gotten into that act as well commenting on Sheryl Crow (here and here) as well as other superstars. In fact, there is a great list of “supporters” that make one start to question the education of any superstar.
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Filed under: Politics
Posted on July 14th, 2008 by admin
Crooks and Liars - July 13, 2008
This story is all over the web right now but the best coverage that I found was on Crooks and Liars as they include the video as well as a transcript of the interview. Other versions of the story only include a snippet of the actual interview (a lot like what I have done).
STEPHANOPOULOS: How much of that is due, do you think, to global warming, to climate change?
SCHWARZENEGGER: Well, it’s very hard to say. I mean, one thing we know for sure, and that is we have had a drought for two years in a row now. … And I think that we just have to be aware of those changes. I’m sure, partially, that it has something to do with global warming, also, because we have just now broken a record.
This is a preview of
Schwarzenegger slams Bush administration on global warming - calls Bush efforts bogus
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Click here to read the full post (625 words, 1 image, estimated 2:30 mins reading time)
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Filed under: Getting warmer, Greenhouse gas, Politics
Posted on July 9th, 2008 by admin
USA Today - July 8, 2008
Politics, once again, rears its nasty head in the discussion of global warming. I really don’t know what the truth is here and, frankly, I am not sure that I care. On one side we have a mid-level manager saying that Vice President Dick Cheney forced the changing of testimony but refusing to give much very much detail. On the other side we have a White House spokesman saying the editing process was standard.
It seems reasonable that Mr. Cheney should have some say on testimony from an Executive Branch organization. He is the second in command of that branch of government. It is not obvious to me that he actually changed anything but rather expressed his views. The way I read this article, it seems that Ms. Gerberding made her statements over the objection of Mr. Cheney.
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Filed under: Politics
Posted on June 23rd, 2008 by admin
The Guardian - June 23, 2008
Jim Hansen of NASA must have finally gone off the deep end. While the man is probably brilliant, his call to put the CEOs of companies on trial for global warming is one of the most radical statements that I have heard in this global warming discussion. He states that he is 99% certain that carbon dioxide has already passed the safe level.
Mr. Hansen is certainly free to challenge the election of politicians and to speak on what he feels needs to be done. However, when someone calls for radical measures such as putting CEOs on trial for high crimes against humanity, I immediately put him into the weirdo bucket and dismiss him as a heretic.
This is a preview of
Put oil firm chiefs on trial, says leading climate change scientist
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Click here to read the full post (415 words, estimated 1:40 mins reading time)
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Filed under: Getting warmer, Human fault, Politics
Posted on June 9th, 2008 by admin
A little departure from the typical columns on this site. Rather than simply discussing an aspect of global warming, I am going to discuss a related topic - gas prices. There are quite a few articles out there on the discussion but I think I have a different perspective for everyone to consider.
First, how bad is it? Yes, I know that at the time of this writing, gas is over $4 a gallon (just filled up last night) but perhaps we need a reality check. The good folks over at InflationData.com compiled a table of average crude prices which they also inflation adjusted for 2007. I have combined that with a chart from WiseGeek that details the price of gold. Since the WiseGeek site stopped at 2000, I put in the price of gold at the end of 2007 from Goldprice. I also added today’s approximate pricing for gold (Kitco) and oil (MSNBC).
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Filed under: Politics
Posted on May 16th, 2008 by admin
Junkscience.com - May 15, 2008
I was about to write a review of John McCain’s recent speech. I was reading other comments on it first to make sure that I had my thoughts put together and I found Steven Milloy’s review. He has done an excellent job of discussing the speech.
I am going to pull the highlights from Steven’s article. Click through at the end to read the whole commentary.
Next to solar power, however, wind power is the most heavily subsidized form of energy. Taxpayers cough up an astounding $23.37 per megawatt hour of electricity produced, according to the Wall Street Journal. In contrast, coal and natural gas are only subsidized to a tune of $0.44 and $0.25, respectively.
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Filed under: Politics