[Editor note: A new paper by Christopher Booker, GLOBAL WARMING: A Case Study of Groupthink (subtitled How science can shed new light on the most important ‘non-debate’ of our time) was released yesterday by the Global Warming Policy Foundation. The full paper is highly recommended, but a useful summary of major climate-debate events is provided below in Mr. Booker’s Introduction.]
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… Continue Reading“… the rest of the world had no intention of going along with the declared aim of Paris, to agree on the wholesale ‘decarbonisation’ of the world’s economy. Yet astonishingly, so lost were developed countries in the groupthink that the Western media failed to recognize what was happening. One person who did was President Trump who, to the fury of all those still blinded by the groupthink, gave the refusal of the rest of the world to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions as his reason for pulling the US out of the Paris Accord (although even now this was not picked up by those reporting on his decision in the West).”
“Unreliable wind and solar made very little contribution to sustaining the grid…. Oil provided the fuel that saved New England from a grid disaster this past January. On January 6, it supplied 36 percent of the electricity for the New England grid.”
During the coldest days this past January, the New England grid was on the brink of disaster. Only pre-planning by New England Independent System Operator (ISO-NE), emergency actions by the Coast Guard, and luck kept the lights on.
The pre-planning by the New England Independent System Operator consisted of ensuring there were sufficient duel burning, i.e., oil and natural gas power plants, with oil stored on site, available for extended periods when natural gas would not be available for meeting increased demand for electricity.
Homeowners have first call on natural gas and power plants could not be sure of having adequate supplies when cold weather resulted in increased loads.…
Continue Reading[Editor note: This post is taken from Marian Tupy’s new study, “Julian Simon Was Right: A Half-Century of Population Growth, Increasing Prosperity, and Falling Commodity Prices” (Cato Institute: February 16, 2018).]
“In 1960, American workers worked, on average, 1,930 hours per year. In 2017, they worked 1,758 hours per year — a reduction of 9 percent.”
“… the human brain, the ultimate resource, is capable of solving complex challenges. We have been doing so with disease, hunger, and extreme poverty, and we can do so with respect to the use of natural resources.”
Many people believe that global population growth leads to greater poverty and more famines, but evidence suggests otherwise. Between 1960 and 2016, the world’s population increased by 145 percent. Over the same time period, real average annual per capita income in the world rose by 183 percent.…
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