“Over the past 15 years, the U.S. has spent $150 billion on global warming, and this year’s budget calls for another $18 billion. What do we have to show for all this spending – numerical models that can’t make accurate forecasts for 17 years and numerous failed green energy projects (i.e. bankrupt Solyndra that cost U.S. taxpayers a half-billion dollars)?”
– Neil Frank (Ph.D), Letter to the Editor, Houston Chronicle, October 3, 2014.
The mainstream media, including the Houston Chronicle in my hometown, has neglected to expose the falsified, exaggerated claims of climate alarmism. For example, no Chronicle reporter bothered to cover the expert-laden energy/climate conference hosted by the Texas Public Policy Foundation last month here in Houston, At The Crossroads: Energy & Climate Policy Summit.
Eric Berger, the paper’s science reporter, and yesteryear’s straight shooter on the skeptic-versus-alarmist climate debate, has largely disengaged (his last climate piece, at least according to his blog, was last Spring).…
Continue Reading“In terms of affordability, availability and scalability – methanol and ethanol are the best prospects to [displace oil in transportation] quickly.”
– John Hofmeister, quoted in John Holeywell, “Q&A: He Ran Shell Oil Co. – and He Thinks We Use Too Much Crude,” Houston Chronicle, September 19, 2014.
Milton Friedman once opined: “The two greatest enemies of free enterprise in the United States … have been, on the one hand, my fellow intellectuals and, on the other hand, the business corporations of this country.”
Enter T. Boone Pickens, crony capitalist extraordinaire. Enter John Hofmeister, former president of Shell Oil Co. (2005–2008), the Houston-based U.S. subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell. [1]
Hofmeister maliciously titled his signature book, Why We Hate the Oil Companies: Straight from an Energy Insider.…
Continue Reading“Since economic models are trained to match climate models, if climate models overstate the effect of CO2 emissions, economic models will overstate the social damages associated with them. “
The fact that CO2 emissions lead to changes in the atmospheric carbon concentration is not controversial. Nor is the fact that CO2 and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) absorb infrared energy in the atmosphere and contribute to the overall greenhouse effect.
Increases in CO2 levels are therefore expected to lead to atmospheric warming, and this is the basis for the current push to enact policies to reduce GHG emissions. For more than 25 years, climate models have reported a wide span of estimates of the sensitivity of the climate to CO2 emissions, ranging from relatively benign to potentially catastrophic, reflecting a wide range of assumptions about how the climate system may or may not amplify the effects of GHG emissions.…
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