A Free-Market Energy Blog

ObamaScience: Third U.S. Climate Assessment DOA (hype haunts in real science)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 9, 2014

“This is not sober, balanced science; it is ObamaScience for open-ended government planning.”

Despite uncooperative data regarding global warming (in a 15+ year ‘pause’), hurricanes, and tornadoes; despite the failure of climate models to predict and thus explain; despite the inability of the same models to attribute regionally; and despite the well-known benefits of carbon dioxide fertilization and moderately warmer/wetter climate scenarios, Obama and the Malthusian Left (including many cooperating scientists) soldier on.

But it will not be easy. The all-in effort to stretch climate science beyond the normal peer-review literature (John Holdren got his wish) may well backfire. Good science drives out bad, and the public is already alerted to the politicization of climate science and the nefarious agenda of “saving the planet.”

A Wall Street Journal article, “Obama Climate Push Faces a Lukewarm Public,” explained the climate conundrum.

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Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for Windpower: ABC Request vs. Government-enabled Eco-blight

By Michael Morgan -- May 8, 2014

“At the risk of sounding harsh, these gestures [by the American Bird Conservancy et al.] seem little more than the war’s defeated negotiating terms of surrender when, in reality, the industrial wind profiteers should be made to justify their existence. With tens of thousands of turbines placed in the U.S. and easily hundreds of thousands more to be placed until the business falls under its own weight, the onus is on industrial wind to prove its worth.”

Under the banner of the American Bird Conservancy (ABC), approximately seventy organizations have requested that Interior Secretary Sally Jewell “develop a Programmatic Wind Environmental Impact Statement to identify appropriate areas for wind energy development as well as areas where new projects should be avoided to conserve wildlife and sensitive habitats.

The letter refers to studies which “have documented significant losses of birds and bats, including threatened, endangered and other protected species (an estimated 573,000 birds and 888,000 bats annually at 2012 build-out levels).

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Bird Vaporization at Ivanpah: Solar Enters Wind Territory

By -- May 7, 2014

“After several studies, the conclusion for why birds are drawn to the searing beams of the solar field goes like this: Insects are attracted to the bright light of the reflecting mirrors, much as moths are lured to a porch light. Small birds — insect eaters such as finches, swallows and warblers — go after the bugs. In turn, predators such as hawks and falcons pursue the smaller birds.

But once the birds enter the focal field of the mirrors, called the “solar flux,” injury or death can occur in a few seconds. The reflected light from the mirrors is 800 to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Either the birds are incinerated in flight; their feathers are singed, causing them to fall to their deaths; or they are too injured to fly and are killed on the ground by predators, according to a report by the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory.”

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The Coal Train Steams Forward

By Robert Bryce -- May 6, 2014
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AWED Energy & Environmental Newsletter: May 5, 2014

By -- May 5, 2014
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The Green Benefits of Food Globalization: Markets at Work

By Pierre Desrochers -- May 2, 2014
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California Energy Policy: Elitist, Import-dependent, and a Tax on the Rest of Us

By -- May 1, 2014
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Rolling Blackouts from EPA’s Utility MACT? FERC Commissioner Says a “Possibility”

By William Yeatman -- April 30, 2014
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“Advanced Energy for Life”: Peabody Energy Puts Coal on High Moral Ground (energy poverty must end, CEO Boyce argues)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- April 29, 2014
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Al Gore Soldiers On (false alarmism, hypocrisy make for a rejected public message)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- April 28, 2014
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