“We were motivated by the public and political controversy fostered by alarming predictions of impending catastrophic anthropogenic global warming [at] NASA …. Many of us felt these alarming and premature predictions … would eventually damage NASA’s reputation for excellent and objective science and engineering achievement.”
The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) was established in 1990 in order to “assist the nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change.” Two reports have been released (2000 and 2009), and a third one is due out this year.
The whole (government) exercise from the beginning has been predictably politicized. The reports are a lawyer’s brief for climate alarmism and policy activism–complete with a call for expanded federal research dollars. But the lack of even-handedness with the physical science, no to mention the scientific method itself, has reached crisis proportions.…
Continue Reading“The energy and economic welfare of the United States and Mexico are intertwined by our shared geography, geology, and peoples. The Transboundary Hydrocarbon Agreement will help to tie our countries together and grow our economies.”
– Daniel Simmons, Testimony before House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, “U.S.-Mexico Transboundary Hydrocarbon Agreement and Steps Needed for Implementation,” April 25, 2013.
Mexico is America’s third largest trading partner and has been one of the largest sources of oil exports to the United States. Mexico is the largest recipient of U.S. gasoline exports and the second largest recipient of our natural gas exports.
The energy trade between the United States and Mexico is growing, especially for America’s finished petroleum and natural gas exports. Mexico’s heavy oil production is falling, but that means more spare refining capacity on the Gulf Coast if Canadian oil sands can be transported to the Gulf Coast.…
Continue Reading“The notion that energy efficiency measures might bring deep emissions reductions along with greater economic growth has long promised an attractive ‘win-win’ for policy makers and business leaders. The extensive literature on rebound presents an uncomfortable challenge to this view, undermining the idea that efficiency leads to decreased energy use on anything approaching a one-to-one basis.”
The International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook 2013 grossly overestimates how much energy efficiency can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to scholars cited in this very study. As such, IEA’s claim that demand-side measures can account for almost three-quarters of emission reductions by 2020 could result in global-warming mitigation efforts that overinvest in efficiency and underinvest in low- and zero-carbon energy technologies.
The Paris-based agency’s projections of emissions reductions from energy conservation and efficiency are based on questionable assumptions, experts said, pointing out that rebound effects frequently take back much or all of the energy savings that efficiency policies attempt to capture.…
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