Greenhouse Gases Up, Global Temperatures Down

By Chip Knappenberger -- February 17, 2009

Over the weekend, a widely-distributed story by AP science writer Randolph Schmid voiced the concerns of several scientists that humans were emitting greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a rate much faster than anyone expected. Funny thing is, Schmid failed to mention that during the same time, global warming proceeded at a rate much slower than anyone expected.…

California Car Wars: EPA, CARB, and Unintended Consequences

By Tom Tanton -- February 16, 2009

EPA administrator Lisa Jackson is currently weighing whether to reverse the Bush Administration’s policy and grant a waiver for the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB’s) stringent greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards. Thirteen other states are poised to adopt the CARB program if Jackson reverses. But what will ensue is less a victory for “clean air” than the creation of a chaotic and likely intractable set of regulations with very modest emission reductions. In the current economic climate, in fact, the waiver will likely result in increased GHG emissions.…

CERAWeek 2009: Why Didn’t Daniel Yergin Question Climate Alarmism–and Both Cap-and-Trade and Carbon Taxation?

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 15, 2009

At the just-completed CERAWeek, here in Houston, Daniel Yergin had an excellent opportunity to inject some scholarly realism into the climate-change debate. As a wise man of energy and an opinion leader, he could have stated publicly what many in the vast audience mutter privately, such as:

Global warming has stalled in the last decade or more, bringing into question the high-sensitivity, high-warming scenarios of climate models (the major costs of climate change)
Cap-and-trade CO₂ reduction in the European Union has failed under a variety of metrics–deadweight costs, higher prices, very little gain, unintended consequences
U.S. voters have put climate-change at the very bottom of their list of concerns and affordable energy high on their list of concerns
What emerges from Congress in the next several years will be grotesque–almost regulation and higher energy costs for its own sake (with no appreciable effect on climate).