AP writer Samantha Young describes the results of a new report commissioned by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Climate Action Team that puts a price tag on all sorts of climate change-related damage set to befall California in the decades ahead.
But as you may have guessed from a report commissioned by the leader of state who presided over the enactment of the world’s first “comprehensive program of regulatory and market mechanisms to achieve real, quantifiable, cost-effective reductions of greenhouse gases,” the price is high (it better be, or what was the point?). And, as with all things global warming, folks are quick to point out that it is probably going to be even worse than it is made out to be.
But what is not pointed out is that California’s emissions reduction program will do nothing to mitigate the impact of the coming climate.…
Continue ReadingEarlier this week, President Obama signed an administrative directive to ensure that scientific fact – not ideological fancy – informs federal policy. Well, good for him. Now that he’s overturned the Bush administration’s prohibitions against using federal money to undertake some forms of research associated with embryonic stem cells, up next should be an administrative about-face on corn ethanol as a means of addressing climate change. Alas, the possibility that Obama will admit error on this matter is only slightly better than the possibility that Jessica Simpson will someday win the Nobel Prize for physics. Ideology trumping science? Bad. Politics trumping science? Business as usual.
Regardless, let’s quickly review the literature on ethanol and climate change.…
Continue ReadingI have previously posted on NASA scientist and leading climate alarmist James Hansen as a “scientist behaving strangely.” His mixing of politics and science–controversial science at that–has raised eyebrows among friend and foe.
But then there is the old, more moderate Jim Hansen. Below, I offer some quotations for the historical record. There are undoubtedly other quotations that can be added–and should be in the “comments” section, whether by Hansen or by colleagues of Hansen.
Perhaps Dr. Hansen can say that his thinking has evolved toward greater alarm. But if so, with temperatures little or no higher today than when he wrote a decade or more ago, the question must be asked: why has his alarm gone up rather than down?…
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