[Editor note: This recent post by Lea Giotto of Energy in Depth expounds on the controversial, sputtering involvement of the Niskanen Center and the Colorado climate lawsuit. Her title: “Contradictions Mount as Lawyer for Colorado Climate Lawsuits Struggles to Defend His Role.” For more on the policy shift of Niskanen founder Jerry Taylor from libertarian to climate/energy statism, see here.]

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When David Bookbinder signed up to help Colorado municipalities sue the energy industry for the impacts of global warming, he claimed his purpose was not about climate change. But when he recently attempted to defend his role with those climate lawsuits, the Niskanen Center attorney not only contradicted himself, but may have undermined the broader climate litigation campaign.

Bookbinder – who was previously a climate-focused attorney with the Sierra Club – took an unconventional approach in his latest defense of climate litigation: he penned a guest commentary for the Federalist Society, an organization that has provided a forum for many who express skepticism about the validity of these cases.…

” It is difficult not to conclude that the 2008 oil price spike was a bubble, reflecting momentum trading spurred on, in part, by belief in the peak oil theory.”

“The misinterpretation of high oil prices as driven by geological scarcity instead of transient problems exactly mirrors the mistakes of the 1970s, suggesting that some, at least, never learn from history.”

Suggestions that the oil price will soon reach $150 or more need to be considered carefully, coming from respectable sources (in some cases), and given that the market saw such an elevation a decade ago, with the price of Brent crude reaching $144 per barrel on July 3, 2008.

The popular thinking is that oil prices collapsed shortly thereafter from the financial crisis.  And crude oil regained three-digit levels for a couple of years before shale oil production soared and sent prices tumbling in 2014.…

“There is this mismatch between what the climate models are producing and what the observations are showing,” says lead author John Fyfe, a climate modeller at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis in Victoria, British Columbia. “We can’t ignore it.”

Susan Solomon, a climatologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, says that Fyfe’s framework helps to put twenty-first-century trends into perspective, and clearly indicates that the rate of warming slowed down at a time when greenhouse-gas emissions were rising dramatically.

 – Jeff Tollefson, “Global Warming ‘Hiatus’ Debate Flares Up Again.” Nature, February 24, 2016.

It was officially noted in early 2016 with the above article in Nature, which was subtitled “Researchers now argue that slowdown in warming was real.”

I was reminded of this upon reading Pierre Gosselin’s recent post at NoTricksZone, “Global Temperature Rise Some 75% Lower Than Models Projected!…

“The Icebreaker six-turbine wind project, now foreign owned, is not a ‘gusher,’ the ‘Saudi Arabia’ of wind, as termed. It is a massive industrialization of Lake Erie, from which none will recover for a very long time.”

“We respectfully ask the Ohio Power Siting Board to examine the weight of all evidence–not hearsay, propaganda, or wishful thinking. If so, the staff-report caveats for approval (July 3, 2018) will prove insurmountable.”

Abstract: Icebreaker Wind, formerly LEEDCo (Lake Erie Development Company), has failed to materially advance its proposal of six-turbine project offshore Cleveland, reflecting an Ohio Power Siting Board (OPSB) meeting at City Hall, July 19, 2018. Key business, recreational, and conservation organizations of Cleveland, passionate members of the public, as well as representatives of concern from PA, NY, and Ontario, line up to protect Lake Erie from the taxpayer/ratepayer boondoggle.…