In my last post, I suggested that the externalities from coal-fired electricity generation were probably not as negative as was being touted in a recent report by Paul Epstein and colleagues from the Center for Health and the Global Environment. As further support for my contention, I submit the contents of a new book by copious carbon dioxide researchers Drs. Sherwood and Craig Idso titled “The Many Benefits of Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment: How humanity and the rest of the biosphere will prosper from this amazing trace gas that so many have wrongfully characterized as a dangerous air pollutant!”
The father-son authors take the reader alphabetically through the many benefits from an atmosphere enriched with carbon dioxide that they have gleaned from the peer-reviewed scientific literature, as well as the results of their own experimentation (also documented in the literature).…
How many times have you been told that the debate on the science of climate change is “over”? Probably almost as many times as Al Gore has traveled in private jets and limousines to urge audiences to repent of their fuelish ways.
Although tirelessly intoned by politicians, major media, advocacy groups, academics, and even some Kyoto critics, the “debate is over” mantra is just plain false. The core issues of climate-change attribution, climate sensitivity, and even anthropogenic detection remain very much in play.
Detection
The world has warmed overall during the past 130 years, as evidenced by melting glaciers, longer growing seasons, and both proxy and instrumental data. However, the main era of “anthropogenic” global warming supposedly began in the mid-1970s, and ongoing research by retired meteorologist Anthony Watts leaves no doubt that in recent decades, the U.S.…