It was nice to see John Tierney in his blog post, The Skeptical Prophet, pay tribute to John Maddox, the scientist and revered long-time editor of Nature. “He debunked the catastrophists, most notably in his 1972 book, The Doomsday Syndrome,” noted Tierney, “in which he argued that Spaceship Earth had more carrying capacity and ecological resilience than environmentalists realized.”
Tierney adds: “His book was denounced at the time by John P. Holdren, who is today the White House science advisor. In a 1972 article in the Times of London, Dr. Holdren and his frequent collaborator, the ecologist Paul Ehrlich, dismissed Dr. Maddox as ‘uninformed’ and clearly unable to understand ‘simple concepts’ of population theory.” Stated Ehrlich/Holdren (as quoted by Tierney):…
Headlines are meant to sell papers, but the above scream from atop Page 1 of today’s Houston Chronicle deserves critical comment. A fair and accurate (but less sexy) headline would have been: “EPA Declares Peril of Greenhouse Gases.” Just changing one word–from “recognizes” to “declares”–makes all the difference.
The Chronicle, particularly the editorial page, has been a bastion of climate alarmism rather than informed skepticism, or what a lot of us simply call climate realism. (Eric Berger, the “sci-guy” at the Chronicle, is more of a straight shooter on day-to-day global-warming reporting.)
The science is not settled in favor of climate alarmism. But this conclusion requires some background and explanation.…
A recent article in the New York Times, “Not So Green After All: Alternative Fuel Still a Dalliance for Oil Giants,” chronicled the move away from politically correct (but economically incorrect) wind and solar energy by the oil majors.
Royal Dutch Shell and BP, in particular, recognize wind and solar as what they are: dilute, intermittent energies that are not consumer friendly or economic. And their investment returns in the same have been lackluster. Shell and BP have found out what Exxon Mobil learned in the 1970s.
“Oil giants worldwide are skeptical that President Barack Obama’s plans to move the economy away from petroleum will be successful,” Jad Mouawad wrote in the Times. “Many of the oil companies are sticking to their hydrocarbon business model and some are backing away from commitments to renewable power.”…