Pew Center Realism Towards ‘Kyoto II’: Game, Set, Match Adaptation?

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- April 8, 2009 1 Comment

“I can find virtually no one—in government, in the environmental community, in business or in the press—who thinks that the Kyoto Protocol has even the proverbial snowball’s chance in hell of coming into effect in anything approaching its current form.  This is every bit as true internationally as it is in the United States.”

– Paul Portney [then president: Resources for the Future], “The Joy of Flexibility: U.S. Climate Policy in the Next Decade,” Keynote Address, Energy Information Administration Annual Outlook Conference, March 22, 1999, mimeo, p. 2.

Joe Romm at Climate Progress is increasingly fighting his own flank as a number of Left environmentalists are moderating their climate views in response to scientific and political realities. His enemies list grows and grows, the latest being Newsweek’s Jacob Weisberg, whom Romm challenges (and more!) …

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More Doubts on “Green Jobs”

By Robert Murphy -- March 6, 2009 3 Comments

As time passes, the skepticism grows about the ability of government funding for “green jobs” to simultaneously (a) pull the economy out of recession and (b) reduce the risk of climate change.  In the March 4 edition of Slate–hardly a bastion of reactionary conservatism–Senior Fellow Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations took the greenwash off of “green jobs” in the essay, “Barking Up the Wrong Tree: Why green jobs may not save the economy or the environment.” Levi also directs CFR’s Program on Energy Security and Climate Change.…

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Solar Hyperbole 2009: Don’t Forget Enron/Solarex circa 1994

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 28, 2009 8 Comments

Solar hyberbole is decades old. Inevitably, every few months there are fresh headlines about significant cost reductions, insinuating that the competitive moment of solar panels is arriving. In a recent post at Climate Progress, for example, Joe Romm reports: “Solar prices set to fall by up to 40 per cent by year end.” Google “solar” and “advances” to see what you get for previous years and even decades!

But fossil-fuel technologies have advanced too, and the competitive gap between solar and hydrocarbons for generating electricity remains huge. DOE Secretary Stephen Chu told the New York Times recently that solar technology will have to get five times better than it is today to be part of the energy transformation that he and other alarmists think is necessary.

Why is “free” energy from the sun so expensive?…

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A Warm Year? Or a Cool Decade?

By Chip Knappenberger -- February 24, 2009 6 Comments

I was recently pointed to an amusing post by Joe Romm over at Climate Progress last week about the “unprecedented global warming during the past year.” Joe pointed out that the earth had apparently warmed rapidly (“20 times [greater than] what most climate models have projected we should be experiencing”) during the period January 2008 through January 2009.

It turns out that Joe was only joking—not about the temperature rise, but as to whether or not it was comment-worthy.

As I’ll show you, the global temperature behavior during the last year isn’t particularly noteworthy, but that during the past decade or so, it is starting to become interesting.…

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John Holdren Told “Not to Make News” at his Confirmation Hearing

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 12, 2009 10 Comments Continue Reading

What Happened to ‘Painless’ Carbon Dioxide Reduction to Greet, Meet, and Exceed the Kyoto Protocol Targets?

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- February 3, 2009 6 Comments Continue Reading

Martin Weitzman’s Dismal Theorem: Do “Fat Tails” Destroy Cost-Benefit Analysis?

By Robert Murphy -- February 1, 2009 8 Comments Continue Reading

Why Do the Alarmists Feel Bad About Debates–and Debating?

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- January 25, 2009 2 Comments Continue Reading

Green Jobs: Is the Science “Settled” on This, Too?

By Robert Murphy -- January 19, 2009 3 Comments Continue Reading

Wind Stimulus: Bad Green

By Glenn Schleede -- January 17, 2009 14 Comments Continue Reading