“If ‘some humans survive’ is the only thing we care about, then climate change is a non-issue. I think it’s certain that ‘some’ humans will survive almost any climate change. They may be living short, hard lives of poverty, but they’ll be alive.”

“Future humans, as they live in a climate dystopia: ‘I thought he cared about the environment’.”

“I find the path we’re on now — the rich world survives (if lucky), but abandons everyone else — to be morally problematic.”

Professor Andrew Dessler of Texas A&M is the alarmist’s alarmist. At a lunch some years ago, he remarked to me (and his more moderate colleague Gerald North) that humankind would have to live underground because of anthropogenic warming. And he stated that fossil fuels had made us slaves, a deep-ecology argument that has been ably turned around by Matt Ridley).…

This is the final installment of the course syllabus of Pierre Desrochers’ Energy and Society class.

Part I explored the course description as well as the videos and readings from the first two weeks of the class; Part II covered carbon-based energy. Part III yesterday was on electricity generated from non-carbon sources (Hydro, Nuclear, Renewables, Biomass).

“[Bjorn] Lomborg’s performance careens far across the line that divides respectable (even if controversial science) from thoroughgoing and unrepentant incompetence…. He has needlessly muddled public understanding and wasted immense amounts of the time of capable people who have had to take on the task of rebutting him.”  – John Holdren (2003)

This April 1^st is a good time for skeptics of settled, high-sensitivity climate science to make amends. My apology goes to the distinguished John P. Holdren.

My comeuppance (below) reminds me of the episode of Dallas where J. R. Ewing befriends a pretty young secretary at a friend’s office. He talks her up, she bubbles.

At J.R.’s next visit, she bashfully asks if he would like to go to a party with her.

“Sorry honey,” he responded.…

“The highlight of the entire hearing was the testimony of DOE’s Daniel Simmons.  Everyone else pretty much played their assigned role.”

The title of last week’s hearing on the US Department of Energy’s new pro-consumer orientation toward appliance standards, “Wasted Energy: DOE’s Inaction on Efficiency Standards & Its Impact on Consumers and the Climate”, was obviously biased. But Daniel Simmons, Assistant Secretary, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, stole the show.

First up as the only Panel 1 witness was IER alumni, Daniel Simmons, who was sworn-in on January 16^th, 2019. Daniel’s five-minute allocation started at the 34-minute mark of a nearly 4-hour long hearing. Simmons was followed with five minutes of questioning from Subcommittee members; starting with Chairman Rush; who questioned a possible lifting of restrictions affecting the manufacture of certain types of incandescent light bulbs.…