A Free-Market Energy Blog

Climate Protest Fail (Westervelt on defense)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 23, 2024

“I haven’t seen a convincing argument yet about why the climate crisis must be named as such….”

“The climate movement has been led by people who look and think and talk the same for a very long time. If time is short, isn’t this precisely the time to try everything? To broaden out, seek fresh ideas, build a larger, stronger and more connected movement?” (- Amy Westervelt, DRILLED)

Drilled founder and editor Amy Westervelt, like other climate extremists attuned to the real world, is confused and perplexed. She wants to legalize vandalism and whatever else is necessary to wake up the world to what she sees. But reality is reality, from public opinion to CO2 science to climate-model exaggeration to the eco-sins of wind, solar, and batteries.

“Over the past two years, there’s been a sudden and severe backlash to climate protest, both legally and socially,” she recently lamented.…

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Energy Justice in Africa? Energy Exceptionalism Please

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 22, 2024

“Social justice” demands energy freedom and energy exceptionalism for the poorest of the poor. Today, tomorrow, and yesterday.

A recent release from CarbonBrief, “How a UK government-backed Company has Fueled Gas Power in Africa,” reported that “a little-known company that is majority-owned by a UK government development body and backed by UK aid money has been pouring investment into gas power across Africa.”

British International Investment (BII)’s Globeleq has 1,120 MW of gas-fired generation in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, and Tanzania to serve the electricity impoverished. UK climate activists are up in arms (“don’t gas Africa”), urging divestment from fossil fuels. “Let them have wind and solar” is the mantra, as if these dilute, intermittent substitutes were not expensive and unreliable.

Globeleq is adding new gas capacity to keep its portfolio at 85 percent natural gas.…

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Naturally Hot, Exaggeration Not

By Kennedy Maize -- October 21, 2024

“What has come to be known as ‘weather attribution,’ research assigning causation to observed weather events, is fraught with methodological problems. Veteran climate scientist Roger A. Pielke Jr. in his Substack publication The Honest Broker calls it ‘weather attribution alchemy’.”

Last year was hot, unusually so. The global temperature was almost 0.3°C above 2022 levels, so much higher that even conventional analyses of global warming didn’t appear to explain it. As a recent article in Science magazine notes, iconic climate scientist James Hansen was suggesting that a new, air-pollution-driven warming mechanism might be at work. NASA’s Gavin Schmidt posited that a novel, unknown force could be involved.

Wrong, says a team of six climate scientists led by Shiv Priyam Raghuraman (University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana). The culprit is more likely the familiar climate confounder, El Niño (technically, the El Niño-Southern Oscillation or ENSO).…

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Wind vs. Ecology in Australia (Nick Cater reports)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 18, 2024
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Climate Anxiety Discussion Raises Alarmists’ Ire

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 17, 2024
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“Green” Energy: It’s Just a Bribe

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 16, 2024
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Risking Alaska’s Energy Exceptionalism (RPS looming)

By -- October 15, 2024
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Energy & Environmental Review: October 14, 2024

By -- October 14, 2024
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Democratic Platform 2024: Energy and Climate

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 10, 2024
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“Resilience and Adaptation”: Mitigation Demotion Ahead?

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- October 9, 2024
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