Public support for tapping America’s oil reserves has been strong over the past several years, but it received its toughest test with the Deepwater Horizon spill. The verdict is now in – and it’s drill, baby, drill!
A clear majority continued to support drilling in American waters even during the height of the spill, when oil was gushing uncontrollably and dying birds headlined network newscasts. Pollsters at Rasmussen report that, “since the oil rig explosion that caused the massive oil leak, support for offshore drilling has ranged from 56 percent to 64 percent.”
That’s not far below the 72 percent who supported it before the spill, nor much different than the support back in the summer of 2008 when pump prices topped $4 a gallon. Now that the leak has been stopped, the percentage in favor should start rising again.…
Continue ReadingEveryone knows that our industries contain a large collection of minds that are almost indecently fertile. Name the business and you can see lots of people who were quick to spot the growth possibilities in climate policy, whether they were financial, political or technological. The semiconductor industry turned sand into wealth, and we were going to do the same with the world’s exhalations.
And now it’s as good as over. Only the problem is that those of us who were smart enough to get into carbon on the ground floor refuse to acknowledge what is becoming more obvious by the hour.
The great bulk of groups that call themselves “nonprofit” and “nonpartisan”are little more than shills for environmentalists and Democrats. But here is an unusual one: the Breakthrough Institute.
“Breakthrough” is usually a word reserved for psychotherapy, but the Breakthrough Institute is green with an attitude.…
Continue ReadingThere has been renewed talk in recent weeks about whether this summer’s scattering of extreme weather events is linked to anthropogenic climate change.
True, humans have altered the radiatively active portions of the atmosphere by adding greenhouse gases and aerosols. We’ve also altered the planetary landscape. These alterations are now part of the integrated global climate system that produces daily weather events—both extreme and benign.
So can our influence change the intensity of weather events? Yes.
Can it cause an event to happen that otherwise wouldn’t have? Conceivably.
Does it always act to make the weather more severe? No.
Are the changes detectable? Hmmm.
It seems that it is this issue of detectability that we often get hung up on. Otherwise, how do we know that human changes are having any impact?…
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