The latest peak oil news is simply astounding: a whistleblower inside the International Energy Agency (IEA) claiming that “the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.”
The fact that this report appeared in the Guardian, which has published questionable articles on peak oil, is suggestive.
First and foremost, one is tempted to conclude that this story represents poor reporting, bringing to mind an earlier Guardian story claiming that Fatih Birol, the IEA official in charge of the World Energy Outlook, acknowledged peak oil. It turns out that Fatih was misquoted. And while I might be biased, considering Fatih a friend, the nature of the present story is close to ridiculous, rather than misleading.…
Continue ReadingA previous post at MasterResource described the findings and implications of a new scientific study published by Richard Lindzen and Yong-Sang Choi, “On the Determination of Climate Feedbacks from ERBE Data” published in Geophysical Research Letters.
Lindzen and Choi’s concluded that climate sensitivity to atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations is six times less than generally accepted—a conclusion that potentially overturns the current paradigm of scientific thinking.
Their paper is now under careful scrutiny–as it should be. As I wrote:
… Continue ReadingThis is a major paper. And as with most findings with serious repercussions to our scientific understanding, it will doubtlessly be gone over with a fine-toothed comb and subject to various challenges. It is too early to tell whether Lindzen and Choi’s findings will prove to be the end-all-and-be-all in this debate.
Two years ago, in Scenes from the Climate Inquisition, my colleague Steve Hayward and I observed that climate alarmists were growing ever more incendiary in their criticism of people who disagree with them. And these disagreements were not simply about the science, but about the favored policy choices of leftist environmentalists, many of whom had no training in public policy or economics. As we wrote:
… Continue ReadingAnyone who does not sign up 100 percent behind the catastrophic scenario is deemed a “climate change denier.” Distinguished climatologist Ellen Goodman spelled out the implication in her widely syndicated newspaper column last week: “Let’s just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers.” One environmental writer suggested last fall that there should someday be Nuremberg Trials–or at the very least a South African-style Truth and Reconciliation Commission–for climate skeptics who have blocked the planet’s salvation.