Government policies that arrest economic recovery and diminish economic growth reduce our carbon footprint. Indeed, human misery and carbon reduction are positively correlated in a growing world where consumers demand red-meat energy–oil, gas, and coal. The Malthusian wing of the Obama Administration knows this, and they might just be hoping that the recession will last long enough so that folks question their long-standing belief of economic growth. Rising expectations among the masses is the bane of interventionists and Malthusians everywhere.
So get ready for the end-of-growth mantra from the Left as time marches on and Obama’s economic recovery plan keeps the economy from recovering.…
Continue ReadingYesterday, the National Clean Energy Product Summit was held in Washington, DC to discuss the Center for American Progress’ s February 2009 white paper titled “Wired for Progress: Building a National Clean-Energy Smart Grid.” Participants included Steven Chu, Al Gore, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., T. Boone Pickens, Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and pretty much everyone else who thinks they know a priori how to most efficiently organize and manage the electricity sector. As one might expect, no good came of it.…
Continue ReadingI 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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