The Climate Torquemada – Joe Romm at the Climate Inquisition

By Kenneth P. Green -- November 9, 2009

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:

Anyone 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.

Energy Reality: The Stock Beats the Flow from the Sun (why technology struggles to save ‘renewables’)

By Roger Donway -- November 7, 2009

This article, “Energy to Spare” by David Warren, published in the Ottawa Citizen on November 4, 2009, says much in few words. Energy reality is that the sun’s work over the ages has produced energy sources (oil, gas, and coal) that far exceed the dilute energy from the sun. The stock beats the flow–by a country mile.

This article is reproduced below as a Weekend reading feature:

Will technology solve our energy problems? This seemingly fatuous question is actually stupider than first appears. For we already have the technology to power anything within reason, with minimal if any environmental fallout.

Yet under the inspiration of the Green Zeitgeist, I cannot go into a magazine shop without finding some science-lite cover story on new prospects for harnessing solar, thermal, wind, tidal, or whatever “renewable” forces.…

The Bear Growls, The EU Grovels: Adventures in the European Gas Market

By Donald Hertzmark -- November 6, 2009

Among those hoping that global warming is real we should now count the EU. As winter approaches there is, quelle surprise, the initial hint of yet another gas supply crisis between Russia, Ukraine and Russia’s EU customers. The problem is that those pesky pipelines have to go through somewhere to reach the market and that somewhere happens to be the Ukraine (unless it’s Poland, more on that later).

Source: US DOE, for better map resolution

All those red lines running Northeast-to-Southwest carry gas from Russia to the EU countries. There is just no getting around the Ukraine for most of the transits; it is big and (if you are Russian) in the wrong place.

Gas: The Great Green Hope for Europe

As noted previously, gas use in Europe is roughly the same as that of the US, a bit over 20 tcf annually. …