Category: Climate realism

An open letter to Pierre Poilievre: Please abandon Ottawa’s futile battle against the non-existent ‘climate emergency’

If Conservatives win the next election, they should cancel the growth-inhibiting carbon tax and focus, again, on restoring Canada’s economic prosperity

By Ron Barmby, P. Eng.

Dear Mr. Poilievre,

There will probably be a federal election in Canada in the coming months as Justin Trudeau’s government is in a minority position with waning support.

His past three successful elections have all included fighting climate change as a key and winning platform. His current legislative agenda indicates his next campaign will have the same focus.

As Leader of the Official Opposition, and in the best position to form a new government, you are currently advocating eliminating Trudeau’s national carbon tax and “letting technology handle CO2 emissions.”… Read more

Cost of Net Zero electrification in U.S.? 13X the U.S. GDP in 2019

Below is the Executive Summary of “The Cost of Net Zero Electrification of the U.S.A.”, which examines the Tanton Report. For the pdf of the full article click here.

By Ken Gregory, P.Eng., Aug. 23, 2022

Many governments have made promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by replacing fossil fuels with solar and wind generated electricity and to electrify the economy. A report by Thomas Tanton estimates a capital cost of US$36.4 trillion for the U.S.A. economy to meet net zero emissions using wind and solar power.

This study identifies several errors in the Tanton report and provides new capital cost estimates using 2019 and 2020 hourly electricity generation data rather than annual average conditions as was done in the Tanton report.… Read more

Climate crusaders are coming for electric cars, too

Progressives’ ultimate goal is to reduce consumption—and living standards—because they believe humans are a menace to the Earth. That means eliminating single-passenger vehicles.

By Allysia Fin­ley, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 13, 2023

Replacing all gasoline-powered cars with electric vehicles won’t be enough to prevent the world from overheating. So people will have to give up their cars. That’s the alarming conclusion of a new report from the University of California, Davis and “a network of academics and policy experts” called the Climate and Community Project.

The report offers an honest look at the vast personal, environmental and economic sacrifices needed to meet the left’s net-zero climate goals.… Read more

Electricity generation with 100% renewables is a fantasy

Ontario buys ‘renewable’ power for dollars, and sells it for pennies

BY ANDREW ROMAN, Dec. 3, 2022, Andrew’s Views

Renewables advocates have been claiming that solar and wind generation are now the least costly form of generation, and therefore, should replace all fossil fuel generation as quickly as possible.  Is this correct? 

A number of energy analysts have reminded us that weather-dependent wind and solar generation are necessarily intermittent, requiring costly backup when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.  However, few commentators have examined actual operating experience in as much detail as Parker Gallant, a retired international banker.  A large part of this blog post is based on Mr.… Read more

Suing the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency)

Brief by Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council (CHECC) challenges the EPA’s ‘science’ that CO2 is a danger to human health and welfare

By Francis Menton, Feb. 11, 2023, Manhattan Contrarian

The briefing is now complete in Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council v. EPA. That is the case, currently pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where a small and brave band of electricity consumers, CHECC, challenges the “science” behind EPA’s 2009 finding that CO2 and other “greenhouse gases” constitute a danger to human health and welfare. I am one of the attorneys for CHECC.

In the case, we ask the court to compel EPA to go back and re-assess the “science” of greenhouse gas “endangerment.”… Read more

The Paul Ehrlich Apocalypse is back!

Despite utter failure of predictions of deadly ‘population bomb,’ biologist still preaching humanity’s doom while ignoring role of human ingenuity

Editorial, Wall Street Journal, Jan. 4, 2023

We’ll say this for Paul Ehrlich—at least he’s consistent. In 1968 the Stanford biologist famously declared that “the battle to feed all humanity is over,” at a time when the earth’s population was about 3.5 billion. Today we have a population of eight billion (better fed than ever), yet there was Mr. Ehrlich, on CBS’s “60 Minutes” Sunday night, still predicting that “humanity is very busily sitting on a limb that we’re sawing off.”… Read more

We need debate over role of fossil fuels that goes beyond Net Zero

Is massive attempt to transform global energy system working against the interests of humankind? We should be asking this question

By Terence Corcoran, National Post, Feb. 8, 2023

The global policy consensus on the future of energy is clear: Fossil fuels are done, finished, peaking, on the way out and never to return once their 100-year role as the engine of human progress has been reduced to net-zero by 2050. That, at least, is the general thrust of the 2023 edition of the BP Energy Outlook released last week based on BP’S carbon control policy models.

The BP outlook is short but densely speculative, and not particularly convincing one way or another.… Read more

2022: Another year of media climate exaggeration—because hysteria sells

News sources continue to mislead the public into thinking there is a dramatic change in frequency and intensity of hurricanes and flooding

By Hol­man W. Jenk­ins, Jr., Wall Street Journal, Jan. 4, 2022

Exaggeration is the universal media bias. Hysteria sells and is also a form of personal signaling. No wonder 2022 was another busy year for hyperbole on many fronts, including on climate.

In a tweet thread, Patrick Brown, an atmospheric scientist at the climate-action-supporting Breakthrough Institute, wondered why, apart from increased rainfall, the news media “insist on a framing that misleads its audience into thinking we have experienced a dramatic change in hurricane frequency/intensity?”… Read more

How computer models get it wrong while seducing their creators

A review of Escape from Model Land by Erica Thompson

By David A. Shay­witz, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 28, 2022

We live in an information age, as the cliché has it— really an age of information overload. But “measured quantities do not speak for themselves,” observes Erica Thompson, a statistician and a fellow at the London School of Economics. Data, she notes, are given meaning “only through the context and framing provided by models.”

When we want to know how rapidly a new infectious virus is likely to spread, we turn to mathematical models. Models are used by climate scientists to project global warming; by options traders to price contracts; by the Congressional Budget Office to forecast the economic effects of legislation; by meteorologists to warn of approaching storms.… Read more

False urgency of the ‘climate crisis’ gives no time or space to build a secure energy future

Thinking that we can minimize severe weather through using atmospheric carbon dioxide as a control knob is a fairy tale

By Judith Curry, Dec. 27, 2022, Climate Etc.

There is a growing realization that emissions and temperature targets are now detached from the issues of human well-being and the development of our 21st-century world.

For the past two centuries, fossil fuels have fueled humanity’s progress, improving standards of living and increasing the life span for billions of people. In the 21st century, a rapid transition away from fossil fuels has become an international imperative for climate-change mitigation, under the auspices of the UN Paris Agreement. … Read more