Climate Change? What Climate Change?

The Real Cost of Wind and Solar By Norman Rogers The main problem with either wind or solar is that they generate electricity erratically, depending on the wind or sunshine. In contrast, a fossil-fuel plant can generate electricity predictably upon request. Blackouts are very expensive for society, so grid operators and designers go to a lot of trouble to make sure that blackouts are rare. The electrical grid should have spare capacity sufficient to meet the largest demand peaks even when some plants are out of commission.  Plants in spinning reserve status stand by ready to take over if a plant trips (breaks down). Injecting erratic electricity into the grid means that other plants have to seesaw output to balance the ups and downs of wind or solar. Adding wind or solar to...

SHELLENBERGER: On Behalf Of Environmentalists, I Apologize For The Climate Scare By   Michael Shellenberger • Jun 29, 2020    DailyWire.com • Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Since its initial publication, the following op-ed has been read and shared by hundreds of thousands of people. Along with stirring up widespread debate, the self-styled “heterodoxical” piece has been reviewed by fact-checkers, some of whom have pushed back on some its claims and conclusions (see summary below). The following is the full text of an opinion piece written by climate activist and energy expert Michael Shellenberger which was originally published by Forbes but pulled a few hours later.  Shellenberger,  a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment” and Green Book Award Winner,  told The Daily Wire in a statement hours after Forbes deactivated the piece, “I am grateful that Forbes has been so committed to publishing a range of viewpoints, including ones that c...

Forest Fires Aren’t at Historic Highs in the United States. Not Even Close California’s wildfires are a serious matter, but the official record of the United States shows forest fires in the US today are far below the annual average in the 1930s and 1940s. Monday, September 21, 2020 Image from Needpix.com | Social image from Bjørn Lomborg on Facebook Jon Miltimore California wildfires have been in the news in recent weeks. As I noted Thursday, the Golden State is experiencing one of the worst fire seasons in recent memory. Newly updated figures from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection show there have been nearly 8,000 wildfires that have burned more than 3.4 million acres in California. Since August 15, when the state’s fire activity elevated sharply, there have been 25 fatalities and some 5,400 structures destroyed. Despite widespread news coverage, some have argued many do not appreciate the historic severity of the b...

How Wildfires Can Affect Climate Change (and Vice Versa) It's complicated: While CO2 causes long-term warming, aerosols can have both a warming and a temporary cooling effect. By Bob Berwyn, InsideClimate News Aug 23, 2018 California and Washington state issued health warnings in August as smoke blown from wildfires darkened the skies. Wildfires also affect the climate. Credit: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images The extreme wildfires sweeping across parts of North America, Europe and Siberia this year are not only wreaking local damage and sending choking smoke downwind. They are also affecting the climate itself in important ways that will long outlast their flames. Wildfires emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that w...

  Forget The Amazon Hype, Fires Globally Have Declined 25% Since 2003 Thanks To Economic Growth Michael Shellenberger Contributor The land area burned by fire has declined 25% from 2003-2019 thanks to economic growth. NASA The whole world is burning, The New York Times, CNN , and mainstream media outlets around the world have declared in recent days. The Amazon could soon "self-destruct" reports   The Times . It would be "a nightmare scenario that could see much of the world’s largest rainforest erased from the earth," writes Max Fisher who notes, "some scientists who study the Amazon ecosystem call it imminent." “If enough [Amazon] rain forest is lost and can’t be restored, the area will become savanna, which doesn’t store as much carbon, meaning a reduction in the planet’s ‘lung capacity,’” reports   The New York Times . It's not just the Amazon, though. Africa, Siberia, and Indonesia are als...

  49 Former NASA Scientists Send A Letter Disputing Climate Change Gus Lubin Apr 11, 2012, 7:10 AM JJSchad on flickr Some prominent voices at NASA are fed up with the agency's activist stance toward climate change. The following letter asking the agency to move away from climate models and to limit its stance to what can be empirically proven, was sent by 49 former NASA scientists and astronauts. The letter criticizes the Goddard Institute For Space Studies especially, where director Jim Hansen and climatologist Gavin Schmidt have been outspoken advocates for action. The press release with attached letter is below. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Blanquita Cullum 703-307-9510 bqview at mac.com Joint letter to NASA Administrator blasts agency’s policy of ignoring empirical evidence HOUSTON, TX – April 10, 2012. 49 former NASA scientists and astronauts sent a letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden last ...

  Separating Fact From Fiction About Wildfires Posted at 3:00 pm on September 9, 2020 by The Heartland Institute FILE – In this Thursday, Nov. 15, 2018 file photo, a Sheriff’s deputy looks for human remains at a home burned in the Camp fire in Magalia, Calif. Searchers are in a race against time with long-awaited rains expected in the Northern California fire zone where dozens of bodies have been recovered so far. While the rain is good for tamping down the still-burning fire, it will turn the fire zone into a muddy mess and make it more difficult for crews to search. (AP Photo/John Locher, File) Due to much of the western United States being naturally arid, high mountain scrub desert, grassland, and dry forest, wildfires are an unfortunate fact of life. They always have been and likely always will be. And despite what you may have heard, there is no evidence climate change is making the problem worse. California, where much of the atten...

  Keep It Simple Stupid: Why No Country Will Ever Be Powered By Wind & Solar Power Alone September 3, 2020 by stopthesethings 3 Comments Australia’s blackout capital, South Australia is what happens when hubris and ideology trumps sound engineering. After a run of mass blackouts, load shedding and a complete statewide blackout in September 2016, South Australia (Australia’s wind and solar capital) was forced to spend a fortune on diesel powered jet engines , open cycle gas turbines and, later, giant piston engines (effectively ship engines) built to run on gas or bunker fuel, all designed to be fired up in an instant to compensate for massive collapses in wind (see above) and solar output (see the horizon to your west each day at dusk); the kind of collapses that led to all those blackouts and the big one that cost the state hundreds of $millions four years ago . Notwithstanding that costly debacle, there are still plenty of rent seekers with the audacit...