Tag: Climate change
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Polar Vortex II Brings Gas Curtailments, Price Spikes
Virginia’s climate has been setting record low temperatures in the past few days, and state newspapers have been full of stories about poor people shivering in the cold, traffic accidents caused by black ice, and the defects of Virginia Department of Transportation snow removal. But I have seen nothing about the impact of the deep…
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The Cost of Cold
When climate gurus calculate the net cost of a warmer climate, do they assign any benefit to the reduction in extreme cold? From a Washington Post article about how Vermonters are dealing with temperatures 25 to 30 degrees below zero: This stretch of extreme cold has taken a toll on much of the Eastern United…
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The Shamanistic Logic of Climate Science
I’ve been mixing it up with Lowell Feld, publisher of Blue Virginia, who took exception to my argument that the debacle in Charlottesville represented a clash between the far Right and far Left. He accused me of “moral equivalency,” which is absurd, for I have thoroughly denounced the white nationalists who provoked the confrontation and…
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Putting the Clean Power Plan in Perspective
by James A. Bacon Governor Terry McAuliffe has created a working group to recommend concrete steps on how to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from Virginia’s power plants. As the task force undergoes its deliberations, I hope it will consider the tradeoffs between economic costs and environmental benefits. Writing in the Wall Street Journal today, Bjorn Lomborg, president of…
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How Not to Turn Enemies into Friends
by James A. Bacon Does Governor Terry McAuliffe deliberately misrepresent what skeptics of the prevailing Global Warmig Orthodoxy think, or does he simply repeat what others have said about what skeptics supposedly believe? Either way, we have a problem. Here’s what he said yesterday before signing an executive order to convene a work group to deliver recommendations for carbon…
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Republicans and Leftists Are Outraged, Outraged, I Tell You
by James A. Bacon Here’s what I missed in yesterday’s quickie post about Governor Terry McAuliffe’s plan to convene a clean energy task force: Both Republicans and leftist environmental groups are attacking the move, though for opposite reasons. Republican legislators see the initiative as an end run around the state budget, which specifically prohibits any spending…
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Lawsuit Pries Loose Warmist Emails
by James A. Bacon The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) has prevailed in a lawsuit to obtain emails detailing how GMU climatologists organized a call for a federal investigation into corporations that “knowingly deceived” the public about climate change. The campaign was organized by Jagadish Shukla, director of the Institute for Global Environment and Society (IGES), who subsequently drew…
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How Many Millions Have Died from This Failed Scientific Orthodoxy?
One of the most rigorous scientific experiments on the effects of fatty foods in the diet took some 40 years to complete, but the results are now in. Reports the Washington Post: Collectively, the fuller results undermine the conventional wisdom regarding dietary fat that has persisted for decades and is currently enshrined in influential publications…
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Learning from the “Fat Hypothesis” and the Intersection of Science and Politics
by James A. Bacon Ian Leslie has written a long piece for The Guardian, a left-wing English newspaper that to the best of my knowledge is not funded by the Koch Brothers. He chronicles how the medical hypothesis blaming fat and cholesterol for heart disease became ensconced as scientific orthodoxy in the United States and…
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Turning Sea Level Rise into a Competitive Economic Advantage
by James A. Bacon To hear Henry R. “Speaker” Pollard describe all the economic risks associated with rising sea levels in Hampton Roads — soaring insurance rates, higher financing costs, declining property values, disruption to business — one might be forgiven for wondering why any business would ever want to consider investing there. “It’s easy…
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Making NIT More Productive, More Resilient
by James A. Bacon For the millions of Virginians living above the fall line, the struggle that Hampton Roads has with rising sea levels and increasing flooding may seem remote and far away. Why should we care? After all, does anybody in Hampton Roads give a hoot about our problems? Kit Chope, vice president of sustainability for…
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A Partial Mea Culpa on Shukla and GMU
by James A. Bacon I fess up. I raised questions and made insinuations unwarranted by the facts in a recent post, “Did Shukla Fudge His Conflict-of-Interest Waiver Form?” When I’m wrong, I’ll be the first to admit it, so here goes…. The article addressed a conflict-of-interest waiver form submitted by George Mason University climatology professor Jagadish…
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Sweet Perks Paid to GMU Climate Change Prof
by James A. Bacon In addition to collecting pay from George Mason University and the federally funded, non-profit Institute of Global Environment and Society (IGES), climate scientist Jagadish Shukla also enjoyed some perks not normally due university professors. IGES would pay for business-class airline travel, expenses for Shukla’s wife to accompany him on some IGES-related travel, and…
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Did Shukla Fudge His Conflict-of-Interest Waiver Form?
by James A. Bacon George Mason University climatology professor Jagadish Shukla obtained a waiver from the university’s conflict-of-interest committee for payments received from the federally funded Institute of Global Environment and Society (IGES) in addition to his full-time faculty salary, according to Freedom of Information Act documents acquired by Bacon’s Rebellion. In his waiver request, Shukla revealed that…
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Dialing up the Heat on Climate Warmist
by James A. Bacon A recent audit by George Mason University “appears to reveal” that climatologist Dr. Jagadish Shukla engaged in “double dipping” when he paid himself a full salary from the Institute of Global Environment and Society (IGES) while pocketing a salary from GMU, according to Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Committee on Science,…