Daniel Sarewitz and Samuel Thernstrom, of Arizona State University’s Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes and the American Enterprise Institute respectively, co-authored an op-ed in today’s Los Angeles Times on how the debate over leaked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, and climate change more broadly, is colored by the mistaken […]
Archive | Climate Change
Opinio Juris Copenhagen Postings
Over at Opinio Juris this week, a special lineup of international law experts blogging on Copenhagen – addressing topics ranging from proposals to pay for things to the questions of how whatever emerges is supposed to be enforced. It’s a highly expert group of guest bloggers, often in quite technical terms of either law or […]
Michael Mann Should Not Be Investigated by Penn State
By Jim Lindgren on December 15, 2009 12:25 am in Academia, Climate Change, Environment, Politicizing Science
According to press reports, Penn State University is conducting an inquiry to determine whether it should institute a formal ethical investigation of Michael Mann, the Penn State professor who was the lead author of the paper that invented the “Hockey Stick.” At issue are CRU emails and his role in ClimateGate. Frankly, I am not […]
“And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords”: A Planetary One-Child Policy?
Diane Francis, the Editor at Large of the Financial Post (Canada), argues for taking away basic human reproductive rights: The “inconvenient truth” overhanging the UN’s Copenhagen conference is not that the climate is warming or cooling, but that humans are overpopulating the world. A planetary law, such as China’s one-child policy, is the only way […]
“Stossel” premieres tonight on Fox Business Channel
John Stossel’s new show premieres tonight on Fox Business Channel at 8pm ET. His topic is global warming. He has called the opening film shown to delegates at the Copenhagen conference “fear-mongering.” Here it is: Please Help the World — COP15 Opening Film
Survival of the Fattest and the Global Superfluous Poor in the Negotiations in Copenhagen
By Kenneth Anderson on December 10, 2009 10:08 am in Climate Change, Collective Action Problems, Economy
One of the minor brouhahas at Copenhagen has been over one of the many pieces of public art put up for the conference, Survival of the Fattest, sculpted by artist Jens Galschiot (2004), sponsored by sevenmeters.net. (I am putting up an image from a blog I frequently read, the “I am a middle-aged gay libertarian […]
Applying the Precautionary Principle Consistently
One major problem with most invocations of the precautionary principle is that people tend to apply it to whatever danger they want to prevent, but largely ignore it in considering the potential dangers created by the policies they advocate. For example, Dick Cheney applied a version of the principle to the threat of terrorism, arguing […]
Europol Reports Massive Fraud in the Carbon Credits Market
Europol, the European police consortium, has issued the following press release: The Hague, 09 December 2009 Carbon Credit fraud causes more than 5 billion euros damage for European Taxpayer The European Union (EU) Emission Trading System (ETS) has been the victim of fraudulent traders in the past 18 months. This resulted in losses of approximately […]
Quick Note on Sunstein and the Precautionary Principle
This is further to Jim’s post below on the Precautionary Principle and climate change; it also goes obliquely to a couple of Eric’s posts on the climate change debates. I’ve been meaning to raise Cass Sunstein and his very interesting book Worst-Case Scenarios in this context, but I’ll be very brief. Jim points out that […]
The Precautionary Principle
Last night I was talking with a colleague about writing something on the “Precautionary Principle.” This morning I see John Miller at the Corner writing about a Tom Friedman column pushing that very principle. After raising Dick Cheney’s views on meeting low-probability threats from Al Qaeda and quoting Cass Sunstein on the precautionary principle, Friedman […]
Some of the “Homogenized” Temperature Data is False
By Jim Lindgren on December 8, 2009 5:43 pm in Academia, Climate Change, Environment, Politicizing Science
When the CRU at East Anglia disclosed that it had lost some of the raw temperature data, leaving only the “homogenized” data, some honest commentators expressed the hope that the homogenizing was competently done. Anyone who has been following Climate Audit for the last few years knows that at least some of the adjustments to […]
Krugman v. Hansen
NYT columnist Paul Krugman is not happy with NASA climate scientist James Hansen for the latter’s op-ed attacking cap-and-trade and proposing a tax-based alternative (which I blogged about here). Such arguments are “unhelpful,” Krugman says, because they ignore the fact that in the theoretical world of transaction-cost free blackboard economics caps and taxes are the […]
Here Come the Greenhouse Regs
This afternoon, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will announce that it has made a formal determination that, in the judgment of the EPA Administrator, the emission of greenhouse gases cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare. This is the so-called “endangerment finding” which will trigger […]
Hansen: Fee-and-Dividend not Cap-and-Trade
NASA’s James Hansen, one of the most prominent (and alarmist) climate scientists, argues against cap-and-trade plans in today’s NYT. While I don’t quite agree with every point in his analysis, I agree with his bottom line. Cap-and-trade is unlikely to produce meaningful emission reductions, but will require the creation of a massive regulatory bureaucracy and […]
OzoneGate and ClimateGate
In his post below, Eric Posner asks why ozone depletion and the phaseout of CFCs and other ozone-depleting substances did not produce the same degree of backlash as does global warming. Where were the Climate Skeptics back then? Or was ozonegate, like asteroidgate, a non-event because the climate is a “complex system” whereas, um…. Why […]