Dr. Singer wows San Diego on CFACT tour
Dear Jack,
Renowned scientist Dr. S. Fred Singer predicted that climate change will become a significant issue during the 2012 Presidential campaign in two separate interviews on San Diego's KUSI-TV news. Speaking at San Diego State University, Dr. Singer predicted that rising electricity and energy prices will make global warming a hot topic during the 2012 Presidential debates. He noted that satellites do not show the kind of warming claimed by warmists and noted that increased CO2 actually provides benefits to plants, animals and humans.
Dr. Singer is the coauthor of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years. He has worked closely with CFACT for years and was in San Diego on a CFACT speaking tour that took him to several campuses in Texas and California. At Rice University and the University of Houston, his audience included NASA scientists and Forbes columnist Dr. Larry Bell. At the University of Texas, he engaged in a lively debate with students and faculty members.
Returning to UCLA and Chapman University, Dr. Singer explained that ocean and atmospheric measurements contradict the rise in global temperatures predicted by computer models and "measured" by land-based thermometers which have been increasingly affected by the urban heat island effect. Similarly, he pointed out that young faculty members seeking tenure are pressured to make politically correct findings leaving it no surprise that retired scientists have had to take the lead in speaking out against over-baked climate pronouncements.
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Morano on Canadian TV: Climate billionaires dish out poverty for others
Marc Morano, editor of CFACT's Climate Depot news website, appeared on the Sun News (Canada) TV program, "The Source with Ezra Levant," on February 1 to discuss how rich foreigners spend huge sums of money to oppose cheap energy both in Canada and worldwide. Wealthy white environmentalists who live in luxury are telling poor people of color all over the world that they cannot have electric power, roads, running water, or even pesticides and must remain poor and unhealthy and die young, all in the name of saving the planet.
Paul Driessen: Energy choices for Chile
CFACT Senior Fellow Paul Driessen traveled to Chile in November 2011 at the request of Chilean citizens and business leaders, to defend prosperity against a massive financial campaign by American billionaire (and Chilean landowner) Doug Tompkins. Tompkins, who became wealthy through manufacturing and global trade, has become a leader of the Deep Ecology movement and now opposes (for others) modern technology, energy, economic development and global trade for ordinary Chileans – all the while still living the lifestyle of the rich and famous.
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Dr. Kelvin Kemm: Africa's right to affordable electric power
During last December's UN COP 17 climate conference in Durban, South Africa, CFACT advisor and nuclear physicist Dr. Kelvin Kemm, explained to Kenyan network NTV reporter Joe Ageyo that, "Africa needs electricity – it needs to double its capacity, then double it again and double it again – and does not need the First World standing in the way." Kemm, an outspoken opponent of over-heated global warming claims, says the climate change narrative is a ploy to keep Africa underdeveloped, arguing that rich westerners' climate policy would keep Africa poor.
Skeptical scientists disbelieve in "climate change" |
Exposing Deep Green Resistance
Radical environmentalists Aric McBay, Lierre Keith, and Derrick Jensen have treated us all to a book which outlines their goal of the complete destruction of the capitalist economic system and even civilization itself as we know it. Loathing factories and corporate farms alike, they envision a new social order based wholly on small communities that obtain their food locally and use only that energy that the land around them can provide (a lifestyle enjoyed by our forebears during the middle ages). With so many in positions of authority apparently in sync with this movement, how do rational people respond to and turn away this threat?
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Sustainable development: EPA's new power grab
CFACT senior policy analyst Bonner Cohen says EPA is using the recent National Research Council report on sustainable development to extend its reach and expand its already oppressive power against individuals and small businesses. A Heritage Foundation report warns that placing Agenda 21/sustainable development in the hands of EPA “would significantly expand the role of government in economic decision-making, impede development and economic growth, and undermine individual choice and policy flexibility in local communities."
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A conspectus on U.S. energy
CFACT Advisor Dr. Howard Hayden has written a brief paper that outlines the growth and direction of energy use in the United States, providing a wealth of information in one place. For example, he shows that we today use only about 3.1 times as much energy as did our pre-Civil War forefathers, thanks largely to increased efficiency. On the other hand, energy used to produce electricity has grown from 14% in 1950 to 41% today, thanks in large part to air conditioning and communications devices that support our use of computers, cell phones, etc. The piece shows just how absurd it is to think we can transition to using only renewable energy in the foreseeable future.
Eleven more Solyndras
CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson counted 12 clean energy companies that are having trouble after collectively being approved for more than $6.5 billion in federal assistance. Five have filed for bankruptcy: The junk bond-rated Beacon, Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt, AES' subsidiary Eastern Energy and Solyndra. Beacon had a bond rating of CCC-plus – not even a good junk bond, according to economist Peter Morici – but still got $43 million from Uncle Sam; now Beacon has gone bankrupt.
After a French company took it over, SunPower got a $1.2 billion loan guarantee to design, build and operate and maintain the California Valley Solar Ranch Project. The company now has debts in excess of its assets. Nevada Geothermal, with a personal endorsement from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, has received at least $66 million in grants and $98.5 million in Energy Department loan guarantees for a project facing multiple defaults despite this taxpayer supplied largesse.
How the U.S. shale boom will change the world
Energy technology and information services advisor Gary Hunt, President of Scalable Growth Strategy Advisors, writes, "A funny thing is happening on the way to the clean energy future = reality is setting in." Hunt cites a July 2011 U.S. Energy Information Agency report which found that the lower 48 states have a total of 750 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable shale gas resources, and that total U.S. recoverable natural gas resources (including offshore and Alaska) exceed 4.2 quadrillion cubic feet – enough to meet U.S. electricity demand for 575 years at current fuel demand, enough to fuel homes heated by natural gas for 857 years, and more than Russia, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkmenistan combined. Moreover, the U.S. has over 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil trapped in shale just on federal lands in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming – three times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia.
All of this means that those who have pursued a virtual war on fossil fuels for decades are faced with the stark new reality that they have overreached. The great likelihood is that older coal plants will be replaced with newer, cleaner, cheaper natural gas plants as a result of market forces. Meanwhile, renewables will continue to need subsidies to be competitive.
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