Sales of electric vehicles fell 6.8 percent in 2019. British newspaper the Guardian halts fossil fuel ads, accepts auto ads. H-T Charles Rotter. Subsidies, regulation, or both? Recycling bills percolate through Congress.
Tag: Global Warming
Monday’s Links
‘Fight fires with facts—not fake science.’ Did British broadcaster David Attenborough scare Greta Thunberg with inaccurate stories of starving polar bears? NOAA revises American climate history (video).
Friday’s Links
Is too much e-commerce overrunning our cities? Yes, says the World Economic Forum. The term ‘global warming’ may be coming back, because it’s scarier than ‘climate change.’ Puddles, ditches, and watering ponds no longer regulated as federal waters.
Is Anybody Abiding by the Paris Agreement?
As noted in a recent Washington Times article, nearly four years after the Paris agreement was enacted with full force, only two of the 32 top emitting countries — Morocco and Gambia — have actually “enacted policies consistent with holding global temperature rise from pre-industrial levels below 2 degrees Celsius by 2100, according to the Climate Action Tracker.”
Faced with public backlash (on the streets and at the ballot box) against costly climate policies that have raised energy prices, the European Union and Japan — the two main driving forces behind the demand for stringent emissions reductions — have enacted policies that have increased their greenhouse gas emissions since the Paris agreement was signed.
And there’s more from H. Sterling Burnettt in the American Spectator.
(Comment? Click “Leave a Comment” below.)
‘I Get Attacked from People on Both Sides of the Issue’
Roy Spencer is a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and U.S. Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite. In a recent post on his blog he wrote:
One would think that the practice of science would be objective. I once believed this, too. As a fresh post-doc at the University of Wisconsin, when I discovered something new in satellite data, I was surprised to encounter NASA employees who tried to keep my work from being published because they feared it would interfere with a new satellite mission they were working toward. I eventually got it published as a cover article in the prestigious journal, Nature.
But the subject I was dealing with did not have the profound financial, political, policy, and even religious import that climate change would end up having. Furthermore, 35 years ago things were different than today. People were less tribal. There is an old saying that one should not discuss politics or religion in polite company, but it turns out that social media is far from polite company.
From a practical standpoint, what we do (or don’t do) about human-caused climate change supports either (1) a statist, top-down governmental control over human affairs that involves a more socialist political framework, or (2) an unconstrained individual-freedom framework where capitalism reigns supreme. So, one could easily be a believer (or non-believer) in the ‘climate emergency’ based upon their political leanings.
Are You Willing to Bet Money on Your Environmental Views?
Andrew McAfee is offering to take a number of bets centered around predictions and implications from his new book More From Less
- In 2029, the US will consume less total energy than it did in 2019.
- In 2029, the US will produce less total CO2 emissions than it did in 2019, even after taking offshoring into account.
- Over the five years leading up to 2029, the US will use less paper in total than it did over the five years leading up to 2019.
HT to Alex Tabarrok.