Ron Arnold: Keeping score of mounting global green failures

Benny Peiser’s academic resume notes that he’s a social anthropologist whose research focuses on “the effects of environmental change and catastrophic events on contemporary thought and societal evolution.”

However arcane that may sound, many know Peiser only as the pesky director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation who routinely embarrasses man-made climate change diehards with his weekly compilation of green policy flops — washouts such as Solon, Q-Cells, Solar Millennium and Solarhybrid. These are all once-thriving German solar energy firms that recently filed for bankruptcy, like America’s Solyndra.

The irreverent Peiser email report usually consists of a half-dozen or so stinging mainstream news clips with links, chosen partly because they include a “Benny” — a ready-made, slap-in-the-face headline — such as the London Daily Telegraph’s “Climate scientists are losing the public debate on global warming.”

But every now and then, a wickedly droll “Double Benny” headline will unexpectedly pop up, as it did this Wednesday in The Washington Examiner: “Astronauts condemn NASA’s global warming endorsement.” Columnist Paul Bedard gave details: “In an unprecedented slap at NASA’s endorsement of global warming science, nearly 50 former astronauts and scientists — including the ex-boss of the Johnson Space Center — claim the agency is on the wrong side of science and must change course or ruin the reputation of the world’s top space agency.”

That story whacked NASA for toadying up to Big Green and its out-of-place admonitions against man-caused climate change. Bedard wrote that the space heroes “demanded in a letter to Administrator Charles Bolden that he and the agency ‘refrain from including unproven remarks’ supporting global warming in the media.”

Examiner