Category: Environmentalism

An Essay from Kansas

About language and propaganda.
Mr. Babcock, from Lawrence Kansas.
If you like the Midwest the Flint Hills of Kansas are a beautiful place.
Coherent discussion about the propaganda game of climate change.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/01/its_colder_hotter_blame_climate_change.html

Here Come the Tautologists, Watch Out Popperians

So cooling and cold is due to warming, so the next ice age might be do to green house gasses and the green house effect produces a colder planet.
Warming could be the reason for more Antarctic and Arctic ice or for less ice.
I told you this cold snap would not slow down the warming propagandists. They’ve got a stake.
Continue reading Here Come the Tautologists, Watch Out Popperians

Karl Popper and Reliable Science

I will admit some criticize Popper for being so dead set in favor of deductive methods and against inductive scientific methods, but his point is deductive science that tests and verifies with reliable evidence is the essential test of reliable and credible science. Falsifiability (testability) is a big and important word in the world of Popper Science. Seems Einstein agreed about experiments and evidence as controlling and dispositive.
Continue reading Karl Popper and Reliable Science

Kerry, a Science Illiterate, Pushes Climate Issues

John Kerry, who served in Viet Nam, by the way, is pushing for climate change policy responses and some State generated treaty work.
Maybe they can stop storms and weather events, which now are getting names from the weather channel to make sure people get scared and stuff.
Info forwarded by Fred Singer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/03/world/asia/kerry-shifts-state-department-focus-to-environment.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20140103&_r=0

Thus Spake Richard Lindzen

Richard Lindzen once said to me from the audience–no that’s not right.
What an honor to be corrected by a climate science genius.
And here Dr. Lindzen, now emeritus Prof at MIT, makes some observations about catastrophic warming.

What Catastrophe? MIT Climate Scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen, the unalarmed climate scientist

Wind Subsidies aren't Fair–Shocking

Just a little something to irritate you from our friends at NCPA.
Every time I drive to work at Fort Hood I get to review a new wind farm with 100 turbines.
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=23948&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD
Just a little info on Wind.
Dept of Energy has a map of the country that shows our part of Texas is not good for wind.
In fact the mountains, the coasts are the best for wind. In Texas only the coast and the panhandle are adequate. Midwest America is not good for wind.
One must consider that even when wind is good, its intermittent so the efficiency output of wind tubines is well under 50 percent of rated capacity.
When you read about a wind farm having a output for whatever, remember that’s not real output, that’s what they might put out if the ideal wind was 24/7.
Usually they are a third of capacity, for each turbine 2 or 3 Megawatts is the rated capacity, the actual is about a third with gas/coal backup or alternative to pick up the slack. Really smart–engineers tell me that gas and coal effeciciencies are lost with off and on demand.

Another Stupid Biofuel

You can’t make this stuff up. Renewables projects are the playground of air heads. Here’s another stupid idea, jatropha–a bush now promoted as an alternative fuel source. Sorta like cane and corn to ethanol and canola oil for diesel additive. I am breathless with anticipation on the breakthrough that is jatropha.
Another waste of land and good resources to produce an inferior energy source that benefits from green projects and renewable fanaticism. Almost as maddening as taking away some remaining tiger and orangutan habitat, taking down forest for an inefficient plant that requires a carbon using process to be converted to fuel.
Any physicist can splain to you, if you believe in plants, that plants be made of compounds that are not energy dense–they must be converted by a process that takes energy to make something that has concentrated energy. Compression makes coal and petrol dense–they are cooked down in high pressure earth mantel.
Here’s the interesting thing.
We used to burn wood,because it had more electron bonds and energy than burning weeds and manure and trash, then we moved up to coal and oil because, by golly the physics favored our choice–high energy concentrations, now we are going back down the energy ladder? Help me out here, is that progress? Look at the waste of land and resources, even carbon imprint required because of the renewable religion of coalophobia and petrolophobia.
I know nuclear would be better, but that’s another lesson.,
Often wrong but never in doubt, the geniuses of the green community. Repeat after me–for miles driven ethanol produces more carbon dioxide because it is less energy dense. Moreover ethanol burns hotter and is hydrophilic so it is hard on engine parts. Ethanol adds increase the cost of fuel, it has a big land, carbon and water use footprint, and it only survives because of the politics of the ethanol mandate and a little thing called the Iowa caucuses along with our friends at Archer Daniels Midlands and the farmers who are getting rich on high priced corn while mexicans can’t afford tortillas.
Damn shame.
Read about jatropha below–it’s probably more stupid than ethanol if that is possible. After that, class dismissed.
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/367178/print

Solar Strikes Out Every Time

Norm Rogers is an excellent analyst because he is.
I know him from his writing and previous take downs of stupid ideas in enviro/energy matters.
He had a successful career as an evil capitalist, and I applaud him for it.
So Norm gets top billing at American Thinker today, but look at the archives and you will see, this ain’t his first rodeo.
Continue reading Solar Strikes Out Every Time