EDITORIAL: Blowing smoke - Washington Times

The Obama White House spews climate hysteria
...
Like previous alarmist climate predictions, today's global-warming scare is devoid of cold facts. Temperatures were supposed to keep increasing, but they haven't. None of the alarmist climate models predicted recent trends in which global temperatures have either fallen or remained unchanged over the last decade. Not only are the existence and dangers of global warming unproven, but there is little chance that a bunch of mad scientists can save the world with geoengineering even if there were a crisis. Mr. Holdren should be prepared for the artificial-volcano theory to blow up in his face.

Only In It For The Gold: Failure of Short Run Strategies in Long Run Arguments

The implicit idea that the purpose of pushing sustainability is to support employment has no fewer than five problems

1. It is not logically supported in arguments made in its favor. For all its supporters know sustainability costs jobs. Certainly the idea that it is a net economic benefit in conventional terms (neglecting externalities) is unlikely.
2. It abandons the far more important and susbtantiated argument of externalities.
3. It totally abandons technically sophisticated opinion leaders like engineers and doctors, who will see through manipulation and be inclined to presume there are no better arguments to offer if nothing more is offered.
4. It totally abandons addressing the question of sustainability in economics, failing to draw attention to the underlying problem of the growth imperative and how to overcome it.
5. It continues the assault on reason, weakening collective reasoning.

Japan stimulus may not help cut emissions | Environment | Reuters

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's latest burst of economic stimulus spending is aimed at promoting energy-efficient products made by recession-hit exporters, but analysts say it is unlikely to help the world's fifth-biggest polluter cut greenhouse gas emissions.

GREENIE WATCH

An email from geologist Paul Driessen [pdriessen@cox.net]

Regarding the recent AP story about UN climate talks stalling over emission cuts by rich countries:

I am astonished at how casually activists, bureaucrats and politicians toss out these carbon dioxide reduction targets – as though cutting US (or EU, Canadian, Australian, et cetera) emissions by some essentially random amount by 2020 or 2050 is actually within the realm of possibility. Unless we assume major technological advancements … and even if we accept the risk of widespread social and economic upheaval … these targets land somewhere along the spectrum of fanciful, absurd, irresponsible and disastrous.
...
BASIC IDEAS ABOUT ELECTRIC POWER SUPPLY: CAN WE SURVIVE ON WIND, SOLAR AND MARINE POWER?

An email from Prof. Cliff Ollier [cliffol@cyllene.uwa.edu.au], School of Earth and Geographical Sciences, University of Western Australia
...
Energy storage. Renewable energy like wind or solar is not produced when needed, so storage is needed, and this is expensive. All the promoters of renewable energy ignore the need for storage.

What is needed is a large-scale, efficient, low-cost technology that can store huge amounts of electrical energy for weeks or months. No suitable technology exists or has even been contemplated. Hydro-pumped storage is the best we have. It is expensive - at least $1500 /kW – and requires two very large storage lakes not far from each other and with one lake something like 700 m higher than the other. The losses are 25%. The cost, the losses, and the difficulty of finding a suitable site are insuperable barriers to large-scale adoption of hydro-pumped storage.

So people who tell us that it is possible to run modern power systems from wind power, solar power and marine energy are not telling the truth.