by Sir Oolius

Posted 1 year, 3 months ago From the most recent New York Times Magazine:

As a Texas oilman and major contributor to the Republican Party, you've just launched yourself, at 80, into green stardom by devising an energy plan that relies mainly on wind power.

Green stardom. All you have to do is mention wind turbines to make the eyes of dirty hippies glaze over in delight. Read More

Posted 1 year, 5 months ago Estimated time for full ecological recovery by affected species from the Exxon Valdez oil tanker spill: 15 - 30 years.

Estimated time for full financial recovery by Exxon Mobil Corp. from yesterday's Supreme Court decision: 4.5 days.

As written in yesterday's opinion:

The real problem, it seems, is the stark unpredictability of punitive awards.

Read More

Posted 1 year, 7 months ago Via an email from The National Center for Public Policy Research:

The ad is being released in conjunction with a National Center for Public Policy Research policy paper, "Listing the Polar Bear Under the Endangered Species Act Because of Projected Future Global Warming Could Harm Bears and Humans Alike," by Peyton Knight and Amy Ridenour.

The paper questions the wisdom of listing the polar bear as threatened based on environmentalist organizations' projections of future global warming because:

• Listing the polar bear could have adverse affects on bear conservation efforts.

Now that we… Read More

Posted 1 year, 7 months ago Looking back at seven years of ever-looming -- yet constantly narrowly-averted -- GHG emissions regulations, it seems like it might have been a lot less painful to industry and damaging to the economy if the Bushies would have laid out a simple set of expectations early on and then just let us handle it from there. Even if the resultant regulations wouldn't have been nearly as stringent as most of us would have liked, industry might have benefited from the certainty.

Preferring to keep us all waiting just a little longer, however, last Thursday Bush's EPA put off any… Read More

Posted 1 year, 8 months ago John Hofmeister, President of Shell Oil Company, was on Charlie Rose Tuesday night.

About 22 minutes into the segment, he says the following [my own transcription]:

If we don't drill more in this country, I am quite concerned about civil disturbances in our urban areas because of the price of fuel.

...

I was meeting in Los Angeles with mayor Villaraigosa and I asked him a specific question because I lived there during the Rodney King civil disturbances. [I] said, "How is the mood in the hood based upon the price of gasoline compared to the mood in the… Read More

Posted 1 year, 8 months ago ... over there:

While the area of collapse involves 160 square miles at present, a large part of the 5,000-square-mile Wilkins Ice Shelf is now supported only by a narrow strip of ice between two islands, said CU-Boulder's Ted Scambos, lead scientist at NSIDC. "If there is a little bit more retreat, this last 'ice buttress' could collapse and we'd likely lose about half the total ice shelf area in the next few years."

Read More

Posted 1 year, 8 months ago A short while ago, Sir Oolius received a fundraising email from the Competitive Enterprise Institute asking for donations to help them with their new raison d'etre: yelling "FU, Al Gore!" as loudly and as often as possible. The fruits of this effort are now upon us in the form of a national ad whining campaign:

If carbon = life, then Al Gore ... Read More

Posted 1 year, 8 months ago If only Congress would have signed on to the Manhattan Declaration years ago, we could have spent valuable resources wisely summarizing nonexistent reports, thereby avoiding the subprime crisis. Read More

Posted 1 year, 8 months ago I'm sure there's at least a chapter devoted to the two decades of TV broadcasts in which, no matter how irrelevant the context, the words "global" or "climate" or "change" or "warm" were inextricably linked to the words "scientists disagree."

No?

Instead, they offer us John Coleman's Medienkritik:

Coleman told an audience at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change on March 3 in New York that he is highly critical of global warming alarmism.

"The Weather Channel had great promise, and that's all gone now because they've made every mistake… Read More

Posted 1 year, 8 months ago Revkin:

Mr. Morano, in an e-mail message, was undaunted, saying turnabout is fair play: "Fair is fair. Noting (not hyping) an unusually harsh global winter is merely pointing out the obvious. Dissenters of a man-made 'climate crisis' are using the reality of this record-breaking winter to expose the silly warming alarmism that the news media and some scientists have been ceaselessly promoting for decades."

And then there's this: "Earth's 'Fever' Breaks: Global Cooling Currently Under Way."

That should answer Barry Ritholtz's question (h/t to sunsetbeachguy):

If the… Read More