Sometimes the overuse of words make them unsustainable and actually reduces their impact.
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Just over a quarter of Nebraska is mixed grass prairie on grass-stabilized sand dunes, referred to locally as the sandhills. It is the largest area of sand dunes in the western hemisphere.
In 2007, we visited a relative’s ranch in the sandhills, a place of fond memories for me. The accompanying video was produced from pictures from that visit.
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When it comes to many projects, endeavors, and merchandise touted as “green” these days, I find myself becoming more and more skeptical.
“Green” – for whatever reason – has come to symbolize environmentalism, likely through the association of green color with nature, health, and growth, and “green” energy generally refers to renewable and alternative production and use of energy.
An recent article in the Washington Post looks at five myths about green energy:
Americans are being inundated with claims about renewable and alternative energy. Advocates for these technologies say that if we jettison fossil fuels, we’ll breathe easier, stop global warming and revolutionize our economy. Yes, “green” energy has great emotional and political appeal. But before we wrap all our hopes — and subsidies — in it, let’s take a hard look at some common misconceptions about what “green” means.
5 Myths:
- Solar and wind power are the greenest of them all.
- Going green will reduce our dependence on imports from unsavory regimes.
- A green American economy will create green American jobs.
- Electric cars will substantially reduce demand for oil.
- The United States lags behind other rich countries in going green.
Check out the full Washington Post article: Five myths about green energy.
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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is getting a lot of heat these days on the claim that the Himalayan glaciers will be gone by 2035.
While the information used by the IPCC is supposed to be peer-reviewed and well vetted, it turns out that this gem is derived from a magazine article in New Science several years ago that was based on a single phone call to an Indian scientist.
An IBD Editorial says:
The scientists who said that Himalayan glaciers will be gone by 2035 have admitted the claim has as much credibility as sightings of the mythical Yeti. It’s their fraudulent claims that are melting away.
We hesitate to call it Glacier-gate, but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.N. body tasked with scaring us to death about global warming, has admitted that the claim in its 2007 report about the Himalayan glaciers disappearing was not based on any scientific study or research. It was instead based on one scientist’s speculation in a telephone interview with a reporter.
This issue has been hitting a number of other media sites over the last week or so.
Read the rest of the IBD Editorial at Investors.com.
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… more than a tad unusual lately, here in Arkansas, as I’m sure it seems to people in a lot of other places.
But, the weather for the next week is…, well…, ah…, it’s Winter!
It’s winter like winter was when I was a kid growing up in Nebraska. It’s cold – and it’s staying cold.
And it’s doing it in a lot of places other than Arkansas.
Something called the Arctic Oscillation has gone into a deep negative phase, where atmospheric pressure in the Arctic is relatively high, while pressure is low in the middle latitudes. In the negative phase, frigid winter weather extends further into the middle of North America than usual.
Hopefully, this thing will moderate soon – but I’m not counting on it.
How’s the weather where you are?
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Telegraph.uk.co, December 14, 2009, quoting Tony Blair
Following the ‘climategate scandal’, Mr Blair said the science may not be “as certain as its proponents allege”.
But he said the world should act as a precaution against floods, droughts and mass extinction caused by climate change, in fact it would be “grossly irresponsible” not to.
BBC News, December 14, 2009
Negotiations at the UN climate summit have been suspended after developing countries withdrew their co-operation.
Delegations were angry at what they saw as moves by the Danish host government to sideline talks on more emission cuts under the Kyoto Protocol.
GlobalWarming.org, December 14, 2009
Today’s dominant mindset that any climate change at all is bad is puzzling. It implicitly assumes that today’s climate is the best of all possible climates. Maybe that’s true. But maybe it isn’t. The trouble is that few climate activists seem to have had that thought. The idea of change is so scary that nobody has the presence of mind to ask if that’s a problem or not.
Reuters.com, December 14, 2009
The head of the Asian Development Bank said on Sunday that rich countries’ offers of funds to developing countries for measures to mitigate or adapt to climate change remain insufficient a week into U.N. talks.
ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda also told Reuters in an interview that if governments were to fail to reach a climate deal in Copenhagen, it could lead to a collapse of the carbon market which would hit efforts to deal with climate change.
GlobalWarming.org, December 14, 2009
It has always been hard to persuade the public that invisible gases could somehow warm the planet, and that they had to make sacrifices to prevent that from happening. It seemed, on the verge of Copenhagen, as if that might be about to be achieved.
“But he says all that ended on Nov. 20. ‘The e-mails represented a seminal moment in the climate debate of the last five years, and it was a moment that broke decisively against us. I think the CRU leak is nothing less than catastrophic.’”
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