Steve Milloy, who most often exposes the scare tactics of environmental fearmongers has been employing their methods recently. It is one thing to point out conflicting scare stories from the environuts, e.g. the world is ending because of fossil fuels, but we can't use windmills because they kill birds. There is nothing so wonderful as watching various claimants to ecological consciousness beat each other to a pulp in the public square. But I refuse to join those trumping up environmental dangers of wind power simply because I disagree with renewable power subsidies.

Adopting environmentalist tactics of poorly communicating risk in context to defend abstract libertarian principle is a bad idea. This week Steve's Junkscience Column for Fox News is part of the junk rather than exposing it. In a timeworn rearguard effort he complains that Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards are killing people. So if this chance is increased by 7.5% that means that CAFE standards would increase the chances of the average American dieing in a traffic fatality to 1in 92,500 annually. As father Guido Sarducci once said on Saturday Night Live: "I'm shakin' in my boots.

There is, admittedly, more truth to this line of reasoning than the idea that Alar was killing people, but in context CAFE standards are a non-issue with regard to automobile safety. At first blush it sound like I'm talking through my hat. Various studies cited by Steve suggest that a median of about 2500 traffic fatalities a year might be attributed to CAFE standards. With NHTSA statistics showing a total of 33,000 traffic deaths a year this appears to be more than an insignificant number, i.e. it represents about 7.5 percent of the total. But if one factors in transportation statistics regarding total vehicle miles (VMT) from the Center for Transportation Analysis at the Oakridge National Laboratory, the total number of deaths represents a statistical risk to a individual American of 1/100,000.

Continue reading "Don't tout Fear of Death when we want the Death of Fear" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 06:36 AM | Permalink

The new World Watch Living Planet Report provides strong evidence that the space required by urban areas is only a small part of what is required to support human habitation --- that the land required for agriculture, energy production and other factors is far greater --- 90 times greater. The World Watch data thus provides evidence that the urban form --- whether dense or sparse (“compact” or “sprawl”) --- is irrelevant with respect to sustainability. If the World Watch prescription is reliable, then strategies to combat “urban sprawl” would yield virtually no progress toward improving sustainability (even at the theoretical level).

Continue reading "World Watch, Sustainability and the Irrelevance of Sprawl" »

Posted by Wendell Cox at 06:53 AM | Permalink

Chicken Little Makes Policy: "Global warming" has become the latest weapon of the anti-automobile crowd. This may be best illustrated in Montreal, where public officials and the local media object to virtually every road improvement and suburban development on the basis of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Never mind that Environment Canada data shows automobile GHG to be so small that if all Canadians gave up their cars and began walking tomorrow, the nation would still fall far short of meeting its Kyoto agreements. (See Housing and Transportation in Montreal – How suburbanization is improving the region's competitiveness .)

Continue reading "Replacing Transit with 5 Light Bulbs" »

Posted by Wendell Cox at 10:19 PM | Permalink

High Speed Rail Proposal A high-speed rail system has been proposed for California, which would serve San Diego, Los Angeles, Sacramento, the San Joaquin Valley and the San Francisco area. Planners place the cost at $37 billion and claim that the alternatives would cost more. History suggests that projects such as this virtually never achieve their objectives and experience exorbitant cost escalation. Taxpayers beware!

Continue reading "California High Speed Rail: Taxpayers Beware!" »

Posted by Wendell Cox at 06:20 PM | Permalink

America’s interstate highway system is celebrating its 50th anniversary. It is hard to imagine an infrastructure project that has provided greater economic and social returns. The interstate system has been instrumental in the widespread affluence that has occurred since it was established in 1956. At the same time, the interstate highways system has saved hundreds of thousands of lives and millions of injuries.

Continue reading "The Interstate Highway System: At the 50th Anniversary" »

Posted by Wendell Cox at 10:09 PM | Permalink

In an interesting twist which may ultimately separate those taking an ideological ride on the global warming issue from those engaged in serious scientific disputation, physics professor and author Dr. Gregory Benford offered his first public statement on an anything-but-Manhattan-Project to save the planet at the Skeptics Society Conference in Pasadena this Weekend.

Benford seems to accept the possibility that anthropogenic carbon emissions could trigger a climactic tripping point, e.g. interruption of the gulf stream in the Atlantic. But rather than urging an all out effort to shrink the human atmospheric-carbon footprint, he and "the guys", an informal group of scientists from Livermore National Labs and Stanford, propose relatively low tech and low expense experiments at changing the climate "on purpose instead of by mistake".

Continue reading "Dr. Gregory Benford, Noble [maybe Nobel] skeptic urges climate action of a different sort" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (25) | TrackBacks (0)

In a day of debate on Saturday that was bookended by Tapio Schneider, a Caltech climate researcher, and Michael Crichton, whose high profile State of Fear contends that the catastrophic risk associated with climate change is overstated, there weren't winners and losers. It is, after all, hard to expect an eclectic day of exchanging ideas on the environment to end 25 years of debate (or is it 2500 years) over what direction climate is taking and why. But the day did help to crystalize where exactly the scientific and policy differences lie.

Continue reading "global warming or just heated discussion at Skeptics Society" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 08:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

... not Iraq, Caltech -- ground zero in The Environmental Wars next week. Still time to think about joining the free market[intellectual] militia in attendance. This unusual conference presents serious questioners of the media 'consensus' on hot button environmental issues -- along with some of the journalists and opinionmakers who support the status quo.

The conference is unique in not presenting dissenting opinions as fringe, but as serious and welcome skepticism. Of course, that is what you might expect from a Skeptics Society but it is not what you usually get with regards to the environment.

Although I have been touting this skeptical soiree about town, some have recently and rationally questioned whether even this seemingly 'up the status quo' offering is the product of serious skepticism. The host's recent high profile skeptical apostasy in embracing Al Gore's interpretations of glacier melt (buttressed by an eclectic group of more serious thinkers who present hypotheses of other human signatures in the historic ecological record) was a disappointment.

His Flipping Point is rather flippant for anyone who was honestly skeptical of 'consensus' climate science. These ice pictures have been around for several years, as have studies suggesting that landed ice volume was increasing even while these pictoral anecdotes were being ballyhooed as evidence for the second coming of Noah. National Review has a good summation that was conveniently published contemporaneously with Michael Shermer's defection:

and is reproduced on Free Republic (IP warning, l lifted this picture from Free Republic who probably lifted it from National Review, but given the importance of the cause one hopes they'll take one for the gipper).

Not to mention (well I did mention) this first person ditty, admittedly anecdotal, on glaciation from the Times of India. (Well this is no doubt some Indianophile arguing that 2nd or 3rd world people should be able to develop economically too. What kind of backward thinking is that? After all, subsistence has such a light footprint.)

Continue reading "Shipping out for the front..." »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (35) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm been busy preparing to report from the front of the environmental wars (more on this shortly). But no month goes by without a good excuse to bash what used to be the preeminent distillation of science for the popular culture and has become yet one more journal of lefist political opinion.

Scientific American hasn't yet created a digital link to Jeffrey Sachs's new column, Sustainable Developments, and when they do, you might have to pay for it, and I can't in good conscience suggest giving them even 2 cents, so you may have to infer what Sachs wrote in the June 2006 issue from my curmudgeonly (I'm sure you're shocked) reply:

Continue reading "Unscientific American Sachs it to 'em" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 07:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBacks (0)

Americans are correct to be concerned about potential terror activities by Muslims, but the most common form of terrorism since 9/11 has been among so-called environmental and animal-rights activists.

Continue reading "The Terrorists are among us and not who you think" »

Posted by Sam Karnick at 08:59 AM | Permalink

The New York Times splashed what appeared to be one more story about how the Texan's in the current administration are giving it away to the oil companies: U.S. Has Royalty Plan to Give Windfall to Oil Companies. Enough to make your average, even your below average, libertarian nash their teeth.

As per usual, the New York Times is misleading its readers. The story should be titled: Clinton Era Decisions Bring More Oil but Less Royalties. This is the kind of not so subtle bias that pervades the New York Times. The story isn't outright dishonest or untrue, it is just cryptically titled and doesn't reveal that this is principally a Clinton administration decision until you jump to the follow and are 1400 words into a 1700 word article. I would call that irresponsible journalism, but I expect nothing less from the New York Times.

Unfortunately, the Rockefeller Republican and Truman Democrats who people editorial boards at northeastern papers that aren't per se house organs for the Socialist Workers Party don't understand oil exploration economics any better than the New York Times (free sign-up required). But the irony here is that the Clinton administration might actually have gotten it right -- even if the New York Times never will.

Continue reading "The broken clock theory - Clinton era oil incentives probably right" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 06:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (0)

This is a me too post. Mike already noted the coverage of this lunatic. I'm shocked, shocked to see our cherished institutes of higher learning are employing misanthropes.

Now the FBI is investigating (sorry, this is an older article so you have to do a free sign-up to read it, but if you are interested in the 'exterminate 90 per-cent of humanity to protect the natural world' philosophy this little inconvenience is worthwhile). This little ditty makes me nostalgic for when the youth movement once had a sense of humor and a sense of freedom, before being completely co-opted by marxists.

In one of Arlo Guthrie's famous cynical tributes he dedicates a song to the FBI because "in America, there is no discrimination,
and there is no hypocrisy,'cause they'll get anybody."

Talk about kneejerk reactionary law enforcement, the FBI looks like distinctly the keystone cops chasing the crazy professor.

Continue reading "Lifeboat ecologist resurgence - FBI outsourcing?" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 06:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (0)

Whenever you hear people talking about things like "sustainable development" just remember this guy. At root the notion is that the wants and needs of human beings should be subordinate to the needs of the ecosystem. When there are 6-odd billion people on the planet this presents a bit of a problem, one that can only really be solved by mass extermination. Not that all eco-spiritualists and promoters of sustainability are eco-fascists ... but we have to recognize the root ideas they have in common.

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 10:27 AM | Permalink

Against their better judgement, the editors of this site offered me an opportunity to share my acerbic wit with cyber libertarians and accidental tourists, premised on the understanding that I would have the good taste to avoid scatilogical humor. But I never promised anything about scatilogical politics!

Only in 21st century America could this scene be protected by government.

Continue reading "Caution falling droppings ahead" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 07:58 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

This is how it ends. Not with empirical evidence, a trial, an expert opinion. Not with a referendum or an election. Not with a public policy paper or an academic conference. Not with critical analysis and not with caution. These days this is how a debate ends ... with a commercial.

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 09:55 AM | Permalink

A nod to freedomdemocrat's Logan Ferree for subjecting himself to the criticism I have leveled at his libertarian scorecards for the house and senate. He left a comment that parallels several offline comments I've had on my blog posts that appears to return this discussion of partisanship to one of pragmatism -- thus vindicating Mike Van Winkle's instincts.

The sagebrush rebellion was snuffed out when its effective coalition broke apart into factions promoting regulatory reform through state based management of federal lands, and those promoting privitization of the vast federal estate. This theme obviously continues to play itself out as virtually any federally managed use of these lands is portrayed as fraught with subsidy rather than freeing overregulated industry. Thus, Logan disagrees with my proposal that votes for opening ANWR to oil exploration would be reliable indicators of a libertarian philosophy. Logan is by no means the lone libertarian with respect to such criticism, he is just wrong.

Continue reading "Sagebrush civil war" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 06:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (24) | TrackBacks (0)

Mike recently posted links to a topic that drew me to blogging in the first place, although I think the title might be a little bit of false advertising. It is really about "partisanship and idealism" rather than "pragmatism and idealism".

Stephen Gordon at Hammer of Truth has seized upon a young Democrat's libertarian view of his party to support the theory that the party out of power develops more libertarian tendencies. I think that is a reasonable proposition. But the ‘research’ Stephen cites to support this is tainted by the choice of legislation used to analyze Congress, as well as ignoring the Democratic party's institutional responsibility for the existing anti-libertarian status quo in the economic sphere. I don’t think libertarian oriented Democrat Logan Ferree necessarily conspires to make Democrats look better on the Nolan chart, although I can’t rule it out.

Sorry that, as usual, it has taken me rhetoric of such logorrheic proportion to half explain why, but for the fearless of heart, or those with a large periodicals shelf or an ethernet connection next to the W.C. (and with only a slight bit less respect for what Shakespeare actually said): read on Macduff.

Continue reading "freedom democrats - a contradiction in terms?" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 02:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

… are hybrid cars as phony as the hydrogen economy? As pointed out yesterday -- well it was really a week ago, but this blogella (is that how you say novella in blog), begun the day after, has taken me quite a bit of research and thought, the value of which I hope will be open to some speculation here and elsewhere -- Steve Milloy takes the libertarian cudgel to Bush's alternative energy boosterism. Starting with the most glaring policy inconsistency of the new Bush energy push, Milloy observes that Ethanol takes more energy to produce than can be derived from burning it. Can you say "grasping at straw"?

From there, thinking about alternative energy and subsidies gets more complex…

Continue reading "Grasping at straw or..." »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (0)

On Thursday, March 2, at a media industry conference in Orlando, former vice president Al Gore called on the media to support an upcoming effort to spend millions on an alarmist television ad campaign portraying global warming as a looming catastrophe, "the most serious challenge our civilization has ever faced."

Continue reading "Heartland Responds to Al Gore Campaign" »

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 03:22 PM | Permalink

Candidate Kerry was ruthlessly (and correctly) criticized for being on both sides of most issues. President Bush, instead of running that way, has arguably governed from both sides of the issues. For libertarians, his faux-Reagan patina tarnished early with the 'No Child Not a Federal Project Act'.

The pattern is clear enough that libertarians know better than to watch a Bush of the union message without an air sickness bag. Of course there is a bipolar character to these edge-of-the-seat yawns in which the forgotten proposal to privatize social security revealed a principled president with the temerity to challenge a reactionary constituency that can be stampeded in defense of the status quo (see, e.g. Hilarycare - this phenomenon works in both directions).

But this year's state of the union address was the largest rhetorical reversal for this President as he declared "America is addicted to oil".

Continue reading "Is oil an addiction?" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 06:50 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Better wine!

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 09:06 AM | Permalink

It's just a coincidence, I'm sure, but every major event that happens in the United States seems to be read as showing that we need more intervention from the federal government.

The Katrina disaster is an excellent case in point. As soon as it happened and people in the region had to put up with the consequences of having chosen to live in an area long known to be vulnerable to just such a catastrophe, the complaints rang through the press regarding the alleged slowness of the federal government in responding. Relatively little attention was paid to the disgracefully slow and inept response by the governments of New Orleans and Louisiana, and likewise to the fact that the federal government stepped in as soon as was legally permitted.

Continue reading "Katrina and Big Government" »

Posted by Sam Karnick at 01:13 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Kevin Drum is freaking out over glacier melt in Greenland:

Not only is it happening, but every recent report I've seen indicates that it's happening faster and with more dire results than we've previously believed. It's really beyond belief that so many people are still burying their heads in the sand over this.

Sure, we can show that the glaciers in Greenland are melting faster. We can show that 2005 was a pretty warm year (though NASA fudged a little by calling it the warmest in a century). But apocolyptic predictions and the belief that man is the fundamental cause of the problem, and the subsequent assumption that we can somehow "fix" it, go beyond mere observation of the phenomenon. In fact, they border on complete anthropocentric arrogance. The complaint from the skeptic is not about the data, it is about the fear, anxiety, and politics that dominate the debate.

Continue reading "Environmental Science Via AP" »

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 09:24 AM | Permalink

Of course there is still a debate going on about the science of global warming, but an interesting contribution might come from the anti-smoking lobby. Banning smoking pushes smokers outside and tends to induce restaurants to offer outdoor seating. Accompanying any outdoor seating, at least in cities with temperate weather, are those towering space heaters that emit, you guessed it, greenhouse gases. Thank the Brits for this one.

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 10:21 AM | Permalink

From Environment and Climate News:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will be allowed to implement potentially counterproductive smog-prevention regulations after the U.S. Supreme Court on November 14 let stand a lower court decision that a legal technicality prevented the National Alternative Fuels Association (NAFA) from challenging the regulations.

Full Article

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 09:52 AM | Permalink

The Times is reporting that the American Association of Petroleum Geologists has given its annual journalism award to Michael Crichton for his fictional work, State of Fear. You don't have to have read the book to know that Crichton's done something right because the reporter basically quotes a few "leading" climatologists engaging in rather pedestrian name calling. From the Times:

Continue reading "Crichton Wins Journalism Award" »

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 08:44 AM | Permalink

Steve Milloy has a great column on FoxNews' website that raises some very good questions about the alleged rediscovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Arkansas:

Last year’s reported sighting in eastern Arkansas of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker, long thought to be extinct, raised the hopes of bird-watchers everywhere.

But now a prominent bird expert has cast serious doubt on the report, characterizing it as “faith-based” ornithology and “a disservice to science.”

Writing in the ornithology journal The Auk (January 2006), Florida Gulf Coast University ornithologist Jerome A. Jackson criticized the “evidence” put forth to support the conclusion that the Woodpecker wasn’t extinct after all — including a four-second video of an alleged sighting which garnered widespread media attention; several other anecdotal sightings; and acoustic signals purported to be vocalization and raps from the Woodpecker.

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 10:16 AM | Permalink

Last week AP published a report, which was picked up by just about every major newspaper in the country, that 2005 was the hottest year on record in a century. This despite the fact that NASA's Jim Hansen admitted in the article that a lack of information about temperatures in the Artic required him to rely heavily on estimates.

Continue reading "Was 2005 the Warmest Year on Record?" »

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 09:01 AM | Permalink

From the Daily Telegraph (London)

Posted by Wendell Cox at 08:38 AM | Permalink

From the Daily Telegraph (London)

Posted by Wendell Cox at 08:38 AM | Permalink

Global warming is coming !!! I

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 05:02 PM | Permalink

New Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is preparing the electorate for a bit of reality on Canada's prospects for meeting its Kyoto CO2 reduction goals. Noting that Canada trails the United States, which has no commitment to abide by the Kyoto protocols, Harper has expressed the view that its too bad the better part of a decade was wasted pretending that Canada would meet its commitments.

Posted by Wendell Cox at 08:57 AM | Permalink

USA Today, along with just about every other newpaper in the country, is reporting that news that 2005 is the warmest year on record in over a century. Funny ... I didn't mind so much.

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 12:08 PM | Permalink

Ever wondered how nuclear power works. How about a demo from How Stuff Works?

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 12:57 PM | Permalink

Coming Soon.

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 01:20 PM | Permalink

Hasn't anyone figured out that the UN is a political body, not a scientific one. Why is it that domestic US government statistics are treated with skepticism (as they probably should be) but UN statistic are not. This time it's USA Today:

The Earth's average temperature rose roughly 1 degree in the 20th century and could rise 10 more degrees by 2100, according to an international group of scientists convened by the United Nations.

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 08:56 AM | Permalink