News

Another year has passed quickly; too quickly for those who will run out of time before they run out of money. Undoubtedly, the most important event in the Australian year was the election last month of a new federal government.

So-called Global Warming has the potential to destroy 300 years worth of scientific progress and our advanced western civilization along with it. From an economist’s position, it is pure folly. And our worst enemies’ dream come true.

If a scientific paper appeared in a major journal saying that the planet has warmed twice as much as previously thought, that would be front-page news in every major paper around the planet. But what would happen if a paper was published demonstrating that the planet may have warmed up only half as much as previously thought?

New Yorkers should rejoice that the Environmental Protection Agency last week slapped down California's request to write its own fuel-economy rules to combat global warming. Gov. Spitzer had vowed to follow the lead of California's Arnold Schwarzenegger - so if the "Governator" had prevailed, New Yorkers would have seen their wallets and their cars shrinking.

Christmas is over but, for those who are not emotionally invested in the global warming theory, there is some post-Christmas cheer. Mankind is not headed for extinction, after all. The North Pole will not melt and the Atlantic Ocean will not flood New York City.

On December 19, President Bush signed an energy bill that will, among many, many other things, force you to buy a new kind of light bulb. He did this because environmental enthusiasts don't like the light bulbs you're using now. He and they reason, therefore, that you shouldn't be allowed to have them. So now you can't.

Scientists like money. (It's true --- be still, my heart.) Big Science is a Big Business, supporting nearly half the budgets of our major universities. Science professors are only hired if they can swing enough Federal grant money to pay for their labs, hire a gaggle of graduate assistants, and let the universities skim up to forty percent off  the top for overhead.

Earlier this month Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson refused to briefly answer a question about global warming at a debate in Iowa, suggesting 30 seconds wasn't long enough to lay out his views on the issue. During a recent telephone interview with Radio Iowa, Thompson was given an unlimited amount of time to talk about global warming. He said it was a problem.

If you have a relative who is worried about global warming, it's hard to know what to buy him this Christmas.

The Environmental Protection Agency, if it tries to regulate global-warming carbon dioxide from motor-vehicle exhaust as it appears about to do, could kneecap the U.S. economy with new regulations on factories, farms and ordinary buildings.

More than 400 scientists challenge claims by former Vice President Al Gore and the United Nations about the threat of man-made global warming, a new Senate minority report says.

Contrary to the focus of much of the media on Canada and the U.S. “backing down” at the Bali conference on climate change, the real story may be quite the opposite. Opposition halted only after the conference agreed not to state specific emission reductions as targets for the year 2020. This was the big sticking point.

New York will sue to challenge the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's blocking of efforts by major states to reduce vehicle greenhouse gas emissions.

The subject of man-made global warming is almost impossible to discuss without a descent into virulent name-calling (especially on the Internet, where anonymity breeds a special kind of vicious reaction to almost any social or political question), but I’ll try anyway. I consider myself to be relatively well-read on the matter, and I’ve still come down on the skeptical side, because there are aspects of the issue that don’t make a lot of sense to me.

Over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called "consensus" on man-made global warming. These scientists, many of whom are current and former participants in the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), criticized the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore. 

President Bush on Wednesday signed an energy bill designed to cut U.S. dependence on overseas oil by imposing the biggest increase in fuel-efficiency standards in 32 years and mandating a fivefold increase in the use of home-grown biofuels.

The EU's controversial plans to force car makers to make greener cars from 2012 or face fines have caused strong division within the European Commission itself, with industry commissioner Guenter Verheugen said to have boycotted the press conference to announce the proposals on Wednesday (19 December).

Chancellor Angela Merkel and the powerful German auto industry slammed a European Commission proposal Wednesday to slap heavy fines on car-makers that fail to meet emissions targets.

Al Gore says global warming is a planetary emergency. It is difficult to see how this can be so when record low temperatures are being set all over the world. In 2007, hundreds of people died, not from global warming, but from cold weather hazards.