Tag Archives: Global Warming

News

New EPA report: natural gas production is even cleaner than previously thought

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From the liberal Associated Press. (H/T Hot Air)

Excerpt:

The Environmental Protection Agency has dramatically lowered its estimate of how much of a potent heat-trapping gas leaks during natural gas production, in a shift with major implications for a debate that has divided environmentalists: Does the recent boom in fracking help or hurt the fight against climate change?

Oil and gas drilling companies had pushed for the change, but there have been differing scientific estimates of the amount of methane that leaks from wells, pipelines and other facilities during production and delivery. Methane is the main component of natural gas.

The new EPA data is “kind of an earthquake” in the debate over drilling, said Michael Shellenberger, the president of the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental group based in Oakland, Calif. “This is great news for anybody concerned about the climate and strong proof that existing technologies can be deployed to reduce methane leaks.”

The scope of the EPA’s revision was vast. In a mid-April report on greenhouse emissions, the agency now says that tighter pollution controls instituted by the industry resulted in an average annual decrease of 41.6 million metric tons of methane emissions from 1990 through 2010, or more than 850 million metric tons overall. That’s about a 20 percent reduction from previous estimates. The agency converts the methane emissions into their equivalent in carbon dioxide, following standard scientific practice.

The EPA revisions came even though natural gas production has grown by nearly 40 percent since 1990. The industry has boomed in recent years, thanks to a stunning expansion of drilling in previously untapped areas because of the use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which injects sand, water and chemicals to break apart rock and free the gas inside.

Wow, when you have the EPA on board with responsible energy development, then you know it’s solid.

See my previous post in which I talked about how the EPA had exonerated fracking in Dimock, Pennsylvania.

Podcasts

Stephen C. Meyer on the nationally syndicated Michael Medved show

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The Michael Medved show is a national radio show broadcast out of Seattle, Washington. According to Talkers magazine, he has the fifth largest radio audience. Mr. Medved will now have a segment on origins, evolution and intelligent design every week.

Here is the announcement:

Does science conflict with religious faith? Does nature offer scientific evidence of design? Should public-school students learn about all sides of contentious scientific issues? Or should teachers spoon-feed them with only the politically approved views? Should scientists be free to pursue the truth, wherever the search takes them? What if it leads to conclusions that are disturbing to a rigidly secular point of view?

Starting this Thursday, April 25, the Michael Medved Show will shine a bright light on these and other fascinating questions that are vital to the future of our nation and our culture.

[…]From Darwinian evolution to climate change, science has become a major flashpoint in the culture war. In using science as a political and cultural weapon, aggressive, evangelizing materialists count on our not knowing enough to argue back. That’s why, to follow and participate in the greatest debates of our day, you need to know about the science behind the controversies.

Each week, leading fellows from Discovery will join Mr. Medved to talk about the intersection of science and culture, how bad science and biased science are corroding the best American values. They’ll talk about the assault on human dignity and uniqueness, about attempts to silence dissenting scientists and suppress academic freedom. They will discuss the danger posed by revived Social Darwinism and the new eugenics. And yes, they’ll explore the debate over scientific materialism versus intelligent design.

The Michael Medved Show is one of the top ten most listened to radio talk shows in the United States. Syndicated to some 200 radio stations, it reaches an estimated weekly audience of 3-4 million people.

Here is the first segment, courtesy of the Intelligent Design: The Future podcast.

The MP3 file is available for download at the link above.

The description is:

On this episode of ID the Future, hear Dr. Stephen Meyer talk with Michael Medved on the Medved Show’s very first “Science and Culture Update.”

Each week, leading fellows from Discovery Institute will join Mr. Medved to talk about the intersection of science and culture. Listen in live online or on your local Medved station, or stay tuned for at ID the Future for the weekly podcast.

The podcast is about 15 minutes long, and focuses on work of the atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel, and his views on intelligent design. I highly recommend that you listen to the podcast. It was awesome.

This segment was broadcast in the third hour of the Thursday show, so I am expecting that it will be a regular feature of the third hour. This is cause for rejoicing – a mainstream radio audience is going to have a chance to think about how science and culture interact. Great news!

Now might be a good time to subscribe to the ID: The Future podcast.

News

Reuters: scientists struggling to explain 15 years of global cooling

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From the left-leaning Reuters news service.

Excerpt:

Scientists are struggling to explain a slowdown in climate change that has exposed gaps in their understanding and defies a rise in global greenhouse gas emissions.

Often focused on century-long trends, most climate models failed to predict that the temperature rise would slow, starting around 2000. Scientists are now intent on figuring out the causes and determining whether the respite will be brief or a more lasting phenomenon.

[…]”The climate system is not quite so simple as people thought,” said Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish statistician and author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist” who estimates that moderate warming will be beneficial for crop growth and human health.

Some experts say their trust in climate science has declined because of the many uncertainties. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had to correct a 2007 report that exaggerated the pace of melt of the Himalayan glaciers and wrongly said they could all vanish by 2035.

“My own confidence in the data has gone down in the past five years,” said Richard Tol, an expert in climate change and professor of economics at the University of Sussex in England.

I think it’s important to note that science is not to blame for these failed predictions. What is to blame is government handing money to corrupt charlatans who then produce “scientific research” that proves that bigger government is needed to control capitalism and constrain individual liberty. In effect, government bribed the university charlatans to fake research that would trick the public into voting for more government control of job creators and their employees. The fastest way to solve this would be to get the government out of the higher education business and let science serve the needs of ordinary people instead of corrupt socialists.