Regulation

Modern Transportation – A Miracle under Attack By Climate Zealots

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By Steve Goreham – Re-Blogged From WUWT

Modern transportation is amazing. Each day, millions of people fly, drive, or are transported across our world for business, pleasure, or to see distant family members. These trips, which are powered by petroleum-based fuels, were all but impossible a century ago. But today, many of our leaders call for elimination of hydrocarbon-fueled transportation.

Between 1840 and 1860, more than 250,000 people traveled by wagon train from Independence, Missouri to the west coast on the Oregon Trail. Horses and oxen carried the settlers on this 2,000-mile, six-month journey. Disease, attacks by Native Americans, and run-overs by wagons claimed the lives of more than 15,000 travelers. Today, a family can make this same journey in a few days in the safety of their air-conditioned vehicle.

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Past, Present and Future Progress Requires Mining

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By John M. Clema – RE-Blogged From WUWT

Metal and mineral needs are constant, constantly evolving, requiring new mines

Civilization’s progress has always been heavily dependent on farming and mining. The Stone Age didn’t end because mankind ran out of stones.

Instead, the discovery, mining and processing of metals like copper, bronze and iron, followed by the development of steel, led to progressively sharper, more effective tools, improved construction techniques, and other engineering and technological achievements. Nonmetallic minerals have also been and remain vital to civilization and progress.

Minerals – or their scarcity – have precipitated wars, but more often have led to certain countries becoming dominant in manufacturing vital products such as computer chips.

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Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #370

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The Week That Was: August 3, 2019, Brought to You by www.SEPP.org

By Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Quote of the Week: “Do you know what we call opinion in the absence of evidence? We call it prejudice.”— Michael Crichton [H/t William Readdy]

Number of the Week: 1998 and 2016

Confusing Planet: Our planet is a complex place, no doubt confusing global warming headline seekers. About 71%of the surface is water (ocean), 29% is land. Water warms and cools far more slowly than land. Complicating matters further, the dominant greenhouse gas is water vapor, slowing the nighttime cooling of water and land masses even further, where it is present.

Making matters even more complex is that about 81% of the Southern hemisphere is water and 19% is land. For the Northern Hemisphere, about 61% is water and 39% is land. Land area varies by latitude. About 68% of the land is in the Northern Hemisphere, only 32% in the Southern Hemisphere. By latitude, the highest percentage of land area is between 30 degrees North and 60 degrees North. [The distribution of land areas has changed significantly over the past 750 million years, making any paleo-earth studies of the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide on temperatures difficult. One cannot assume the ocean currents were the same as today.]

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What the Green New Deal Really is About

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By Allan M.R. MacRae – Re-Blogged From WUWT

On July 4, 2019, I published the article “THE COST TO SOCIETY OF RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM”.
There was a reason why this article was published on July 4. My article begins:

Ever wonder why extremists attack honest scientists who oppose global warming and climate change hysteria? Ever wonder why climate extremists refuse to debate the science?

IT IS BECAUSE GLOBAL WARMING AND CLIMATE CHANGE ALARMISM WAS NEVER ABOUT THE SCIENCE – IT WAS ALWAYS A FALSE NARRATIVE, A SMOKESCREEN FOR THE TOTALITARIAN OBJECTIVES OF THE EXTREME LEFT.

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US City With Highest Min Wage Signals a ‘Tipping Point,’ Businesses Uncertain on How They’ll ‘Survive It’

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The continued hike in the minimum wage in one California city — which has the highest in the U.S. — has local business owners worried.

The city of Emeryville, California, garnered the title of being the highest minimum wage city in the United States when the city saw a minimum wage hike in July from $15 to $16.30, according to The Wall Street Journal. Due to the city’s high cost of living in the Bay Area region, supporters of the wage hike saw it necessary.

Thomas White/Reuters

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ENVIRONMENT & CLIMATE NEWS

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[This is one good article from the Heartland’s Journal. It’s worth your time tolook at the whole Journal. -Bob ]

By Duggan Flanakin – Re-Blogged From Heartland Institute
The U.S. Department of Interior (DOI) has identified the steps it is taking to improve transparency and public input for legal settlements it is considering.A memo from Daniel Jorjani, principal deputy solicitor at DOI, explains what the department is doing to insti-tute then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zin-ke’s 2018 directive to stop entering into secret “sue-and-settle” agreements.Regulatory ShortcutEnvironmental lobbyists often sue vari-ous agencies, including DOI, to force them to implement policies they favor without going through the normally required regulatory process.Under previous presidential admin-istrations, federal agencies have often agreed to legally binding settlement agreements or consent decrees, creat-ing priorities and rules and establish-ing timelines for action outside of the normal rulemaking process.

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That Old Gas Stove Is Not Your Friend

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By Jean Tepprman – Re-Blogged From East Bay Express

As the United States has begun transitioning away from the use of coal and petroleum as a source of electricity and fuel, natural gas has been viewed as a relatively benign fossil fuel. After all, natural gas produces less carbon dioxide when burned than those other fossil fuels. It remains the energy source in about half of California’s buildings.

But scientists have increasingly warned that methane, the main component of natural gas, is itself a key heat-trapping gas — 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the first twenty years after release, according to the Environmental Defense Fund. In addition to the carbon dioxide created by its burning, the inevitable leaks as natural gas is extracted and shipped, make gas a serious climate threat in its own right.

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