Weekly John Locke Foundation research division newsletter focusing on environmental issues.
The newsletter highlights relevant analysis done by the JLF and other think tanks as well as items in the news.
1. Hell has frozen over: Guru of Gaia, James Lovelock, goes skeptic on global warming
The guru of Gaia and, until now, a global warming alarmist and carbophope that has made Al Gore sound like a skeptic, James Lovelock, is backing off of his warm-mongering ways.
Before I recount his most recent view, as being reported at MSNBC, here’s what he said in an article he wrote just 6 years ago:
We have given Gaia a fever and soon her condition will worsen to a state like a coma. She has been there before and recovered, but it took more than 100,000 years. We are responsible and will suffer the consequences: as the century progresses, the temperature will rise 8 degrees centigrade in temperate regions and 5 degrees in the tropics.
Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert, and will no longer serve for regulation; this adds to the 40 per cent of the Earth’s surface we have depleted to feed ourselves. …before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.
That was 2006 and this is today:
The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books — mine included — because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened.
The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now.
The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time….it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising — carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that. (Where have you seen this before? See item 2 here.)
The fact that a kook like this is acknowledging what those "deniers" have been saying for years is definitely giving me pause. If Al Gore follows suit and changes his views, I’m switching sides.
2. Another heavily subsidized wind power plant approved for North Carolina’s coast
This story was reported last week by the Raleigh News and Observer regarding a third wind power plant project that has been approved for North Carolina near Pamlico. What is interesting for me is the direct contradiction contained in the story that goes completely unnoticed, either willfully or out of ignorance, by the author, John Murawski.
First the article quotes Neil Jones, director of project development for Wind Capital, the company that would build and operate the power plant:
We do see there’s market interest…We feel like it’s going to be a matter of when, not if.
Then at the end of the article the author states:
North Carolina’s utilities are considering buying power from wind farms because state law requires them to rely on an increasing percentage of alternative energy.
Wind farms would be boosted by several financial incentives, primarily a federal production tax credit that could cover between $50 million and $100 million of Bay River Wind’s costs over a decade. North Carolina offers a state tax credit up to $2.5 million and the utilities would pay these projects for "renewable energy certificates" to meet their state mandates for clean energy.
But, of course, if there were actually "market interest" for these wind power plants, there would be no need to force utility companies to purchase the electricity generated by them. For example, there has never been a law forcing utilities to buy electricity generated from coal fired or nuclear power plants. Why? Because there is actual market interest for electricity generated from these sources. The same is true, of course, for the federal and state taxpayer subsidies that Wind Capital would be getting. Government does not need to subsidize the production and purchase of any product when there is a real interest from market participants for it. There is no market interest in wind power; there is government interest in wind power.
3. Ozone Report
The 2012 ozone season began on April 1 and each week during the ozone season this newsletter will report how many, if any, high ozone days had been experienced throughout the state during the previous week, where they were experienced, and how many have been recorded during the entire season to date. The ozone season will end on October 31st. All reported data is from the North Carolina Division of Air Quality, which is part of the state’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources. During the period April 16th to April 22nd there were no reported high ozone readings on any of the state’s monitors and there have been none thus far this season.
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