Earth could be entering a new Ice Age within the next millennium, but it might not, the deep freeze averted by warming from increased carbon dioxide emissions. Humans could be thwarting the next glacial inception, a new study says. --Rebecca Boyle, Popular Science, 8 January 2012
Is global warming our best friend? That’s the inference from a study on climate variation being covered by the BBC this morning. The study underscores our lack of knowledge about the basic climate system of our planet, and how man made changes interact with natural cycles to produce the climate we live in. We will understand it better by and by, but in the meantime, there is a lesson for greens: the world is not going to consent to the radical changes the global greens want anytime soon. --Walter Russell Mead, Via Meadia, 9 January 2012
The problem for the present swollen human species is of a drift back into an ice-age, not away from an ice-age. Manifestly, we need all the greenhouse we can get, even to the extent of the British Isles becoming good for the growing of vines. The renewal of ice-age conditions would render a large fraction of the world’s major food-growing areas inoperable, and so would inevitably lead to the extinction of most of the present human population. Since bolide impacts cannot be called up to order, we must look to a sustained greenhouse effect to maintain the present advantageous world climate. This implies the ability to inject effective greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the opposite of what environmentalists are erroneously advocating. --Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, CCNet, June 1999
Optimistic predictions that Germany's decision to turn its back on nuclear energy will lead to the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs in the renewable energy sector have met with scepticism. While the installation of solar panels in Germany has jumped in recent years, it is down to a subsidy system financed through levying a surcharge on consumers' energy bills. "Every job (in Germany) in the solar (sector) costs 250,000 euros ($318,000)" to electricity consumers, meaning they are "doomed" or already lost jobs, Frondel commented. --AFP, 8 January 2012
Coral reefs around the world are suffering badly from overfishing and various forms of pollution. Yet many experts argue that the greatest threat to them is the acidification of the oceans from the dissolving of man-made carbon dioxide emissions. Human beings have indeed placed marine ecosystems under terrible pressure, but the chief culprits are overfishing and pollution. By comparison, a very slow reduction in the alkalinity of the oceans, well within the range of natural variation, is a modest threat, and it certainly does not merit apocalyptic headlines. --Matt Ridley, The Wall Street Journal, 7 January 2012
Britain too, it seems, is sitting on huge potential reserves of shale gas, which could supply us with cheap energy for centuries to come. Yet because it is a fossil fuel, our Government refuses to take it seriously. When I asked DECC, last week, why all its projections ignore shale gas, I was given the truly astounding reply that, even if we do begin to produce gas from shale, “it will all be exported”. --Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph, 8 January 2012
