Climate Lynx

I remember as a youngster, when someone would say something which on the face of it seemed wrong, I and my buds would call them out by saying, “Prove it!” As we got older, but not demonstrably smarter, we would call out improbable statements by yelling out, “I am calling a Bullshit on that one!” Today the science world is doing the same on incorrect or false claims about climate change. Scientists are standing up to the daily lies spread via the internet. These dangerous lies often worm their way into political publications, reputable newspapers and our minds. Universities are employing scientists to study the psychology of lying, why people latch onto lies and spread them, and how to combat the lying pandemic. Scientists aware of the danger created by the super spreader of lies, social media, are focused on defeating the tornado storm of misinformation which sucks logic and reason out of our US citizenry. It is crucial the current trend is reversed as philosophers Theodore Sch...

On Sunday the 7 th of August 2022 the US Senate, by the slimmest of margins, passed the Inflation Reduction Act, (IRA) with its 369 billion dollars of clean energy and environmental incentives. Just weeks prior to this vote meaningful legislation seemed impossible. Perhaps the last holdouts in the Democratic Party were nudged along by the fact heat records in July fell like flies dropping from heat stroke. There were 9000 heat records set in July, 6000 in the USA alone. While London, hitting 104 with its melting runways caught the headlines, Abilene, Texas set a three consecutive day blazing heat record of 110. Joe Manchin’s West Virginia was hit hard by floods, and next to West Virginia, many homes in eastern Kentucky literally floated away. This, after Kentucky’s city of Mayfield was disappeared by a tornado in December. Senator Manchin, much to his credit, is figuring this climate stuff out. It has been an ugly hot summer in the Northern Hemisphere and scientists tell us if y...

  For those of you who follow the climate drama in Washington DC the biggest surprise in the last decade came last week when it was announced Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer agreed to the climate provisions in legislation called, “The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022”. You might expect me to comment on it, but I will not. We in the climate action universe have been through over 30 years of disappointments. It is bad luck to count the climate cows before they are in the barn. I am going to write about the National Academies of Science, (NAS) and the amazing trove of information available to us.   The NAS is a treasure chest of free scientific information. I would like to note, researchers who attempt to figure out how people create opinions sometimes divide socioeconomic groups into two simple categories. High information gatherers, (HIGs) and low information gatherers, (LIGs). If you want to effectively expose people to fact...

  I have a postcard which says, “Yooper’s Last Words, Hold my Beer, Watch This!”. For me it is one bookend on a subject called risk management. My good friend and former Law Enforcement Officer likes to tell people there really is no such thing as an accident, only people who act without thinking, foresight, or knowledge. In other words, those who have not incorporated risk management in their lives find disaster. If you trace back the chain of events, he stresses, all accidents are avoidable. And so it is with climate change. The current climate disasters were avoidable, and future disasters are avoidable if we are good risk managers. When I first started my career aviation safety was stressed. But the pre-flight act of analyzing risk was not quantified. The Coast Guard and civilian medical helicopter evacuation (medevac helicopters) had high accident rates. Investigators, when evaluating the causes and the chain of events leading to accidents discovered the same avoidable...

  Have you noticed the long lines at gas stations? Have you seen the signs at the stations saying, “Pumps Closed”? Did you hear, to promote energy efficiency, the government has taken the very effective conservation measure of reducing the maximum speed limit to 55? No, but these were common experiences in the 70s when OPEC cut us off. That was a real gas shortage. If we are not short of oil, why have USA gas prices gone up so much? The International Energy Agency, (IEA) claims the USA was the top oil producer in 2020 . Our Energy Information Administration tells us the United States was an energy net exporter in 2020 and 2021.   If you search “historical oil price fluctuations” you will find many sites detailing the huge price variations of oil. If you consider the effect this has on the world economy, oil price fluctuations are the scariest roller coaster ride ever. Since our efforts to pursue clean energy have been, at best, weak one must ask, “Do we simply love this ...

  Physics is blind and incorruptible. The rules were set at creation and have never changed. For individuals, nations, and generations who understand the rules of nature, success is assured. Courts are manmade entities and as such are imperfect. Courts generally deliver justice but there have been moments in history when injustice was inflicted by the Supreme Court. Despite the best intentions of our founding fathers to create an honest judicial system there has been corruption. The six fossil fuel Republican Supreme Court members, by eviscerating the power of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has made it nearly impossible for the EPA to protect our young citizens and future generations from the ravages of climate change. While the recent ruling against the EPA in “West Virginia vs the EPA” may not have been corrupt it was, at a minimum, stunningly science ignorant. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC ) is the world’s preeminent climate science autho...