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By Steven Aftergood Updated below When the Central Intelligence Agency established a Center on Climate Change and National Security in 2009, it drew fierce opposition from congressional Republicans who disputed the need for an intelligence initiative on this topic.  But now there is a different, and possibly better, reason to doubt the value of the Center:  It […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., September 20, 2011 — Having failed to implement the provisions of the 2005 Energy Policy Act aimed at facilitating interstate electric transmission, the Department of Energy now wants to punt the problem to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Whether FERC wants this political black spot isn’t clear, but in any […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., September 16, 2011 — Add another prominent name to the list of know-nothing, scientifically illiterate skeptics of the conventional wisdom about global warming. Ivar Giaever, co-winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize in physics, has resigned as a Fellow from the American Physical Society over the scientific group’s political position on […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., September 12, 2011, 9:30 a.m. — There are multiple reports this morning of an explosion at the French nuclear site at Marcoule. According to the BBC, one person has been killed and four injured. Few details are available. This morning’s New York Times said French nuclear regulators had confirmed the […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington D.C., September 9, 2011 — Pondering the collapse of solar PV manufacturer Solyndra and the earlier business failures of Evergreen Solar and SpectraWatt, all recipients of Department of Energy loan guarantees, several points seem clear to me. The first is that the Obama administration has made a mistake by investing economic […]

By John Egan Lafayette, Colo., September 5, 2011 — “A live electric wire just fell on a bus full of senior citizens—what do you do?” No, that wasn’t a line from Dennis Hopper in the movie Speed. In fact, it was an interview question I was asked when I was being interviewed to become a […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., August 25, 2011 — A year ago, a peer-reviewed report in Science magazine concluded that a warmer planet over the past decade has led to drought that has reduced plant production and threatened worldwide food security. Today, a new, peer-reviewed study in the same journal argues that the results in […]

CERN CLOUD Experiment Challenges Climate Models By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., August 25, 2011 — The long-anticipated CERN study of the impact of cosmic rays on formation of clouds in the atmosphere, published today in Nature, should prompt a major revision of the global circulation models that support claims of man-made climate warming. The CLOUD […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., August 15, 2011 — It’s about those polar bears. You know, the ones endangered by global warming turning the Arctic into Florida, the poster predators of man’s inhumanity to the Earth. Those cute figures who have graced Coca-Cola ads and memorabilia for decades. Well, maybe they aren’t that endangered after […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., August 14, 2011 — I don’t often agree with former CIA director James Woolsey. In fact, I can’t think of a time that I have ever agreed with him. Until this week, that is, when Woolsey offered a short, sharp elbow to the policy ribs of the smart grid during […]