Energy & Environment

If anyone ever deserved to win an award, it is the American master Mel Brooks, who was honored this week at the Kennedy Center. They might offer an evening showing of “Young Frankenstein” this week in Copenhagen, a small masterpiece in that popular genre of the mad scientist.

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Now that the Environmental Protection Agency has sounded the climate change alarm formally, legally and technically, get ready for the president to use his authority to impose, through the EPA, strong regulations. Good. He should. Whatever the law allows.

Obviously, the EPA action was a lead-in to the Copenhagen summit, and the president intends to take advantage of executive authority, either before or shortly after the meetings in Denmark. Don't I recall President George W. Bush using executive authority aggressively where he had far less legal authority than Obama does on climate change after the EPA finding?

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Bad news for the flat-earth society: This alleged scandal of criminally stolen e-mails is one of the phoniest productions of all time, because it changes nothing about the scientific facts believed by the overwhelming majority of scientists.

It is true that the wimpy e-mails don’t look pretty and that all views, no matter how wrong or reprehensible, no matter how much we may agree or disagree with them, should be presented fully and fairly. I have no hesitation condemning anyone who wrote any e-mail suggesting otherwise for any reason. Read more...

I remember very clearly when my seventh-grade science teacher told me and the rest of the class that sometime in the early 21st century, we were going to enter into a new Ice Age. We had had a few rough winters back in the mid-’70s, and obviously, we were preparing for a few more.

Perhaps that is why I am such a skeptic of so-called climatologists. They come up with their theories and then seek out to prove them, only to have the sun have a bad day, and to have the theories thrown out the window.

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When the world convenes in Copenhagen, Denmark, for further talks about what to do about global warming and climate change, most of the press attention will inevitably be focused on what America and China have failed to do to achieve their carbon reduction targets.

But that is not the only issue that ought to be discussed. Indeed, it is probably not the most important one.

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Back when I was a more consistent runner, I used to hate running behind big buses, especially in the summertime. The fumes from their exhaust would make me sick to my stomach.

Many of the buses in Washington are now powered by natural gas, which doesn’t have the noxious fumes. These newer buses are better for the environment and better for the lungs of runners everywhere.

I was thinking about black smoke as I ate lunch with T. Boone Pickens today. Mr. Pickens is pushing his plan to wean our nation off of its foreign oil addiction by increasing incentives to use more natural gas. Pickens is a canny businessman and he obviously has a vested interest in his plan to increase the use of natural gas in America.

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Note: The following is an excerpt from Mr. Williams's column on page A-4 of today's Washington Times. — Ed.

For years, the left and environmental crusaders pilloried anyone who dared question the “science” behind their self-deemed irrefutable claims that global warming was real and pernicious. To anyone who publicly raised the notion, they were immediately dubbed a neanderthal, a flat-earth theorist who “still” believed in creationism. For its part, the media jumped all over the naysayers — using the “facts” to question the legitimacy of climate opponents’ arguments, ultimately undermining the otherwise strong standing of their skepticism writ large.

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According to a new poll, the American people think we are heading in the wrong direction as a country.

Public Opinion Strategies just released results of a new survey that can’t be very comforting to the Obama administration: “Just 31 percent of Americans say the country is headed in the right direction, while 55 percent say it’s off on the wrong track. That’s a dramatic change from last month when a slight plurality of Americans said the nation was headed in the right direction — 45 percent-43 percent, and it’s also the first slippage in mood since Obama was elected.”

I wonder why. Read more...

Sarah Palin has published an opinion piece in The Washington Post about President Obama’s cap-and-trade energy policy, calling it an enormous threat to our economy and saying it would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who once had his picture taken with a hunting rifle in his hands, has challenged Palin with comments in The Huffington Post. "The global climate change crisis threatens our economy and our national security in profound ways," writes Kerry. Read more...

The Vancouver city council has unanimously approved new regulations for electric vehicle charging stations, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reports. Under the plan, approved Thursday, developers must include plug-ins for electric cars in at least 20 percent of parking stalls in new condominium and apartment buildings, along with some city-owned parking lots.

One commentator responded, “Yet another example of a Canadian special interest group of latte-sucking yuppie wimps that has taken over and obtained access to government policy.” Read more...