The US rush into wind power has enabled the country to pass Germany to become the world’s biggest generator of such energy, according to estimates for the first half of 2008 from the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA).

The US had not been expected to reach this milestone until the end of next year. It achieved this early, while still running behind Germany in total installed capacity, because its average wind speed in significantly stronger.

The total capacity of wind installations in Germany was 22,000 megawatts in 2007, compared with 17,000mw in the US.

Nonetheless, with growing attention on wind energy in the US, the AWEA says the country could well take the world lead in installed capacity as well by the end of this year.

I was delighted, as you were I'm sure, to see in this space last Friday an opinion about climate change by an academic who surely knows what he's talking about.

I read with anticipation, hoping to discover nuggets of truth that might help resolve uncertainties about the complex phenomenon.

I was soon let down.

I groaned when I bumped into the assertion, cribbed from the well-thumbed playbook of climate alarmists everywhere, that "there is a robust scientific consensus that climate change . . . is caused by human activity."

"Consensus" as defined in the dictionary means "general agreement, characterized by the absence of sustained opposition to substantial issues."

Comments and reports about global warming are getting silly and even ridiculous.  Al Gore says we have ten years left. We’re told cooling is due to warming. More rain and flooding and less rain and drought are both due to warming. More hurricanes are predicted while fewer occur. Global temperatures declined as much in the first few months of 2008 as they increased in the previous 100 plus years due to warming. Recently we were told global warming is causing an increase in kidney stones in a travesty of geographic correlation assuming cause and effect. One blogger who began recording, with tongue in cheek, all the events attributed to global warming was John Brignell.

Actually, ridiculous statements and definitive claims of doom are a good sign. Good because they are a sign of desperation as evidence accumulates that human CO2 is not causing warming or climate change. Good because people and governments are changing their positions faced with the evidence and the costs already incurred by wrong policies and actions. Good because governments are coming to their senses and getting their priorities right. India putting development to feed starving citizens ahead of unsubstantiated threats of climate change is a great advance. It also provides an argument that transcends and regains the moral high ground environmentalists claim.

Al Gore gave a speech last week "challenging" America to run "on 100% zero-carbon electricity in 10 years" -- though that's just the first step on his road to "ending our reliance on carbon-based fuels." Serious people understand this is absurd. Maybe other people will start drawing the same conclusion about the man proposing it.

The former vice president has also recently disavowed any intention of returning to politics. This is wise. As America's leading peddler of both doom and salvation, Mr. Gore has moved beyond the constraints and obligations of reality. His job is to serve as a Prophet of Truth.

In Mr. Gore's prophesy, a transition to carbon-free electricity generation in a decade is "achievable, affordable and transformative." He believes that the goal can be achieved almost entirely through the use of "renewables" alone, meaning solar, geothermal, wind power and biofuels.

And he doesn't think we really have any other good options: "The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk," he says, with his usual gift for understatement. "And even more -- if more should be required -- the future of human civilization is at stake."

It seems that global warming is as easy to blame as “the devil made me do it” these days. Almost anything can be blamed on global warming it seems. It has become the new universal evil, replacing the threat of communism as the new global menace. But it doesn’t always deserve the blame for things that happen in our world, and with a little digging, you can often find that blaming global warming for a variety of ills and changes is about as credible as blaming the boogeyman. Consider algae blooms for example.

Earlier this year we saw this story

Harmful Algae Takes Advantage Of Global Warming: More Algae Blooms Expected

ScienceDaily (Apr. 7, 2008 ) — You know that green scum creeping across the surface of your local public water reservoir? Or maybe it’s choking out a favorite fishing spot or livestock watering hole. It’s probably cyanobacteria — blue-green algae — and, according to a paper in the April 4 issue of the journal Science, it relishes the weather extremes that accompany global warming. more…

Now we have this new factual story:

(H/T to Drennan) The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management today published proposed regulations to establish a commercial oil shale program that could result in the addition of up to 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil from lands in the western United States.

In keeping with the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920, the BLM is proposing regulations that would provide the critical “rules of the road” on which private investors will rely in determining whether to make future financial commitments to prospective oil shale projects.

“As Americans pay more than $4 for a gallon of gasoline and watch energy prices continue to climb higher and higher, we need to be doing more to develop our own energy here at home, through resources such as oil shale,” said Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne. “Instead, I find it ironic that we are asking countries halfway around the world to produce more for us.”

Oil shale is a fine-grained sedimentary rock containing organic matter from which oil may be produced. The regulations would provide for a thoughtful, phased approach to oil shale development on public lands in the West.  Commercial development of oil shale will not begin until it is technologically viable, which is not expected for several years.

Why do certain ideas in science become targets of social criticism and others do not?

It would be easy to assume that the controversy occurs when science challenges "ignorance," especially ignorance created by cultural myths and religion. This is very neat if you believe you are being scientific, but it doesn't pass the test.

For example, Darwin's idea on evolution and Freud's ideas of the mind and behavior were met with strong social and cultural opposition which could be interpreted as a contest between religion and science.

On the other hand, theories about the quantum nature of reality, the big bang theory of creation, physical causes of mental illness, and others have not generally raised conflicts between religion, culture and science even though all of these ideas have strong religious elements.

Three days after former Vice President Al Gore gave a speech outlining his plan for countering climate change, he appeared on “Meet the Press” with Tom Brokaw who lauded the former Vice President's efforts but also pressed him on his own energy usage and suggested that Americans must sacrifice in order to fight climate change.

Brokaw started off his program lauding Gore, claiming that since losing the presidency to Bush in 2000, Gore has “since focused on his environmental crusade, winning an Oscar for his documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ as well as the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. On Thursday he proposed a bold new plan to address global warming and the energy crisis.”

After Gore joined the program, Brokaw again lauded the former Vice President and showed his personal beliefs on global warming by describing him as “Nobel Laureate, Oscar winner and crusader for conservation of energy and attacking the climate change that we're all experiencing in this country.”

Of all the overblown predictions of a future global warming apocalypse in the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Analyses of the Effects of Global Change on Human Health and Welfare and Human Systems,” the one the agency should be most ashamed of is its claim that warming will exacerbate ozone, otherwise known as smog. The others, like increased hurricane and flood damage, are also at odds with the actual trends and scientific evidence. But smog is within the agency’s expertise, and it knows full well its assertions are misleading.

The claim that global warming worsens smog is based on the fact that, all other things being equal, hotter temperatures create more smog. This is why smog is a summertime problem. Thus, EPA argues that continued warming will lead to “ozone levels more likely to increase than decrease.” The agency then projects more smog related health problems like cardiovascular and pulmonary illnesses.

However, as EPA knows, all other things are not equal. The agency’s own data shows that emissions of the pollutants that form smog are declining, and regulations already in place ensure that this decline will continue. Thus, even if future temperatures are higher, we will almost certainly see continued reductions in smog levels.  Source

Fewer than half of Americans polled by the Pew Research Center believe humans are causing global warming, and a declining number even believe the Earth is experiencing a warming trend.

The survey, conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, finds "roughly half, or 47 percent, of Americans say the Earth is warming because of human activity, such as the burning of fossil fuels."

Nearly as many, 45 percent of respondents, contend the higher Earth temperatures are due to "natural environment patterns," that no global warming exists, or that causes cannot be scientifically determined.

Seventy-one percent of Americans believe the Earth is warming, down from 77 percent of Americans who held that belief last year. The six percentage point drop parallels falling, and in some parts of the country, record-low, temperatures over the past year that continued a decade-long trend of temperatures remaining flat or falling.