Learning more about science in general may not make individuals more likely to accept the science behind climate change, according to a new Yale research paper.
The senator smiled when recalling that one environmental group spent $500,000 on advertisements criticizing her stance on cap-and-trade.
Solar electric power was the poster child of green energy, with a cleaner, higher tech image than gaunt intrusive windfarm arrays drawing criticism even from environmentalists in favour of alternate energy, but the industry is now leading the way to green energy downsizing, industrial consolidation and restructuring. The industry was a classic example of mushroom growth driven by massive government subsidies, uncritical policy support and a wave of investor enthusiasm, but solar power companies in Europe and the United States are now hit hard by a toxic mix of oversupply, falling orders, and panel supply at cuthroat prices from low-cost Asian competitors who themselves also face troubled times.
The industry now faces a near collapse of investor support and a troubled outlook for the carbon financing that helped its soaring growth, but in particular is being downsized by steep cuts in the massive government subsidies and financial aid which artificially boosted the industry until the past 18 months. Until 2010 and the start of 2011, industry growth rates were often running at over 20% p.a.
Over the last two years, there have been three separate reports on the IPCC. They are: the report by the InterAcademy Council, a collective of the world’s leading scientific academies; the report written by Professor Ross McKitrick, a Canadian professor of economics who for a time served as an expert reviewer for the IPCC’s fourth assessment report; and a book, The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’ s Top Climate Expert, written by Donna Laframboise, a Canadian journalist. Although they write from three different perspectives, in different styles, the message is the same: there are serious flaws in the competence, operations and governance of the IPCC.