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Given the high profile story today about the 49 NASA astronauts, engineers, and scientists who wrote a scathing letter to NASA director Charles Bolden, Jr. saying Jim Hansen and NASA GISS are exemplifying the “wrong stuff”, I thought I’d share this poster contributed by WUWT reader NickFromNYC:

According to WWJ Detroit, there was an explosion at the General Motors Tech Center in Warren, Mich., on Wednesday morning. Deputy Fire Chief Gary Wilkinson said the explosion most likely was related to a lithium battery. Wilkinson told Autoweek that a responder notified the HAZMAT team via radio that the explosion involved lithium batteries in the research facility's Alternative Energy Center. The fire was extinguished and portions of the facility were evacuated, but responders were still on the scene. Two people were taken to the hospital with nonlife-threatening injuries. Check out WWJ CBS Detroit for up-to-the-minute information. Read more: http://www.autoweek.com/article/20120411/CARNEWS/120419982#ixzz1rkOFfaeg

Copper -- the stuff of pennies and tea kettles -- is also one of the few metals that can turn carbon dioxide into hydrocarbon fuels with relatively little energy. When fashioned into an electrode and stimulated with voltage, copper acts as a strong catalyst, setting off an electrochemical reaction with carbon dioxide that reduces the greenhouse gas to methane or methanol. Various researchers around the world have studied copper’s potential as an energy-efficient means of recycling carbon dioxide emissions in powerplants: Instead of being released into the atmosphere, carbon dioxide would be circulated through a copper catalyst and turned into...

BrightSource Energy of Oakland, a solar power-plant developer whose first project won $1.6 billion in federal backing, abruptly canceled its initial public stock offering Wednesday night, just hours before trading was scheduled to begin. The surprise move killed what had been the most hotly anticipated clean-tech IPO this spring. It casts doubt on investor appetite for similar offerings in the future. The cancellation could also revive the debate over federal support for renewable power companies. Solar-module maker Solyndra of Fremont, which received $528 million from the same government program that funded BrightSource's first power plant, also canceled a planned IPO...

Just as the Department of Energy gave A123 Systems a vote of confidence by extending a deadline until 2014 to spend down its $249 million stimulus grant, the deeply troubled electric vehicle supplier experienced another setback. One of their batteries caused an explosion. The blast occurred yesterday morning in Warren, Mich. at General Motors’ Alternative Energy Center – a research facility – while performing on an A123 battery “intensive tests designed to make it fail,” the Detroit News reported. GM confirmed to Crain’s Detroit Business that chemical gases released by the battery caused the explosion. One employee was sent...

The government spent at least $205,075 in 2010 to “translocate” a single bush in San Francisco that stood in the path of a $1.045 billion highway-renovation project that was partially funded by the economic stimulus legislation President Barack Obama signed in 2009. “In October 2009, an ecologist identified a plant growing in a concrete-bound median strip along Doyle Drive in the Presidio as Arctostaphylos franciscana,” the U.S. Department of Interior reported in the Aug. 10, 2010 edition of the Federal Register. The bush—a Franciscan manzanita—was a specimen of a commercially cultivated species of shrub that can be purchased from nurseries...

From the earliest days of the Wild West, water rights have always been a bone of contention and, no doubt, the cause of more than one gunfight. It’s still an issue to this day. But instead of being a dispute between farmer and rancher or cattleman and sheepherder, it’s now a battle between people and fish. Two years ago, the Delta smelt, a tiny, minnow-like fish, caused a brouhaha. In an effort to save this fish (which has no commercial value whatsoever), water supplies to California’s Central Valley were severely limited. As a direct result, this fertile agricultural center was...

There is a way to stop the EPA's abuse of science and prevent their continued aggressive regulatory activity that destroys the economy and causes harm to Americans. Primarily, we have to hold the EPA to good scientific principles and stop the EPA's overreaching and panic-mongering. The method that will work is a well-established judicial and legal demand for good scientific evidence as described in the Daubert supreme court opinion, explained in the book by the Federal Judicial Center -- the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence. The Supreme Court opinion in Daubert v. Merrell Dow, 509 U.S. 579 (1993) set out...

With the ongoing media coverage of a well-known scientist lying to get confidential documents from the Heartland Institute regarding global warming, there’s been consistent reporting in the media about the “scientific consensus” that climate change is manmade. Numerous articles on blogs and news sites cite that scientific “consensus” of man-made global warming without citing any reference. The phrase may be a reference to the body of work done over the years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which involves work done by thousands of scientists from more than 120 governments. John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center...

Costs of Algae Biofuel* By: Larry Walker, Jr. *Detective Thorn: It's people. Soylent Green is made out of people. They're making our food out of people. Next thing they'll be breeding us like cattle for food. You've gotta tell them. You've gotta tell them! ~ Memorable quotes from Soylent Green * The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), reported that gasoline prices have risen from an average price of $1.61, in the week ending December 29, 2008, to $3.72, as of the week ending February 27, 2012 (see chart above). So with gasoline prices on a tear having risen by 131%...

Over at Bishop Hill there is a post titled A Study in Groupthink that looks at an exchange of Twitter comments between Maurizio Morabito ( @Omnologos ) and Bora Zivkovic ( @BoraZ ), the blogs editor at Scientific American. The author of the Bishop Hill blog, Andrew Montford, explains in his post that Zivkovic is clearly very much out of the same mould as Peter Gleick, which I take to mean an unswerving true believer, a rigid in his views who sees anyone dissenting from what he chooses to believe in and argue for as ultimately evil or corrupted by...

On one issue, President Barack Obama is depressingly consistent. Just this week, he once again sounded the alarm about the dangers of fossil fuels and the need to pursue alternative sources of energy. He is also determined to purse “green” energy projects, despite some well publicized disasters such as Solyndra. In spite of $535 million in federal government loans, the solar panel manufacturer went bankrupt. The administration was able to stage some nice photo opportunities, but the public’s money was wasted.

California Democrat Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones along with his union oriented brothers and sisters now require California Insurance companies that wrote over $300M in business last year to respond to the a questionnaire concerning how their business and operations are impacted by and addressing disproven climate change faux science. This may be just another strategy for Jones to drive insurers from California so he can be first in line to be Obamacare Czar in California.The Workers Comp Executive wonders, “Next we expect the Department to make inquiries as regards carrier preparation for the coming zombie apocalypse or even the invasion...

Scotland, one of Barack Obama’s models for his bogus wind power scam has literally seen the wind go out of her socialist politically correct sails. Scotland is the poster boy for the failure of wind power as a genuine source of energy. All of the high and mighty talk about wind as a viable alternative source of energy is now gone, not in the strong productive winds of the drawing board, but with the gentle breezes that are Scotland’s reality. The Scottish government’s ill-advised but politically correct “wind; not fossil fuel” scheme has so devastated the average Scottish household’s economy...

Obama's first big energy-policy speech was to the United Nations in 2009 when he boldly told the entire world that it had to get off of fossil fuels because: "the threat from climate change is serious, it is urgent, and it is growing." "Rising sea levels threaten every coastline," blah, blah, blah, but to the true believers, it was lines from a psalm: More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent. More frequent drought and crop failures breed hunger and conflict. All the largest emitters of greenhouse gas pollution [must] act together. Wind turbines and solar panels and batteries for...

You might have noticed the blaring headlines of doom: (Reuters) – The world is close to reaching tipping points that will make it irreversibly hotter, making this decade critical in efforts to contain global warming, scientists warned on Monday. Of course, this alarmism lives in a computer projection of how things will be in the future. Not in reality. They rely on a theoretic CO2 cause-and-effect all out of proportion to reality. So, how has that global warming phenomenon actually been going? There’s a different headline for that . . .

Those who insist that a fraction of a degree over a century and a half is evidence of global warming raging out of control aren’t real keen on what would disprove their alarmist theory. But one of the high priest gurus of the movement said this not too long ago. . .

1,306,375,000,000 gallons of oil used per year worldwide A partial list of products made from Petroleum (144 of 6000 items) One 42-gallon barrel of oil creates 19.4 gallons of gasoline. The rest (over half) is used to make things like: Solvents Diesel fuel Motor Oil Bearing Grease Ink Floor Wax Ballpoint Pens Football Cleats Upholstery Sweaters Boats Insecticides Bicycle Tires Sports Car Bodies Nail Polish Fishing lures Dresses Tires Golf Bags Perfumes Cassettes Dishwasher parts Tool Boxes Shoe Polish Motorcycle Helmet Caulking Petroleum Jelly Transparent Tape CD Player Faucet Washers Antiseptics Clothesline Curtains Food Preservatives Basketballs Soap Vitamin Capsules Antihistamines...

Apparently even college campuses aren’t providing green jobs anymore. A survey by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (Aashe) “showed that creation of new sustainability positions peaked in 2008, then dropped 31 percent in 2009,” Dave Newport reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education on April 6, 2012. Newport directs the Environmental Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder. That actually might be a better record than the Obama Administration has amassed in its much-touted—at least by administration officials—green jobs program. The Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (ETA) found that “ETA and grantees...

We’ve noticed a growing trend: global warming alarmism is becoming much less alarming. Maybe it’s the Cry Wolf syndrome. Maybe it’s just taking notice of reality. Maybe it’s only a fad that’s run its course. Nevertheless, there’s more evidence every day: . . .