Op-Eds
Unhappy Birthday
This week marks the first anniversary of the Kyoto Protocol's coming into force. It's an unhappy birthday. The one-year-old has been badly treated by…
Op-Eds
Beware False Profits
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers,…
The American Spectator
What Are Op-Eds For?
Ever since the Cato Institute fired syndicated columnist Doug Bandow over the revelation that disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff had asked and paid him to…
Op-Eds
I’m Proud to Be a Coal Miner’s Grandson
To hear Senators Byrd and Rockefeller speak, one would think that the coal mining industry in this country is one of the major sources…
Op-Eds
No Future in Kyoto Dreaming
In 1977, the punk rock band the Sex Pistols shocked England with their nihilist anthem “God Save the Queen,” where they declared there was “No…
Op-Eds
PETA: Cruel and Unusual
The FBI recently declared environmental and animal rights extremism its top domestic terrorism priority. The bureau is currently investigating over 150 cases of…
Op-Eds
Cruel and Unusual: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
On January 9, two employees of the group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) will appear in court to answer felony…
Op-Eds
Caveat Emptor: No, Really
One of the oldest maxims in commerce is caveat emptor: let the buyer beware. Sadly, this is often interpreted as a condemnation of businessmen, a…
Op-Eds
Climate Policy Needs a Stern Review
Tony Blair's admission that any international climate change treaty to follow <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 />Kyoto is unlikely to be based on the same model…
Op-Eds
Do-It-Yourself Legislation
The aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita have proved a massive breeding ground for what former OECD Chief Economist David Henderson has termed…
Op-Eds
Between the stacks – Google book engine needs ingenuity
What bookworm doesn’t love the idea of Google’s new project, Google Library? The ability to search the entire contents of the world’s greatest libraries online…
Ideas in Action
LordD have MerCIe Vpon Vs
In some places in London, you can find scratched on old walls the imprecation, LorD haVe MerCIe Vpon Vs. The curious arrangement of the capital…
Op-Eds
Gouging? No Such Thing
For various reasons, I took a lot of trips to the local hardware store on Sunday. On my route there were two gas…
Op-Eds
How Government Can Help: By Getting Out of the Way
When the initial rescue efforts wind down in the ravaged <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Gulf Coast area, the much longer…
Op-Eds
The New Face of Organized Labor
Any student of socialism will recognize that organized labor and leftist politics have marched hand in hand since their inception. Early labor union organizers saw their…
Op-Eds
Questioning the Authority of Scientific Journals
A Tufts University School of Medicine reporter has realized that a pretty large amount of scientific findings are, well, wrong. This work…
Op-Eds
Nationalizing Science
It seems as if you can’t turn anywhere without hearing that industry is destroying science these days. Former editors of the New England Journal of…
Op-Eds
Spaceship Earth: An Astronaut is up above the Clouds
Astronaut Eileen Collins is concerned about the environmental degradation she sees from space. On board the fragile spaceship Discovery, she lamented from her unique…
Op-Eds
PETA’s Cruelty to Humans and Animals
THE FBI recently declared environmental and animal rights extremism its top domestic terrorism priority. The bureau is currently investigating over 150 cases of…
Op-Eds
Don’t Throw Money at Overheated Issue, by Iain Murray
The suggestion that <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />U.S. senators are considering inflicting severe damage on the U.S. economy to mitigate…
Op-Eds
Bureaucrats Can’t Run A Railroad
Given its recent troubles, Amtrak's flagship Northeast corridor high-speed Acela train might as well be renamed “Decela.” Amtrak officials suspended the service and acknowledged that…
Op-Eds
Bureaucrats Can’t Run A Railroad
Given its recent troubles, Amtrak's flagship Northeast corridor high-speed Acela train might as well be renamed “Decela.” Amtrak officials suspended the service and acknowledged that…
Ideas in Action
Short Term Memory (Letter to the Editor)
An unwitting yet hideous ex ample of the politically correct, can’t-we-move-on short memories of the elites exposed in Tony Blankley’s spot-on analysis “Short memories, politically…
Op-Eds
Chirac vs. the Anglosphere: At the G8 Summit, Chirac will again beat a dead horse, by Iain Murray
When French voters rejected the draft European Union constitution drawn up by former French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing, his successor Jacques Chirac reverted…
Op-Eds
Spice Up G8 with No Regrets, by Iain Murray
The suggestion that the Spice Girls are about to re-form may not seem like major international development news, but the upcoming Live 8…
Op-Eds
A Congressional Waste of Energy, by Iain Murray
If it seems it has been a long time since Congress embarked upon comprehensive energy legislation, that’s because it has. It was early in President…
Op-Eds
Surrender Monkeys in the Senate: Senate Republicans follow the French president’s lead on global warming, by Iain Murray
When British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced to the world that he was going to make global warming a focus of his G8 chairmanship,…
Op-Eds
Privatize Amtrak the Right Way, Avoiding Pitfalls of British Experience, by Iain Murray
WASHINGTON – Given its recent troubles, Amtrak’s flagship Northeast corridor high-speed Acela train might as well be renamed “Decela.” Amtrak officials suspended the service and…
Op-Eds
The Pickett’s Charge of Climate Alarmism
The release on June 8 of a statement signed by 11 separate national science Academies on global warming represents the Pickett's charge of…
Op-Eds
Unbearable Legislation
The decision by the Secretary of the Interior to list the polar bear as “threatened” removes all doubt that the Endangered Species Act…
Op-Eds
Europe Adds Headache to Blair’s Post-Election Hangover
When Tony Blair was reelected British Prime Minister last Thursday, he was entitled to a celebratory glass of champagne. Despite all the sound…
Op-Eds
Quaky Nutritionists Cross the Line
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine recently celebrated its 20th birthday at a star-studded gala (and vegan dinner) attended by Alec Baldwin, Alicia…
Op-Eds
Hybrid Hubris?
<?xml:namespace prefix = u1 />The <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Commonwealth of Virginia is faced with an unpleasant problem with its…
Op-Eds
Nation Descends into Mercury Madness
Mercury is all over the news these days, which is appropriate for an element named after the messenger of the gods. At some Maryland high…
Op-Eds
Science Goes Tabloid: In scientific journals, if it bleeds, it leads
In the United Kingdom, most of the respected broadsheet newspapers have cut costs and increased circulation by adding a tabloid edition. Some argue that…
Op-Eds
Kyoto Protocol Simply Wrong, Wrong, Wrong
The Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which comes into force this week, represents a massive act of folly by many of the…
Op-Eds
New Agenda Fails to Address Problems
George Bernard Shaw once observed that: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the…
Op-Eds
The Bill That Wouldn’t Die
You may hear the creak of a coffin-lid today as the alarmists' favorite domestic energy suppression measure rises from the grave. This particularly…
Op-Eds
Gas Emissions Trading Scheme (Letter to the Editor)
Sir, Anatole Kaletsky (Comment, January 27) suggests that Tony Blair’s agreement to support the US in Iraq should have been made conditional on American support…
Op-Eds
Consensus, Truisms and Straw Men
In a recent op-ed published in the Washington Post, science historian Naomi Oreskes, elaborating on her essay for Science magazine, argued…
Op-Eds
Science Fiction: Michael Crichton Takes a Novel Approach to Global Warming Alarmism
Michael Crichton's new blockbuster novel, State of Fear, begins with sex, violence, and oceanography. It's that sort of book all the way through,…
Op-Eds
Coal Is The New Gold
A report in the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />United States has found that coal is becoming ever more important as…
Op-Eds
It’s the Infrastructure, Stupid: Amtrak, derailed
The news that the Department of Transportation’s Inspector General is deeply concerned about the dangerous state of Amtrak’s railroad infrastructure should come as…
Op-Eds
Abusive Behavior
Recent months have seen some regrettable lapses by prestigious scientific journals. Some highly questionable claims have been made, but have been published anyway.
Op-Eds
Margaret Thatcher: A Free Market Environmentalist
Full document available in pdf format <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> Tracy Mehan’s account of Margaret…
Op-Eds
Cooling Blair’s Climate Crusade
Tony Blair is, in a way, as polarizing a figure in the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />United Kingdom as President…
Op-Eds
Science Loses Some Friends
The scientific world lost three important figures in recent weeks, as Francis Crick, Thomas Gold and Philip Abelson have all passed away. In…
Op-Eds
Ford Motor Plans for Energy-Poor Future
According to The New York Times (Oct. 4), “Ford's goal, according to its own internal projections, would require an improvement of about 80…
Op-Eds
The One Percent Solution
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> Many of the scientific papers that have contributed to global warming alarmism over…
Op-Eds
Missing in Action
In a <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />US election campaign that has seen the presidential candidates attack each other with great…
Op-Eds
EU Adopts ‘Imperial Preference’
Commissioner Pascal Lamy’s announcement on 20 October that lesser developed countries that implement the European agenda of the Kyoto protocol and other international treaties on…
Op-Eds
Flights of Fancy
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> The current British hysteria over global warming, which has seen party leaders…
Op-Eds
Health, Wealth and Happiness
How do we know when we’re happy? Strange as it may seem, this philosophical question could come back to haunt you one April 15. Psychologists…
Op-Eds
Hockey Stick Reduced to Sawdust
Von Storch et al (ScienceExpress, Sept. 30) first looked at the likelihood of being able to get an accurate climate signal from historical…
Op-Eds
Tyndall Center Proposes Energy Rationing
Dr Kevin Anderson and Richard Starkey are developing a system called Domestic Tradable Quotas (DTQs). Under this system, every <?xml:namespace prefix = st1…
Op-Eds
Global Warming not a Cost-effective Target
There’s a scientific consensus, we’re often told, that global warming is a problem—despite the opinion of qualified experts ranging from the <?xml:namespace prefix…
Op-Eds
Rolling in the Greenpeace: How to succeed in charity work without really trying
The IRS has announced that it will investigate the executive-compensation packages paid at 2,000 nonprofit organizations and charities. It could do worse than turning…
Op-Eds
Journalistic Balancing Act?
A new study published in the journal Global Environmental Change (see here for a press report) argues that, by adhering to the…
Op-Eds
Global Jockeying over Global Warming
British Prime Minister Tony Blair's call for America to ratify the Kyoto Protocol this week tacitly acknowledges that Russian ratification, thought by then-Commissioner…
Op-Eds
July Was Coldest Month in Four Years
The data show that the global temperature was 0.21°C (about 0.38°F) below the 20-year average for July. This followed on from a June…
Op-Eds
International Atomic Agency Regrets Lack of Progress on Kyoto
The relevant section reads, “From the viewpoint of the IAEA, ‘no progress was made in 2003 on the Kyoto Protocol, which would help…
Op-Eds
State Attorneys General Sue Utilities over Global Warming
The attorneys general of California, Connecticut, Iowa, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, and Wisconsin, and the corporation counsel of New York City, filed…
Op-Eds
Conflicting with Reality
Former New England Journal of Medicine editor Jerome Kassirer, in an August 1 Washington Post op-ed, argues that conflicts of interest in medical…
Op-Eds
Obesity: a Sign We’re Doing Things Right
Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson recently designated obesity a disease, with all the negative implications that entails. Our society, crippled, it seems,…
Op-Eds
Climate Consensus: Scarce resources should be spent where they’ll do the most good.
There's a scientific consensus, we're often told, that global warming is a problem—despite the opinion of qualified experts ranging from the <?xml:namespace prefix =…
Op-Eds
Finding the Truth about Kyoto in a Lie by Bill Clinton
The old joke goes, “How can you tell a politician is lying?” to which the answer is, “His lips are moving.” At this…
Op-Eds
No-Second-Thoughts “Science”: A Noticeable Difference
Two recent findings, one right next to <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Washington, D.C., the other as far away as is possible…
Op-Eds
Green Grow the Pressies
In 1995 they told us that Yucca Mountain was going to explode in a nuclear firestorm. It won’t. In 1998 they told us that nuclear-weapons…
Op-Eds
Rude Awakening for Hybrid Dreamers
Hybrid-electric cars are the flavor of the moment for environmental campaigners. Activists like Arianna Huffington, Larry David and Leonardo DiCaprio urge us all…
Op-Eds
Here Comes Tomorrow
The fatuous new special-effects extravaganza The Day After Tomorrow (which, judging from the plot summaries so far released might just as well have…
Op-Eds
Adolf Lomborg?
Back in 1990, Mike Godwin, then legal counsel for the advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, noted that online discussions on the various…
Op-Eds
The City that Never Gets a Break: Anti-Capitalism at the Movies
In the upcoming movie The Day After Tomorrow, German director Roland Emmerich lets the glaciers roll over Manhattan following an abrupt change in climate. It’s…
Op-Eds
Abusing Substance Abuse Data
I haven't covered the issue of alcohol for a while, but a recent set of headlines had a reek of moonshine about them.
Op-Eds
What Commissioner Wallstrom Doesn’t Want You to Hear
Faced with a crumbling façade of unity in the EU over the Kyoto protocol, Margot Wallstrom, EU Commissioner responsible for the environment, spoke to the…
Op-Eds
Get Shorty
Americans appear to have stopped growing. Europeans, on the other hand, are continuing to grow taller. That's an interesting phenomenon, but probably little…
Op-Eds
Why We Need Sound Science Rules
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> In the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />United Kingdom, the Sir…
Op-Eds
Our Science Can Beat Up Your Science: Playing Politics with Data.
A new front in the war over “sound science” opened on February 29, with the publication of a Washington Post op-ed by former American…
Op-Eds
The Unthinking in Pursuit of the Unthinkable: Disingenuous global-warming nonsense
When a “scandalous” story breaks in the United States, makes no waves, resurfaces a few weeks later in the left-wing British press, and only then…
Op-Eds
Epidemiology Beyond Its Limits
In 1995, science writer Gary Taubes warned that the science of epidemiology (tracing the source and causes of disease) was reaching a crisis…
Op-Eds
No, Not the NHS!
Whenever I hear the words “universal health care” — as I did during Sunday night's Democratic debate in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns =…
Op-Eds
Warming Warning off Message in America
The Chief Scientific Adviser to the British Government, Sir David King, was in Washington DC this week trying to persuade America to act on global…
Op-Eds
Extreme Measures
James Hansen, one of the fathers of global warming theory, commented in the online journal Natural Science in September last year, “Emphasis on…
Op-Eds
Time to Move on
No doubt trying to distract attention from the recent Bush-Hitler ad controversy and its sponsorship of an event where B-list celebrities used the F-word to…
Op-Eds
Virtually Extinct
It seems that virtually every news organ in the English language has carried the story of new scientific claims published in Nature magazine that…
Op-Eds
The Cow that Came Home to Roost
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> Non-stories are common in the media around the holidays. Last year, we…
National Review
Finding Nemo, Losing Fear
Many thousands of children and their parents were entranced this year by Pixar's excellent movie Finding Nemo, whose combination of inventiveness, comedy, and emotion…
Op-Eds
An Improved Climate
Every year, environmental alarmists claim we have taken another step on the road to ruin. This year, they claim 2003 was the third-hottest…
Op-Eds
This Christmas, a Red-Green Split?
Europeans often talk about the Red-Green coalition, the coming together of socialists and environmentalists to save the world and its people from the…
Op-Eds
Russia Isn’t Bluffing on Kyoto
In late October, Vladimir Putin shocked the environmental movement the world over by announcing doubts over whether <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns =…
Op-Eds
Russia Buries Kyoto ‘Consensus’
The most momentous event in the politics of climate change since <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />America's decision to shelve the Kyoto…
Op-Eds
Adrift on the Seas of Knowledge
Senators John McCain (R., Ariz.) and Joe Lieberman (D., Conn.) are deeply concerned about the issue of global climate change. So much so that…
Op-Eds
Voting the Easy Way
The Ninth Circuit's controversial decision to delay the California recall election, likely to be overturned today, is just the latest in a series of…
Op-Eds
Are We All “Damn Fools”?
The accomplished British humorous songwriters <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Flanders and Swann (Donald Swann put JRR Tolkien's various Middle Earth…
Op-Eds
Fixing the Game
<?xml:namespace prefix = v ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml” /><?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /><?xml:namespace prefix = w ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word” />Foreign countries are…
Op-Eds
Environmental Scientists Must Stop Crying Wolf
There is a crisis emerging in the scientific community. The ideals of science are being sacrificed to the god of political expediency. Environmental scientists are…
Op-Eds
Son et Lumière Over French Heat Wave
With over 10,000 deaths ascribed in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />France to the recent European heat wave, the finger-pointing has…
Op-Eds
Greenhouse Hot Air
“Can This Man Save the World?” (Aug. 11, p. 54) first assumes there is a problem associated with greenhouse gas emissions that…
Op-Eds
Down the Tube
The first elected Mayor of England's capital city, Ken Livingstone, has seen his transportation policy descend into chaos in recent weeks. Londoners regularly…
Op-Eds
A Bright Idea: Deregulate
The massive blackout that shut off lights along the East coast, <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Midwest and Canada need not…
Op-Eds
Environmentalists for Enron
CERES, the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies, is terribly concerned about corporate governance. Worried by the recent corporate scandals, this coalition of environmental groups and…