In recent weeks, disaster porn has mutated with concerns about climate change to produce an orgy of writhing, conflated arguments. People, I know you have a lot of pent-up frustration. It’s been a rough couple of years: a global recession, climategate, the failed promise of Copenhagen and Obama. I know how you’ve been yearning for years…Continue Reading…
Over the weekend, NASA climate scientist James Hansen wrote on his website (my emphasis): The U.S. Department of State seems likely to approve a huge pipeline to carry tar sands oil (about 830,000 barrels per day) to Texas refineries unless sufficient objections are raised. The scientific community needs to get involved in this fray now. If this…Continue Reading…
The climate debate is so politicized that rational dialogue is virtually impossible between warring sides. A complicating factor is that there are also hostile camps within the same factions. The climate blogosphere, in particular, is like the island in Lost, where the plane-wrecked survivors had to constantly determine who was on which side. (I loved…Continue Reading…
Bill Keller, the top NYT editor, goes exploring: Humans live along a continuum from doubt to faith. Wander far enough in the direction of faith and you reach the land of Nostradamus and of the Rapture (recently postponed). Wander too far in the other direction, past cynicism, through misanthropy, and you get to more or…Continue Reading…
So Mitt Romney is the latest high profile Republican to believe that global warming is real. With apologies to Buffalo Springfield, There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear. Indeed. As New York Magazine notes: Denying that human activity is making the Earth warmer, despite the opinion of people who spend their lives studying these…Continue Reading…
Your humble host is attending the World Science Festival today (it’s running all week). I’ll be a bystander to some of the events, hoping that all the brilliant minds gathered together will stimulate my feeble brain. Probably not. But it should be fun. I noticed at their blog that boingboing’s Maggie Koerth-Baker has a real…Continue Reading…
That’s the million dollar question Yale Environment 360 put to a nice cross-section of climate experts. The roster includes Kevin Trenberth, Judith Curry, Kerry Emanuel, and Roger Pielke, Jr., among others. To my mind, there are no surprising statements from any of the aforementioned contributors, if you are familiar with their previously stated positions. (Somebody…Continue Reading…
Michael Levi at his Council on Foreign Relations blog has an interesting take on a recent decision by New Jersey’s Governor: People who care about climate change are understandably upset with Chris Christie’s announcement that he’s pulling New Jersey out of the Regional Greeenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the first-of-a-kind cap-and-trade program for carbon dioxide emissions in…Continue Reading…
I’m confused. We have this news: Worldwide carbon-dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels reached a record 30.6 billion metric tons in 2010, an international energy group reports. And this admission: The shock rise means the goal of preventing a temperature rise of more than 2 degrees Celsius ““ which scientists say is the threshold for potentially…Continue Reading…
So it’s official: Germany is banning nuclear power. Those who applaud this decision are obviously taking the long-term view–they see a clean energy age on the horizon. But in the short term, let’s be clear-eyed about the tradeoffs. For starters, their are potentially huge climate consequences. I’m curious to hear what climate policy wonks and…Continue Reading…