If climate projections prove even partly correct in the coming decades, many areas of the planet will experience longer and nastier drought conditions. Let’s be clear: that won’t be anybody’s idea of fun in the sun. But as SciAm’s David Biello reports, for the last several years agribusiness giants like Monsanto, Pioneer and Syngenta have…Continue Reading…
Some regular readers might be surprised to learn that I think this latest National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report, called “America’s Climate Choices,” should inspire more than a collective yawn from the media. But as Charlie Petit explains, there are institutional reasons for this: The news business is about what’s new. If a prestigious body…Continue Reading…
The curmudgeons and scolds are braying at WUWT over this Australian rap video. How crude! How offensive! How naughty! How…unsurprising. Once upon a time, lots of people got all riled up over this guy and his swiveling hips. Imagine. These were bad boys, too (and one of my favorite all time bands). Anyway, for Anthony or…Continue Reading…
Nothing spreads awareness of an issue more than when it breaks through into Pop Culture. Here’s a new one from Australia’s New Zealand’s Hungry Beast. And in a similar musical vein (H/T: Bryan Walsh), here’s another, a neat collaboration between an NYU journalism class and an investigative journalism site.
There is this assumption in environmental and climate circles that the Republican party represents (in the United States) the biggest obstacle to political progress on climate change. Recent developments certainly support this view. Since 2009, the GOP has become increasingly hostile to climate science. Republican presidential hopefuls are marching to this same Tea Party beat (even those…Continue Reading…
We are living in strange times. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a conservative politician and until a few months ago, a longtime supporter of nuclear power, has vowed to shutter her nation’s 17 nuclear reactors and make renewable power, such as wind and solar, Germany’s dominant source of energy by 2030. Meanwhile, staunch British environmentalist George Monbiot, the…Continue Reading…
The lessons to be learned after reading this story by John Otis in Time magazine couldn’t be clearer. Here’s the set-up, describing the situation in Colombia: Amid 11 months of nearly nonstop rain, dykes have burst and rivers have topped their banks, inundating communities, cattle ranches, and croplands in 28 of Colombia’s 32 departments. Waterlogged…Continue Reading…
This is a cool story: David Goodrich doesn’t just think there is a global issue with climate change, he says he knows it. And he’s so sure of the problem that he is willing to bike across country educating students about it. Goodrich, 58, of Rockville recently retired as director of the Climate Observation Division with…Continue Reading…
Those two terms don’t have much in common unless you’re a 2012 Republican Presidential candidate running away from your prior positions on torture and the environment. I’m referring to former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, or T-Paw as he’s known in his home state. Via Andrew Sullivan (who is all over Dick Cheney for claiming torture…Continue Reading…
Imagine you crossed Jared Diamond and Lester Brown with a former Royal Dutch Shell economist turned-brilliant hedge fund manager. That’s the author of this stunning quarterly newsletter for GMO Capital, an investment firm that manages over $100 billion in assets. Over at Climate Central, I barely scratch the surface of Jeremy Grantham’s essay, which begins with…Continue Reading…