Green Skeletons
Politico digs them out of the GOP closet.
Posts Under ‘climate change’ Category
Holy War
The battle (over global warming) between competing conservative evangelical camps is one to watch in 2011. It’s been brewing for years. In 2005, Richard Cizik, who was then the political lobbyist for the conservative-leaning National Association of Evangelicals, and talking up the notion of environmental stewardship to its 30 million members, found himself in the…Continue Reading…
Faux Deprivation
I gotta say, I’m really floored by the level of sacrifice exhibited here. No new clothes for a year! Wow. But as far as such eco-gimmicks go, it doesn’t begin to approach this one. Seriously, I would have been more impressed if the Guardian writer had become a Freegan for a month, or swore off…Continue Reading…
Buying Political Time for Climate Action
Over at Real Climate, Ray Pierrehumbert has a meaty post that takes up this assertion by Ramanathan and Victor in their recent NYT op-ed: Reducing soot and the other short-lived pollutants would not stop global warming, but it would buy time, perhaps a few decades, for the world to put in place more costly efforts…Continue Reading…
Fighting For Your Miserable Future
As much as I admire Bill McKibben’s tenacity, he really bums me out in this interview with Andrew Revkin: The basic issue of the planet right now is that it’s disintegrating…There’s no happy ending where we prevent climate change any more. Now the question is, is it going to be a miserable century or an…Continue Reading…
Fearing the Findings on Fear Messaging
UPDATE: Joe Romm and Brad Johnson respond in the comment thread. If you’re a climate blogger who often plays up the most potentially catastrophic consequences of global warming, and a new sociological study finds that “dire messages warning of the severity of global warming and its presumed dangers can backfire,” what do you do? You…Continue Reading…
Getting Serious about Adaptation
The Economist explains why adaptation has long been marginalized in the climate debate: The green pressure groups and politicians who have driven the debate on climate change have often been loath to see attention paid to adaptation, on the ground that the more people thought about it, the less motivated they would be to push…Continue Reading…
A Climate Treaty Analogue?
Christina Larsen at Foreign Policy has a nifty silver lining take on the U.N. climate talks now underway in Cancun, Mexico. It boils down to the “absence of delusions” this time around, or more charitably, no expectations of any breakthrough agreement, much less any significant progress. More interestingly, Larsen considers when, if ever, any similar…Continue Reading…
Can We Buy Time?
Much of the discussion on the “low-hanging fruit” post revolved around a hypothetical question: would tackling secondary climate forcings (such as soot and methane) pave the way for stronger climate policies down the road, or further defray action on carbon dioxide, which happens to be the more pressing long-term threat? At this juncture, political and…Continue Reading…
The Low-Hanging Climate Fruit
Paul Kelly tries talking sense to the all-or-nothing crowd over at Bart’s place. The usual suspects snarl and prance. The bloggy dialogue is set up by this op-ed in yesterday’s NYT, which Kelly refers to as a good example of effective science communication. It would be interesting to hear from climate scientists if they agree….Continue Reading…