Here’s some straight talk on climate politics: A facile explanation would focus on the ‘merchants of doubt’ who have managed to confuse the public about the reality of human-made climate change. The merchants play a role, to be sure, a sordid one, but they are not the main obstacle to solution of human-made climate change. The bigger problem…Continue Reading…
Last week, this provocative interview with Sir David King, who the Guardian calls “one of the most respected figures in climate change policy,” seemed to register not more than a blip. That’s too bad, because here’s some of what he said: I can’t see the Kyoto protocol making any headway – there are enough blocks…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…
Below is a guest post from Jonathan Gilligan, an associate professor in the Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences, Vanderbilt University. He is also the associate director of Vanderbilt’s Climate Change Research Network. Gilligan works at “the intersection of science, ethics, and public policy with a focus on the ways in which scientific knowledge and…Continue Reading…
Michael Levi sounds almost bemused as he’s filleting the authors of this argument for a carbon tax: These are very smart guys. The puzzle for me, then, is why they believe what they’ve written. I can’t help but think that there’s a case of climate change myopia at work. A big slice of the political spectrum…Continue Reading…
Can we all agree on this statement from Penn State geologist Richard Alley? I think it’s important to say that the interaction between radiation and gases in the air is not red or blue. It’s not Republican or Democrat, or libertarian or anything else. It’s physics. That’s from an interview that Alley does with the…Continue Reading…
Via Judith Curry, I see there is an announcement for a new round of Capitol Hill-sponsored theatrics. The scheduled hearing is titled: Climate Change: Examining the processes used to create science and policy That’s going to be quite a show, given the deliberate bundling of science and policy. Roger Pielke Jr. should be able to…Continue Reading…
I suppose this story qualifies as news, in the technical sense: A legally binding accord to combat climate change “is not on the cards” at a December summit, because developing countries such as China, Brazil and India won’t commit to it, according to U.S. negotiator Todd Stern. What follows sounds more like fantasy: With developing…Continue Reading…
Huh? Is Joe Romm trying hard to convince himself that he’s not swimming against the current? If truth serum existed, and you gave it to Romm just before he sat down to write this post, you can be sure it would have turned out differently. Even one of Romm’s fiercest loyalists concedes the obvious (at…Continue Reading…
Joe Romm is highlighting this extraordinary assertion from Robert Brulle, a prominent academic who writes often about environmental affairs: By failing to even rhetorically address climate change, Obama is mortgaging our future and further delaying the necessary work to build a political consensus for real action. This broadside follows on the heels of the State…Continue Reading…