Uncategorized

The environMENTALIST contest

One of my guilty pleasures is the CBS crime show, The Mentalist.  One-time fake psychic Patrick Jane uses his powers of observation and deduction to figure out the answer to the mystery before everyone else. So here’s the contest for all you would-be environ-Mentalists.  Use your amazing powers of observation and deduction to figure out […]

SuperFreakonomics coauthor replies to “scathing review”

On Monday, The New Yorker published Elizabeth Kolbert’s lengthy review of SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance.  In her 2400-word review, titled “Hosed:  Is there a quick fix for the climate?” she writes: Given their emphasis on cold, hard numbers, it’s noteworthy that Levitt and Dubner ignore what […]

Record high temperatures far outpace record lows across U.S.

Spurred by a warming climate, daily record high temperatures occurred twice as often as record lows over the last decade across the continental United States, new research shows. The ratio of record highs to lows is likely to increase dramatically in coming decades if emissions of greenhouse gases continue to climb. This graphic shows the […]

U.N. deputy says Copenhagen deal may take two stage approach

The top climate lieutenant to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday that a major — though perhaps preliminary — international agreement to curb global warming is still possible in Copenhagen. One leading option is to set low targets for emissions reductions initially and to boost them if global warming gets worse. Janos Pasztor, director […]

USGBC jobs finds green building to support millions of U.S.jobs

USGBC/Booz Allen Hamilton Report Shows Green Construction to Contribute $554 Billion to U.S. GDP Between 2009 and 2013. The U.S. Green Building Council is having its huge annual conference now — you can watch live streams and archived videos of the leading experts on clean energy and energy efficiency here.  And they just released a […]

Why solar energy trumps coal power

The color of solar cells — and their short energy payback — are trivial factors when considering the huge climate benefit they provide in avoiding the release of CO2 from the combustion of fossil fuels. That was a central point in my first post debunking the error-riddled book Superfreakonomics.  By failing to retract the many […]

Veterans Day, 2029

This post is an update of Memorial Day, 2029. The two worst direct impacts to humans from our unsustainable use of energy will, I think, be Dust-Bowlification and sea level rise, Hell and High Water.  But another impact — far more difficult to project quantitatively because there is no paleoclimate analog — may well affect […]

Maryland county draws a “car-free blueprint for growth”

Montgomery County redefined the way it will grow in the next two decades when lawmakers endorsed a plan Tuesday that encourages development where residents can easily live a car-free lifestyle. The County Council, after weeks of intense debate over the county’s growth policy, unanimously agreed to give developers discounts to build dense developments near transit […]

Must-see video of Sen. Kerry grilling AEI’s Kenneth Green

Senator Kerry:  Has your study been peer reviewed? Kenneth Green:  No, I don’t work in the peer review literature, Senator. I don’t work for a university. Steven Hayward, the F.K. Weyerhaeuser fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, recently said, “The brain waves of the American right continue to be erratic, when they are not flat-lining.”  […]

Why Senator Inhofe is going to Copenhagen

Thousands and thousands of climate science advocates — including me — will be in Copenhagen next month trying to advance an international deal that gives the world a chance to avoid catastrophic global warming. And then there will be the man even the Washington Post calls “the last flat-earther,” Sen. James Inhofe (R-OIL).  Why is […]