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Wining and Declining

Global warming screwing up wine country Bad news for oenophiles: Global warming is messing with wine country. Wine grapes are highly temperature-sensitive, and if the globe gets much hotter (which smart folks say it will), famed wine-producing regions like France’s Burgundy and California’s Napa Valley may lose optimum climate for their grape varieties. Already, warmer […]

Cold Rush

Greens worry as countries scurry to set up camp in Antarctica Several dozen countries have set up camps and research stations in Antarctica, giving greens short-term fears that development will damage fragile ecosystems and long-term fears that the continent will soon be pillaged for oil, gas, and minerals. A 1959 Antarctic Treaty declares Earth’s driest, […]

Kyle Smith’s review of An Inconvenient Truth

In the right-wing tabloid New York Post, movie critic Kyle Smith has a review of An Inconvenient Truth that virtually defies mockery. It almost invites sympathy.

Right off the bat, there's this:

But there is wide disagreement about whether humans are causing global warming (climate change preceded the invention of the Escalade) and about whether we should be worried about the trends.

Um, no there isn't.

His implication that he is our only hope ... is ridiculous.

What implication? What possible fever dream did Smith pull this from?

For jaw-dropping ignorance, this is probably the coup de grace:

Americans and Climate Change: The affliction of partisanship II

"Americans and Climate Change: Closing the Gap Between Science and Action" (PDF) is a report synthesizing the insights of 110 leading thinkers on how to educate and motivate the American public on the subject of global warming. Background on the report here. I'll be posting a series of excerpts (citations have been removed; see original report). If you'd like to be involved in implementing the report's recommendations, or learn more, visit the Yale Project on Climate Change website.

Yesterday we heard a theory about why and when climate change became a highly partisan issue (in short: when Clinton started championing it). Today we hear mixed feelings from conference participants. Should Democrats simply try to win, and thereby establish a mandate for change? Or should they try to lure Republicans into bipartisan consensus through incremental measures? I know where I come out on this question, but I'm curious to hear what you think.

Umbra on couches

Dear Umbra, I am in the market to buy a new couch (our current couch is older than me — it’s 27!). Is it better to buy a “green” couch, a couch from a mainstream vendor, or a used couch? If used is the way to go, do you have any suggestions for finding one […]

The Environmental Wars covered

DeSmogBlog and The Commons Blog are just wrapping up their coverage of "The Environmental Wars," a conference put on by the Skeptics Society. The conference drew quite a bit of flack for featuring Michael Crichton and John Stossel as keynote speakers, but it sounds like aside from that press-hungry stunt, there was a lot of good stuff going on.

Gore interviews

There are tons and tons of Gore interviews out there -- the guy gets around -- but two in particular stand out as unusually substantive. First is this one on NPR's Fresh Air; the other is this one with George Stephanopoulos on ABC. Stephanopoulos is frequently annoying, but it's long and Gore is allowed time to flesh out many of the points he's been trying to make.

Americans and Climate Change: The affliction of partisanship I

"Americans and Climate Change: Closing the Gap Between Science and Action" (PDF) is a report synthesizing the insights of 110 leading thinkers on how to educate and motivate the American public on the subject of global warming. Background on the report here. I'll be posting a series of excerpts (citations have been removed; see original report). If you'd like to be involved in implementing the report's recommendations, or learn more, visit the Yale Project on Climate Change website.

This chapter tackles one of the biggies: partisanship (I'll publish the first half today, the second tomorrow). This was, in my own opinion, one of the weaker chapters, probably because the carefully balanced set of conference participants and the scrupulously apolitical tone of the report prevent its authors from stating the obvious: Democrats are begging for bipartisan action on climate change. It is Republicans that remain resolutely partisan on the issue. But please, share your thoughts in comments, especially if you disagree.

Adaptation and political context

The U.S. should be doing more to prepare for changes in the climate that are already inevitable. As many folks have pointed out, even if we completely stopped emitting CO2 tomorrow, the gases already in the atmosphere will yield climate weirdness 30 to 40 years from now.

Adaptation -- the term of art for these sorts of adjustments -- is necessary. And it probably doesn't get the attention it should in policy discussions.

Nevertheless, I'm leery about discussing it too much. Why? Because there's more to policy discussions than policy discussions. There's also the political and cultural context in which such discussions take place. Focusing purely on policy details without taking the larger context into account is not a virtue, as some would have it. It's irresponsible.

Kevin Drum recently made this argument with regard to another subject, namely Iran. Should progressives spend more time criticizing Iran's repressive, authoritarian regime? Well ...

Americans and Climate Change: Diffusion of responsibility II

"Americans and Climate Change: Closing the Gap Between Science and Action" (PDF) is a report synthesizing the insights of 110 leading thinkers on how to educate and motivate the American public on the subject of global warming. Background on the report here. I'll be posting a series of excerpts (citations have been removed; see original report). If you'd like to be involved in implementing the report's recommendations, or learn more, visit the Yale Project on Climate Change website.

Yesterday we heard that no organization or institution bears responsibility for taking action on climate change; everyone's waiting for everyone else to act. Today, we hear about some tentative solutions to this problem.