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Soon We Can Just Call It the Styx

Yangtze River so polluted it’s on the verge of death The Yangtze River is “cancerous” with pollution — mainly industrial waste and agricultural runoff — according to reports in China’s state media. Experts estimate that within five years, up to 70 percent of its water may be unusable, particularly as drinking water for the 186 […]

It’s the End of the World as We Blow It

Ecosystems don’t like hurricanes any more than we do With hurricane season approaching, scientists are voicing worries about the ability of coastal ecosystems to recover from repeated storms. Some 118 square miles of coastal wetlands were lost to Hurricane Katrina, and the Gulf Coast is vulnerable to more loss, as many islands that had acted […]

Americans and Climate Change: Incentives: Politicians

"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.

Why aren't politicians more eager to champion the issue of global warming? Why did Al Gore fail to get any traction with it in 2000? Find out below!

Adaptation

The other issue that's come up in Pielke-Roberts Mild Disagreement '06 is the relative importance of mitigation vs. adaptation, climate-change wise. A couple of issues need to be distinguished here.

First, the substance: According to Roger, the "Kyoto Protocol, as is the FCCC under which it was negotiated, is in fact strongly biased against adaptation." It frames money spent on adaptation as money directly drained from mitigation (which it says would make adaptation unnecessary). I'm no expert on the FCCC, but this jibes with what I've read, and I agree with Roger that it's not a smart way of framing things.

Bucking conventional wisdom: the new black

A couple days ago, Roger Pielke Jr. posted about "non-skeptic heretics," a group of which he and Gregg Easterbrook are allegedly a part. I left a slightly intemperate comment about it, to which Roger responded at some length. Several issues are getting run together. I'm going to take them one at a time.

The least significant in the grand scheme of things, but most personally aggravating to me, is this question of a "third way" (in general, not on climate change in particular).

It is conventional wisdom now that every issue is defined by two shrill, partisan camps, and that it is a mark of intellectual integrity to choose a path between them.

As a heuristic, this may have once had some value, but today it's become a fetish. A tic.

Let's be clear: There is no empirical significance in falling between, or even just outside, two opposing positions. A position's truth value has nothing to do with its number of adherents, or its adherents' rhetorical acumen. The desire not to be a "joiner," not to belong to a "tribe," is a matter of temperament, not empiricism.

Patrick Michaels hackery through history

As you may recall, on FOX's Hannity & Colmes, the Cato Institute's Patrick Michaels plucked a quote from my Gore interview and grossly misinterpreted it to mean that Gore was exaggerating the evidence for global warming.

I called him out on it here, but for some reason the bell never rang that this was the very same Patrick Michaels involved in a legendary piece of hackery.

Paul Krugman reminds us of the sordid tale in his column:

Coal, coal, and more coal

Yesterday's critique of enviros' hopes for peak oil outcomes dovetails beautifully with this article from the NYT on what big coal is up to.

The future for American energy users is playing out in coal-rich areas like northeastern Wyoming, where dump trucks and bulldozers swarm around 80-foot-thick seams at a Peabody Energy strip mine here, one of the largest in the world.

Coal, the nation's favorite fuel in much of the 19th century and early 20th century, could become so again in the 21st. The United States has enough to last at least two centuries at current use rates -- reserves far greater than those of oil or natural gas. And for all the public interest in alternatives like wind and solar power, or ethanol from the heartland, coal will play a far bigger role.

The article presents two approaches being pursued by two big coal players, Peabody Energy and American Electric power, both of which are about aggressive development, and both of which do little to address climate change.

Drew Weiner, reef-protection crusader, answers questions

Drew Weiner. With what environmental organization are you affiliated? I’m the director of Reef Protection International. What does your organization do? RPI contributes to coral-reef conservation by educating the public about the marine aquarium trade and helping consumers make responsible, “reef-safe” buying choices. Coral reefs are in crisis due to warming seas, pollution, and overfishing. […]

Malysia maligned!

The Energy, Water, and Communications Minister of Malaysia expresses his concerns over a boycott of palm oil in a speech to a gathering of biofuel traders (from the AFP):

"They come up with 'Palm oil kills ... the orangutan'," said the minister in a fiery speech, during which he repeatedly mimicked orangutan noises.

"They know they cannot compete with palm oil so how do they fight you? They find some reason and hit you below the belt."

"So we have to fight that. Don't worry ... we will. When Malaysians get angry, they fight. And I guarantee you we will win."

I just hope he doesn't go home and slap a bounty on orangutans. (Click here if you are curious to know what a real orangutan sounds like.) The minister seems to think that European rapeseed farmers are behind it all, and who knows, maybe they are.

Peak oil will not help us in the climate change fight

On Oikos, David Jeffrey wisely and succinctly diagnoses the problem:

It seems to me that the current international negotiations about climate change are the ultimate prisoner's dilemma. It is in each nation's best (economic) interests to have each other country do something about limiting greenhouse gas emissions, but not do something themselves.

This is equally wise and equally succinct:

To speculate about the way forward, the glimmers of hope seem to me to be:

• National action will become less important as local, state and regional governments and communities take bolder measures;
• International aid will be increasingly targeted at clean energy, helping to restrain emissions growth in developing countries;
• There will be modest technological advances which help decouple economic growth from emissions growth.

This, however, I do not agree with: