Articles by Joseph Romm

Yes, global warming can boost the most severe tornadoes

I am not saying the "unusually ferocious winter tornado system" that hit five southern states Wed. was caused by global warming. I am saying -- or rather NASA is saying -- we're probably going to have to get used to it:

NASA scientists have developed a new climate model that indicates that the most violent severe storms and tornadoes may become more common as Earth's climate warms.

So did John Kerry go too far on MSNBC when he said:

[I] don't want to sort of leap into the larger meaning of, you know, inappropriately, but on the other hand, the weather service has told us we are going to have more and more intense storms," Kerry said. "And insurance companies are beginning to look at this issue and understand this is related to the intensity of storms that is related to the warming of the earth. And so it goes to global warming and larger issues that we're not paying attention to. The fact is the hurricanes are more intensive, the storms are more intensive and the rainfall is more intense at certain places at certain times and the weather patterns have changed.

That sounds about right to me, though it wasn't the "weather service" really, it was NASA. The conservative Business & Media Institute said Kerry was using the tragedy, which killed over 50 people, "to advance global warming alarmism." But BMI embarrasingly undercuts its credibility by quoting one meteorologist from last year who obviously isn't very good at forecasting:

Why John McCain isn’t the candidate to stop global warming

McCain's astonishing doubletalk on climate in the Florida GOP debate -- denying that a cap and trade system is a mandate -- made me start rethinking what a McCain presidency would mean for the fight to prevent catastrophic global warming. The more I researched McCain's views, the more I talked to others, the more I felt forced to change my previous view.

Salon has just published my long analysis, which concludes that while he would be vastly superior to Bush on climate ...

... a President McCain would not be the climate leader that America and the world requires. He is a conservative who happens to be on the only intellectually defensible side of the climate change debate. But he is still a conservative, and the vast majority of the solutions to global warming are progressive in nature -- they require strong government action, including major federal efforts to spur clean technology.

Of course, as I argue in my book, it is precisely because they know that the solutions to global warming are mostly progressive in nature that most conservatives are so close-minded on the subject. My basic argument is:

Nuclear power and fossil fuels face water crises and other problems

This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Bill Becker, executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

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It has not been a good year so far for King Coal, Big Oil, and whatever nickname we give to the nuclear energy industry.

Two weeks ago, TIME reported that nuclear plants in the southeastern U.S. may be forced to cut power production or temporarily shut down later this year because the year-long drought has left too little water to cool the reactors.

There already has been one drought-related shutdown in Alabama. And while officials aren't yet predicting brownouts, utilities will be forced to buy expensive replacement power from other places, leading to "shockingly high electric bills for millions of southerners."

Unfortunately, the Southeast is precisely where the nuclear energy industry has been looking as the best location for new power plants, in part because they believe there is less public resistance there. We'll see how the public feels when those "shockingly high electric bills" arrive in the mail.

The South's problems are not unique. The Associated Press reports that 24 of the nation's 104 nukes are in areas experiencing the most severe drought.

Then came an email from the chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell to his staff, predicting that the production of conventional oil supplies won't be able to keep pace with world demand after 2015 -- a mere seven years from now.

That's very bad news for oil-dependent economies, including ours. Five of the last seven recessions in the U.S. economy have been preceded by big increases in the price of oil (PDF), and today's oil prices are one of the factors being blamed for the economic slowdown and possible recession we're experiencing now. The email from Shell's Jeroen van der Veer suggests that unless we figure out how to replace conventional oil or how to stop economic development and population growth around the world, high oil prices are here to stay. It's the old law of supply and demand.

Details on Bush’s anti-efficiency budget

Bush's phony rhetoric from the State of the Union:

The United States is committed to strengthening our energy security and confronting global climate change, and the best way to meet these goals is for America to continue leading the way toward the development of cleaner and more energy-efficient technology.

His actual energy-efficiency budget, summarized by the Environmental and Energy Study Institute executive director, Carol Werner (my previous post on the budget is here):