Climate Climate & Energy
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The Climate Post: When climate change leads to… m-u-u-u-u-u-r-der…
Climate Post is away this week, trying to estimate sea-level rise from first-hand observation (or, at the beach…). Before life in Washington picks up again in the fall, why not take a step back and look at a way to organize the big picture? The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star recently asked us for an op-ed, reproduced […]
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Global warming, California, and wildfires
The scientific literature paints a hellish future if we don’t quickly reverse greenhouse gas emissions trends (see “Climate change expected to sharply increase Western wildfire burn area — as much as 175% by the 2050s“). Even the watered down, consensus-based 2007 IPCC report acknowledged the danger: A warming climate encourages wildfires through a longer summer […]
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China launches differentiated wind energy tariffs
China has instituted a new system of differentiated wind energy tariffs based on four wind energy zones. The move is the first in Asia since South Korea implemented a feed-in tariff program in 2005. China now joins a growing list of developing countries with feed-in tariffs, including South Africa and Mongolia. China is also the […]
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Enabling wind, sun to be our main power supplies
As the world meets this December to set plans to halt global warming, it is expected America and other industrial nations will commit to a daunting task: reduce CO2 emissions 80% by 2050. In just 40 years, a complete revolution in how we use and supply our power must happen, or the world will face […]
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If you’re not worried about melting permafrost, you should be
“If we lost just 1 percent of the carbon in permafrost today, we’d be close to a year’s contributions from industrial sources. I don’t think policymakers have woken up to this. It’s not in their risk assessments.” — Permafrost expert Chris Burn of Carleton Universiy
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Expedition to link students in support of climate action
From right to left: Tim Bromfield, Lynn Morris, and Will Lorimer. The three are tracing the 1-meter countour around the Atlantic Ocean in hopes of educating British students about communities threatened by rising sea levels.Courtesy Atlantic RisingAtlantic Rising is a new charity backed by Britain’s Royal Geographical Society. We are a three-person team creating a […]
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Can we make it?
More than once over the last several years I have talked with people who understand the deep hole humankind has dug for itself because of our reliance on fossil fuels and the dominant system’s environmentally destructive model of “development.” They have difficulty seeing a way that we will ever get out of this hole. Intuitively, […]
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VIDEO: Weeklong Mountaintop-removal Tree-sit Ends
For a joyously peaceful week, residents beneath Massey Energy’s Edwight mountaintop-removal site in the Pettry Bottom community in the Coal River Valley of West Virginia have received a reprieve from reckless blasting, fly rock, silica-dust showers, and potential flooding–thanks to tree-sitter Nick Stocks, who voluntarily came down at 10:00 a.m. on Monday. The seventh day […]
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Four years after Katrina: Lessons from the Gulf Coast
Four years ago, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. As the Gulf Coast struggled to keep its head above water, the rest of us were glued to the news — astounded at first by the awful destruction, and then by the inadequate response to so much human suffering. In those days, our TV sets became […]
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Climate plus security minus hyperbole still scary
The impact of climate change on national security has finally moved above the fold. And as the December Copenhagen climate change negotiations approach, politicians and experts alike are being forced to examine the complex effects of natural and social change on security. They must also walk a linguistic tightrope between hyperbole and uncertainty, working to […]
