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Politico’s anonymous sources slam Barbara Boxer’s “abrasive personal style”
I was going to blog on this umpteenth attack on strong progressive women, but Matt Yglesias beat me to the punch here, so to speak. I’ll add my thoughts to Matt’s comments at the end: I used to think that US Senate Barbara Boxer was an experienced legislator with a solid progressive record on the […]
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Will America lose the clean-energy race? Only if we listen to The Breakthrough Institute
The radioactive disinformers of The Breakthrough Institute (TBI) have broken through to the MSM again. This time they got The San Francisco Chronicle to print their willfully misleading op-ed attacking “Obama and Democratic leaders” for supposedly failing to deliver on clean energy promises. As we’ll see, this TBI article sets a new record for phony […]
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Bordering on Chaos: Climate change melts lines drawn in ice
As climate change melts the world’s glaciers, some nations must redefine their national borders. Above, the Basodino Glacier near the Swiss-Italian border.Via Wikimedia Commons Something really rather strange is happening to Switzerland, where I spent part of last week at an international conference. The mountainous country is shrinking as a result of global warming. The […]
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Blackout: Heinberg on dwindling coal reserves and the siren song of “clean coal”
Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis, Richard HeinbergThere isn’t nearly as much coal left as most people think. “Clean coal” will run down limited reserves even faster. If humanity doesn’t begin massive, sustained investment in renewable power sources immediately, civilization could be at risk before the end of the century. And that’s without […]
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Why some Russians look forward to global warming
Conquering its vast wilderness has long been a dream of Russia’s rulers, even the not-so-capitalist ones…Freedom Toast via FlickrOK, this is really a glorified retweet, but Brad Plumer has a fascinating post at the New Republic about Russia’s apparent enthusiasm for climate change: “Many Russia leaders are actually excited about a warmer world where Siberia’s […]
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When life makes you lemonade, Kate Galbraith and the NY Times give you lemons
“Convoys of turbine parts for windmills slow traffic and attract attention in coastal towns like Searsport, Me., on their way to western Maine” – the caption from the absurd NYT piece, “Slow, Costly and Often Dangerous Road to Wind Power.” So here’s the news. We’re now the #1 producer of wind power in the […]
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Turns out humans are not like slowly boiling frogs — we are like slowly boiling brainless frogs
I learned something new or, rather, old from reading Fallows’ blog. The famous metaphor* — “the fatally slow human response to climate change makes us like a slowly boiling frog” — is not quite right. As Wikipedia puts it, German physiologist Friedrich Goltz “demonstrated that frogs will indeed remain in slowly heated water, but only […]
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The future of hockey sticks on an ice-free planet
A number of people asked me to reply to a blog post by Atlantic monthly columnist James Fallows in which he opines on a variety of climate-related subjects from Al Gore to the “Hockey Stick” graph. Since I have known Fallows for a long time – we share mutual interests in rhetoric and the late […]
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Palin on Energy: The Bad, the Ugly, and the Response
Barbara Boxer, chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, and John Kerry, chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, write in “What Palin Got Wrong About Energy“: Whether it was the debate over the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Superfund law or any other landmark environmental law, one pattern has always been […]
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“Clouds Appear to Be Big, Bad Player in Global Warming” — an amplifying feedback
The best evidence is that the climate is now being driven by amplifying feedbacks (see Study: Water-vapor feedback is “strong and positive,” so we face “warming of several degrees Celsius”), most notably: The defrosting of the permafrost The drying of the Northern peatlands (bogs, moors, and mires). The destruction of the tropical wetlands Decelerating growth […]
