Climate Climate & Energy
All Stories
-
The breakthrough technology illusion
[A misleading Newsweek piece, “We Can’t Get There From Here” that I will respond to in detail later this week is the inspiration to update this earlier post on the breakthrough myth.] This post will explain why some sort of massive government Apollo program or Manhattan project to develop new breakthrough technologies is not a […]
-
A plea to West Virginia’s legendary Senator to stop mountaintop removal
With daily ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosions from mountaintop removal operations rocking his home and dismantling the mountain above his community, Bo Webb, a Vietnam vet, recently penned an appeal to his West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd to co-sponsor the Appalachian Mountain Restoration Act to stop mountaintop removal and launch a green jobs initiative in Appalachia. […]
-
![]()
![]()
Q: How much can West Antarctica plausibly contribute to sea-level rise by 2100?
U.K. Telegraph: “Antarctic ice bridge collapse hailed as new sign of global warming.” A. 3 to 5 feet — contributing to an increasingly likely total sea-level rise of more than 5 feet by 2100, a rise that will be all but impossible to stop if we don’t sharply reverse CO2 emissions trends within a decade […]
-
Hot climate? Try on some sizzling shorts
The makers of the film “Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy“ (one of whom, Randy Olson, I interviewed for Grist, here) are holding a video contest among students at three universities that hosted screenings of Sizzle last month (Cal State Fullerton, Univ. of Missouri, and SUNY Stony Brook). Their assignment was to make 60 second videos […]
-
Survey says: Americans concerned about global warming, want policy change, like money
An interesting report out today from Public Agenda, entitled “The Energy Learning Curve.” They report on a survey that is both heartening with respect to the public perceptions of global warming (and needs for policy response thereto) and frustrating for what they suggest about the policy conversation in Washington. The Good The good news is […]
-
![]()
![]()
Myth: Solving climate change is primarily about finding cleaner sources of energy
Wind! No, “clean coal“! Biofuels! No, natural gas! Idiots, it’s all about nuclear! Conversations about tackling climate change are perpetually dominated by disputes over which cleaner energy sources will substitute for today’s dirty energy. What’s left out? Using less energy. That is to say: demand. As it happens, getting a handle on demand is the […]
-
![]()
![]()
Myth: Tackling climate change requires fundamental technological breakthroughs
No myth has done more to lull Americans into complacency or allow bad actors to fight off good policy. The American people are deeply attached to the notion that any problem can be solved with a new doohickey. It would, after all, relieve them of the terrible responsibility of saving the world. (Surely a clever […]
-
![]()
![]()
Myth: There is a “free market” in energy
To hear some people talk, you’d think the greatest danger of government intervention in the energy sector is that it will “distort the market.” Poor, tender market. In fact, energy markets would give Adam Smith the screaming willies. The world’s biggest oil companies are state-owned members of anti-competitive cabals. Half the electric utilities in the […]
-
Does Pew Center’s Eileen Claussen get the dire nature of our climate predicament?
Dr. Bill Chameides is the dean of Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He blogs at HuffingtonPost.com and his own GreenGrok.com, which is certainly worth reading. He just posted “Impressions from National Academies Climate Summit,” in which he drops a bombshell quote from Eileen Claussen, […]
-
George Will publishes global warming lies for a third time
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, fool me three times, shame on the media. In a move that calls into question the journalistic integrity of the entire Washington Post editorial staff — especially editorial page editor, Fred Hiatt, who should be fired — the newspaper has published a third […]
