Climate Climate & Energy
All Stories
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CO2 — but not the sun — ‘is significantly correlated’ with temperature since 1850
The lead author of a new study ($ub. req’d) says Inhofe’s office mischaracterized her work with its blaring headline, “Study: Half of warming due to Sun!” Far from supporting Inhofe’s denialist fantasies, the research, led by Anja Eichler, senior scientist at the Switzerland’s Paul Scherrer Institute, is actually one more piece of observation-driven analysis that […]
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Gore embraces 350 ppm target at Poznan
[This post is from Bill McKibben in Poland. For background on the science behind the 350 target and the challenge it poses see here and here.] Al Gore gave the international climate talks in Poznan a new set of marching orders this afternoon, declaring that old targets for fighting global warming had been made obsolete […]
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A carbon tax has efficient sticks, but what about carrots?
I’m finding the carbon tax vs. cap-and-trade debate unsatisfying, for several reasons. Here I’ll try to get at just one of them. In broad terms, you want greenhouse gas policy to do two things (well, more than two, but let’s focus): penalize the emission of GHGs and reward the prevention of GHG emissions. Sticks and […]
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Inhofe recycles long-debunked denier talking points
Who will the media believe this time: The Senate’s leading climate denier, James Inhofe (R-Okla.), or their own lying eyes? Deniers like Inhofe have a serious media problem — an ever growing number of studies, real-world observations, and credible scientific bodies all point to human-caused emissions as the increasingly dominant cause of planetary warming and […]
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Create jobs, cut emissions, and reduce oil imports by investing in renewables and energy efficiency
Originally posted at earthpolicy.org —– At a time when major U.S. companies are announcing job layoffs almost daily, the renewable energy industry is hiring new workers every day to build wind farms, install rooftop solar arrays, and build solar thermal and geothermal power plants. The output of industrial firms that manufacture the equipment for these […]
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What I heard on the radio blew me away
I know green has saturated our cultural chatter to the point where it shouldn’t be surprising to hear it mentioned … everywhere. But sometimes I’m still surprised. Like last night: I’m in the car, I’m scanning through the radio, and something catches my ear. And there it is: two DJs shooting the smarmy sh*t about […]
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A roundup of reports I ought to read but in reality have only skimmed
So many reports, so little time! Greenpeace: The True Cost of Coal It’s well-known that coal’s price is artificially low, since many of its costs — health maladies, climate change, polluted water, etc. — are externalized. But how much do those externalized costs add up to? This report delves into that subject in great detail. […]
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City announces plan to develop next-generation electricity grid
The city of Austin, Texas recently announced a smart grid project. Smart grids, you may recall, are one of the core elements of the Grand Climate Plan. Although the Austin project isn’t the first such effort in the country, officials hope that the city will be able to move faster than others, because Austin actually […]
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Can teaching art to future scientists help save the planet?
A special report from Gainesville, Florida. Robert Ponzio, art instructor and chair of the Fine Arts Department at Oak Hall School took to the skies Sunday above Florida’s Kennedy Space Center in a specially modified, G-FORCE ONE aircraft. Working in a near weightless environment traditionally reserved for astronaut training and scientific experimentation, Ponzio hopes to […]
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Weather-sealing and funding for existing transit offer quick ramp-ups, fast paybacks
David Roberts asks: Another key question is how much money could be pumped into building sector energy efficiency, and how quickly. The feds and states do some weatherization of low-income homes through LIHEAP, but those are not large agencies and probably couldn’t handle tens of billions dumped on their heads. Beyond that, what? To answer […]
