Climate Climate & Energy
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U.K. Ministry of Defence: Global warming goes on, deniers are deluded
The U.K.’s Met Office issued a blunt statement on Tuesday, “Global warming goes on,” that begins: Anyone who thinks global warming has stopped has their head in the sand. The evidence is clear — the long-term trend in global temperatures is rising, and humans are largely responsible for this rise. Global warming does not mean […]
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Methane releases from under the Arctic seabed could jeopardize GHG stabilization
The U.K.’s Independent reported today some pretty shocking news in “Exclusive: The methane time bomb”: The first evidence that millions of tons of a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere from beneath the Arctic seabed has been discovered by scientists … The Independent has been passed […]
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This year’s top 10 climate blogs
Last summer, I put together a list of the top 10 climate blogs. For the sake of objectivity, I used Technorati, which ranks all blogs by “authority” (the number of blogs linking to it). The lower the rank, the better. One of the blogs on that list, It’s Getting Hot In Here, has updated it […]
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Bill Clinton says smart energy policy could have avoided the financial meltdown
Henry Farrell has an interesting account of a discussion session Bill Clinton held with a group of bloggers. This jumped out: Clinton’s basic argument was that the [financial] crisis was one of an overleveraged Wall Street system which emphasized the volume of transactions, and in which people were rewarded for chasing risky deals, and in […]
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GM flack misuses Thomas Kuhn’s philosophy of science (!) to defend Lutz climate skepticism
As I’ve said before, I don’t care if GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz doesn’t believe that human beings are causing climate change. It’s GM’s behavior that deserves our scorn, not the mental states of their executives. But (per Kate below) the defense of Lutz offered by GM’s Tom Wilkinson cannot stand. God knows what a […]
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Madam I’m Adam
Adam the first: Credit crunch could take shine off efficiency improvements Adam the second: … it’s a great time to be in the efficiency business. Explain yourselves, Adams!
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Taking the red tape out of green power
Adam Stein predicts that the financial meltdown will cool the ardor for carbon legislation, and I agree. But that doesn’t mean that policymakers will throw up their hands. Here are my predictions. One, the framing will shift from making fossil fuels more expensive (e.g. putting a price on carbon, a carbon tax, etc.) to making […]
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Hott policy primer
Sightline has a new report out: “Cap and Trade 101: A Climate Policy Primer.” It’s a plainspoken introduction that explains: • The cap, the trade: How cap and trade works • How to evaluate the efficiency, effectiveness, and fairness of a cap and trade system • What about offsets? • What happens to energy prices […]
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Credit crunch could take shine off efficiency improvements
I previously noted that the financial crisis is likely to be very bad news for renewable energy developers dependent upon access to credit for their cash-hungry projects. Geoffrey Styles points out that a credit crunch will also affect consumer-driven efficiency improvements: If consumers can’t obtain attractive financing for more efficient appliances, heating systems, or rooftop […]
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Summer ice in the Arctic has recovered–Was the Arctic ice retreat a climate anomaly?
(Part of the How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic guide) Objection: Sea ice at the north pole recovered a whopping 9.4 percent from 2007 to 2008 despite the doom and gloom predictions of the alarmists. Yet another wheel falls off the global warming bandwagon. Answer: It is true that the minimum summer ice extent […]
