Climate Climate & Energy

European automakers in a snit over proposed EU emissions cuts

A European Union proposal to reduce average new-car CO2 emissions 20 percent by 2012 — and to fine automakers that don’t meet the target — has revved up observers on all sides. German Chancellor Angela Merkel — a climate Cassandra whose country is home to industry giants including Porsche, BMW, and DaimlerChrysler — took a […]

Coal industry kicks off a PR campaign aimed at influencing lawmakers

Santa moonlighting on K Street? Photo: iStockphoto I heard from someone in downtown D.C. this morning who ran into a guy in a Santa suit who handed him a flier saying, "even Santa is rethinking his position on coal!" Yes, really. From The Hill: Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC) is sending 30 Santas to […]

Efficiency without renewable energy is not sufficient

Recently George Monbiot argued that humanity must figure out a way to leave the fossil fuels in the ground:

Most of the governments of the rich world now exhort their citizens to use less carbon. They encourage us to change our lightbulbs, insulate our lofts, turn our televisions off at the wall. In other words, they have a demand-side policy for tackling climate change. But as far as I can determine, not one of them has a supply-side policy. None seeks to reduce the supply of fossil fuel. So the demand-side policy will fail. Every barrel of oil and tonne of coal that comes to the surface will be burned.

In other words, things like fuel economy standards and efficient appliances won't help unless cars and appliances are powered by renewable energy (solar/wind/geothermal).

The problem might be more manageable if we divide it into three parts:

1. Active energy sources -- wind/solar/geothermal.
2. Passive energy sources -- mostly in buildings, as detailed in David's recent excellent post .
3. Design -- as in how to design cities, towns, and the their transportation systems.

Once we have moved to renewable electricity and passive systems as the source of almost all of our energy needs, then we can keep the rest of the fossil fuels in the ground.

Climate skeptic plays hookey

The great climate debate was supposed to be yesterday, but it was not to be. My opponent, Dr. Tim Ball, was a no-show. He knew the debate started at 2:00 p.m., but got the time zone wrong. After he figured that out, his phone stopped working. Go figure.

So it was just me, and I spent about 75 minutes answering questions that readers had left on Eric Berger's Sciguy site, as well as taking questions from the phone lines. Many of the questions were interesting and reasonable, and I very much appreciate the people that posed them.

However, what would a climate change debate be without a few wackos?

One caller asked (and later emailed me the same question):

I would like to know if you really believe you and others like you can manage the climate of this planet? As the Wizard of Oz found out, there are unforeseen consequences to your actions.

That's right, if the Wizard can't make good policy concerning flying monkeys, witches, and Judy Garland, what chance do we have of handling climate change? This caller will most definitely not like my suggestion that we geoengineer a cooler climate by sending up flying monkeys carrying mirrors to reflect sunlight back to space.

Grist contributor bashes ‘clean coal’

If you’d like to see our very own Sean Casten call the FutureGen clean coal project “maddeningly stupid” — about the only part of this segment that isn’t creepy and upsetting — you can do so here.

Thirteen stories of coal getting stiffed

The other day I was thinking I should gather together in one place all the stories from this year about coal getting rejected. And I was feeling lazy, and wishing someone else would do it for me. And look, someone else did! Check it out below the fold: Following are some of the coal plant […]

How much global warming results from air travel?

Over the past few days, I’ve been trying to pull together some data on how airplane travel affects global warming, as part of a broader project on transportation and climate change. My stunningly obvious conclusion: it’s complicated. Worse, different calculation methods yield wildly different results. Take, for instance, this brilliant chart (below) from the Stockholm […]

FutureGen “clean coal” demonstration plant slated for Illinois

FutureGen, the U.S. Department of Energy’s massive “clean coal” demonstration plant, will be sited in Mattoon, Ill., officials announced this morning. Three other potential locations for the plant each lobbied heavily for the roughly $1.8 billion project to be built on their turf — one other site in Illinois and two others in Texas. The […]

Economists cannot predict the future

For those of you who have not seen this presentation given at the American Association for the Advancement of Science humor session earlier this year, I highly recommend it. Of all the posts I've seen on the Gristmill on the subject of economics, this one by Sean Casten most closely reflects my views.

In this post, Jerry Taylor from the CATO Institute tells us about the worst case scenario from a study done by Dr. Martin Parry, the lead author of the most recent IPCC Working Group on climate change impacts. According to results of this "computer run" eighty years from today, average incomes will have increased somewhere between five and 50-fold, and the land needed for agriculture will be reduced by half (along with deaths from hunger, malaria, and coastal flooding). Are we talking about the same Dr. Parry who said the following in September?

"Mitigation has got all the attention but we cannot mitigate out of this problem. We now have a choice between a future with a damaged world or a severely damaged world."

I tend to agree with many of Jerry Taylor's stances. Here he reflects my opinions on corn ethanol, and here he reflects my opinion of Republicans, except he appears to think highly of Reagan.

A public policy silver bullet that’s available to fight global warming today

Steve Heckeroth’s piece "Solar is the solution" has been recommended all over the green blogosphere, first by Robert Rapier, I think. It’s great reading, but I wanted to hone in on one thing he mentions — a piece of public policy that has been woefully under-hyped. To wit: with today’s technology, we know how to […]