Climate Climate & Energy

Rate of global warming predicted 35 years ago in Nature

Nature just published this remarkable letter by Neville Nicholls of Australia's Monash University:

Greenpeace ad on climate change

I have mixed feelings about this powerful ad. I'm curious to know how it strikes others.

Atlas makes significant changes to maps due to human activity

The editors of the Times Atlas made significant changes to their newest edition to reflect altered coastlines and shrinking lakes affected by climate change and unregulated irrigation. The last edition of the Atlas, which is published in Britain, came out in 2003; the newest edition contains “half a dozen major examples of how human activities […]

Doctors suggest global warming could lead to more heart problems

Does global warming make you heartsick? Oh wait, we mistyped. Retry: Does global warming make your heart sick? Some doctors think it might.

On the problem of carbon-offset projects in developing countries

[editor's note, by David Roberts] Important update to this post here.

It turns out that Climate Care, a major indulgence offset provider, is paying farmers in India to pump water with treadles rather than diesel pumps in order to offset plane flights.

I would hope that supporters of offsets would be as quick as opponents to see what is wrong with this. In case someone is reading this before their morning coffee, I will simply point out that it is one thing for rich, overweight Americans to substitute manual labor for energy use, and another for a poor Indian farmer who already has plenty of manual labor in his life to do so. It is paying poor people to suffer to offset plane rides for the rich.

Climate change is increasing the frequency of Category 5 storms

Global warming has long been predicted to make hurricanes more intense. Well, now we are seeing more intense hurricanes. Chris Mooney has a great post on the recent storm surge of Category 5 hurricanes, now that Felix has joined that once-elite club. He notes:

• There have now been 8 Category 5 Atlantic hurricanes in the past 5 years (Isabel, Ivan, Emily, Katrina, Rita, Wilma, Dean, Felix).
• There have been two Atlantic Category 5s so far this year; only three other seasons have had more than one (1960, 1961, 2005).
• There have been 8 Atlantic Category 5 hurricanes so far in the 2000s; no other decade has had so many. The closest runner up is the 1960s with 6 (Donna, Ethel, Carla, Hattie, Beulah, Camille).

Some people, especially the Deniers, think this is all a coincidence, or the result of incomplete data from earlier years. Here's why I don't:

Congressional Research Service report bolsters California’s case for EPA waiver

As you know, California is all set to implement its tough tailpipe GHG emissions standards — and something on the order of 14 other states are ready to follow suit. All Cali needs is a waiver from the U.S. EPA, allowing it to supersede national standards. It first requested the waiver in Dec. 2005, but […]

Wisdom from 13th-century Persia

Last Friday, Bill Moyers interviewed the poet Robert Bly on PBS. Bly has been translating some of the poetry of the great Persian poets Hafez and Rumi, and he recited the following piece from Rumi:

Just be quiet and sit down. The reason is you're drunk. And this is the edge of the roof.

Bly (and Man with a Muck-Rake) relate this to Bush, but I wonder if the phrase could be also be applied to way humans have been abusing the environment: becoming drunk on fossil fuels and the natural capital of nature, ready to fall off the roof.

Consumer Reports hypes hydrogen cars

Consumer Reports has a fluff piece on hydrogen fuel cell cars in its latest issue (subs. req'd).

I spend way too much time debunking this most consumer unfriendly of alternative fuel vehicles -- I even wrote a book on the subject, The Hype About Hydrogen. So I was happy to get an email from Tom Gage, President and CEO of AC Propulsion, containing a letter he sent to the magazine. I asked him if I could run it, and he not only said yes, he expanded it:

Bush lies misleads on global warming, again

The Prez has a long history of misleading the nation on climate change. Not unlike his father, who promised on the stump to be the "environmental president," Bush promised on the campaign trail in 2000 to reduce CO2 emissions, then promptly reversed this position once he took office.

But that's in the history books. Last week, according to the Washington Post, he told an audience at a fundraiser in Washington state:

Do you realize that the United States is the only major industrialized nation that cut greenhouse gases last year?

One problem: that's, er, misleading at best. A spokesperson for the Council on Environmental Quality admitted so after the speech, saying that although the U.S. did slightly reduce energy consumption and thus emissions last year, it couldn't rule out the possibility that other nations did as well.

"We are making sure the President is aware of that," the spokesperson said.