Climate Climate & Energy
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Yet another one
As a physicist, I have never been a big fan of Freeman Dyson. He was, after all, one of the "geniuses" pushing Project Orion -- the absurdly impractical idea of creating a rocket ship powered by detonating nuclear bombs -- I kid you not!
Dyson has written a new book, A Many Colored Glass, that you shouldn't waste your time and money on -- as this extract on global warming makes clear. Dyson has basically joined the famous-crackpot camp with Michael Crichton and Bill Gray. You can read a good debunking of Dyson here. I'll add my two cents.
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Really?
The Electric Power Research Institute just released "The Power to Reduce CO2 Emissions" (PDF), its discussion paper to "provide stakeholders with a framework [to] develop a research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) Action Plan that will enable sustainable and substantial electricity sector CO2 emissions reductions over the coming decades."
It is crazy, mathematically bogus, economically disastrous, and generally inane ... but will reach an audience vastly larger than its rigor warrants.
First, a bit about EPRI. It is the research arm of the nation's regulated utilities. It has historically been funded by charges on electric bills, but with restructured markets, it's had to adapt its revenue model. Still, it has not strayed too far from its funding sources, and has been chronically unwilling to recommend any course of action that:
- would be contrary to the interests of regulated utilities, or
- requires anything other than massive technology R&D from which regulated utilities benefit.
That's all personal opinion, which readers may choose to ignore. Let's take a look at the facts -- what they recommend to control carbon. (I should note that they describe this path as "aggressive but feasible.")
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Dust to Dust
NASA recalculates, 1998 becomes second-hottest year in U.S. The year 1998 has dropped from the hottest-year-ever-in-the-U.S. throne after NASA revised calculations, allowing Dust-Bowl-affected 1934 to claim the title. Despite triumphant cackling from climate skeptics, the rejiggering does not affect global climate records, and really is, for all intents and purposes, a technicality — globally, 1998 […]
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A tragedy in Utah and everywhere else, too
Coal is the enemy of the human race, Salon edition: This is the great paradox today: In an age of global warming and greater energy and safety awareness, we are also witnessing the great coal revival. Nearly 50 percent of our electricity still comes from coal — the very energy that runs our computers on […]
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Move over, 1998
Turns out that in the U.S., 1934 was a bit hotter than 1998. Which matters not a whit for global temperatures, but it's worth reading the story below before the spin machine gears up. Mr. Limbaugh has already started.
"1934, not 1998, the hottest year on record, NASA confirms," from Greenwire ($ub req'd):
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To solving our global warming problem
Geo-engineering is "the intentional large scale manipulation of the global environment" (PDF) to counteract the effects of global warming, which itself was unintentional geo-engineering -- although today you'd have to say global warming is intentional, since everybody now knows what we're doing to the planet.But I digress. We're screwing up the planet with unrestricted greenhouse-gas emissions, and the question is, do we want to try to fix that problem by gambling on some other large-scale effort to manipulate the climate, or should we just try to restrict emissions? It's as if the doctor says you have a disease that can definitely be cured by diet and exercise, but you opt for expensive chemotherapy -- even though the doctor can't guarantee the results but is pretty certain the side effects would be as bad as the disease.
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How lazy people can conserve energy
I love this idea: a single off-switch for your whole house, to power down all of those nonessential appliances that suck electricity while you're at work or out on the town.
OK, so it's just a concept at this point. But it's a good one.
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Renowned ecological economist Herman Daly says climate action can’t wait
This guest essay comes from Herman E. Daly, an ecological economist and professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, College Park. He's one of the experts featured in Leonardo DiCaprio's new eco-documentary The 11th Hour, which opens in L.A. and New York on Aug. 17 and in other spots around North America on Aug. 24.
The recent increase in attention to climate change is very welcome. Most of the attention seems to be given to complex climate models and their predictions, however. It is useful to back up a bit and remember an observation by physicist John Wheeler: "We make the world by the questions we ask." What are the questions asked by the climate models, and what kind of world are they making? What other questions might we ask that would make other worlds?
