Climate Climate & Energy

A short guide

Lots of economists and analysts on both sides of the aisle prefer a carbon tax to a cap-and-trade system, but political reality is such that the former is exceedingly unlikely and the latter has become all but inevitable. So it’s time to focus on doing it well. One question that came up in the panel […]

Wacky dude makes cool stat-o-meter on what’s happening in the world

OK, so the guy who made this says he finds the “theory of global warming highly debatable,” but this thing is pretty cool: The World Clock. It lets you see a number of (likely somewhat flawed) stats about what’s going on in the world during the current year, month, week, day, or time period you’re […]

More evidence of the link to climate change

The weather is getting more extreme thanks to human-caused climate change (as I've pointed out many times, see here, here, and here).

Now the World Meteorological Organization reports more evidence:

In January and April 2007 it is likely that global land surface temperatures ranked warmest since records began in 1880, 1.89°C warmer than average for January and 1.37°C warmer than average for April. Several regions have experienced extremely heavy precipitation, leading to severe floods. The Fourth Assessment Report of the WMO/UNEP Intergovernmental Group on Climate Change (IPCC) notes an increasing trend in extreme events observed during the last 50 years. IPCC further projects it to be very likely that hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent.

How many more deaths will we tolerate?

About 4am yesterday, a mine in Utah collapsed, trapping six miners 1,500 feet underground, almost three and a half miles from the mine’s entrance. No one knows if they are alive; there’s been no contact since the collapse. Right now, rescuers are trying to drill through the mountainside to reach them. Progress has been slow, […]

The question must be asked

The thought didn't cross my mind until my Minneapolis-based brother suggested it. I had asked him for his thoughts on the collapse, and that is the question he posed.

I was skeptical at first, but after doing a Google search -- and after NBC reported Sunday that National Transportation Safety Board investigators are "looking at everything" including "the weather" -- I think it is a legitimate question to ask.

First, though, why is it an important question to ask? NASA's James Hansen says we are on the verge of turning the earth into "a different planet," thanks to uncontrolled greenhouse-gas emissions. We've seen the Brits and Chinese link recent flooding tragedies driven by extreme weather to climate change.

We are all facing far more extreme heat waves, floods, wildfires, rainstorms, droughts and hurricanes -- yet our infrastructure apparently can't handle the weather we have today, as Hurricane Katrina revealed. If we don't adopt aggressive actions to prevent catastrophic climate change, we need to seriously climate-proof our electric grid, our levees, and our water and sewage systems.

The question remains, do we need to climate-proof our bridges? Does a connection exist between climate change and the collapse of the I-35W bridge? Consider what a meteorologist who worked in the city for years blogged:

Mon Dieu, Il Fait Chaud

European heat-wave length has doubled since 1880, study says The average length of Europe’s sultry heat waves has doubled since 1880, researchers say, from an average of 1.5 days to an average of three days. By analyzing historical records from 54 stations across the continent — then correcting for an upward bias in earlier decades […]

With Safety Like This, Who Needs Danger?

Rescue effort continues in collapsed Utah mine called “safe” by owner The search for survivors continues at a coal mine in central Utah that collapsed early Monday. Four miners escaped the implosion — which was so strong it registered magnitude 3.9 at a nearby seismic station — but six others were trapped about three miles […]

If you only read one book, pick this one

For years I've been looking for one book to recommend to people who want to get up to speed on what's happening in clean technology. I have finally found it: The Clean Tech Revolution: The Next Big Growth and Investment Opportunity, by Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder.

It is the only book I've seen that covers the whole gamut of the latest in clean energy -- including such cutting-edge areas as concentrating solar power and microalgae -- and isn't swept up in fads like hydrogen cars.

I was a bit worried when the index didn't have an entry for either "hybrids" or "plug-in hybrids," but that is only because the index is quite lame. In fact, the book "gets" plug-in hybrids, which I consider the acid test of any clean-energy book today.

Cool commentary on a hot topic

Awhile ago I made a lame post pointing to a really cool page in Mother Jones that actually wasn't online yet. Well, it's up now, so if you were one of the two people who tried to see it, you can go visit MoJo now and check it out.

Test Drive

New York to paste “global warming index” stickers on some new vehicles New York has become the second state in the U.S. to require new cars and light trucks to bear a “global warming index” sticker. (We’ll give you a minute to guess which one was first.) The law, which begins with the 2010 model […]