Climate Climate & Energy

Or is it just us?

April may have seemed on the cool side in this country, but globally it was the third warmest on record (and the warmest April ever over land). In fact, the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reports that "globally averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was the warmest on record for January-April year-to-date period."

Drudge reported the April news perversely: "WARMING ON HOLD? April’s temperatures were below average ..."

April temperature anomalies are shown on the dot map below. The redder it is, the hotter it is:

It runs together several distinct things

There's been a nice, coherent-if-incipient debate on cap-and-trade on this blog lately, which I've alas been too busy to reply to. But I wanted to throw in just one small thought: it just might be time to ditch the whole notion. It conflates at least three things together, and as they are all quite different, the "trading debate" as we know it is both confusing and confused.

The ethics of climate change

It's probably rude to point to this RealClimate post on a recent meeting at the University of Washington on Ethics and Climate Change, since it mentions me. But it's really Paul Baer, EcoEquity's Research Director, that attended, and who got top billing as the author of the "influential" (and out of press) book Dead Heat.

The real issue here, as far as we're concerned, is the notion of "developmental equity," which we are trying to develop and defend as a normative and politically salient alternative to "equal per capita emissions rights."

Anyway, this is worth a quick read. The comments are many, and besides, authors Eric Steig and Gavin Schmidt prove the worth of the philosophical approach by defining an "Easterbrook fallacy."

I knew there had to be a name for it.

Biden recites conventional wisdom on ethanol

You won’t see it in a more pure form than this: (thanks LL)

A new report says regulations are needed

A while back I mentioned a McKinsey Global Institute report showing that efficiency is the fastest, cheapest way to cut global GHG emissions. Now McKinsey’s got a new report out, making a heretical claim: even though homeowners could vastly improve energy efficiency and save tons of money over the long term with current technologies, there […]

Once we blow through the carbon sinks, it’s down the drain for us

Another sign that the economists' central myth, their creation story in a sense -- that there is a replacement for anything scarce and the replacement appears whenever the price of the depeleting resource gets high enough -- is the most dangerous fantasy in the world:

Alas, there are no replacement carbon sinks, and we seemed to have filled ours up. Now we learn that, after you're through in the sinks, you head down the drain.

A new study with intriguing conclusions

This is interesting. One of the big dings on a carbon tax has been that it’s regressive — it will hurt the poor (who pay a higher percentage of their income for energy) more than the rich. But according to a new study, it ain’t so: But the new study, based on data from Indonesia, […]

Get Your Vacuum Cleaner Ready

Southern Ocean losing ability to soak up carbon dioxide, researchers say If you’re counting on the seas to soak up excess emissions and get us out of this climate mess, you might need a new plan. Scientists say Antarctica’s Southern Ocean, a whopper of a “carbon sink,” is losing its ability to absorb more carbon […]

Massachusetts is going to blow

The electrical grid in Massachusetts is getting ready to blow: Documents obtained by the Herald show more than 12,000 transformers from Attleboro to Ayer are operating at above 200 percent capacity, with some as high as 900 percent over design standards. Union officials, who last night reached an agreement in contract talks with National Grid, […]

New Scientist’s troll-b-gone

If our How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic guide doesn’t whet your appetite for debunkery, head on over to New Scientist, which has a new series taking on “the 26 most common climate myths and misconceptions.” Some are familiar to devotees of our guide — they predicted global cooling in the ’70s! — but […]