Climate Climate & Energy

Blue Monday

Russia’s going nuclear, the U.S. is going nowhere, and Cambodia’s going wild We hope you had a chance to relax this weekend, to cast aside your cares and spend hours soaking in the jasmine-scented bubble bath of life. Because now it’s back to the putrid mudbath of reality. From Russia comes news that the country […]

Debunking the ‘water vapor’ nonsense

On March 8, the Newport Daily News published a commentary that recycled one of the stalest skeptical arguments around: because water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide must be unimportant.

This is incorrect, of course, and has been debunked on several blogs (e.g., here).

In response to this, my colleague Chris Reddy and I wrote this response, published March 16:

Can Al Gore’s message be tailored for kids?

Can Al Gore’s message be tailored for kids? Lisa Shimizu thinks so. Over the past few months, Shimizu has been developing a version of the Inconvenient Truth slideshow that would be easily understood by and engaging for children. After testing it out on captive audiences ranging from her 8-year-old daughter Aya to a classroom full […]

Facts alone will never cut it

I want to tear my %$#@! hair out. On Wed. night in New York City, there was a formal debate. At issue was the statement, "global warming is not a crisis." David Biello sets the scene: Arguing for the motion were the folksy (and tall) Michael Crichton, the soft-spoken Richard Lindzen and the passionate Philip […]

And They’re Off

As ministers gather in Potsdam, Germans still fuming over speed-limit idea The G8 environment ministers are spending two days in Potsdam, Germany, chewing over the world’s post-Kyoto possibilities with their developing-country counterparts. “We are going to speak about the barriers that have until now held back international climate-change negotiations and how to break them,” said […]

Sequester Requester

Coal sequestration a near-future necessity; one utility gets a jump start If coal’s going to be viable in an emissions-regulated future, we need to hurry up and learn the how-tos of carbon sequestration, says a new study from MIT. The U.S. should take the lead and fund three to five emissions-burying demo projects within the […]

The damming question

It's been 50 years since Celilo Falls in Oregon was buried by the Dalles Dam to create 800 megawatts of power, but the memory of the great salmon runs lost live on through the tribes who migrated again this year to the spot to mourn the day. Orion Grassroots Network member group Save Our Wild Salmon opined eloquently in the Oregonian this week about the choices our society made for green power.

What should be the cost of skepticism?

Every few months, it seems, someone comes out with the great idea about how people who are wrong in the climate-change debate should have something really bad done to them. Who can forget our very own David's, ahem, indiscretion? Or Heidi Cullen and her suggestion to strip skeptical meteorologists of their AMS credentials?

Over on Roger Pielke Sr.'s Climate Science blog, guest blogger Hendrik Tennekes suggests some tit-for-tat:

More than once I have dreamed of regulations that would cut the retirement pay of climate modelers in half if their forecasts proved off the mark at their retirement. Such an arrangement would also help them keep their feet on the ground concerning the prediction horizon of climate scenarios.

What's interesting is Tennekes doesn't mention what should happen to scientists who claim that climate change is not happening, yet turn out to be wrong. Perhaps they should have their retirement taken away, too?

But What About Liechtenstein?

Survey unearths international climate-change attitudes A majority of South Koreans believe global warming is a critical threat. Same with Iranians. And Mexicans. And Israelis. But Americans — not so much, says a recent survey of more than 20,000 people in more than 15 countries. Granted, the U.S. could have been more ignorant: a solid 46 […]

Bush to cut funding for geothermal

The Bush administration wants to eliminate federal support for geothermal power just as many U.S. states are looking to cut greenhouse gas emissions and raise renewable power output. A comprehensive new MIT-led study of the potential for geothermal energy within the United States has found that mining the huge amounts of heat that reside as […]