Climate Climate & Energy

Oceanus is for more than just middle-schoolers

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has an online magazine, Oceanus. Over the past few years, they've published many stories (at the middle school level and up) on numerous aspects of the ocean/climate system. There's some great material there (e.g., this article on solar effects on climate or this one on the oceanic sink for carbon dioxide). Check it out here.

A guest essay from Environmental Defense

The following is a guest essay from Bill Chameides, the Chief Scientist at Environmental Defense. He maintains a blog on global warming at climate411.org. —– Some folks think global warming is best fought through a federally-imposed tax on greenhouse gas emissions — often called a carbon tax. The government would use the additional tax dollars […]

Just as misleading as the old round

Because of the enormous credibility of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's reports, and because they suggest that human-induced climate change is a very real risk, opponents of action on climate change must attack the IPCC or completely cede the scientific high ground in the debate.

With the release of the latest IPCC report, a whole new crop of specious skeptical arguments has arisen. Here's a good example, which appeared in this week's Weekly Standard:

One possible reason for the timing is that there appear to be some significant retreats from the 2001 IPCC report. The IPCC has actually lowered its estimate of the magnitude of human influence on warming, though we shall have to wait for the full report in May to understand how and why. Only readers with detailed knowledge of the 2001 report would notice these changes, which is why most news accounts failed to report them.

As with most skeptical arguments, there is a grain of truth here, sitting under a mountain of deception.

Op-ed on the IPCC and climate change

An op-ed I wrote with my colleague Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech appeared last Sunday in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

The editorial can be found here.

Update [2007-3-16 11:55:39 by Andrew Dessler]: The link no longer appears to work. The text of the op-ed is reproduced below:

Pro Bowl will go carbon neutral

Not to be outdone by the Super Bowl, tomorrow’s Pro Bowl in Honolulu is also going carbon neutral. (Note: This statement is not to be construed as “tree planting = true carbon neutrality rah rah rah!”) Apparently it takes a village to carbon-neutralize a Pro Bowl; the NFL is partnering with the U.S. EPA, nonprofit […]

Gore to announce climate-change concerts around the world

This July 7, the world will rock out in the name of stopping climate change. And at the head of it, global warming’s resident rock star: Al Gore. We mentioned this waaaay back in December, but news is hitting the rest of the dinosaurs mainstream media just today. Much like the worldwide party that rocked […]

Follow-up on think tank paying writers to question IPCC

The "AEI vs. AR/4" story has gotten a surprising amount of play in the mainstream press over the last few days. Briefly: last summer conservative think tank AEI sent letters to two of my colleagues asking them to participate in a "critique" of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR/4). Oh yeah, and they offered them $10,000 to do this.

My initial blog post from July can be found here. It got picked up by the mainstream press and has been widely reported on over the last few days (e.g., here and here).

This morning I received an email from AEI, asking me to post a statement about this kerfuffle, as well as a revised description of their examination of the AR/4. I posted them on my personal blog here.

Here is my critique of AEI's new proposal to critique the AR/4.

Hey, We’ll Take Stewardship

Texan Baptists turn themselves into quiet anti-coal activists Duty says we should report on the $5.9 billion Kyoto loophole that let China add simple upgrades to plants making a gas called HFC-23 and reap gigantic benefits through carbon trading. But yawn! Wouldn’t you rather read about Texan Baptists busting the shackles of their anti-eco-activism past […]

Microsoft’s Vista boasts energy-saving features, but does that mean it’s eco-friendly?

Most of the chatter about Vista, Microsoft’s new operating system, centers on whether the techies in Redmond have outsmarted the hackers this time around. But might the system also slow destruction of the environmental variety? Microsoft is touting Vista’s new energy-saving features, even as critics are pointing out that the system has some eco-downsides as […]

Jeans-maker Diesel is

Jeans-maker Diesel is. Their new “Global Warming Ready” ad campaign (image: CNW Group) depicts life in a climate-changed world (yes, that’s Mount Rushmore in the background). And PS, y’all, if global warming is going to make people that hot, I’m all for it. Check out those … um … jeans. Below the fold, a short […]