Climate Climate & Energy

It’s all about oil, baby

DR: You say pretty openly that Iraq and a good chunk of our defense spending — about half total federal expenditures now — is about oil. Not very long ago that was written off as a hysterical lefty conspiracy theory. TT: Certainly with respect to Iraq, as the excuses get peeled away one by one, […]

Let’s wonk it out

DR: On our site there are many people highly skeptical about biofuels. For lots of reasons: corn ethanol barely breaks even on energy balance. It’s an environmental nightmare, with nitrogen fertilizers in the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. It is a commodity sector governed by a few massive multinational corporations, which are lavished […]

A dispatch from Gore’s climate training sessions

I'm blogging from Nashville, where I just spent two days hanging with Al Gore and shooting the sh-t about climate change. OK, it wasn't just me and Al -- there were about 200 other people there.

This meeting is part of Al Gore's effort to train 1000 people to go out and deliver his Inconvenient Truth talk.

The meeting started off on a low note when I found out that Cameron Diaz had been in the session before mine. Damn. My session was actually devoid of anyone well known. The closest we got was Dennis Kucinich's wife, who it turns out is actually quite a babe.

Haul Out the Halter Tops

It’s official: 2006 was warmest year ever for the contiguous U.S. In 2006, the contiguous U.S. experienced its warmest year since records began in 1895 (also the year of the first volleyball game — who knew?). Every state in the Lower 48 had average temperatures above, well, average; New Jersey hit its highest temperature ever. […]

China and India have joined Kyoto, they just have different obligations, as is morally appropriate

(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide)

Objection: Why should the U.S. join Kyoto while India and China haven't?

Answer: The U.S. puts out more CO2 than any other nation on earth, including China and India, by a large margin. Considering the relative populations (a billion-plus each for China and India versus 300 million in the U.S.), per capita emissions in the U.S. are many times larger. This has been true for the past 100-plus years of CO2 pollution.

For the U.S. to refuse to take any steps until India and China do the same is like the fattest man at the table, upon realizing the food is running out, demanding that the hungry people who just sat down cut back just as much as him, at the same time.

‘Kyoto is a big effort for almost nothing’–Kyoto is only in its first phase

(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide)

Objection: The Kyoto treaty, even if fully implemented, would only save us about a tenth of a degree of future temperature rise many decades from now. What a waste of effort! You can see for yourself here at the Junk Science website.

Answer: There are three big problems with this claim.

So says a Houston newspaper

So says the Houston Business Journal.

The problem is not how high the temperature may go, but how fast it is changing

(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide)

Objection: The earth has had much warmer climates in the past. What's so special about the current climate? Anyway, it seems like a generally warmer world will be better.

Answer: I don't know if there is a meaningful way to define an "optimum" average temperature for planet earth. Surely it is better now for all of us than it was 20,000 years ago when so much land was trapped beneath ice sheets. Perhaps any point between the recent climate and the extreme one we may be heading for, with tropical forests inside the arctic circle, is as good as any other. Maybe it's even better with no ice caps anywhere.

It doesn't matter. The critical issue is not what the temperature is, or may be, or will be. The critical issue is how fast it is moving.

Better Not, Pout

North Sea fish population declines as water warms, says new study For the first time, those meddling scientists have found a direct link between warming seas and dying fish. A heated habitat leads to rapid population decline for the eelpout, a shallow bottom-dweller in the North Sea, according to a decade-long German study recently published […]

The former says nothing about the latter

“We found that there is just no way that the observed changes [in hurricane strength] [in sea-surface temperatures] could be attributed purely to internally generated natural variability.” (see correction at bottom of post) So said Tom Wigley — one of many people at NCAR with more expertise and peer-reviewed papers in the area of hurricanes […]