Climate Climate & Energy

The Mend Is Nigh

Some scientists look to geoengineering to stave off climate change What will it take to stop global warming? Reducing developed-world consumption and funding clean technologies in the developing world? Boooring. Human-engineered ultra-reflecting clouds, altered carbon-soaking oceans, trillions of little sunshades floating in space? Now we’re talking! “We should treat these ideas like any other research […]

Olive Twist

“Climate-change farmer” plants England’s first olive grove Britain’s first olive grove has been planted in Devon in southwestern England — made possible by global warming. Traditionally an iconic crop of Mediterranean regions, the olive may soon be able to flourish in more northerly climes, some specialists believe, thanks to rising temperatures. Olive entrepreneur Mark Diacono […]

Profit and Laos

Big dam project in Laos aims to minimize environmental and social damage A controversial hydropower dam under construction in Laos will serve as a test case for whether a large dam can be built without trampling too heavily on the natural world and human rights. Supporters, including the World Bank, say the Nam Theun 2 […]

Heh Heh, He Said Buttress

Greenland is melting fast and worrying scientists Greenland’s name may soon be more accurate, as its two-mile-thick ice sheet is melting twice as fast as it was five years ago — faster than climate models predicted. Since 1991, the average winter temperature has risen almost 10 degrees; by 2005, the landmass was losing up to […]

Addicted to Oil, with Tom Friedman

I poke fun at Thomas Friedman on occasion. His platitudinous, gee-whiz, American-tourist prose, presented with a heaping helping of deep-think pretension, is a target-rich environment. But that gee-whiz persona serves him well when he’s right, and he’s right about energy. His Discovery Channel program Addicted to Oil, which aired Sat. night, is absolutely stellar. Catch […]

Au revoir, Greenland

Meanwhile, over at the L.A. Times, we find that the Greenland ice sheet is melting faster than climate models predicted.

Hey, I figure, more freshwater for us! Our grandkids? Eff them.

Fuel tax magic, part one

The following is part one of a guest essay from Charles Komanoff, an economist and environmental activist in New York City. For more on taxing carbon fuels, go to http://www.komanoff.net/fossil/.

For part two of this essay, go here.

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"Pam and Matt Keith spent Memorial Day weekend on a houseboat on Lake Oroville in Northern California. But because of high gasoline prices, the Keiths never even untied the boat from its mooring slightly offshore. When they ventured away from the shore, they supplied their own power -- in kayaks."

So began The New York Times take on the start of the summer driving season in an age of $3 gas: "Holiday Travelers Hit the Road, but Scrimped a Bit."

The Times' page-one piece was guaranteed to bring smiles to both economists and despisers of motorized recreation. As a member of both camps, I ate it up. I loved that the Keiths were kayaking instead of houseboating around the lake, and that another California couple, Celia and Michael Shane, had shelved their annual jet-skiing trip in Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Nevada. "To save the $70 per tank it now costs to fill up their minivan," the Times reported, "the Shanes were barbecuing instead." For guys like me who can let a single roaring jet ski ruin an entire beach day, fewer decibels mean more happiness. And after a year's drumbeat of articles insisting that higher gas prices hadn't dented Americans' "love affair with their cars," it was heartening to see the paper of record start acknowledging the No. 1 tenet of economics -- higher prices mean lower demand.

The world's thirst for petroleum breeds war, props up dictators, and imperils the climate. Known oil deposits are shrinking by the day. So no question in economics is more pressing than whether, and by how much, changes in the price of gas reduce the demand for it. I've been examining this question since May 2004, when the price first edged past two bucks. Every month I faithfully enter the latest price and consumption data into a spreadsheet. This has to be done just right. For one thing, because gas use follows seasonal patterns, monthly data must be compared over intervals of 12 months (or 24, etc.). For another, changes in price must be adjusted for general inflation. Most important is netting out the upswing in gasoline use that ordinarily accompanies expanding economic activity when the price of gas is stable. Only after taking these steps can one isolate the effect of higher pump prices on gasoline demand.

Goodell on coal gasification

My officemates are furiously packing, washing, dusting, and hauling in preparation for the Big Grist Move (you could help out by sending a few dollars our way!). I fled the scene to come home, using the excuse that somebody has to keep the blog going. So I guess I better blog about something ...

On Wednesday, I had a long, fascinating conversation with Jeff Goodell, author of Big Coal. I hope we can get it up in a week or so. In the meantime, check out the great op-ed Goodell just wrote for the NYT, which echoes many of the things we discussed. It's mainly about the big push behind coal-to-liquid plants.

About sequestration:

It’s Wicked, Wicked Real

Two new high-profile studies reaffirm global-warming science Last year, the National Academy of Sciences was commissioned by Congress to rigorously assess a notorious climate study that has become a flash point in the debate between global-warming denialists and the other 98 percent of us. The study contained a graph that’s come to be known as […]

Sear in the Headlights

Summer in Western U.S. is off to a hot, dry, fiery start In Western states, wildfires and heat waves are getting an early start this year — a pattern unsurprising to climate scientists, and likely to get worse. Wildfires have already burned more than 3 million acres, more than triple the average for this time […]