Climate Climate & Energy

Forget about CO2 for a minute already

It's a dirty secret in the blog world that occasionally bloggers will recommend that their readers read something that they themselves have not read. (Gasp.) But not this blog! At least, not any more! Or rather, at least not this time!

Yesterday I was going to recommend "Bringing Society Back into the Climate Debate" (PDF), a new paper by Roger Pielke Jr. and Daniel Sarewitz (found via their excellent Prometheus science blog). But then I realized that it's a PDF, it's wonky, it's written in dry academic language, and y'all would never read it. And really, how could I expect you to if I hadn't? So last night, I read it.

My initial reaction: They make an extremely good point. Enviros need to reconsider their monomaniacal focus on cutting CO2 emissions.

Go beneath the fold for a brief summary.

Kids Absorb the Darndest Things

Lower IQs in mercury-exposed children cost U.S. billions, study says The effects of mercury on fetal development are costing the U.S. economy $8.7 billion a year, says a new study. Some 317,000 to 637,000 children born in the U.S. each year have been exposed to unsafe mercury levels in the womb, and many of them […]

Dam

Hydropower a major greenhouse-gas producer, researchers say Although hydroelectric power is often heralded as a green alternative to fossil fuels like coal, scientists now say that in terms of greenhouse-gas production, hydro projects may be just as damning. Ahem. New research reveals that the initial flooding involved in creating hydroelectric dams releases large amounts of […]

Ich Bin Ein Cowboy

U.S., Germany agree on vague climate measures President Bush is on a tour of Europe, seeking ways to repair relationships with traditional allies that don’t involve changing any U.S. position on any subject — and that includes global warming. His stop in Germany yesterday to talk with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was a positive, if strained, […]

Hazed and Confused

Appeals court rejects five-state plan for clean park air A market-based program used by five Western states to control haze in national parks and wilderness areas was rejected by a federal appeals court Friday. Brought to court in a challenge by a coal and utilities industry group, the states’ efforts to cut sulfur-dioxide pollution and […]

Global Warming — It’s Infectious

Environmental change linked to spread of infectious diseases If the catastrophic flooding, drought, and weather-related calamities associated with global warming don’t kill you, exotic infectious diseases might step up to do the job, a new report released by the U.N. suggests. It found that changes to the environment — such as deforestation, urban growth, mining, […]

Cities Slicker

Seattle, other U.S. cities to hammer out their own Kyoto-like reductions The Kyoto Protocol has arrived, and though the Bush administration has opted out, others in the U.S. are not so climate oblivious. Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels announced Wednesday he’s leading an effort to get major U.S. cities to agree to Kyoto-like reductions of their […]

A Current Affair

New data on warming oceans are strong evidence for climate change Measurements of ocean temperatures presented yesterday constitute (still more) compelling evidence that global warming is upon us, say scientists. The data, introduced at the annual gathering of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, show that temperature readings in the oceans for the […]

Umbra on how climate change will affect us

Dear Umbra, My girlfriend asked me the other day why global warming was going to be so bad for her. I just graduated with a degree in environmental science, and I like to think I learned something in my classes, but I still struggled to give her a concise, straightforward answer. I see new research […]

Photos of Tuvalu show global warming in action

Since 1999, photographer Gary Braasch has worked to document global warming around the world. His images bring home a concept that’s often hard to visualize. Today, as the Kyoto Protocol goes into effect, Braasch sends a dispatch and photos from Tuvalu, a Pacific island nation whose fate already hangs in the balance. Photos: © Gary […]