scientific research

Research vs. cap-and-trade

Yes, OPEC is now "pledging $750 million for research into climate change technology" (while opposing a cap-and-trade system).

[Note to President Bush, Newt Gingrich, and Bjørn Lomborg -- it ain't a good sign when your climate strategy is the same as OPEC's.]

OPEC, however, seems a tad confused on just what a technology-based strategy could do for oil:

Latest IPCC climate report comes out strong, lays groundwork for Bali talks

“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal,” warned the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its hardest-hitting report yet, released on Saturday. Delegates from more than 140 countries came to agreement on the document, which summarizes three previous reports and warns of the grave dangers posed by climate change. The new report is […]

Priorities

Here’s a nice little graph showing U.S. R&D spending in various types of energy compared to spending in Iraq for 2007 (click on the image for background): This is what we, collectively, deem important.

New study finds that pollution from ships kills 60,000 a year

It's surprising how much pollution ships emit: over 2,000 tons of diesel soot a year in southern California, for example, about 10 percent of the total in the region.

Worse, a new study by researchers at the University of Delaware and Rochester Institute of Technology finds that the burning of cheap, dirty, sulfurous "residual oil" on ships kills an estimated 60,000 people around the world. "Premature mortality" is the phrase used in the study.

Annual average contribution of shipping to (particulate matter) PM<sub>2.5</sub&gt concentrations for Case 2b (in µg/m³). Copyright © 2007 American Chemical Society

(h/t: The Blue Marble)

Organic food is better for you

For years, studies showed no nutritional difference between organic and conventionally grown food. That’s because scientists were looking at macronutrients — vitamins A, B, C, and so on. But they’ve since learned that macronutrients are only part of the nutrition story. It turns out that there are all sorts of compounds like antioxidants and phytonutrients […]

Delayers are replacing deniers

There's been some hand wringing about the fact that science does not have the traction it should in the political debate over climate change.

This is the genesis of the framing argument, most recently pushed by Chris Mooney and Matt Nisbet. Basically, this thesis says that scientists need to put their scientific results into a "frame" that allows the general public to better understand how to interpret their results.

I've never particularly liked "framing," and here's one reason: I think that the scientific community has been extremely effective at getting the word out about climate change.

Look at this article:

Nobel Prize award and Clinton highlight importance of climate science

This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Bill Becker, executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

It has been a good month so far for climate science, and a bad month for climate cynics. It has been an especially bad month for those on the Irrational Right who, for whatever reason, cannot stand the thought that Al Gore has emerged so gloriously from the grave in which they thought they had buried him forever.

"So now 'Algore' will join Yasir Arafat among the list of noble Nobel peace laureates," Rush Limbaugh lamented. By awarding Gore the prize, Limbaugh said, the Nobel committee has "rendered themselves a pure, 100 percent joke."

A week earlier, Hillary Clinton issued her "Agenda to Reclaim Scientific Innovation." As president, Sen. Clinton says, she would ban political appointees from "unduly interfering with scientific conclusions and publications," tell agency heads to resist political pressure that threatens scientific integrity, and protect whistleblowers who tattle on ideologues who mess with science.

Thus, the Bush Administration suffered two loud and public slaps in the face for its suppression of science at a time when the world needs it like never before.

Time to end the phony and historically inaccurate debate

This will, hopefully, be the last post devoted to debunking Shellenberger & Nordhaus.

As noted, S&N spend far more time attacking the environmental community and Al Gore (and even Rachel Carson!) than they do proposing a viable solution. Worse, they don't even attack the real environmental community -- they create a strawman that is mostly a right-wing stereotype of environmentalists.

Now it turns out they support the exact same thing the environmental community -- and energy technologists like me -- have been pushing for many years: an aggressive and intelligent regulatory strategy coupled with a significant increase in the energy R&D budget.

To my great surprise, they have taken up my challenge and endorsed Barack Obama's terrific climate plan. So why are we fighting? Only because S&N keep attacking, keep trying to rewrite history.

S&N claim over and over again that environmentalists don't support increases in clean energy budgets. They even claim I don't support an increase in the budget of the very office I ran at the Energy Department -- and that "'experts' like Romm" shift our analysis "after the political winds changed direction." Silly (and petty).

In this post, I will set the record straight.

This blew a few of my circuits

You’ll learn a lot in these 20 minutes: