A moving target: Hardening our infrastructure against climate change
Hardening our infrastructure against the effects of climate change on our electrical grid, our drainage and sewer systems, and our roads and bridges seems like a no-brainer.
climate change
All of a sudden: Climate change tipping points appear with a vengeance
For decades policymakers and the public believed that climate change would arrive gradually and that therefore we had plenty of time to deal with it. Climate scientists knew better. The consequences of delaying action are now in the news every single day.
Climate Change and Resource Depletion. Which Way to Ruin is Faster?
What could bring down the industrial civilization? Would it be global warming (fire) or resource depletion (ice)? At present, it may well be that depletion is hitting us faster. But, in the long run, global warming may hit us much harder. Maybe the fall of our civilization will be Fire AND ice.
Climate change consequences: Too hot, too wet and out of time
We thought we had decades to avert climate catastrophe. But it’s already here.
The Most Colossal Planning Failure in Human History
But let’s assume there is indeed enough time, and that we suddenly get serious about planning. What should we do?
Climate change and the “law of acceleration”
Acceleration is a common theme in contemporary culture and generally tinged with the connotation of “progress.” But acceleration shows itself to be a two-edged sword when applied to the alarming trends in our climate.
Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet: Review
The message in this book is simple: There are hard physical limits to the growth of available energy to power our civilization and these will probably be seriously in effect by the end of the 21st century.
Internalizing Climate Risk
From ‘natural’ disasters causing property damage, to climate mitigation measures rendering fossil fuel assets unburnable, to potential impacts of climate change on agricultural production, energy, food, insurance, real estate, and other sectors, it’s clear that private sector companies and all kinds of investments stand to suffer significant losses as a consequence of climate change.
The ‘new normal’ has been postponed (and probably canceled)
There remains a hope that once we get past the economic and social effects of the pandemic, all of us will be able to return to something resembling normal life before the pandemic—even if it is a “new normal” marked by heightened vigilance and protection against infectious disease … But the date for this recovery to a new normal seems to keep getting postponed.
If you can’t stand the heat…get off of the planet!
As I sit in 90-degree heat typical of Washington, D.C. in midsummer and a so-called “heat dome” hovers over much of the United States, I am reading the following: “At 11 or 12 degrees [Fahrenheit] of [global] warming, more than half the world’s population, as distributed today, would die of direct heat. Things almost certainly won’t get that hot this century, though models of unabated emissions do bring us that far eventually.”
Covid-19 sucks but it could teach us how to avoid the worst consequences of climate change
Four things we can learn from the response to COVID-19 that are critical for climate change resilience.
Productivity, Energy and Climate Change—a View on the Links
Radical changes are needed if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change: 2 trillion dollars of fossil fuel related capital investment has to go. Without a better understanding of the basic relationships between energy and production it is hard to say how such changes will play out in the wider economy, and almost impossible to prepare to face them.