climate change

Stealing from the future

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I thought – or hoped — Paul Krugman’s recent New York Times op-ed, “Cheating Our Children,” was going to be about an important issue involving our individual and societal responsibilities to our descendants. It was – just not the one I anticipated from the headline. Perhaps I was practicing wishful thinking, but when I read “Yes, we are cheating our children, but the deficit has nothing to do with it,” I assumed he was going to talk about the fact that the decisions we make today are determining the environment (and hence the future) for upcoming generations, and that those generations have absolutely no voice in those decisions.

Chilling out globally

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What has the atomic number of 16, and is liable, in the form of a compound, to be spritzed into the stratosphere by the mega-ton? You’d be right if you said sulfur. That’s one of the interventions suggested by geo-engineers to reduce global warming, along with such initiatives as making biochar, "sequestering" CO2 under the earth, brightening clouds by spraying water upwards, and dumping iron powder in the sea. A sulfur compound injected into the middle atmosphere would mimic a massive volcanic eruption, which is known to reduce the mean surface temperature.

Current U.S. energy policy: Risk management that is worse than ever

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Current U.S. energy policy is, in fact, a hodgepodge of disconnected policies designed for specific constituencies with no coherent goal. What never gets asked and answered definitively in the policy debate is this: What should our ultimate goal be and when should we aim to achieve it?

Climate, politics & money – Mar 29

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•Giant investment bank taken over by hippie alarmists •Fossil Fuels Divestment Fever: Canadian Students, Doctors Launch New Campaign •Republican Mayor Leads City To First-Ever Solar Energy Mandate •New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated •Why Russian doomsday climate predictions may prove prophetic •Carbon in Worst Quarter Since 2011 Set for Rescue Vote

The other job

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This is a blog about carbon, and by extension climate change mitigation, but there’s another big job that’s rising fast on a lot of people’s To Do lists. It’s called adaptation, and suddenly everyone’s talking about it – for good reason as I learned last week. And the reason is this: the future is now. Climate-related changes are bearing down on us faster than many scientists expected, requiring action by individuals, communities, cities, and nations to reduce their effects. Inaction (like so much else connected to climate change) will only magnify the challenges, making them much harder to solve later. In other words, our collective To Do list just got a lot longer.

Climate and the Khans

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There are periods in Western Civilization’s history that lack the glamor of the ages of empire or the steady march of progress that seemed to characterize the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans or other remarkably advanced societies. Between military adventures we tend see the periods of hiatus and re-consolidation as “dark” or “middle” ages. Nothing much was going on, we think. These periods comprise a largely un-rediscovered history. The fascination of the dominant university narrative with militarism also leaves out vast areas on the periphery, where a lot of innovation began.

Will the final blow for America’s shale gas ‘revolution’ be high prices?

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As U.S. natural gas prices flirt with the $4 mark, some skeptics of the so-called shale gas revolution think prices are headed much higher. Such a move would, not surprisingly, seriously undermine the official story that the United States has a century of cheap natural gas waiting for the drillbit.

Climate, politics & money – Mar 21

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•Greedy Lying Bastards, New Film Pulls No Punches To Expose Climate Denial Machine •Climate Change Denying Congressman to Head Subcommittee on Climate Change •Distribution of Carbon Emissions in the UK: Implications for Domestic Energy Policy •How Many Gigatons of Carbon Dioxide…? •Nations urged to combine environmental and development goals

Victory at Hand for the Climate Movement?

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There are signs the climate movement could be on the verge of a remarkable and surprising victory. If we read the current context correctly, and if the movement can adjust its strategy to capture the opportunity presented, it could usher in the fastest and most dramatic economic transformation in history. This would include the removal of the oil, coal and gas industries from the economy in just a few decades and their replacement with new industries and, for the most part, entirely new companies. It would be the greatest transfer of wealth and power between industries and countries the world has ever seen.

Phoenix in the Climate Crosshairs

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We’re not the first people on the planet ever to experience climate stress.  In the overheating, increasingly parched American Southwest, which has been experiencing rising temperatures, spreading drought conditions, and record wildfires, there is an ancient history of staggering mega-droughts, events far worse than the infamous “dust bowl” of the 1930s, the seven-year drought that devastated America’s prairie lands.  That may have been “the worst prolonged environmental disaster recorded for the country,” but historically speaking it was a “mere dry spell” compared to some past mega-droughts that lasted &ddquo;centuries to millennia.”