Critically Thinking Copenhagen

Everyone is talking about climate change and Copenhagen, so I suppose I should be…The latest dither around the topic involves back and forths between adherents and deniers of the climate change hypothesis and a certain expose of emails supposedly refuting the reality of climate change and a plethora of rebuttals to those emails.

Fear and loathing in the blogosphere: doom, gloom, and controlling the message

Lest you think I’m all about unwarranted criticism, the reason I keep turning to these particular blogs is because I enjoy their writing. So, although I’ll be poking a little fun and pointing out the absurdities I observe, I’ll keep reading these folks as long as they keep me entertained or informed. I’m especially inclined toward humor, and especially writers who manage to take their own messages seriously without taking themselves seriously.

Transition Reflections from Copenhagen: Naresh Giangrande blogs from COP15

Klimaforum, the people’s conference, has started slowly. Maybe a 1000-2000 of us in many different locations feeling our way into perhaps the defining moment of our life and times which this conference represents and reflect the hopes an fears of our generation in a way that no other I have even been to does. There is a tension and an intensity that I have never felt before.

ODAC Newsletter – Dec 11

In a commentary published in The Times this week to coincide with the Copenhagen climate talks, Fatih Birol, Chief Economist of the International Energy Agency wrote that on existing energy demand projections “the world faces the prospect of a peak in conventional oil production in about 2020…

Not In the Labor Force

Some of us think America is in Big Trouble. The often sarcastic way I cast doubt on government unemployment statistics today may strike you as negative in the extreme, and in a way it is. But the real dilemma we face is simple: are we going to address deep structural problems in our economy? Or are we going to keep lying to ourselves about those problems? How long are we going to pretend they don’t exist?

Is “Clean Coal” a Dead End?

Many energy experts, politicians on both sides of the aisle, and representatives of the coal industry agree on the need to spend billions to develop technologies to capture and store the carbon from burning coal, thus making coal “clean” from a climate standpoint.