My friend Mark Boslough presented a fascinating analysis last month at AGU comparing the risks of climate change to big rocks from space hitting Earth: One objective way to compare the relative magnitude of the impact threat to that of anthropogenic climate change is to estimate the long-term worldwide fatality rate. For asteroids, the average …
Continue reading ‘Quantifying and Thinking About Climate Risk’ »
Nothin’ like a good economic collapse to rein in greenhouse gas emissions. From Bloomberg: Oil demand will fall for a second year, the first back-to-back contractions since 1983, as a deepening recession erodes consumer spending, the International Energy Agency said.
I know Joe Romm is a smart guy. I’ve read lots of his work, and interviewed him for newspaper stories. I am sure he must have useful things to add to the climate change-energy policy discussion. He’s aparently an important guy in this arena, because he gets quoted on Andy Revkin’s blog and stuff. But …
Well, this is a relief: The earth is now on the brink of entering another Ice Age, according to a large and compelling body of evidence from within the field of climate science. Many sources of data which provide our knowledge base of long-term climate change indicate that the warm, twelve thousand year-long Holocene period …
Interesting bit of work in today’s Science arguing that heat, rather than drought, may be the most significant determinant of declining food production as a result of climate change: It will be extremely difficult to balance food deficits in one part of the world with food surpluses in another, unless major adaptation investments are made …
Continue reading ‘Heat, Not Drought, May Pose Biggest Food Threat Under Climate Change’ »
From the Economist: Coal’s share in global energy will continue to climb because of its relative cheapness and abundance, especially in the two largest coal-producing/consuming countries, the US and China. In the US, more coal-fired than gas-fired power plants will come on stream in the next two years. Globally, demand for coal will rise by …
Continue reading ‘Why I Am Skeptical About Successful Greenhouse Gas Reduction Measures’ »
Andy Dessler does a terrific job in this piece of explaining CO2 basics: So we know that adding carbon dioxide is going to warm the planet. This leads us to the real question: How much warming are we going to get? Carbon dioxide by itself will only provide somewhere around 1 degree C warming over …
Stuff I wrote over at the work blog on an intriguing effort to control greenhouse emissions in New Mexico via the state’s Environmental Improvement Board. Basically, the argument is that the EIB already has the legal authority to do it, and no additional legislation is needed. Interesting approach.
Drier Climate on the Way for Southwest (ad gated): Climate change is increasing the chances of severe and persistent drought in the Southwest, according to a new report from a panel of federal scientists. “It’s going to get drier,” said Richard Seager, a climate researcher at Columbia University in New York. That means diminished water …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Water in the Desert Edition’ »
John Whitehead’s green jobs freight train has apparently completely burned its brakes on the run out of the mountains, and is hurtling headlong toward we know not what. In this morning’s epistle, Whitehead quotes a Forbes listing of the new green jobs (Could Forbes really misunderstand macroeconomics? This being a blog and not real journalism, …