CBO’s Peter Orszag on the economics of putting a safety valve in a cap-and-trade bill: One option for allowing firms flexibility in determining when to reduce emissions while also achieving compliance with a cumulative emissions target would be through setting both a ceiling—typically referred to as a safety valve—and a floor on the allowance prices …
David Appell (who got me hooked on climate blogging in the first place) has some wise words regarding the latest bit of back-and-forth on climate change and hurricanes: Clearly more study is needed. Give the scientists time to do their jobs before you plan out your propaganda.
Preliminary 2007 US greenhouse emission numbers are out:
0.04 inch of rain overnight at my house (0.1 cm). First measurable precip since April 10. It looks from the COCORAHS map as though some folks down in the valley got a good soaking.
I wrote a piece in Sunday’s newspaper about new work by Ben Cook at NASA Goddard and his colleagues about the role of dust in the Dust Bowl drought. As the name implies, we knew the Dust Bowl was dusty. The new bit here is a much more clear understanding of the role of dust …
Environmental economist John Whitehead explains why he won’t sign the economists’ petition arguing for a 100 percent auction of carbon emission credits, rather than giving some of them away for free: Why won’t I sign? I agree with everything in the statement except for the 100% part. 100% auctions seems like a guarantee that some …
Matthew Nisbet: Conventional wisdom pegged Gore’s film and media campaign as changing the nature of the debate in the public’s mind, but unfortunately this interpretation doesn’t hold up to the data.
From the BBC: Great tits cope well with warming: Researchers found that great tits are laying eggs earlier in the spring than they used to, keeping step with the earlier emergence of caterpillars. (via Belshaw)
In a sort of grand convergence of anti-environmental flypaper, a souffle of red meat, New Scientist just sent out this news flash: Penguins exposed to DDT from melting glaciers Decades after most countries stopped using the insecticide DDT, frozen stores of the chemical are now dripping out of melting Antarctic glaciers – and into penguins. …
Lawrence Solomon: Next to Al Gore, William Connolley may be the world’s most influential person in the global warming debate. I’ll just point out that my Connolley number is 1. I am one degree of separation from greatness.