This new poll of climate scientists by The Guardian will raise many an eyebrow. If the quotes in the article reflect where the climate science community is heading, get ready for an ugly debate that will probably split the environmental community. The mitigation crowd has already boarded its freight train. If the adaptation crowd gets…Continue Reading…
No environmental issue, other than global warming, generates as much controversy and misguided rhetoric as overpopulation. (The disclaimer at the top of the Wikipedia entry that I link to speaks for itself.) The population issue has loomed so large in the environmental movement that greens these days have a tendency to consider it part of…Continue Reading…
Some months ago, Joseph Tainter published a withering essay entitled, “Collapse, Sustainability, and the Environment: How Authors Choose to Fail or Succeed.” The title is a clever play off of Jared Diamond’s 2005 best-seller. Anyone interested in an overview of collapse literature and a counter-perspective to the current popularizing of the concept should read Tainter’s…Continue Reading…
I doubt anyone walks away from an Arlo Guthrie concert disappointed. He’s too entertaining a storyteller, and many of his punch lines are masterfully timed. And then there’s the music. Tonight, I saw him at the Boulder theater and in addition to his own stuff (to borrow a favorite Guthrie word), he ranged from Leadbelly…Continue Reading…
I’m sympathetic to this farmer, who is responding to new neighbors that left the city for greener pastures: When you live in the country, sometimes it smells. Sometimes it’s noisy. Sometimes it’s dusty. Sometimes there’s cattle that cry all night for their mothers. We’re doing nothing wrong. We’re doing nothing we haven’t been doing. But…Continue Reading…
As I pulled into the supermarket today, a classic from The Cranberries came on the car radio. Because I had a rare few minutes of alone time, (parents of young children will surely understand), I stayed in the car to listen to the song, appropriately titled, “Linger.” Like coming across those stories that grab our…Continue Reading…
“The Population Bomb” is number three on Daniel Drezner’s top ten worst books in international relations. First, he [Ehrlich] was wrong on the specifics. Second, by garnering so much attention by being wrong, he contributed to the belief that alarmism was the best way to get people to pay attention to the environment. Third, by…Continue Reading…
Building on recent concerns, the U.S. Navy is mulling climate change a lot lately. (H/T, The New Security Beat.) Memo to Romm and other catastrophe-mongers: instead of conflating every major flood or wildfire with global warming, which is not credibly supported by science, why not talk more about the increasing apprehension within the U.S. military…Continue Reading…
Folks over at Oil & Gas Investor are finding consolation in the latest James Bond movie. And pretending to learn something new about the role oil plays in geopolitics. After seeing “Quantum of Solace,” Stephen Payne got to thinking about the world we live in and writes that, “unfortunately,” politicians need to have a sort…Continue Reading…
Remember the good old days? Well, according to Current Archaeology, The perception that much of prehistory was relatively peaceful is changing. I happen to think that Stanley Kubrick, in one indelible scene 40 years ago, already dispensed with that perception.