**UPDATE: Stuart Pimm, the highly respected conservation biologist at Duke University, emailed me his thoughts on the climate change/global land use dichotomy that is implied by my post. It’s an important perspective. Stuart has given me permission to publish his email in its entirety. You can find it below at this comment.** Perhaps the biggest…Continue Reading…
There’s big news today that will reinforce the hardening belief among many climate scientists and climate advocates that there is nothing constructive to be learned from climategate. That would be a huge mistake. Alas, perhaps the die is already cast. In the volatile climate change debate, journalism has come under increasing attack in the blogosphere…Continue Reading…
It seems the Real Climate gang is feeling invigorated after having many of its kinks worked out by the deep Krugman massage. Today, Eric Steig squeezes in a two-for-one pot shot at Andy Revkin and Roger Pielke Jr., while saluting The Economist. Man, there’s some bad feelings RC just can’t seem to shake. Maybe a…Continue Reading…
Experts who are grappling honestly with the national security/climate change nexus will wince when they see this post by the Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson. It’s the kind of blatant political exploitation of recent headlines that some scholars warned about when the climate security meme was picked up prominently by mainstream media last summer. Johnson, doing…Continue Reading…
There was a time in the mid-2000s when it seemed that every other Thomas Friedman column was about the connection between U.S. oil consumption and terrorism. Here he is in 2005, in “No Mullah Left Behind”: By adamantly refusing to do anything to improve energy conservation in America, or to phase in a $1-a-gallon gasoline…Continue Reading…
It’s only a matter of time before “America’s fiercest climate change activist blogger” let’s one rip on this essay by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger. Above all, Joe Romm will vehemently object to the essay’s central thesis–that energy policy should be divorced from climate science. Doing this would deprive Romm of his main arsenal, which…Continue Reading…
Over the weekend I attended a large wedding anniversary party in Florida. Lots of smart, successful people in attendance. At one of the tables I was sitting at, a few snow birds were complaining about the unusually cold winter. It sounded as if some pact had been breached. One retiree complained about having to keep…Continue Reading…
As I noted in this review of Cleo Paskal’s new book, “the northwest passage looms large in geopolitics.” Paskal argues that the the U.S. and European Union are allowing short term economic interests in the Arctic to threaten their long-term security interests. It’s one of the more provocative assertions she makes in Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises…Continue Reading…
I have a guest post up at Nature’s Climate Feedback, titled “Are climate scientists ignoring the lessons of climategate?”
Earlier this month, the Center for American Progress (CAP) moderated an interesting panel discussion on the relationship between migration and climate change. Based upon this CAP paper on the subject, issued in December, it would seem that the liberal think tank is not above overplaying the scary climate migrant card. So, via The New Security…Continue Reading…