Looks like Marc Morano is steering clear of the U.S. military’s acceptance of climate change. You won’t find any big, bold headlines on Climate Depot about how the Pentagon is planning for a warmer world: Climate change will affect DoD in two broad ways. First, climate change will shape the operating environment, roles, and missions…Continue Reading…
There are varied forces arrayed against wind and solar, but Todd Woody at Yale Environment 360 nicely sums up the situation in the California desert: The Mojave has become a metaphor for an existential crisis in the environmental movement as it tries to balance the development of renewable energy with its traditional mission to protect…Continue Reading…
It starts. I’m convinced that Joe Romm will not go down without a fight. He will, to paraphrase a famous term from a far more socially divisive chapter in American history, destroy the climate debate to save it. You think I exaggerate? Check out his post today, in which Romm finally acknowledges that enviros are…Continue Reading…
In 2008, it was shaped by Copenhagen and the proposed U.S. congressional cap & trade legislation. That makes sense, since major political events (especially protracted ones) tend to propel narratives. (Ordinarily, climate science drives the global warming narrative, but 2008 was akin to a presidential election year for climate change.) Sure there were new public…Continue Reading…
That Osama Bin Laden. What a carpetbagger. It’s not enough for him to be the front man for a global jihad movement? He’s got to horn in on the biggest environmental issue of the day, too? Seriously, Bin Laden entering the global warming fray is about the last thing climate advocates would want. He’s toxic….Continue Reading…
David Roberts is first out of the box to note the obvious, after reading this story in today’s Times, which quotes Republican Lindsey Graham: Realistically, the cap-and-trade bills in the House and the Senate are going nowhere. They’re not business-friendly enough, and they don’t lead to meaningful energy independence. Graham then drives the nail in…Continue Reading…
That wily Frank Luntz. What’s he up to? Last week, the Republican pollster advised enviros on how to sell the congressional climate bill. (Don’t mention polar bears or cap and trade, the bill’s centerpiece. Instead, talk about energy security and jobs.) That’s quite a turnaround from the guy who, in 2002, counseled the Bush Administration…Continue Reading…
Is it official? Can we say the IPCC is having an even worse week than the U.S. Democratic party? First the Himalayan glaciers, then the ongoing Rajendra Pachauri chronicles, and now this story, which is bound to reverberate for days, if not weeks. Let me be the first to point out the common denominator: the…Continue Reading…
Looks like there’s an important new voice in the climate change debate. As Roger Pielke Jr. notes, Bill Gates recently offered some refreshing thoughts on climate policy, starting with this: Conservation and behavior change alone will not get us to the dramatically lower levels of Co2 emissions needed to make a real difference. We need…Continue Reading…
Quirin Schiermeier has a must-read piece (free access) in Nature about the gaps in climate science. It’s a sober and frank examination, placed in a larger (and very helpful) perspective. He lists the bullet points in this blog post: My feature describes unressolved problems in four specific areas – regional climate prediction, precipitation changes, aerosols,…Continue Reading…