Oh, the irony. Yesterday, Rolling Stone magazine posted Al Gore’s 7,000 word essay, which is critical of the media’s (and President Obama’s) handling of climate change. That same day, the highly respected PBS news show hosted a discussion of Gore’s essay. Instead of inviting non-partisan environmental scholars or political scientists to analyze the essay’s premises,…Continue Reading…
Mark Lynas is digging in his heels and standing up for principle, or, if you’re inclined to view this escalating controversy over IPCC process and ethics, he’s being a handmaiden for the Dark Side in the endless climate wars. In his latest post, Lynas uses the analogy of an Exxon-Mobil employee being a lead IPCC…Continue Reading…
Michael Levi at his Council on Foreign Relations blog has an interesting take on a recent decision by New Jersey’s Governor: People who care about climate change are understandably upset with Chris Christie’s announcement that he’s pulling New Jersey out of the Regional Greeenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the first-of-a-kind cap-and-trade program for carbon dioxide emissions in…Continue Reading…
I’m confused. We have this news: Worldwide carbon-dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels reached a record 30.6 billion metric tons in 2010, an international energy group reports. And this admission: The shock rise means the goal of preventing a temperature rise of more than 2 degrees Celsius ““ which scientists say is the threshold for potentially…Continue Reading…
A commenter (“Joshua”) at Climate Etc observes: How anyone can not see the tribal character of the combatants on both sides of this debate is astounding to me. Ensuing responses in the thread indicate that Climate Etc denizens don’t see this, so “Joshua” elaborated: My point is that a baseline assumption for everyone involved should…Continue Reading…
Below is a guest post from Jonathan Gilligan, an associate professor in the Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences, Vanderbilt University. He is also the associate director of Vanderbilt’s Climate Change Research Network. Gilligan works at “the intersection of science, ethics, and public policy with a focus on the ways in which scientific knowledge and…Continue Reading…
This essay by Bill McKibben is getting a lot of eyeballs. Originally published yesterday in The Washington Post (where it was among the most widely read articles for part of the day), it has since been reproduced in Salon and The Huffington Post. At the Washington Post, the piece thus far has generated over 1200…Continue Reading…
I’ve been traveling, so I’ve only been keeping up with the news sporadically. But this front page NYT story from Monday, about Chicago (and other cities) preparing for climate change, deserves mention. It also highlights the parallel (but strikingly different) universes of the climate change debate. In her piece, Leslie Kaufman nicely displays the disconnect…Continue Reading…
A former Republican governor from a conservative state who is now considering a run for President is….get ready for it..vouching for climate science and not denying the existence of global warming. Shocking! Unbelievable! He also must not be seriously thinking he can win the GOP nomination. Here’s the excerpt of Jon Huntsman’s interview with Time…Continue Reading…
There is this assumption in environmental and climate circles that the Republican party represents (in the United States) the biggest obstacle to political progress on climate change. Recent developments certainly support this view. Since 2009, the GOP has become increasingly hostile to climate science. Republican presidential hopefuls are marching to this same Tea Party beat (even those…Continue Reading…