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Investing in technology vs. pricing carbon
This quote from a story about a recent report on the challenge of integrating "green" cars into the marketplace contains an important policy lesson: “While considerable interest exists among governments, media and environmentalists in promoting...
Climate change and the Caribbean coral bleaching, again
There's an upswing of skepticism about climate change of late, thanks in part to the crazy season in the US (and I'm not talking about the baseball playoffs, although they have been pretty surprising too). While the pundits argue, the climate keeps...
Collaborating with industry on publications and climate solutions
The article Geoengineering: The Inescapable Truth of Getting to 350 from online hybrid magazine / academic publication The Solutions Journal appeared in my inbox today. We can argue back and forth about the societal and ecological implications of...
Obama and Chu on piecemeal climate policy
This is from US President Obama's interview in Rolling Stone: When I ask him [Stephen Chu] how we are going to solve this problem internationally, what he'll tell you is that we can get about a third of this done through efficiencies and existing...
Glacier melt and water supply in North America
We often here about glacier melt in Asia threatening the water supply for the downstream population. Faux controversies about a single line in the IPCC reports aside, the potential decline in South Asian water flows is certainly a critical concern...
The second "global" coral bleaching event
The NY Times has an article on the observations of coral bleaching across the planet over the past 12 months, an subject I've raised here in the past few months. The NY Times article calls the concurrence of events "only the second known global...
Really, what do Republican "climate zombies" accomplish?
A colleague mentioned this list (also see Joe Romm) of statements about climate change by Republican candidates for Senate. With one exception, they all doubt that human activity is responsible for climate change. Sure I agree with all the...
The Mark: Why U.S. environmentalists should support offshore drilling
Last week, President Obama shocked environmentalists by opening millions of acres of the American continental shelf to oil and gas drilling. The announcement reminded me of a backpacking trip I took to Malaysian Borneo several years ago. Stranded...
Pod science: PRI's The World Science
For all those lamenting the decline of science journalism in print and on television, its worth checking out the growing number of science podcasts. One great example is Public Radio International's The World: Science hosted by Rhitu Chaterjee....
Tongue-tied on global warming
A few days ago, I waded into the old "global warming" vs. "climate change" debate to demonstrate a simple point about public communication. The issue at hand is not which term is most appropriate. Of course, there is a legitimate argument to be...
Global warming trumps climate change?
So much of the online climate "debate" is about effective communication, not science. Earlier this week, I met with a public opinion expert who critiqued the way many scientists and environmental groups speak about, er, climate change, no global...
The opt-in climate policy for Canada: Some detail
Since people are asking, here's a little bit of background on my climate policy proposal in the Mark. I trust that to many an "optional" climate policy smells fishy, like setting voluntary targets that companies or jurisdictions will then...
