Author Archives: Kit Stolz

Global Warming: #2 on the Pop Charts

Thom Yorke, lead singer of the world-famous band Radiohead, is not the first pop artist to find success with a song about global warming. Andrew Bird, a superb violinist and exciting new rock musician with a long-term interest in weather systems, already has an alternative hit with his Tables and Chairs, a soaring song withContinue reading “Global Warming: #2 on the Pop Charts”

Innovative White House Strategy: Incompetence Exhaustion

A couple of months ago I remarked that the Bush administration had found an innovative strategy to avoid further investigations: scandal fatigue. Administration screw-ups (WMDs, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Valerie Plame, Medicare, the budget, and many, many more) have become so complicated and overwhelming that most people tune out less spectacular misdeeds. But while the worldContinue reading “Innovative White House Strategy: Incompetence Exhaustion”

Southwestern Drought Linked to Hot SoCal Summer

Hmmmm. My favorite meteorologist, Bill Patzert, yesterday linked the drought in the Southwest–now heading into its eighth year–to the unusually hot summer we’ve been having down here in Southern California. According to the story in the LATimes: The cool ocean breezes and clouds that meteorologists call Southern California’s natural air conditioner broke down this year,Continue reading “Southwestern Drought Linked to Hot SoCal Summer”

My Generation’s Biggest Challenge? (Graph of the Week)

This chart, from a geophysical study published in the journal of the National Academy of Sciences last year at about this time, shows carbon emissions by each recent human generation. Generations before us have not hugely altered the atmosphere, but we’re changing all that. Take a look at how much bigger our contribution to theContinue reading “My Generation’s Biggest Challenge? (Graph of the Week)”

Taking on the Skeptics, One by One

In Australia, for John Quiggin’s leading enviro blog, a special guest named Charles Young brilliantly deconstructs prominent climate change-dismisser Bjorn Lomborg. Lomborg is a statistician who convenes conferences in Europe to argue that climate change is a trivial problem compared to hunger and AIDS in Africa. (Though, as John Quiggin points out, he wasn’t outspokenContinue reading “Taking on the Skeptics, One by One”

Flower Wrenching! Or, Sunday Morning on the Planet (the Ed Abbey edition)

The most entertaining of all nature writers is surely Ed Abbey, a pickup truck novelist and philosopher who pointedly refused to adopt "the lofty stance, the wise man’s tone" when it came to his desire to save the planet from rape and pillage. Orion magazine has just published a sheaf of letters from Abbey notContinue reading “Flower Wrenching! Or, Sunday Morning on the Planet (the Ed Abbey edition)”

Global Warming: The Spectator Sport

According to a story Friday in The Guardian, a huge chunk of rock–twice the size of the Empire State Building–is about to fall off the famous Eiger mountain in the Swiss Alps.  Since the alarm was sounded for the Eiger tourists have been gathering around the town of Grindelwald in the hope of seeing whatContinue reading “Global Warming: The Spectator Sport”