Category Archives: climate

I admire scientists enormously but let’s face it, they’re not the most captivating of storytellers, even with their nifty color graphs. Darwin has a lot to say but when it comes to our heritage, he loses most of the country, the polls say, and no matter how many times anthropologists and National Geographic explain thatContinue reading “Writers Around the World…on the Big Heat”

The Brookings Institute, Goldman Sachs, the Wharton School of Business, and quite a few other prestigious institutions allied to host a conference of economists in New York last month on the top ten risks facing the global economy. Among those risks was global warming (although it was considered far less threatening than the rise inContinue reading “Kyoto is Dead: Now What?”

People far more famous than I have called Rush Limbaugh a big fat liar, but what shocks me is not just the fact that he shades the truth, or that he blames the Clintons for everything under the sun, or even that he misleads. Everyone has a point of view, and everyone is going toContinue reading “Mr. Orwell, Meet Mr. Limbaugh. Mr. Limbaugh, meet–Oh! You’ve Already Met”

According to a story in USAToday, Harlan L. Watson, the U.S. envoy to negotiations on climate change, finds no connection between climate change and the strength of hurricanes. "Our scientists are telling us right now that there’s not a linkage," he said in Geneva. "I’ll rely on their information." None. Zero. Nada. Zip. This isContinue reading “Who is Harlan Talking To?”

According to the Financial Times, the US and Australia will on Thursday announce a plan they say will reduce the escalating emissions of greenhouse gases. As part of the as-yet-unnamed scheme, they will  offer Asian nations China, India, and South Korea new technologies to reduce their emissions as well, early reports say. The White HouseContinue reading “How to Lead and How to Mislead”

A Republican Congressman from Texas has launched an investigation into the research of three climate scientists, notably Michael Mann, arguing–based on an article in the Wall St. Journal–that their representation of a warming climate is fundamentally flawed. The threatening nature of inquiry is apparent in the Congressman’s letter. For example, here’s one passage: 4. ProvideContinue reading “Elephants Squabble Over Climate Change”

Chevron (er, excuse me, ChevronTexaco) recently has launched a truly exquisite website called will you join us? It’s about the fact that at this moment in history we as a busy, busy species have burned through at least half of the available oil reserves on the planet…and are expected by many experts to burn throughContinue reading “Chevron Gets Serious”

While I was on vacation, a fascinating piece on the insurance industry’s attempts to quantify global warming in the L.A. Times  (registration required) ran last week. Although well-researched and thick with thought-provoking quotes from scientists, insurance industry experts, and skeptics, the piece by Michael Bustillo couldn’t seem to decide if the reinsurance industry’s fears ofContinue reading “Is the Insurance Industry Exploiting Global Warming?”

"Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue," said the witty La Rouchefoucauld, back in 1665. In California in 2005, the governor — a former movie star who more than any other individual popularized the Humvee, an extreme emitter of the prime heat-trapping gas, CO2 — now declares his opposition to global warming. Because anotherContinue reading “The Usefulness of Hypocrisy”

Environmental correspondent Judith Lewis points out that over on the right, Reason magazine’s science reporter Ronald Bailey’s "obdurate" see-no-global-warming, hear-no-global-warming, speak-no-global-warming stance is beginning to crack…while on the left, The Guardian‘s science reporter, Robin McKie, opens discussion of a innovative scheme to bury carbon dioxide emissions from English power plants, instead of releasing them intoContinue reading “Changing Climates, Changing Minds”