Nature has a story on a massive Sahara-based solar energy proposal to be presented to the European Parliament in Brussels tomorrow (Thursday Nov. 28). The price tag mentioned in the story sounds enormous: US$595 billion. The political complications sound vexing. But hey, couldn’t be any harder than retrofitting coal plants for carbon capture, could it? …
I am happy to note that Roger Pielke Sr.’s blog is back.
Per capita income in Kenya is $1,200. Climate change does not currently rank high on the list of pressing concerns of the residents of Nairobi, according to a new study by Meleckidzedeck Khayesi and Chris Shisanya in the journal Climatic Change. The global concern about climate change appeared like a mere drop in the oceanic …
Roger Pielke Jr. points to a nice example of why all the energy so enthusiastically devoted to arguing about the hurricane record or fighting those pesky Climate Audit guys and the other “science wars” activities is such a colossal waste of time. On Prometheus, Roger points to comments by both James Hansen and David Victor …
Kelsey has some nice thoughts on what it would mean to actually try to buy locally: Globalization seems to favor our desert city sticking to high technology at discount rates, with low land costs and lots of intellectual capital. Farming is mostly done elsewhere already, and the city is supported by the Labs, the Base, …
Cleaning off my desk this evening, I found an interesting paper I’d printed and set aside to read weeks ago by Alison Smith in Holocene about the relationship between climate change and human evolution. Smith uses data from the human genome project on the timing of major bits of human evolution to argue that pressures …
Continue reading ‘Did Climate Change Make Us What We Are Today?’ »
One of the disconnects between science as it’s practiced and science as it’s understood by the public is “the results of the latest study”. When we report on “the results of the latest study,” the public is likely to be left shouting: “But last week I though they told me coffee was good for me!” …
Continue reading ‘The Colorado River: Dwindling Under Climate Change’ »
Funny is hard, especially when it’s about the fact that we’re all screwed because we’re running out of water. So I’m happy to discover a water blog that is both informative and funny: As we glumly consider our half-empty glass of tap water, which may or may not be contaminated, we decide that we have …
There’s an exchange over at Prometheus that nicely illustrates the fundamentally linear face of the public climate debate, as so eloquently characterized by Andrew Revkin’s “pushmi-pullyu” metaphor. The example at hand is the Prins and Rayner paper in Nature last month laying out, in part, the argument for a fuller integration of adapation to climate …
The Kentucky legislature held a hearing the other day about global warming. The featured speakers: James Taylor of the Heartland Institute and the ubiquitous Lord Monckton: Before the hearing, Gooch said he called the Heartland Institute once he decided to address global warming and asked for any skeptical experts it might send. Scientists weren’t necessary, …