No Palms

Australia’s drought means no palms for Palm Sunday in New South Wales: Up to 300 NSW churches could have no palms for Palm Sunday with suppliers blaming the drought and logging for the shortage. Instead, churches will be supplied with paper replicas for the religious day, observed on April 1 this year as precursor to …

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A Problem With “Average Temperature”

A new paper by David Lobell and his colleagues at Lawrence Livermore illustrates one of the problems with the whole “average temperature” notion ensconced in our discussions of climate change. The researchers compared outputs from 12 climate models, looking at the differences between daytime highs and overnight lows. The lows went up a little bit …

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Meanwhile, Closer to Home

Folks in Tucson are gearing up for drought restrictions: A plan that would force homeowners and businesses to conserve water if southern Arizona’s drought worsens is expected to go into effect Tuesday. The City Council approved the plan in November, but the panel is scheduled to vote Tuesday on the code change that puts the …

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Broad in the New York Times

Apparently union regulations require all climate bloggers to weigh in on Bill Broad’s story in today’s New York Times about Al Gore etc. In brief, there’s not much more I could add to what Chris Mooney and Andrew Dessler have said: “surprised it didn’t happen sooner” (Mooney) given that Gore was largely solid on the …

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The Nuclear Power Dilemma

Via NEI Nuclear Notes, an interesting discussion about the role of nuclear power in the energy mix as Europe grapples with carbon emission reduction targets. Per capita/per GDP unit carbon emissions in France are already substantially lower than the UK and Germany. France generates 80 percent of its electricity from its nuke plants. The French …

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Some El Niño That Turned Out to Be

With El Niño fleeing the equatorial Pacific over the last month, and with La Niña apparently seizing the opportunity like Rush Limbaugh seeing Al Gore’s electric bill, it’s worth reflecting for a moment on the El Niño that was. From today’s Drought Monitor: Los Angeles has seen their driest season to date on record, with …

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