EcocentricPolitics
Chances are you’ve heard about—if not read—Al Gore’s 7,000-word essay in Rolling Stone on America’s ongoing failure to act on the climate crisis. (If the whole piece is a bit too much for your Wednesday lunch hour, Mother Jones has a nice summary.) The media, unsurprisingly, has focused Gore’s criticism of President Obama’s inaction …
EcocentricEcocentric
Last month, in the wake of the catastrophic Joplin tornadoes, 350.org founder Bill McKibben published a scathing op-ed in the Washington Post mocking those who show caution about linking climate change and extreme weather:
Caution: It is vitally important not to make connections. When you see pictures of rubble like this week’s shots
…
EcocentricEcocentric
When I woke up today at my apartment in upper Manhattan, it was nearly 80 F. It’s nearly 90 F right now, and it will likely scrape 100 F before the day is blessedly over. On a weather map, the entire broiling eastern half of the U.S. looks like it has a bad Memorial Day early summer sunburn. It’s hot, it’s staying hot and it’s really …
EcocentricPolitics
There ought to be a special place in honesty jail for people who say presposterously wrong things publicly — and know full well they’re doing so. If such a place exists, it’s time to turn down Newt Gringrich’s bed and place a mint on his pillow, because he’s headed there for a long stay.
Last week, on a tour of New Hampshire, the …
EcocentricUncategorized
As the middle of the country weathers a truly historic string of tornadoes—see TIME’s David Von Drehle’s moving story from Joplin, Mo.—another battle has opened up over climate change’s possible role in these record-breaking disasters. For many environmentalists, the twisters of 2011 are an ominous sign of things to come—and …
EcocentricEcocentric
Climate modeling is the inverse of weather prediction. The further away from the present a weather event is going to occur, the harder it usually is for meterologists to predict—as anyone who has ever tried to rely on a 10-day extended forecast should know. But in climate change, modelers can have meaningful confidence in how increased …
EcocentricPolitics
For my weekly Going Green column on the Time.com mainpage, I have a piece examining why belief in climate science—especially among conservatives—has waned so much in America lately. Tuesday’s climate science hearings in the House of Representatives—which featured significantly more politics than science—seemed to show that facts …
EcocentricEcocentric
Right now the Energy and Power Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee is holding hearings into climate science. You can watch them here, if you’re really masochistic, or you can follow expert live blogging from Science magazine’s Eli Kintisch and others over here. I’m at a hydraulic fracturing expert panel for the …
EcocentricEcocentric
Update [2/17/11 5:05 PM]: A few bloggers and scientists have taken issue with the two Nature studies, arguing that they underplay the uncertainties still at work in the climate system. Judith Curry, an atmospheric scientist at Georgia Tech who tends to be a bit more skeptical of mainstream climate research, wrote that she doubted the …
EcocentricUncategorized
I’m in Abu Dhabi right now, attending the World Future Energy Summit and getting a chance to check out the first finished buildings in Masdar City. I’ll have more on the summit and the city tomorrow, but I wanted to focus on something else today. I often write on this blog about rapidly the planet has developed over the past few decades, …
