It’s All About the Feedback
A fairly common reaction to climate science is to wonder how changes in the concentration of a trace gas can have a substantial effect on the world's climate. As it turns out, this is exactly the right question to ask. There's a great post at RealClimate working through the logic. The direct effect of increased CO2 is small. But we know that the earth's climate has changed substantially over its history. Neither the changes of CO2 or of solar radiation are nearl...
CONTINUE READINGProp 23: Spinning the Poll Numbers
A new email blast from the California Jobs Initiative trumpets: "Brand new Los Angeles Times poll puts Yes on 23 in the LEAD!" That's true, sort of. Or at least it has what Stephen Colbert calls "truthiness." The LA Times story is headlined: "Proposition 23 poll shows a dead heat among California voters." As shown by the pie graph, the split is 40% yes, 38% no. That's within the 3.3% margin of error. Apparently, these are actually not encouraging numbers for...
CONTINUE READINGMeg Whitman, Prop 23, and AB 32
Meg Whitman takes the position that Prop 23 is wrong, but she says that she'll suspend California's keystone climate legislation,AB 32, for a year if she's elected. The Berkeley White Paper on Prop 23 takes a different view than she does of the economic impact of Prop 23. Her proposal, which takes advantage of an escape hatch provision within AB 32 itself, is narrower and more closely related to the current economic situation than the much more sweeping approach taken ...
CONTINUE READINGAir Resources Board Does Some Punting On SB 375 Targets
As I blogged, the California Air Resources Board yesterday set greenhouse gas targets for the eighteen metropolitan regions in the state, which these regions must try to meet through a land use and transportation planning process. The Board basically split the difference of what the staff recommended. For the four largest regions, staff wanted 5-10% per capita reductions. The Board went with seven percent. If you believe real estate developers, the world as we know...
CONTINUE READINGOne More Try This Year for a National Renewable Electricity Standard
Is something, in terms of a federal renewable standard, better than nothing? There is new talk of setting a national renewable electricity standard before this session of Congress ends, due to the introduction of S.3813, this week. This Bingaman-sponsored bill echoes an earlier proposal that can best be described as imposing a standard of modest proportions. While California aims for 20% renewable electricity by the end of this year and 33% by 2020, the Bingaman bill pr...
CONTINUE READINGThe Myth of SB 375
Today is a big day for SB 375, California's much-heralded land use and transportation law. The Air Resources Board is setting greenhouse gas emissions targets for each metropolitan region covered by the law. The regions then have to develop a plan to meet these targets through comprehensive land use and transportation planning. That means reorganizing transportation and land use planning to make sure people don't have to drive so much and can live near transit, services,...
CONTINUE READINGProp 23 and PG&E: Setting the Record Straight
The California Jobs Initiative is spreading a highly misleading story about PG&E's opposition to Prop 23, the ballot measure to suspend California's keystone climate legislation (AB 32). The story appears in an email that they've circulated widely. To make it easy to understand, I'm leaving the truthful parts of their story in black and putting the false parts in red: PG&E recently announced its opposition to Prop. 23. Now, many of you are receiving notices f...
CONTINUE READINGWill the Future Be “Made in China”?
Thomas Friedman's column warns that, while we're dithering about climate action, the Chinese are forging ahead in the energy field: What a contrast. In a year that’s on track to be our planet’s hottest on record, America turned “climate change” into a four-letter word that many U.S. politicians won’t even dare utter in public. If this were just some parlor game, it wouldn’t matter. But the totally bogus “discrediting” of climate science has had serious im...
CONTINUE READINGAnd Caldron Bubble
Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble. Or in this case, vast quantities of natural gas bubbled into the Gulf of Mexico: A vast majority of the natural gas that billowed out of BP PLC's failed well in the Gulf this summer did not escape to the surface and atmosphere. Instead, the gas -- including its main component, methane -- remained trapped deep underwater, priming the bacterial response to the spill, according to research published online ye...
CONTINUE READINGWomen Know More About Climate Change, Men Think They Do
Sociologist Aaron McCright, in a recently published academic article, analysed 7 years of Gallup polling data on environmental issues (from 2001-2008) and reached these startling (not) conclusions: women have a greater scientific understanding of climate change than men do; women are more likely than men to worry that climate change is a large problem; but men think they know more about climate change than they actually do while women think they know less about c...
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