Climate Change
“Say What?” – Learning to Communicate About Climate Change
Scientists and journalists have very different professional training and skill sets. Often they find it hard to communicate with each other. Steps are being taken at Berkeley to try to address this problem. Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group (ERG) and the Journalism School have announced a new set of resources on effectively communicating about climate …
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CONTINUE READINGGoogling Climate Change
I was curious about what information people would find if they were curious about climate change and took the easiest route by googling the phrase “climage change.” It’s a mixed story. The first listing on the page (presumably sponsored) is a Chevron site. Right below that are “related searches” for climate change emails climate change …
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CONTINUE READINGIn Terms of Ethanol, Corny Is Not Funny
Today’s NY Times has an excellent op ed on corn ethanol. In terms of the environmental impact, the author (Russell Harding) says: . . . . if ethanol use was really helping the environment, it might be worth putting up with higher costs. But many environmental groups dropped their support for corn-based ethanol after two …
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CONTINUE READINGThankful for U.S., China News on Climate?
After yesterday’s news that Obama will attend the international climate talks in Copenhagen and commit to near term targets (discussed by Cara here and Dan here) we’re greeted today with the news that China’s prime minister Wen Jiabao will attend and commit to reductions in the greenhouse gas emissions intensity of China’s economy. China’s commitment …
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CONTINUE READINGMore on today’s White House announcement re Copenhagen
Dan writes immediately below about Obama’s announcement that he’ll attend the talks in Copenhagen in two weeks, and with a U.S. emissions reduction target in the range of the 17% below 2005 levels found in the House bill. At the press conference on this announcement, a little more was said about the kind of agreement the White House is …
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CONTINUE READINGEverything You Always Wanted to Know About China But Were Afraid to Ask
As President Obama heads to China, the World Resource Institute has launched a very interesting new website devoted to China, energy, and climate change. The chart above is an example of the kind of information on the website. Notice for example the important role of manufacturing emissions on the Chinese side versus transportation emissions on …
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CONTINUE READINGMore on the recent Pew poll and on debating the science
My colleague Steve Weissman writes well here about the recently released Pew poll on Americans’ beliefs about climate change. Like Steve, I find the most troubling statistics from the poll to be the plunging numbers of people who seem to believe the underlying science. This is from Pew’s write-up: 57% [of all respondents] think there is solid evidence that the …
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CONTINUE READINGPublic Focus on Climate Change Slow to Develop, Hard to Sustain
The date was August 4, 1977, and Congressman Peter Rodino inserted, in the Congressional Record, an article from the New York Times that had run a week earlier. The Times article reflected on the Carter Administration’s effort to encourage the greater of coal as a power plant fuel. The Times said: “The National Academy of …
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CONTINUE READINGSuperFreakonomics and Climate Change
If you haven’t been following the controversy that has erupted with the publication of SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance, you should be. In SuperFreakonomics — the sequel to Steven Levitt and Stephen Duber’s wildly popular Freakonomics — the authors take on climate change. Their arguments are somewhat …
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CONTINUE READINGClimate Change versus the Benzene Case
The Benzene Case — more properly, Industrial Union Dept. v. American Petroleum Inst. — is almost thirty years old, but is still the Supreme Court’s most important statement on risk regulation. After considering mountains of evidence, OSHA issued a rule restricting benzene in the workplace. Benzene was known to be a carcinogen; the evidence was …
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