climate science

Another Job For California: Energy & Climate Research

If Trump guts research funding, California should step into the breach.

During the campaign, Trump said he would save $100 billion by cutting climate programs.  His campaign staff referred as support to a report, which said that 75% of the funding was energy related and included  “about 68 percent for energy technology, 23 percent for science, 8 percent for international assistance and 1 percent for adaptation …

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Confronting the “Emissions Gap”

Long-term thinking and short-term deficiencies in climate change mitigation

With the Paris Agreement now ratified by 86 countries, and entering into force this Friday, countries have defined their first targets—the first round of nationally determined contributions (NDCs). The United States has pledged to reduce GHG emissions 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025. This initial round of NDCs is significant, but represents only a short timeframe and …

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Two Record-Breaking Hot Years in a Row

Recent World Temperatures Provide Strong Evidence of Climate Change

Scientists in the United States, Japan, and Britain have all confirmed that 2015 was the warmest year in average world temperature in the historical record.  This breaks the previous record temperatures of 2014. You wouldn’t really expect a record that has been around for many years to be broken two years in a row, unless something was …

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Mr. Smith’s War Against Science

Further harassment of climate scientists from the House Science Committee.

Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), who chairs the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, doesn’t believe in climate change.  Still, by current political standards, I guess we should be glad that he hasn’t accused them of cheering when the Twin Towers fell, as his party’s leading contender for the Presidency did to what he called “thousands …

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Global Warming and Changing Weather

Why DOESN’T global warming just raise the temperature everywhere a little bit?

The amount of global warming that scientists are predicting doesn’t seem like that big a deal — maybe about 4 degrees Fahrenheit if we control emissions, up to maybe 12 if we don’t.  But as I’ve said a hundred times — and the experts have said a lot more often than that — we won’t …

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Could a Riparian Conservation Network increase the ecological resilience of public lands?

A new article suggests river corridors could leverage existing policies to build habitat connectivity

As we try to protect biological diversity for the future, a perpetual challenge is ensuring that the strategies we adopt today will continue to work in the face of changing conditions. How can we design conservation approaches that will be resilient in the face of environmental challenges that will only become more severe in coming years? …

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Don’t Know Much ‘Bout Climatology

Why should we believe the scientists about climate change?  Nobody — not even any individual scientist — understand all the details of the IPCC’s recent 1552 page “summary” of climate science.  So why buy into the idea that tiny amounts of gases from beneficial energy production can cause devastating global harm? Part of the reason …

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Should Environmental News Coverage Be In The Science Section?

A whiles back I wrote about how the New York Times’ environmental coverage had been in decline. The public editor at the Times has a new article stating that environmental coverage has recently increased substantially. I think that is a great thing. But I want to focus on another element of the public editor’s article. …

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Conspiracy!

Even as conspiracy theories go, the

Some members of Congress — not to mention any number of bloggers — think climate change is a hoax.  Most famously, Senator Inhofe has said: With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, all of the phony science, could it be that manmade global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American …

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Lies, Damned Lies, and Climate Denial

One key question is whether these statements amounted to factual accusations that Mann had engaged in scientific misconduct.

A D.C. trial judge recently refused to dismiss climate scientist Michael Mann’s libel lawsuits against the National Review and the Competitiveness Institute.  There are some serious constitutional barriers against such libel suits, which are designed to provide ample breathing room for free speech.  Is this one of the rare cases that can jump the hurdles?

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