Climate Change

Surviving on a Changing Planet

[youtube=http://youtu.be/O5h02Yc6lfA] As this video explains, the Arctic is entering a new state, quite different from the Arctic regime that we have long known.  Over a somewhat longer time frame, much the same is happening with the climate and ecology of the world as a whole. It’s a bit like a science fiction cliché: explorers leave …

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Yes, California Can Spend the Cap-and-Trade Auction Proceeds

California’s 2012-13 budget assumed that $500 million of cap-and-trade auction proceeds could be used to offset the cost of greenhouse gas emission reduction programs traditionally supported by the General Fund.  Two recent stories, one in the San Francisco Chronicle, the other in ClimateWire, report that since the California Legislative Analyst’s office found only $100 million …

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A Plea from Doha

As Jonathan has noted, the international climate negotiations now underway in Doha, Qatar are receiving little media attention and are not expected to result in a major political breakthrough. And, most of the time, it’s difficult for those not in the melee to parse the speeches, interventions, and positions taken by countries at these talks, …

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Breaking News: Judge Rules San Diego’s SB 375 Transportation Plan Violates State Environmental Law

San Diego Superior Court Judge Timothy Taylor today ruled that the San Diego Association of Government’s (SANDAG) regional transportation plan, with a sustainability chapter as required by SB 375, violated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Judge Taylor concluded that the environmental review accompanying the plan, as required by CEQA, did not sufficiently analyze the …

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Feeling the Heat

The forecast for the end of this century seems to be getting worse.  New measurements, reported by E&E here, indicate that Greenland is shedding ice rapidly — and Antarctica is also shedding: Ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are shrinking three times faster than they were in the 1990s, and their contribution to global sea …

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On the Irrelevance of Doha: The Demand for an Absence of International Regimes

Just compare for a moment the high expectations around Copenhagen in 2009 and the obscurity of Doha today, and you can quickly get a sense of the basic contemporary irrelevance of UN bodies in the creation of climate policy.  (At the New York Times website as of this writing, Doha doesn’t even merit a mention …

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Chasing Ice, For Now

Last night I watched glaciers more than 30,000 years old break open and crash into the ocean – disappearing in mere seconds.  In photographer James Balog’s new documentary, Chasing Ice, he and a small team embark upon a multi-year “Extreme Ice Survey” to document 18 glaciers in remote regions of the world, including Iceland, Greenland and Alaska.  …

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Renewing Britain’s Clean Energy Vows

The British are ramping up their efforts on renewable energy.  The NY Times reported a few days ago that the new plan will “gradually quadruple the charges levied on consumers and businesses to help support electricity generation from low-carbon sources, to a total of about £9.8 billion, or $15.7 billion, in the 2020-21 fiscal year, …

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Heating Up the Eurozone

The EU has issued a new report about climate impacts.  The picture is mixed, with some good news (warmer winters in the Northern and Eastern Europe) but bad news in other respects.  The report has this to say about some disaster risks: Increases in health risks associated with river and coastal flooding are projected in …

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Highly Uncertain But Not in Doubt

It seems paradoxical to say that climate change is uncertain but not in doubt.  At this point, we can be highly confident that greenhouse gases are disrupting the climate system and that the disruption will be very serious unless we act.  But there’s considerable uncertainty about   the magnitude of climate change and its local …

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