Climate Change
Peter Gleick, the Heartland Institute, and Scientific Ethics
The Heartland Institute is a climate denial shop well-funded by fossil fuel interests and standard right-wing extremist foundations, which has underwritten attacks on climate scientists and has plans to disrupt authentic climate science education in K-12 classrooms. Peter Gleick is one of the most respected scientific researchers in the world, who has done extremely …
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CONTINUE READINGLegal Planet Takes Over the Yale Law Journal
Along with Dan, I also have a response to the Ewing/Kysar paper at YLJ Online. (For those of your keeping score at home, two out of three commissioned responses were Legal Planet bloggers: we win!). It should surprise no one that while Dan’s is elegant and technical, mine is cranky and dyspeptic. Here’s the abstract: This …
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CONTINUE READINGProds and Pleas/Stopgaps and Failsafes
In a recent article in the Yale Law Journal, Benjamin Ewing and Douglas Kysar discuss how other part of government can step in when Congress defaults on its responsibility to make public policy. Their article, Prods and Pleas: Limited Government in an Era of Unlimited Harm, focuses on the tort litigation involving climate change. Using …
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CONTINUE READINGGeoengineering and Conflicts of Interest?
Is it unethical for scientists studying techniques to geoengineer the earth’s climate to advocate for additional government funding to expand the study of the science and geopolitics of the topic? That’s the conclusion of a recent Guardian article that criticizes Harvard’s David Keith and the Carnegie Institute’s Ken Caldeira for a) receiving outside money to …
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CONTINUE READINGCalifornia’s Attorney General Steps Up Environmental Enforcement Efforts
A recent development worth noting is California Attorney General Kamala Harris’ increased profile when it comes to environmental enforcement. Harris, the first woman and minority Attorney General in California history, had a busy first year in office. Her razor-thin election win in November 2010 took over a month to be confirmed, delaying her transition from …
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CONTINUE READINGWhat’s it like to be climate scientist Michael Mann? Think bounty (not the good kind)
Renowned climate scientist Michael Mann was at UCLA and the Emmett Center today to give a talk promoting his soon-to-be-released book, “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines.” Mann, who has been called “one of the most vilified men in the highly vilified field of climate science,” created the famed “hockey stick” …
CONTINUE READINGChina Vice-President Xi Jinping in America: some thoughts on US-China environmental collaboration
Some sobering developments confront us on the climate and environment front as Vice-President (and future head of China) Xi Jinping prepares to visit the United States this week. Despite an unprecedented push to reduce pollution and develop cleaner energy sources, China’s emissions of greenhouse gases and traditional pollutants have continued to soar. Chinese annual greenhouse …
CONTINUE READINGWhy the Right Has Run Out of Ideas
Most policy tools are no longer considered acceptable by many on the Right. If you have no tools to solve a problem, all you can do politically is to insist that the problem does not exist, is really a blessing in disguise, or will be automatically solved by the market and technological progress.
CONTINUE READINGInsurance Salesmen Should Be Selling The Public On Climate Change
As Dan’s post described, the insurance industry has a major, profit-driven stake in stopping climate change. So given the high risks for these private companies as the Earth bakes, why aren’t they the public face of the need to stop climate change, instead of controversial figures like Al Gore, environmental leaders, and scientists? Wouldn’t the …
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CONTINUE READINGNo Free Lunch In The Desert
A tough, heartbreaking story from the Los Angeles Times about the painful choices environmentalists are faced with in combatting climate change. The issue is BrightSource Energy’s Ivanpah solar power project, a massive, 6-square-mile city of 173,500 mirrors that will scar much of California’s desert beyond recognition. This was a hard compromise, reports Julie Cart, as “the …
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