Climate Change
Obama, the GOP, and the Environment
The NY Times has a Christmas Day editorial about the need for the President to take a strong stance in defense of EPA: Republicans in the next Congress are obviously set on limiting the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate a wide range of air pollutants — even if it …
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CONTINUE READINGGOP Environmental Policy FAIL
Last month, when discussing the egregious subsidies for ethanol that expire this year, I commented, “Here is a great test to see whether Republican anti-government and anti-spending rhetoric is any more than that.” Well, so much for that: Renewable Fuels Association president Bob Dinneen says they are thrilled with passage of the Senate tax package …
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CONTINUE READINGWhat a Gas! A Rare Win-Win
Oil and gas wells vent or flare off natural gas. New technology shows that this is actually a lot more gas than anyone knew — about four percent of production, according to GAO. Capturing that natural gas for sale would give the government millions of dollars in royalties. Vented gas is methane, a more potent …
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CONTINUE READINGOceans: the biggest loser from our international failure to address greenhouse gas emissions?
In this op-ed from Monday’s Los Angeles Times, UC San Diego scientists Tony Haymet and Andrew Dickson succinctly and directly summarizes the threat that ocean acidification poses to our world, and plead for reductions in carbon emissions. (My colleagues have blogged about ocean acidification before, here and here among other places.) Unfortunately, as my …
CONTINUE READINGState Dep’t: Legally binding emissions limits not happening “anytime soon”
I wasn’t on the beach in Cancun at the latest international climate summit, but like lots of folks I followed its (pseudo) progress. It wrapped up on Saturday with a package of incremental agreements on important issues (LA Times has a good analysis here), but once again without getting far on the 10,000 gigaton question: Will …
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CONTINUE READINGA Glimpse of the Future at the Tokyo Airport
I was walking through the Tokyo airport yesterday and saw a little two-year-old girl with her parents. It occurred to me that, given life expectancies in developed countries like Japan, there was a very good chance that she would be around to see the end of the century. That will include, I hope, many good …
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CONTINUE READINGFull Speed Ahead!
The D.C. Circuit rejected efforts to stay EPA’s pending greenhouse gas regulations until the court decides the merits of the appeals. It could well take a year or more for the merits to be decided, so in the meantime EPA can move forward. The court order does not indicate any view on the merits of …
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CONTINUE READINGClarifying a Cloudy Situation
One of the biggest difficulties in climate models is posed by clouds. Modelers need to know what kinds of clouds will form, at what altitudes, and with what precipitation resulting. These turn out to be very hard to calculate, and scientists use heuristic approximations to fill the gaps. A new study suggests that on the …
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CONTINUE READINGGoogle Earth Engine and Forest Offsets in California Cap-and-Trade
Last week, Google Labs released Google Earth Engine, an online platform for viewing and analyzing satellite imagery and data. The platform’s strengths are ease of use for viewing images, collaboration tools, and use of Google’s computing infrastructure to analyze the satellite data. Google intends to use the platform to, among other things, help developing countries …
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CONTINUE READINGCert in Connecticut v. AEP: Eight Comments
1) Well, Obama got what he wanted. And it’s a good thing, too: by attempting to short-circuit public nuisance suits, he established his good faith on climate change and paved the way for bipartisan cooperation. 2) It is absurd to argue that a common-law tort claim runs afoul of the political question doctrine. I’m not …
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