Climate Change

A 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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Full 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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Clarifying 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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Google 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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Cert 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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U.S. Supreme Court to Hear Climate Change Nuisance Case

The 2010-2011 U.S. Supreme Court case promises to be a blockbuster one for environmental law.  The Court today announced that it had granted a petition for certiorari filed in AEP v. Connecticut (the lower court decision in the case is here).  The case, brought by  a number of states against the country’s five larges utilities , …

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Connecticut v. AEP Cert Decision Soon?

A reporter just called me for background on the climate change public nuisance case from the Second Circuit, Connecticut v. AEP.  She said, “As you probably know, the Supreme Court will announce on Monday whether it will take the case.” Um, no, actually: I didn’t know that.  The Supremes make their decisions throughout the year, …

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What If They Gave a Climate Summit and Nobody Came?

Last year about this time, everyone was excited about Copenhagen.  UCLA Law School even sent its own delegation.  President Obama was going to come.  It was the biggest thing in climate since Kyoto — maybe bigger, since now the US had an administration that believes in science. Now?  Not so much.  The coverage of Cancun …

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NY Times Triples on Climate Change

The NY Times has three op-eds this morning dealing with climate change: An op. ed. by Bruce Usher argues for a clean energy strategy: “The United States still has a very long way to go to curtail emissions, but the states are heading in the right direction, and national energy policy must build on their …

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Actual Conservative Climate Change Policy!

After all the talk over the last two weeks, here it is: Fresh off a big victory over the GOP establishment on earmarks, conservative GOP senators are opening up a new front in the battle on government spending that could be similar to the earmarks standoff: They are calling on Congress to let billions in …

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