Climate Change
More Bad News on Climate: Boxer is in Deep Trouble
Barbara Boxer has been a US Senator for 18 years. She is chair of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee, and is a real environmental hero. If we ever get a climate bill, she will have a lot to do with it. And she is also in deep political trouble. Take a look at …
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CONTINUE READINGNews Flash: Senate Will Consider Climate Bill First
It looks like Senator Graham won his fight with the Democratic party leadership over timing: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday he is willing to bring up climate change legislation ahead of an immigration bill, the first step toward resolving a dispute with Senate Republicans that threatened to derail a bipartisan effort months in …
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CONTINUE READINGBeing Lindsey Graham
I posted over the weekend about Lindsey Graham’s about-face on the climate bill. The Washington Post has a more sympathetic view, which I thought I should report out of fairness: And this is why Graham is angry: He’s taken a huge risk to be the lone Republican on climate change. Patrick Creighton, a flack for …
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CONTINUE READINGNo More “Global Warming”
In his ERG Lecture last week, John Holdren made an excellent point about terminology. The term “Global Warming” is totally misleading. “Warming” suggests a gradual, gentle process. Combined with the term “global,” it suggests that the main concern is the increase in average global temperatures. As Holdren pointed out, this is all quite misleading: (1) …
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CONTINUE READINGClimate Bill 2.0 on Hold
Senator Graham has announced that he’s withdrawing from the effort to pass the bill that he helped to draft, because he’s irked that the Administration is pressing forward on immigration reform. I’m struggling a bit to understand this. The charitable explanation is that he’s trying to pressure the administration into giving the climate bill priority. …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Libertarian Case for Controlling Climate Change
Inaction on climate change is inconsistent with libertarian principles and belief in property rights.
CONTINUE READINGClimate Legislation 2.0
The Washington Post has some details about the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman proposal, along with some encouraging reports of endorsements by utilities and oil companies. (Those, of course, come with a price in terms of industry concessions.) Some key features: *The bill would take effect in 2013 and would cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 17% by 2020 and …
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CONTINUE READINGPopular Support for “Cap and Dividend”
According to a poll by Public Opinion Strategies, there seems to be strong public support for cap and dividend, at least if the question is framed positively. Here is the question along with some key results: “Some Democratic and Republican Senators have proposed an overhaul to America’s energy system. The goal is to reduce pollution, …
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CONTINUE READINGWarmest March on Record
NOAA reported late last week that this March was the warmest since records have been kept (circa 1880). Here’s a map of “temperature anomalies” on land, showing where the temperature was warmer or colder than usual: Note that the biggest deviations are in the arctic, which is the area most sensitive to global climate change. …
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CONTINUE READINGShould We Run Some Controlled Climate Change Experiments?
Controlled experiments in general are the best way of doing science, but we haven’t been able to take advantage of that in science research. Considering the importance of the climate change issue, it might be worth taking a serious look at this possibility, even if it does seem a little outside the box.
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