Climate Change

Could Obama have wrung China climate concessions from Hu in Italy? We’ll never know

Jonathan’s recent post about the intersection of religion and environmentalism failed to foreshadow the most important way in which religion may have impacted environmental policymaking this week: by scuttling key climate talks associated with the G8 meeting in Italy.  As reported here, the meeting succeeded in securing a pledge from G8 nations to reduce their …

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Science, the public, and policy

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press today released the results of a survey (full report here) of American scientists and the public. The survey lands at a time when both scientists and politicians are actively questioning how science can play a more effective role in the policy process, so it’s not …

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Polar bear fact and fantasy

There was an interesting juxtaposition of news about the polar bear recently, one that illustrates the divide between working research scientists trying to grapple with the impacts of global warming and the skeptics who insist that climate change either is not occurring or is not a problem. The Polar Bear Specialist Group, launched in the …

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Edith Jones Declares War on America’s Coastline

Edith Jones, the 5th Circuit Chief Judge who makes wingnuts swoon, is at it again, this time in Severance v. Patterson, a Takings test case brought by the Pacific Legal Foundation.  For environmentalists, Severance is also a test case in who is going to have to pay for coastal damage from climate change.  Edith Jones …

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Forecasting climate votes in the Senate

Nate Silver, the statistician who gained prominence in the last election cycle with his predictions for the presidential race, has modeled the prospects of the Waxman-Markey climate bill in the Senate. The analysis is necessarily based on a number of assumptions, such as that the bill doesn’t change in its progress to the Senate floor. …

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Debating the Economics of Climate Change

A blog with the great title of Greed, Green and Grains (by environmental economist Michael J. Roberts) reported an interesting national bureau of economic research debate on the economics of climate change.  The debaters were Pindyck (MIT) and Weitzman (Harvard).  It seems increasingly clear that the key factors driving economic conclusions are the treatment of …

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Plastic Trees Revisited

Thirty-five years ago, Larry Tribe wrote an article called “Ways Not to Think About Plastic Trees,” probing the foundations of environmental law.  The article prompted an equally interesting response from environmental philosoper Mark Sagoff.  The issue was whether we should preserve nature simply for its utility to humans or whether it had other types of …

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It Depends on What the Meanings of “Are” Are

Bill Clinton once famously said that the truthfulness of a statement depended on “what the meaning of ‘is’ is.” There’s a similar usage issue in a recent spat over climate data. A  dispute between Roger Pielke and RealClimate seems to turn in part on whether a statement about current climate trends has to be proven …

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Habitat loss still the key conservation concern

Some time ago, I noted this essay in Slate by environmental journalist Brendan Borrell, arguing that our current obsession with climate change is inhibiting more important conservation work. A new report from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature provides some support for Borrell’s position. The IUCN periodically updates its Red List of Threatened …

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Climate change breaking news: EPA grants California waiver to regulate GHG emissions from cars

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has taken an important step toward addressing climate change and improving our nation’s automobile fuel economy, by granting California and at least 14 other states a waiver allowing them to regulate automobile greenhouse gas emissions.  This was not unexpected, given the recent passage of federal legislation with standards similar to …

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