‘Climate’ Archives
PBS Covers Link Between 2011′s “Mind-Boggling” Extreme Weather and Global Warming: “It’s Like Being on Steroids”
Mainstream news outlets spent a lot of time in 2011 covering the record-breaking year for extreme weather in the U.S. But only a few of them spent much time exploring the link between those events and global warming (see With No End in Sight for Texas Drought, ABC News Explains: “Every Farmer in the World Will Be Affected by Climate Change” [...]
Broader + Deeper = Greater Savings in Energy Efficiency
by Brenden O’Donnell, cross-posted from the Rocky Mountain Institute This is part two in a three-part series published at RMI on Turbocharging energy efficiency programs. The momentum for electric utilities to achieve high levels of energy efficiency savings has never been greater. Regulation has taken the lead. Utilities operating in [...]
Turbocharging Energy Efficiency 1: Utility Efficiency Program Budgets Double to $5.4 Billion
by Matthias Bell, RMI, and Dylan Sullivan of NRDC, cross-posted from the Rocky Mountain Institute This is part one in a three part series published at RMI on turbocharging energy efficiency programs. The utilities in Ohio will tell you that they’re nothing like the energy efficiency leaders in California, Oregon, Vermont, or Massachusetts. [...]
Big Environmental NGOs: The End of Incrementalism in 2012?
by Toby Webb, cross-posted from the Smarter Business blog US environmental NGOs, along with other, more globally minded ‘green’ and conservation-minded NGOs, have been poorly led in recent years. They’ve blown a series of chances to help businesses change using a nuanced approach. Their approach been too cut and dried, too [...]
NASA: Climate Change May Flip 40% of Earth’s Major Ecosystems This Century
by Rolf Schuttenhelm, cross-posted from Bits of Science The results of studies that try to quantify the effects of climate change on biodiversity loss — which include damage to the micro scale level of subspecies and genetic variation — are perhaps most shocking. When, however, you focus on the response to climate change at the macro [...]
The Debunking Handbook Part 1: The First Myth About Debunking
The Debunking Handbook is a guide to debunking myths, by John Cook and Stephan Lewandowsky. Although there is a great deal of psychological research on misinformation, unfortunately there is no summary of the literature that offers practical guidelines on the most effective ways of reducing the influence of misinformation. This Handbook boils [...]
Recycling
Two slightly off-center topics that Realclimate has covered in the past have recently come up again. The first is an analysis of Freakonomics by statisticians Andrew Gelman and Kaiser Fung in American Scientist, while the second is a recent reimagining of Washington crossing the Delaware. The Gelman and Fung piece goes through a number of the [...]
How to Discuss Climate Change With Your Uncle During the Holidays
by Russell McLendon, in a Mother Nature Network cross-post Most people know better than to bring up politics, religion or climatology in polite company. It’s a recipe for arguments, or at least for awkwardness. But when families get together for big holiday meals … that recipe is often dusted off anyway. And whether it’s your [...]
The Ghost of Climate Yet to Come
Irreversible does not mean unstoppable: “Why show me this, if I am past all hope?” Unlike Scrooge, we don’t get a spirit to show us what the future holds if we don’t change our ways. In the past two years, though, we have gotten the tiniest glimpse of climate gone wild (see “Masters: “The stunning extremes we witnessed gives me [...]
Tim Wirth Slams Obama: “I Don’t Know Who and Where the Climate Leadership in the Administration Is. It Doesn’t Exist.”
U.N. Foundation President Tim Wirth told Climate Wire this week that President Obama has a “last window of opportunity” to avert catastrophic climate change — assuming he gets reelected: “I don’t know who and where the climate leadership in the administration is. It doesn’t exist. There is no resolve in the Obama [...]
