Climate

Global warming is seen everywhere as one of the most important issues. From the EU to the G8, leaders trip over one another to affirm their commitment to cutting CO2 to heal the world. What they do not often acknowledge - in part because it would lose them support - is that the solutions proffered are incredibly costly and will end up doing amazingly little good, even in a century's time. This is the truly inconvenient truth of the politics of global warming. Let's be clear. I'm not contesting the existence of global warming. Doing so is silly, given the clear and strong results from the UN climate panel. Global warming will most probably warm the planet by between 1.6 and 3.8C above...

Has global warming alarm become the goal rather than the result of scientific research? When the history of the early 21st century is written, it may be the financial health of the global economy was rescued by a new currency, carbon. This new asset class, fungible and tradeable, reinflated the balance sheets of governments and international financial institutions alike, and pulled humanity back from the brink of a worldwide depression. That is the hopeful scenario, and not one to be lightly dismissed. The other outcome that may be our legacy, however, will be that just when technology and capitalism were about to deliver prosperity and security to an unprecedented number of people...

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia's capitol, has slowly transformed into a sprawling city over the years, full of silver skyscrapers and modern buildings. The city is home to over 5 million inhabitants and bears little resemblance to the land that used to be covered with date trees and orchards. Riyadh roughly translates to "garden" in Arabic and it is a suitable name for a region with such fertile soil. It is only fitting that the world's largest greenhouse will reside in the garden city of Saudi Arabia. Barton Willmore, a British design and architectural planning company is working with the civil engineers at Buro Happold to create the 160 hectare King Abdullah International Gardens (KAIG). This garden will be housed in two giant interlocking crescent...

Cities are hot: Filled with skyscrapers, traffic and hot pavement, heat simmers between buildings causing the "heat island effect". Stagnant heat is trapped in the narrow city gaps and air conditioners cooling the inside of buildings spill even more heat out the walls. Trees offering natural cooling and shade are minimal and soil that helps water evaporation (thereby cooling the area) is non existent. Replacing the trees and soil are dark streets that store heat and reach temperatures up to 70F (21C) hotter than lighter surfaces. Stifling heat is depressing (unless you're at the beach), and the added smog and clouds that form because of it, don't help matters either. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) states that...

From the DOE online reference, CO2 Emissions Report, Table 1, you will see that in 1999 in the USA there were nearly 1.8 million metric tons of CO2 emissions from the burning of coal to create electricity, which yielded nearly 1.9 million kilowatt-hours of power.  This means in that year in the USA, for each megawatt-hour of coal-fired electric power, there were .95 tons of CO2 ejected into the atmosphere.  It is likely the global efficiency of coal-fired electricity plants in the USA in 2008 exceeds this standard, but for the sake of a numerically clear argument suppose for every megawatt-hour of coal-fired power, 1.0 ton of CO2 enters the atmosphere. Currently the United States emits about 6.0...

In a story today in the Los Angeles Times entitled "To slow global warming, install white roofs," author Margot Roosevelt reports on a recent study that concludes, if you take it at face value, that all we have to do is paint all of our urban rooftops and pavements white and "the global cooling effect would be massive." "According to Hashem Akbari, a physicist with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a 1,000-square-foot roof -- the average size on an American home -- offsets 10 metric tons of planet-heating carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere if dark-colored shingles or coatings are replaced with white material...  Globally, roofs account for 25% of the surface of most cities, and pavement accounts for about 35%. If all were switched to reflective material in 100 major urban areas, it would offset 44 metric gigatons of greenhouse gases." It would be interesting to understand exactly what Akbari means by...

In a post last week entitled "Debate vs. Demonization" we questioned the tendency on the part of global warming alarmists to demonize anyone who wishes to question the reality, the scope, the causes, or the prescriptions for global warming.  We referenced one recent exchange between Dr. Roger Pielke Sr., a renowned climatologist who has raised such questions, and one of his detractors.  In this exchange, the person who had attacked Pielke made the following statement: "At the risk of talking science, Dr. Pielke takes specific exception to my reporting of the average global temperature over the past 10 years. I hate to get into duelling graphics, in part because it would encourage people to think that...

Cows are notorious for lazily standing around, nonchalantly chewing their cud while staring into space. Ambitious cows may also spend some time swatting the occasional fly with their tails. It is a simple life, constantly inundated with bouts of flatulence and burps. In fact, the global cattle population is the largest contributor of methane gases in the atmosphere: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that cattle "account for about 28% of global methane emissions from human related activities". There are 1.2 billion cows in the world, each equipped with four stomachs full of flora that release gases during the digestive process. Each cow emits over 600 liters of methane created when bacteria in their gut...

At the risk, yet again, at incurring the wrath of the true believers, it is time to continue the debate regarding the cause of climate trends, and indeed, the direction of the trends themselves.  But conducting a debate on this most sensitive issue invites more than civil debate.  The issue of climate change has been succesfully framed as a moral issue, and debate is no longer politically correct.  To persist in debating this issue, despite mounting evidence - both scientific and economic - that debate is vital, is to risk being marginalized and demonized.  Our favorite climate website, www.climatesci.org, is operated by Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr., a climatologist at the University of Colorado.  We...

Despite the relentless media assault declaring debate is over, catastrophic climate change is just around the corner, and immediate and drastic curtailment of anthropogenic CO2 emissions are our only chance of survival, there remains significant debate in the scientific community. Rather than attempt to refrain what has become countless takes on this point (see links below), this post is to highlight the ongoing dialogue and findings on www.climatesci.org, operated by research scientist Roger Pielke Sr. at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Our interest in Pielke's work is based on two key factors: (1) His international reputation for integrity remains intact even among the alarmist community, and (2)...

Assembly Bill 32, signed into law by California Governor Schwarzenegger in late 2006, took a big step closer to implementation last week with the release of the much anticipated "Climate Change Draft Scoping Plan." Sturnella neglecta. AB32 California Global Warming Act Climate Change Draft Scoping Plan - CARB July 2008 Two key pages in the 77 page document are pages 11 (table 2) and page 17 (table 4).  The table on page 11 “Recommended Greenhouse Gas Reduction Measures,” has targeted emissions reductions by sector, expressed in “MMTCO2E” – million metric tons co2 emissions.  In this table, it only appears that 2 of the 160 million ton goal are going to be accomplished through land use regulations.  This may be misleading however, since they are leaving another 35.2...

Al Gore has said Americans are addicted to "short term thinking." He is correct. Even in the business world, which is presumably rational, timelines often stretch no further than the next quarter's earnings reports. To think ahead by spans of generations or more is not very common. Sadly, however, Al Gore fails to emphasize - for reasons either cynical or simply because he suffers from the same affliction as most everyone else - that Americans are also victims of "scope insensitivity." That is a big phrase - "scope insensitivity" - but understanding the meaning of this phrase is key to understanding many of the policy failures of America, especially in recent decades. Scope insensitivity is the inability of a person, or voting block, or nation, to understand simple quantitative proportions, which if understood, would cast a policy issue in an entirely different light. Simply put...