Jonathan Koomey

25 Sep 2012 • 4 min read

The NYT article on Power, Pollution, and the Internet: My initial comments

Jim Glanz, writing in the New York Times this past Sunday, described existing inefficiencies in Internet infrastructure, but omitted important context that can help interested readers really understand the problem. The article, in which I’m quoted, is Glanz, James. 2012. “Power, Pollution, and the Internet.” New York Times. New

18 Sep 2012 • 1 min read

New review of "Cold Cash, Cool Climate"

Writing in Environmental Research Web yesterday, Evan Mills of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory reviewed Cold Cash, Cool Climate: Science-based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs. Here are the first couple of paragraphs: Entrepreneurs and investors alike will profit from Jonathan Koomey’s new book on how to cool the climate while

7 Sep 2012 • 1 min read

A 2002 talk on climate change by the late Stephen H. Schneider, now posted online

The folks at PARC have posted online a 2002 talk on climate change by the late Stephen H. Schneider. For those who didn’t know Steve, he was a genius unlike any other, and a very interesting speaker. I heartily recommend that you check it out.

6 Sep 2012 • 1 min read

Is cheap natural gas really the cause of record low US carbon emissions?

I teamed up with the folks at CO2 scorecard to analyze the causes of Q1 2012’s record low carbon emissions for the US, and you can read the full research note here. The summary findings follow below: In this research note we show that the mild winter of 2012

30 Aug 2012 • 1 min read

Short piece from Congressional Budget Office documenting causes for the increase in the deficit over the past 11 years

This two-pager gives the CBO’s latest estimates of what caused the increase in deficits in the past 11 years (for a bit of high-level discussion of the results, go here). For those interested in causality (i.e., which actions are responsible for changes in the deficit and

23 Aug 2012 • 2 min read

Make your data tell a story!

The Data Warehousing Institute newsletter dated August 21, 2012 contained an interview with me by Linda Briggs titled “Make your data tell a story”. Here’s the first question and answer. For the complete interview, go here. Question: With more tools at our disposal for analyzing, charting, and displaying data,

13 Aug 2012 • 1 min read

My TechNation interview about Cold Cash, Cool Climate with Moira Gunn on June 26, 2012, now posted

I had great fun talking about Cold Cash, Cool Climate: Science-based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs with Moira Gunn of TechNation in June, and the interview is now posted here. The interview focused on how we know climate is a problem, why uncertainty can make communicating the implications of the

13 Aug 2012 • 2 min read

Another source of observational data on the effects of recent warming

The Arctic Sea-ice Monitor tracks the extent of sea ice over the Arctic, and has for a long time posted a wonderful graph that shows sea ice extent over each month in a given year. In the new graph now appearing on their site (reposted below) they show the

10 Aug 2012 • 3 min read

Why climate change causes BIG increases in extreme weather

Jim Hansen just published a terrific summary of the past few decades of temperature measurements, and it shows the stark reality: increasing the average temperature even a modest amount substantially increases the chances of extreme temperature events. I showed this result conceptually in Figure 2-17 of Cold Cash, Cool

24 Jul 2012 • 1 min read

Check out the Accidental Analyst!

Unless you’ve been asleep for years, it’s impossible to miss the data explosion. In 1998, for example, the first Google page index counted 26 million unique web pages. By 2008 that number had grown to 1 trillion, which means the number of web pages doubled every 8 months

29 Jun 2012 • 3 min read

Marty Hoffert hits the climate nail on the head

The frustration of scientists about how the climate problem is being ignored came out in full relief when Marty Hoffert, an NYU physicist, sent this missive to Andy Revkin in response to a post at dot earth: However welcome the news may be to market economists — and I’m confident

26 Jun 2012 • 1 min read

Two new interviews about entrepreneurs and the climate problem

Kate Gammon at Fast Company and Brenna Donoghue at Ethical Ocean just published interviews with me about entrepreneurs and the climate problem. The Fast Company article is here, and the Ethical Ocean article is here. In these interviews I talk about why I chose to focus on entrepreneurs, why ecological

25 Jun 2012 • 3 min read

Indirect greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation technologies

Garvin Heath and his colleagues at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory last month published analyses of the indirect greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation technologies. This work was also summarized in a set of articles that appeared in a special issue of the Journal of Industrial Ecology (which also includes

24 Jun 2012 • 1 min read

Another subsidy for coal: Washington Post today on flawed coal auctions in the Powder River basin

The Powder River Basin, one of the biggest sources of coal in the Western US, has a system for leasing mining rights that is deeply flawed, and has cost taxpayers “as much as $28.9 billion over the past 30 years”. From the article in the Washington Post today: Powder

18 Jun 2012 • 1 min read

GigaOm today released their list of "10 innovators changing the game for Internet infrastructure"

GigaOm named me one of “10 innovators changing the game for Internet infrastructure”. The article introducing the list describes the shifts now ongoing in the industry towards infrastructure, platform, and software as a service. In the past I’ve characterized this trend as “separating physical from virtual servers”. It is