The Washington Post today summarizes findings on the decline in global fish stocks from a recent World Wildlife Federation study, a situation that Daniel Pauly at the University of British Columbia has called “the end of fish”. The report documents declines in many different species on both land and sea,
Read moreCorporate Social Responsibility Wire (CSR Wire) just posted a short synopsis of Cold Cash, Cool Climate in advance of a series of eleven blog posts of mine that will appear there in coming weeks. In those posts I’m boiling down the key lessons from the book in bite-sized chunks,
Read moreAs reported in Climate Progress, climatologist James Hansen has done comparisons of fossil fuel reserves from two sources to concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, using a conversion factor of 2.12 GtC per ppm of CO2. For example, see Figure 1 from Hansen’s more detailed writeup: Figure
Read moreAccording to the MIT news, researchers at MIT have created a sensors using carbon nanotubes that can tell grocers just how ripe their fruit is. This is an interesting example of innovative low-power sensor technology that will help enable a revolution in applications of information technology to business (as I
Read moreDan Lashof compiles findings from some studies analyzing why the utility industry in the US has shown little recent interest in building new coal plants. The main causes relate to market forces, not EPA’s recently announced new source performance standards (although those will have some effect if natural gas
Read moreReal Climate has a brief post comparing the temperature projections contained in a paper in Science from 1981 [1] to what actually happened, showing that the projections underestimated actual warming from greenhouse gas emissions by about 30%. It’s still good agreement for a long-term forecast, and it shows that
Read moreIn a blog post published on April 12, 2012, Dan Lashof of NRDC makes it clear that we’ll run out of the earth’s ability to absorb greenhouse gases long before we run out of fossil fuels. In this blog post I’ll show why he’s exactly right.
Read moreAs I discussed here, the EPA announced in March that they would be promulgating new rules on the greenhouse gas emissions associated with new power plants that would effectively prohibit construction of new conventional coal plants without carbon capture and storage. Such plants were already feeling pressure from cheap natural
Read moreOne of my professors in graduate school, John Holdren, had a goal of writing a paper out of every talk he gave. Neither he nor I always accomplished that goal, but his advice stuck with me as something to which to aspire. After I gave my talk on computing trends
Read moreI gave a talk on the implications of the trends in the energy efficiency of computing at the VERGE conference in Arlington, VA on March 15, 2012. I just received the video and have embedded it below. It’s what the VERGE folks call a “one great idea” talk, and
Read moreDave Roberts has posted a cogent summary of the key implications of the new EPA rule related to new coal plants. These points follow: 1. This rule applies to new power plants, not existing or currently permitted plants, meaning it won’t have any real effect until well after the
Read moreThis is big news. The Washington Post is reporting that the Obama Administration is about to propose regulations on new power plants that would limit greenhouse gas emissions per kWh. Juliet Eilperin writes The Environmental Protection Agency will issue the first limits on greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants
Read moreMichael Tobis (with help from Stephen Ban) posted a wonderful schematic graph back in January 2012 contrasting the state of media coverage about climate with what informed opinion actually says. It’s not intended to be quantitatively accurate, but I think it conveys things pretty well, based on my experience
Read moreThe New Earth Archive opened voting for the most “powerful and influential books on topics like climate change, sociology, economics, politics, technology, philosophy, and many, many other areas.” They are asking for “help in choosing the 25 that have the power to inspire college readers to change the world,” based
Read moreRocky Mountain Institute (RMI), where I am affiliated as a Senior Fellow, just posted my short summary of key arguments from Cold Cash, Cool Climate: Science-based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs. For the full post, go here.
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