Jonathan Koomey

8 Oct 2014 • 10 min read

The Case for the 2 C Warming Limit

On October 1, 2014, David G. Victor and Charles F. Kennel wrote an opinion piece that appeared in the journal Nature, titled “Ditch the 2 C warming goal” [1]. The provocative title, which accurately conveyed the point of view of the authors, led to several responses, two from Joe Romm

25 Sep 2014 • 2 min read

Google ditches ALEC, finally. Facebook, Yahoo, and Yelp follow suit

Google just quit ALEC, and Chairman Eric Schmidt explained why, in very forthright terms: Google’s controversial decision to fund the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) was a “mistake,” company chairman Eric Schmidt admitted on Monday, saying the group is spreading lies about global warming and “making the world a

5 Sep 2014 • 3 min read

Our new article analyzing downloading console games versus shipping them on discs

Photo credit: John McCullough. Licensed through Creative Commons. The Journal of Industrial Ecology just published our article titled “The carbon footprint of games distribution”. It’s freely downloadable. Here’s the summary: Summary This research investigates the carbon footprint of the lifecycle of console games, using the example of PlayStation®

29 Aug 2014 • 3 min read

One key issue missing from a recent Dot Earth blog post on the carbon commitment from electricity investments

Yesterday Andy Revkin posted a very useful discussion among high level experts about the issue of “climate commitment”, as discussed in a recent article in Environmental Research Letters by Davis and Socolow. Both the blog post and the journal article are worth a read to get a sense for the

25 Jul 2014 • 1 min read

Upcoming class: Data center essentials for executives

Photo credit: By Hugovanmeijeren (Own work) [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons I’ve been struggling for years to convince executives in large enterprises to fix the incentive, reporting, and other structural problems in data centers. The folks in the data center know that there are

3 Jul 2014 • 3 min read

A short discussion of academic integrity and what it means

I taught a class called Energy and Society as a visiting professor at UC Berkeley back in Fall 2011. It was a kind of homecoming for me as I had taken the graduate version of that class at the Energy and Resources Group from John Holdren and the late Mark

1 Jul 2014 • 1 min read

My podcast interview with Tom Bowman titled "How Can We Accelerate Carbon Reductions?"

My interview with Tom Bowman about “the unique role entrepreneurs play in climate action” was posted this past Saturday. It turned out very nicely and required little or no editing, so I guess I was on a roll. Please listen, send comments, and spread the word! In the interview I

25 Jun 2014 • 1 min read

A closer look at funding for Bjorn Lomborg

Graham Readfearn over at Desmogblog.com has done the most detailed exposition to date of the various ways that one of the most famous “luke warmists”, Bjorn Lomborg, gets his money (read more about the luke warmists). Students of misinformation know well that Lomborg is a prolific producer of half

24 Jun 2014 • 1 min read

Risky Business: Documenting the economic risks associated with climate change

The new Risky Business report was released today. Worth a read. Here a paragraph motivating the report’s conclusions: Climate Change: Nature’s Interest-Only Loan Our research focuses on climate impacts from today out to the year 2100, which may seem far off to many investors and policymakers. But climate

23 Jun 2014 • 1 min read

National Geographic changes its arctic maps because the arctic ice cover has melted so much in recent decades

For the tenth edition of its National Geographic Atlas of the World, this venerable institution has now altered the way the arctic ice appears on its maps. For details go to “Shrinking Arctic Ice Prompts Drastic Change in National Geographic Atlas" Here’s an animated GIF illustrating the changes.

23 Jun 2014 • 1 min read

An excellent news feed site for climate issues

If you want a compact place to check out the latest climate news from around the world, my friend Mel Harte’s site is for you. It’s hosted on the Huffington Post.

23 Jun 2014 • 1 min read

Ten commandments of logic, worth consulting and following when engaged in arguments of any kind.

Addendum: This list omitted one of my favorites, the Tu Quoque fallacy, where someone claims that an argument is invalidated because of hypocritical actions by the person making that argument. Thou shalt not do that either! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

6 Jun 2014 • 4 min read

Game changing innovation in a Silicon Valley garage. Who would have thunk it?

From an energy efficiency perspective, one of the most persistently difficult appliances is the clothes dryer. Apart from switching from electricity to natural gas, or buying a washing machine that has extra high spin speeds, there just isn’t much you can do about dryer energy use. For decades people

5 Jun 2014 • 3 min read

Why the coal industry should hope that it's efficiency and renewables that displace coal-fired generation

To give context to the recent EPA proposed rule on existing power plant emissions, this week I compiled historical data and the most recent Energy Information Administration (EIA) projections on carbon emissions for the US utility sector. The results are shown in Figure 1. Figure 1: US utility sector carbon

4 Jun 2014 • 1 min read

If you think the climate hasn't warmed since 1998, think again

One of the most common Internet memes about climate is the idea that the earth hasn’t warmed since 1998. This erroneous claim is based on cherry picking data and ignoring the increase in the heat content of the oceans, which is where most of the historical warming has been