A collection of 12 posts
Our new article in Joule on data needs for understanding AI electricity use came out online today in Joule (link will be good until October 8, 2024). Here’s the summary section: As the famous quote from George Box goes, “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” Bottom-up AI
Read moreMy friend and colleague Danny Cullenward and I were on KQED Forum this morning, talking about the environmental impacts of our digital lives. Lesley McClurg was the host. You shouldn’t worry at all about your digital footprint, as we discussed in the show. It’s small and constantly improving,
Read moreIn 2011, we replaced lighting cans with LED inserts in our house, instantly reducing lighting energy use by 50% or more. The inserts looked like the ones on the left in the photos below. Recently (September 2023) I needed to buy a few more to replace some of the old
Read moreEvery year since Chris Nelder started the Energy Transition Show, he’s interviewed me for the annual roundup episode, and this year is no exception. We discuss the proper role of government in a capitalist economy, climate change doomism, how the fossil fuel industry rigs the system, and the difficulties
Read moreOur latest book was just released online today by IOP Publishing (The Institute of Physics). It’s called Solving Climate Change: A Guide for Learners and Leaders. The publisher’s page for the book is https://doi.org/10.1088/978-0-7503-4032-8. This textbook grew out of a course my colleague
Read moreI had at some point bookmarked this 2012 article containing a story from BP about reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and saving money. I’m posting it here now because the lesson it teaches is still important and relevant. BP thought its efforts to reduce GHG emissions would cost money,
Read moreYesterday (May 31, 2018) I talked at the Foothill College Solutions conference about climate solutions, summarizing what I’ve learned in three decades of studying how to solve the climate problem. Here’s the main message: We need to reduce emissions as much as possible, as fast as possible, starting
Read moreThe oil industry has known about the climate problem for a long time, which makes their resistance to actions to reduce emissions somewhat problematic (that’s an understatement). This video from Shell dated 1991 is exemplary in how it treats climate science, and it stands up really well. That speaks
Read moreFor the past two years I’ve been working with a distinguished team of analysts associated with the Risky Business project to analyze possible pathways to substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the US. Our new report, From Risk to Return: Investing in a Clean Energy Economy, just came out
Read moreThe sterling reputations of Michael E. Mann and Tom Toles precede them, and in The Madhouse Effectthey do not disappoint. I confess that I read all the cartoons first (I’m a big Tom Toles fan). Then I dug in to the text, and found it equally enjoyable. The writing
Read moreWe just expanded and updated the Oil-Climate Index (OCI) from the first version that we released in 2015. Project collaborators at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Stanford University, and the University of Calgary have now collected enough open-source data to model the climate impacts of 75 global oils—25
Read moreThe reports produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change contain the sum total of scientific knowledge on climate change science, mitigation, and adaptation. The long lead times needed to produce such comprehensive documents means that they inevitably omit the latest scientific findings when the reports are finally approved and
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