Bryan Walker • Apr 10, 2010 •
Lucidity in an economist is to be prized, and Nobel winner Paul Krugman writes with great clarity in a lengthy article this weekend in the New York Times Magazine headed Building a Green Economy. Is it possible, he asks, to make drastic cuts in greenhouse gases without destroying our economy? I’ll offer a summary of [...] … Read More
Bryan Walker • Apr 08, 2010 •
“…we tend to assume that the public are confused because they have a deficit of scientific knowledge, education and cognitive skills. That is to say that they’re scientifically illiterate.†In these words science historian Naomi Oreskes, speaking with others at a symposium at the recent American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting, [...] … Read More
Bryan Walker • Apr 04, 2010 •
Cleo Paskal, whose book Global Warring was reviewed recently on Hot Topic, has been speaking in New Zealand and left her card by way of an article in the Herald. In it she focuses on one matter raised in her book – the fate of island nations whose land becomes uninhabitable because of rising seas. [...] … Read More
Bryan Walker • Apr 02, 2010 •
Greenpeace has been digging. It has unearthed Koch Industries as a major funder of climate change denial groups. A new 44 page report tells the story. It fits well with  their more widely-scoped report Dealing in Doubt to which Gareth drew attention recently. I was unaware of Koch Industries and, according to Greenpeace, that’s also the [...] … Read More
Bryan Walker • Apr 01, 2010 •
Fred Pearce is a fine one to speak of a rush to judgment. Many of his Guardian articles on the UEA emails did just that. (See Pearced to the Heart and Defending the Indefensible on Hot Topic) Yet that is the accusation he levels at yesterday’s report of the parliamentary committee’s investigation into the [...] … Read More
Bryan Walker • Mar 31, 2010 •
Geopolitics don’t stop because climate change and other environmental pressures confront the global society. Cleo Paskal in her book Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map offers little hope of human societies setting aside their differences to confront the common threat. Not that she’s sceptical of climate change – [...] … Read More
Bryan Walker • Mar 28, 2010 •
“We have a very apt saying in Hindi, which essentially translates as: ‘When a jackal is threatened, he starts moving toward the city.’ In other words, he becomes more visible. I think some of these guys are speaking out volubly because they read the writing on the wall.†That was IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri in [...] … Read More
Bryan Walker • Mar 27, 2010 •
RealClimate has given James Randerson, editor of the Guardian’s environmental website, the opportunity to respond to two RealClimate posts on the Guardian’s “investigation†into the hacked CRU emails. I found his response disappointing. He points to the Guardian’s climate change credentials. They are certainly for the most part good, though in view of the overwhelming [...] … Read More
Bryan Walker • Mar 26, 2010 •
Jonathan Leake and the Sunday Times got a lot of mileage out of his disgraceful Amazongate article, which I wrote about in February. It was pleasing to read yesterday in Climate Progress that tropical forest researcher Simon Lewis has lodged an official complaint to the UK’s Press Complaints Commission (PCC). The IPCC wrote: “Up to 40% of [...] … Read More
Bryan Walker • Mar 23, 2010 •
An illuminating article by Michael Lemonick just published in Yale Environment, which I summarise here, communicates some of the developing understanding of just how uneven sea level rise is likely to prove. It will vary greatly by region. There are a number of reasons for this. One is that the land is actually rising in some [...] … Read More