It’s currently popular to argue for fighting climate change by “solar geoengineering”—such as sending sulfates toward the sun to cool the Earth’s surface (the way a volcano’s eruption can cool the Earth). But many people question this approach. The latest warning comes from Robinson Meyer in the Atlantic. “A new study hints that solar geoengineering…
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What’s Wrong with Planting More Trees?
Planting trees to sequester carbon and prevent carbon dioxide emissions has become very popular (whether it is accomplishing much or not). Now the New York Times reports that the effort to save the world is causing local ecological harm by bringing in non-native species. Writes Catrin Einhorn: “[C]ompanies and countries are increasingly investing in tree…
African Leaders Say No to Renewables
Reuters reported from the prestigious CERAWeek energy conference this month: “Some 900 million people in the world, most of them in Africa, still have no access to energy for basic needs, Nigeria’s oil Minister Timipre Marlin Sylva said during the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston. “‘We are still in transition from firewood to gas,’…
Latest IPCC Report Full of Errors
The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), issued in February, is full of flaws, says Roger Pielke, Jr., professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. The report, called Working Group 2 (or WG2), is supposed to focus on the “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” of a changing climate. Pielke…
Don’t Worry about Greenland’s Melting Ice
Greenland ‘s ice mass is melting—but more slowly than it did a decade ago, and its level right now is about the same as in the 1930s. That’s from Steven Koonin, writing in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required). Koonin cites measurements of ice conducted by the Programme for Monitoring of the Greenland Ice Sheet,…
A Half-Century of Disproven Pessimism
Writing on his blog Master Resource, Robert L. Bradley, Jr. points out that “an optimistic view of future climate has a strong basis in settled science (CO2 fertilization, modest primary warming), just as climate pessimistic has a more speculative basis (as in debated feedback effects to elevate the initial warming).” Bradley reviews “the poor track…