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Oklahoma farmer's son, Dust Bowl era, 1930s

Climate change, drought and the future of America

Climate change will likely lead to drought in the Southwest that make the historic Dust Bowl of the 1930’s look like good times.  A bunch of scientific studies assessing the risk of drought were recently covered in various media outlets, including Forbes, National Geographic, Scientific American and elsewhere. Several of these media reports are based on an excellent paper, published in Science Advances, called “Unprecedented 21st century drought risk in the American Southwest and Central Plains.”  Their findings were not encouraging. In this paper, scientists from NASA, Columbia and Cornell Universities used historical tree ring data and something called the Palmer Drought Severity Index… Read More »Climate change, drought and the future of America

Deniergate! Ohh the irony, Willie Soon!

The New York Times published a very interesting article on Saturday…  Deeper Ties to Corporate Cash for Doubtful Climate Researcher By JUSTIN GILLIS and JOHN SCHWARTZ The NY Times article describes evidence uncovered by Greenpeace and the Climate Investigations Center, that Dr Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon, a prominent climate change denying researcher, failed to disclose that much of his work is funded by corporate interests. Apparently, Willie Soon is almost entirely funded by various coal and oil interests, including the Koch Brothers.  This is richly ironic considering the phony “climategate” scandal, likely orchestrated by the same coal and oil interests, to discredit climate scientists.  On second thought, maybe… Read More »Deniergate! Ohh the irony, Willie Soon!

Divest and have a Happy(er) Valentine’s Day!

Today, just a quick post to say that Global Fossil Fuel Divestment Day has begun.  So why not take a look at your investments and see if you can switch to something less destructive.  Even if you are not an investor, there are still ways you can help. Check out these posts… Why Divest From Fossil Fuels – un-burnable fossil fuels, stranded assets, and corporate welfare Carbon Budgets Explored – how much can we safely burn?  I made some easy to look at graphs to help visualize this. Peak Oil Predictions — Only 50 Years Left?! – thoughts on fracking, Saudi Arabia, and just… Read More »Divest and have a Happy(er) Valentine’s Day!

Climate Change, Your Money, and Your Life

I recently read two great books, one about the financial habits of millionaires, and the other about a way of thinking called Essentialism.  It occurred to me that part of being ready for the impacts of climate change, or your favorite calamity of choice, is being financially prepared. If you are hit by a disaster– be it a super storm, heat wave, hurricane, or invasion of black U.N. stealth helicopters, which is better?  Being caught off-guard and unprepared, or having enough to get your family through whatever comes? So today I’m going to summarize these two books and try to tie… Read More »Climate Change, Your Money, and Your Life

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Carbon Budgets Explored

As you may recall from a recent post about fossil fuel divestment, fossil fuels will soon become a stranded asset, meaning we can not afford to pull it out of the ground and burn it. The concept of carbon budgets was explored in depth in a report by the Carbon Tracker Initiative and the Grantham Research Institute, called “Unburnable Carbon 2013:  Wasted capital and stranded assets,” which we went over in detail in a earlier post. As discussed before, a carbon budget is not hard to figure out, because the relationship between how much carbon is burned and the increase in temperature is relatively well know. ( Data from Carbon… Read More »Carbon Budgets Explored