illconsidered | November 19, 2007Hydrogen powered cars have such an immediate and naive appeal. I mean just imagine nothing but water vapour coming out of your exhaust pipe! What could possibly be wrong with that?
Well as with most deus ex machina solutions to our oil dependence, this one has some rather glaring and inconvenient difficulties, in a very similar way to biofuels.
Specifically, the problem with hydrogen powered vehicles is not with the burning of the fuel, but its production. Because there is no earthly source of ready to go hydrogen, this product is actually better thought of as energy storage, rather than…
illconsidered | November 19, 2007 Sipping from the internet firehose...This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H.E.Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup(skip to bottom) Top Stories: SPM, US Reaction, Ban's Tour, OPEC Arctic Circulation, CARMA, State Of The Carbon Cycle, BBC on Denial, Global Dimming, ARGO Hurricanes, GHGs, Temperatures, Ozone, Satellites Impacts, Rainforests, Corals, Wacky Weather, Wildfires, Floods & Droughts, Food vs. Biofuel Mitigation, Transportation, Buildings, Sequestration, Geoengineering, Adaptation Journals, Misc. Science Bali Summit,…
illconsidered | November 16, 2007Okay, so I've used this before on the old site, it is just too hilarious not to call to attention at least one more time! Steven Colbert's Tek Jansen shows us the (f?)utility of time travel to alter the past.
[UPDATE] There seems to be a problem on the Comedy Central end of things, hopefully it will be resolved!
illconsidered | November 14, 2007 Sipping from the internet firehose...This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H.E.Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup(N.B. Sorry it is late, this is my fault, not Harvey's...)
(skip to bottom) Top Stories, Energy vs War Priorities, IEA Report, Expensive Energy, Bali, Ban Ki-moon Tour Arctic Ice, Tabasco Floods, Polls, GreenList, Ethics, Mayors, Forest Fires Hurricanes, GHG Stats, Temperatures, ENSO, Glaciers, Satellites Impacts, Rainforests, Desertification, Wildfires, Floods & Droughts, Food vs. Biofuel Mitigation, Transportation…
illconsidered | November 13, 2007"Optimism is a moral imperative. That said, it needs to be reality-based optimism. Sometimes the things we want to work aren't the things that are going to work."
says Michael Tobis on Gristmill. It is a good essay on dealing with what he calls the "train wreck of development, energy, food, environment, and warfare, all driven by a hugely overpopulated planet", and on the folly of false solutions.
It is worth the read!
illconsidered | November 12, 2007Last Friday, I noticed a breaking story, potentially a huge media scandal, involving Democratic front-runner Hilary Clinton. What was it? Voter supression? Campaign finance fraud? Some ancient skeleton rattling free from her closet?
Not so much....
A waitress in an Iowa diner mentioned that she had not received any tip from when the Clinton campaign had her serve them lunch. Of course that turned out to not be the case, they had left a tip for all the staff with the restaurant manager and the waitress had not known that at the time.
So...phony and irrelevant event distracts the media...…
illconsidered | November 6, 2007According to a recent poll from PIPA (Program on International Policy Attitudes), commissioned by the BBC, people world wide are ready and willing to pay more for energy supplies in order to combat climate change.
Once again the US is defining "leadership" as "dragging feet, kicking and screaming behind everyone else".
The true costs of oil are buried deep in huge military budgets and corporate welfare for the richest corporations in human history. Bottled water costs more.
(don't forget to check the details [PDF's, both])
illconsidered | November 5, 2007Reading a post on Deep-Sea News, and considering some of the recent worries about it I've read and considered on my own it occurs to me that, like flouride in drinking water, ocean fertilization is promising to be a great excuse to dump all kinds of crap in the ocean.
Got some industrial waste? If you can find some dubious mechanism whereby it may cause some plankton blooming, why not get paid to dump it in the ocean instead of paying to properly dispose of it?
Stay tuned for all kinds of abuses and misuses....
illconsidered | November 5, 2007Congratulations to Chriss Mooney whose book, Storm World, was just named one of the best books of the year by Publisher's Weekly. Head on over and congratulate him!
illconsidered | November 5, 2007 Sipping from the internet firehose...This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H.E.Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup(skip to bottom) Top Stories, Mexican Floods, Mayors Meeting, Carbon Cycle Melting Arctic, ICAP, Ocean Sink, California Wildfires Hurricanes, GHGs, Temperatures, Glaciers, Sea Levels, ENSO, Satellites Impacts, Rainforests, Corals, Wildfires, Floods & Droughts, Food vs. Biofuel Mitigation, Transportation, Building, Sequestration, Geoengineering Journals, Misc. Science Kyoto-2, Carbon Trade, Carbon Tax, Optimal Carbon…
illconsidered | November 2, 2007Via Andrew Dessler on Gristmill, we have this quoted material:
At the World Climate Conference in Geneva this week, the United States blocked consensus on specific goals for reduction of carbon dioxide emission. As What's New predicted a month ago, the US sided with such backward nations as China and the Soviet Union, and oil producers like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. Our traditional allies, Western European nations, Canada Japan, New Zealand and Australia, said they could cut emissions through energy efficiency measures at no net cost. A German study even concludes they can make money --…
illconsidered | October 31, 2007"Bright Scientists, Dim Notions" is the title of a NYT article from a few days ago prompted by the recent controversy over scientifically unfounded and racist remarks made by James Watson about the supposedly inherently inferior intelligence of the African race as compared to Caucasians.
The article is an interesting review of a few other notable examples of scientific crack-pottery in one field coming from the mouths of scientists who have in fact achieved brilliance in there own fields. There is also some speculation as to why this happens and why it is different when a famous scientist…
illconsidered | October 30, 2007Okay, that headline should really say "What if...", but hey, this is one of "the internets" and I'm just one of those irresponsible activist bloggers, so what do I care? But let's get to the point...
Today's Dilbert cartoon offers some sound advice to Exxon Mobile, half of which they are already following.
Now, true to my vile, hate-spewing nature, I must say "I can't wait til they get to the second half" or something similar...but I just don't have the committment and follow-through required to reach blogger bigtime.
illconsidered | October 30, 2007Oceans are 'soaking up less CO2' is the headline of a recent BBC News article. (Well, it is recent in most senses of the word though not in blogger-land...Rabbet Run discusses it here, Stoat did it here, and Michael Tobis blogged about it here).
So the news is that a some new research indicates that the rate at which atmospheric CO2 is being absorbed into the ocean is falling. The findings are new, the authors are not sure if natural varibility is involved or not, but regardless it is a troubling sign. If it does turn out to be the case it signals the cessation of a free ride nature has…
illconsidered | October 29, 2007Australia's 2007 Person of the Year, Tim Flannery, was interviewed in a long segment on Democracy Now last week.
Listen/Watch/Read
It is an interesting interview on a great daily news source.
illconsidered | October 29, 2007If Gore Were Arrested is the title of an article at The Nation online. According to this report Al Gore has been invited to participate in civil disobedience with the Rainforest Action Network and he is considering it!
The article finishes its headline sentence this way:
If Gore did end up getting arrested during a protest against a coal-fired power plant, it would make front-page news throughout the world and put a spotlight on what some climate scientists and activists consider the single most important priority in the fight against climate change: halting the use of coal as the world's…
illconsidered | October 29, 2007Real Climate has a good post on geo-engineering and why it is only fitting as a final act of desperation, not a policy platform. It expresses very well all my own misgivings (it's a terribly dangerous one-chance-to-get-it-right experiment on the entire planet, it commits the human race to centuries of climatic meddling, it will ultimately be more expensive and harder to agree on than simply reducing CO2) so I won't enumerate them here, just go read it all there.
But I will emphasize one of the points Ray Pierrehumbert mentions that is too often overlooked.
As anyone who follows the science…
illconsidered | October 28, 2007 Sipping from the internet firehose...This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H.E.Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's GW news roundup(skip to bottom) Top Stories, Accelerating CO2 Growth, GEO-4, Mass Extinctions, Roe & Baker, Prins & Rayner, IAC Melting Arctic, California Wildfires, Catch Up Hurricanes, GHG Sources, Glaciers, Pine Island, Sea Levels, Satellites, DSCOVR Impacts, Rainforests, Corals, Wildfires, Floods & Droughts, Food vs. Biofuel, Cereal Production Mitigation, Transportation, Building, Sequestration, Geoengineering Journals, Misc.…
illconsidered | October 27, 2007If the United States continues to thumb its nose at the rest of the world in the climate change arena, this article from the EU Observer discusses what the appropriate response should be.
The article indicates that the European Union is considering taxing goods that are imported from CO2 polluting countries. In other words, the US would not be allowed the economic benefits it would gain by being a rogue nation and not controling its CO2 emissions.
Of course, there are many devils hiding in the yet to be established details, but this is clearly the right principle and may actually have a…