Photo via Señor Codo Economists have been saying for years that the best way to reduce greenhouse gasses and prevent catastrophic climate change is to use a carbon tax to put a price on pollution. The logic is pretty self evident: If producing carbon emissions costs money, businesses will look for ways to reduce those…
Will all of our climate change action be undone by squirrels?
For the first time in forever people might be forgiven for feeling just a bit optimistic about stopping climate change. Although the deal is certainly not perfect and has many critics, an agreement was reached by a large number of countries in Lima, Peru a few days ago. It doesn’t do much but there is…
Everyone Needs to Stop Predicting Human Extinction
I grew up in the middle of the cold war. Along with fire drills, we were regularly asked to get under our desks at school and pretend that nuclear weapons were on the way (and pretend that that thin piece of wood would protect us in some way). In 2014 there are more nuclear weapons…
John Oliver and Bill Nye on an accurate climate change “debate”
Neil deGrasse Tyson recently gave television news media a slap on the wrist for giving climate change deniers equal time and hosting debates on whether or not climate change is real. At this point it is an absurd thing to do. Giving those who do not believe in global warming equal time is roughly the equivalent…
A sports analogy to help explain how global warming is measured
There is a great tendency among humans in general, to filter information based on their own recent experiences. People, for example, tend to believe in global warming less on cold days. Obviously climate change doesn’t work that way. Other than the potential impact on storms, today’s weather in your town has nothing to do with global…
Why Geoengineering is our only real hope in the battle against climate change
The idea of geoengineering, essentially using technology to artificially cool the planet is not popular among environmentalists. Former US President Al Gore recently said that the entire idea is insane. Although most people don’t know what it is, it is already the stuff of internet conspiracy theories. However, given our failure to make any real…
Video: Bill Nye vs. Climate Change Denier Marsha Blackburn
On Sunday’s Meet the Press, Bill Nye debated Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn an anti-science climate change denier. Sane people can only hope that the Republican party will continue to implode. At a time when science and technology are essential to our survival (economic and otherwise) their attacks on science and even logic are moving past stupid and…
15 second timelapse video from NASA shows 60 years of rising temperatures
This video from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, shows a running five-year average global temperature, as compared to a baseline average global temperature from 1951-1980. Yellow, on the map, indicates the average being reached while orange and red indicate that the average has been exceeded. According to NASA 2013 tied for the seventh warmest…
Support the Petition to Name Storms After Climate Change Deniers
A petition is circulating to change the naming system for tropical storms and hurricanes. Currently the World Meteorological Society gives storms the names of people. Those names however are fairly random and the people storms are named after have done nothing to earn the dubious honor. The folks at Climate Name Change have a fantastic…
Thanks for Being Part of the Biggest Science Experiment Ever
We are in the midst of the biggest scientific experiment in the history of the Earth and we are all a part of that experiment. To be specific, we are seeing what happens when we push greenhouse gasses to record levels. Last week we pushed past 400 parts per million in the atmosphere and exciting…