Category Archives: Global warming

Gaius Publius: Neoliberalism, “Just Desserts,” and the Post-Climate-Crisis Economy

Gaius examines the connections between neoliberalism and the convulsions that climate change will bring to the world.

Determined Ignorance on Climate Change: Still Impervious to Facts

Climate change is a hard policy question to address because it pits those who believe in evidence against those committed to knowing as little as possible.

Michael Klare: In the Carbon Wars, Big Oil Is Winning

Listening to President Obama’s State of the Union address, it would have been easy to conclude that we were slowly but surely gaining in the war on climate change. Of course, by now, you should know that when Obama claims to have made progress, a reality check is very much in order.

The Embattled Climate Scientist Who Fought Back

Real News Network interviewed climate scientist Michael Mann, who has come under vicious and persistent attack by right-wing groups who decided to play a reductivist game and focus their attack on one chart Mann developed which became important in popular discussions of climate change.

Gail Tverberg: How the EIA, IEA, and Other Researchers Are Modeling the Wrong Growth Limit

Why the real constraint on energy production isn’t the availability of resources, but the cost of developing them, and how these neglected investment constraints have big ramifications for “peak energy” and economic growth generally.

Michael Hoexter: Malign Confusion about Growth, Economic Growth or “Degrowth”: Which Way Forward? – Part 2

Yves here. One of the big problems with the growth v. “de-growth” debate is how terrible our measures of productive activity are.

“Loss & Damage” Beyond Charity, into Solidarity, and Suffused with Climate Justice?i

By Patrick Bond, a political economist at the University of KwaZulu-Natal School of Development Studies in Durban, South Africa, where since 2004 he has directed the Centre for Civil Society. Originally published at Triple Crisis.

An important article about one facet of the Warsaw Conference of Polluters 19, “Loss & Damage”, was published last week in The Star (Malasia) by the very highly-regarded political-ecologist/economist [and regular TCB blogger] Martin Khor (New climate deal on loss and damage). As always, the South Centre and Third World Network provide invaluable information, and Martin has taught me incalculable amounts since we first met in Johannesburg in 1990.

Ohio’s Official Fracking Water Damage Denialism

Yves here. It is not hard to imagine that the position taken by Ohio officials regarding what sure looks like fracking-induced damage to water supplies is being replicated in other states.

New Study Finds Higher Methane Emissions from Fracking

Fracking skeptics have been concerned about methane releases, since methane is a vastly more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. This report is particularly grim and calls the entire case for shale gas into question.

Michael Klare: A Climate Change-Fueled Revolution?

Yves here. The post below by Michael Klare is hardly radical; in fact, the Department of Defense has been for at least the last five years working on geopolitical scenarios that give a large role to climate change induced political instability, such as mass migrations out of heavily populated low-lying areas. So as much as Klare anticipates more and more popular uprisings, I’d anticipate that the powers that be are expecting them and are prepared to suppress them brutally. Thus the places they might succeed are in advanced economies with comparatively little police brutality in large cities (ie, where you’d have lots of media coverage which would constrain how harsh the retaliation would be).

Surely the Lotus F1 Team Isn’t Just Slinking Quietly Away From Its Embarrassing Team Partner, AGT?

Lotus F1 quietly drop AGT from their Official Team Partner list just after Naked Capitalism tells the world that AGT’s a scam.

Why is Google Censoring Search Results to Nix Warnings Just Like Ones Issued by a UK Regulator?

Yves here. One of the things on our very long list of important issues we’d like to write about is the way Google, an unregulated information-screener, can dictate companies’ business models and keep information out of the public eye by how they handle search queries. Richard Smith give an example below.