Planet3.0 Blogs

As part of a series of posts on photovoltaic energy as a metabolic revolution of the earth's ecosystem, I am reproposing a post that I published last year on "Cassandra's Legacy" with the title "Five Billion Years of Energy Supply". It…

I’ve finally watched the video of Kevin Anderson’s talk (posted in a comment that I currently can’t find) which was part of the Cambridge Climate Lecture Series. I found it quite uncomfortable. He addressed things that we typically avoid. The…

Long article, excerpted here is worth a full read if you want to understand this dynamic. Splinter: In 2005, at its annual meeting in Washington, D.C., the National Association of Evangelicals was on the verge of doing something novel: affirming…

Colbert on how climate change is helping build soil in his pants. NYTimes: WASHINGTON — The average temperature in the United States has risen rapidly and drastically since 1980, and recent decades have been the warmest of the past 1,500…

Many of you will - hopefully! - be aware of the short URLs included on the Fixed-number list which lead to our rebuttals. They all have the format of "http://sks.to/" + [key word]. So, if you know that the key word…

Eli’s already covered this but I thought I would present a slightly different argument. The topic is a recent paper by Ned Nikolov and Karl Zeller called new insights on the physical nature of the atmospheric greenhouse effect deduced from…

As John von Neuman put itWith four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.and, as fate would happen, along comes Ned Nikolov and Karl Zellner with "New Insights on the Physical…

Guardian: Staff at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) have been told to avoid using the term climate change in their work, with the officials instructed to reference “weather extremes” instead. A series of emails obtained by the Guardian between…

#Wildfire évolution in #Greenland pic.twitter.com/j60KDpHin2 — Meteos (@Meteos_) August 7, 2017 Wildfire not unknown in Arctic, trying to  remember ever hearing about it in Greenland. yes …. here pic.twitter.com/LZguyVrzim — Meteos (@Meteos_) August 7, 2017   Filed under: Crock of…

Illustration from the recent paper by Olivia Judson on "Nature Ecology & Evolution (2017) "The Energy Expansions of Evolution". Olivia Judson published a very interesting paper this March on "Nature Ecology & Evolution". It is a wonderful cavalcade along 4 billion years of the…

Not just your money. Your Land. Guardian: A study was just published in the journal World Development that quantifies the amount of subsidies directed toward fossil fuels globally, and the results are shocking. The authors work at the IMF and…

Fossil fuels have two major problems that paint a dim picture for their future energy dominance. These problems are inter-related but still should be discussed separately. First, they cause climate change. We know that, we’ve known it for decades, and…

Filed under: Crock of the Week…

Another month has passed and so here is the updated Arctic sea ice volume graph as calculated by the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) at the Polar Science Center: Given the ideal weather for ice retention during…

The excellent new single from Sir William of Bragg. Always right on, our Bill, and often right. See also: Between The Wars. Now talk amongst yourselves……

Anyone that didn’t get this after the appointment of Rex Tillerson is apparently waiting for a skywriting plane to spell it out.Filed under: Crock of the Week…

Stephen Colbert show – where the Deep State goes to recreate. Below, same song, 35 years earlier. Filed under: Crock of the Week…

When this country was colonized by Europeans, ten thousand years of Buffalo migrations across the Great Plains left some 6 feet or more of the world’s most fertile soil in America’s bread basket region. Now that legacy is down to…

Who knows more about losing Florida? Monologue below. Filed under: Crock of the Week…

Filed under: Crock of the Week…

Some have encouraged me to watch Roger Pielke Jr’s presentation on Climate politics as a manichean paranoia, and I have now done so (slides here, and I’ll post the video at the end of the post.). Manichean paranoia refers to…

Facebook – Katharine Hayhoe PhD:  In listening to politicians talk about climate change, we are often encouraged and hopeful when one who previously said, “it isn’t real” changes their tune to “it might be, but even if it is, it…

Image above, from the Washington Post, 17 July 2017. Donald Trump seems to have been basically unaffected by the Russiagate campaign, even with those who disapprove him. Is it a sign that propaganda doesn't work anymore as it used to…

Above – Spoon-Tamago.com:  The startling effects of the passage of time come into sharp focus in aerial images taken of Fukushima’s “difficult-to-return zones” in the seventh summer since the March 2011 nuclear disaster. Tetsuro Takehana, an Asahi Shimbun photographer who…

Context (link here if the video doesn't work, just scroll down):…

Hallmark of the Trump administration is a remarkable level of petty vindictiveness towards science and scientists.Filed under: Crock of the Week…

Filed under: Crock of the Week…

Tesla Model 3 has hit the streets, but it’s only one of a rapidly expanding fleet of EVs, that are aimed at changing how the world moves. On the horizon, driverless EVs are the true paradigm shifter. How soon? How…

Filed under: Crock of the Week…

Tyler Cowen has an interesting point about "defensive innovation" meant to prevent future problems, wherein he describes climate change as a future problem and Tesla as a defensive innovator that solves the future problem without necessarily improving human lives over…