Originally published on Energy Post. By Vincenzo Bove and Petros Sekeris Politicians usually claim they wage war for “idealistic” reasons. Conspiracy theorists usually claim “it’s all about the oil” (or other resources). As it turns out, they are more right than the politicians, according to new research that shows that … [continued]
From Le Grist (yes, I took it upon myself to change their name): Discussions of how to respond to climate change often involve Very Large Numbers — the needed investments to transition to a fully renewable energy system are in the hundreds of billions. The brain sort of shuts down when it … [continued]
This is an awesome guest post from yet another one of our awesome readers, Rich Loomis. Rich offered the data and idea, and then, with a little nudge, actually went ahead and wrote the whole post. While he points this out below, I just want to highlight that while there’s … [continued]
Are we getting more cranky and fractious as the planet heats up? It certainly seems so. The US is only warmer by just a few degrees on average over the last 30 years, and yet the culture seems to have become a lot angrier than thirty years ago. But that’s just one person’s subjective sense of what’s happening.
To see if there is a connection between rising temperatures and rising bellicosity, an interdisciplinary team of researchers at Columbia University’s Earth Institute counted tropical conflicts and compared the timing to the El Niño warming cycles.
Coauthor Mark Cane, a climate scientist at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, was among the earliest to predict the rhythm of El Niño/El Niña cycles, in the 1980s. That discovery is now used by organizations around the world to plan agriculture and relief services.
The higher temperatures during El Niño years double the risk of civil wars across 90 affected tropical countries, the authors found.
Some more clean (& dirty) tech policy and politics stories from the last week….
Two GREAT videos I just saw this week nail some of the major problems with coal and oil (other than climate change) that we are facing. Without even mentioning the controversial (though scientifically proven) issue of climate change, these videos will stir you and would even get grandma riled up … [continued]
