Ideas, Opinions, Genealogy, and Book Reviews
Kate Schapira opened the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth in Providence, RI. Inspired by Lucy of Peanuts comics fame, her sign read “Climate Anxiety Counseling 5 cents: The Doctor Is In.” This led to many conversations with people about climate change and related fears and anxieties as well as anxiety generated by other issues.
Continue reading “Climate Anxiety”
I have written a bit about climate change and its many threats to our future (https://www.jackreidy.com/blog/tag/climate-change/) but have not written on it in a few years. Since last year was the hottest on record (https://www.climate.gov/news-features/featured-images/2023-was-warmest-year-modern-temperature-record) it seems to be a good time to write more about the climate crisis.
There has been recent news on the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) voting to require companies to disclose their climate harming emissions (https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/03/06/sec-climate-disclosure-rule/ ) which contribute greatly to climate change (aka global warming).
Since overwhelming evidence indicates that climate change is a great threat to the financial prospects of companies, the economy as a whole, and human health, I hope this effort succeeds.
The climate change deniers are at it again. Some deny climate change (aka global warning) is happening at all. Other just deny that human activities are a factor or maybe that human activities are a factor but a much smaller factor than volcanoes.
This year it is Mt. Etna that erupted and released millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, supposedly dwafing the contribution of humans to the atmospheric carbon dioxide. But similar claims have been made for various volcanoes in recent years.
Continue reading “Human activities and climate change (aka global warning)”
The House Republicans want to prevent the Defense Department from dealing with a national security threat (http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2016/06/republicans-trying-to-stop-pentagon-climate-plan-000149).
The Defense Department sees that climate change is a threat and wants to prepare for it (http://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/471521p.pdf). But many Republicans seem to think it a hoax and those in Congress are so sure of themselves that they think they should stop the military from preparing for this threat.
Continue reading “Republicans vs military”
I was thinking about climate change because it is much in the news these days. We have the Paris climate change agreement (21st United Nations Convention on Climate Change (COP21)).
I ran across an interesting site. The Yale Project on Climate Change Communication is tracking changes in American public beliefs about climate change and the role of human activity in climate change. The data are looked at a number of ways. It is well-worth your time to look around the site. Continue reading “Paris climate change agreement”
The words grabbed my attention. I can just see someone shouting “Knucklehead for President”. The “stuff happens” part also appealed to me but it was the knucklehead business that really got my attention.
The article was “Stuff Happens to the Environment, Like Climate Change” by Thomas L. Friedman (@tomfriedman) and here is how it begins: Continue reading “Knucklehead for President”
There seems to be a war on science. I am a scientist so my bias is to believe something is probable when most reputable scientists in the relevant field say it is true.
Sure, science gets is wrong once every now and then but not very often. Science is a self-correcting process and mistakes are normally discovered pretty quickly. I suppose a betting man would lose a lot of money by betting against something that most scientists agree with. Continue reading “War on Science”
The full title, Climate Peril: The Intelligent Reader’s Guide to Understanding the Climate Crisis, gives you a better idea of what this book is about and who it is aimed at.
The author is John J. Berger, a Ph.D. with expertise in ecology and and climate science. He has written this book not for other experts but for intelligent readers who wish to understand the current debate about climate change and the likely consequences.
I am in the process of reading this book but there is much to it and I suspect this is going to take awhile. So this is both a progress report and a review of the book as far as I have read and what I see coming based on on chapter titles.
By the way, if you look at the Amazon site you will see many favorable reviews. In fact when I looked all who reviewed the book gave it 5 starts (the highest rating). You may also notice the Kindle version is considerably less than either the hardback or paperback editions.
Dr. Berger starts us a brief picture of what will likely happen as a result of climate change in the next 90 years or so. That is, the life time of those being born now and in the very near future. It is an alarming picture and it could be worse if greenhouse emissions continue to increase.
The next chapter reviews the evidence that climate changes are already occurring. But climate does change naturally. The next 2 chapters explain the normal climate alteration process and then the unnatural process which is occurring now.
This is where I am now. So far, I am very impressed. Dr. Berger does a great job in explaining the complex issues in normal climate fluctuations (why we have ice ages and warming periods) and why most scientists believe we are now abnormally warming the climate.
Of course, weather varies. We have hot days and cold days. But based on yearly averages, 2014 was the hottest year on record. And the past few years have been pretty warm too. See Bloomberg for a great animated graph.
But back to the book. So far I think it does exactly what it set out to do. That is, it is an explanation of climate change and climate peril for the intelligent reader. And so far, the book looks very good at it. I look forward to reading the rest which looks like it lays out various climate perils in greater detail.
In last Sunday’s NY Times, Henry Paulson wrote a piece called The Coming Climate Crash: Lessons for Climate Change in the 2008 Recession.
Yes, we are talking about that Henry Paulson Continue reading “Climate change, a conservative solution”
I’ve been a fan of Governor Huntsman for years. I liked him in the 2012 Republican Presidential primaries. I couldn’t vote for him in the primary since I live in Pennsylvania and am not registered as a Republican (or as a member any party). He is definitely more conservative than me but sounds like a very smart and reasonable man.
But my reason for writing today is to point to his opinion piece on climate change and the GOP in the NY Times today. See the link below.
The scientific evidence for climate change is pretty strong – we often hear that 97% of scientists agree that climate change is happening and human activities are at least partly the cause. A page at NASA shows this consensus.
The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows increasing confidence that this change is happening, using words such as “unequivocal” and “unprecedented“. Continue reading “Climate Change: Scientists think it is real but politicians doubt”
I like to walk.
Now that I am retired I find that I often take 2 or more walks each day. Usually I have company but perhaps 2 or 3 times a week, I walk alone. A few months ago I decide to take my iPod on these walks.
Then I realized I could add podcasts and listen to intelligent conversation as I walk. One of the more interesting talks I heard lately was an interview with Dr. Kerry Emanuel and Chris Mooney on a conservative’s view of climate change from a climate scientist. Kerry Emanuel is a professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chris Mooney is one of the hosts of the Point of Inquiry podcasts.
This quote is taken from the Point of Inquiry “about” page:
Point of Inquiry is the Center for Inquiry’s flagship podcast, where the brightest minds of our time sound off on all the things you’re not supposed to talk about at the dinner table: science, religion, and politics.
So if you’d like to hear interesting interviews, I’d highly recommend their podcasts. You can get them for free at the Apple online store (same as iTunes). Many of us like free.