“Hottest month on record for the nation”
July 2012 was “3.3°F above the 20th century average, marking the hottest July and the hottest month on record for the nation,” reports the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Click here for the report or on the image to enlarge it.…
Hot earth day
"Most of the US experienced record or near-record breaking temperatures, contributing to the warmest March since national records began in 1895," reports the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Click on the map for NOAA's March 2012 global climate analysis. After reading it, if you live in Southern California, Nevada, Arizona etc, what are you waiting for? Rip out your lawn. It will save roughly half of the water you use, the often dirty energy needed to pump that water hundreds of miles from wet places to dry ones, the energy needed to mow the lawn once a week, the air pollution caused by the mowers, and the energy needed to cart away and process the green waste. For support on landscape alternatives, check your local native plant society.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
A new report from the NRDC is reminiscent of a Soviet-style Southern Nevada children's book praising Las Vegas water manager Pat Mulroy.
Publication this week of “Ready or Not: An Evaluation of State Climate and Water Preparedness Planning” by the Natural Resources Defense Council offers a good example of what happens when lobbyists are charged with assessing the very policy that they had a hand in developing. Las Vegas water manager Pat Mulroy becomes a climate hero and California becomes a nationwide leader in climate-ready water policy, a ranking prominently reported today in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Lest anyone mistake skepticism about the NRDC report as an endorsement of climate change denial, let it be said up front: Climate change is fact. What prompts this post isn’t any difference of opinion with the NRDC about the utter urgency of climate change preparedness, or even any over-arching …
A genius caught between theft and heroism
Pacific Institute president and MacArthur Foundation fellow Peter Gleick impersonated a board member of an organization dedicated to denying climate change for all the right reasons but it now threatens his distinguished career. Is he a hero or a criminal -- or both?“Dumb, dumb, dumb” and “a pinch silly”
“Dumb” and “silly” sum up the response last month of Matthew Kahn to my review of his book Climatopolis. Click here for the review and here for the response. Those who questioned Kahn’s choice in Climatopolis of Moscow as one of the more climate change-ready cities will learn that he was not wrong in the book because in his revised estimation last summer’s deadly heat wave leaves Muscovites better versed in disaster. Residents of Salt Lake City may be relieved to learn that they are not in peril of sea level rise, and Antonio Villaraigosa may rest assured that he was not being mocked by the misspelling of his surname; the decision to call the Latino Mayor of Los Angeles “Tony” is left unexplained. The failure of my review to correlate with notices in the British press is offered as evidence that my assessment was unsound. Please note that as …
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