Why Obama should meet Till

Steve Kirsch of SCGI is like the Energizer Bunny — he never runs out of energy in trying to get something meaningful done on the carbon emission mitigation problem. Below is his open letter to the U.S. President’s energy and climate policy staffer. His aim: to get Chuck Till an invitation to the White House! […]

Coal dependence and the renewables paradox

In a recent issue of Dissent magazine, a regular commenter here on Brave New Climate, industrial engineer Graham Palmer, engaged in a debate with Mark Diesendorf on energy futures. Unfortunately, this exchange of prose is not available online, although Graham did send me a scanned version (because of potential copyright issues, I won’t post it here). The […]

The Azimuth Project

In the news recently, there was discussion of using helium balloons for geoengineering, as a method for dispersing aerosols or cloud-nucleation droplets into the atmosphere. (The proposal was critiqued here by George Monbiot). This idea is just the latest in growing field of science-based speculation on active climate system intervention, some of which has been […]

Why population policy will not solve climate change

I have given lots of talks on climate change over the last few years. In these presentations, I typically focus on explaining the basis of the anthropogenic climate change problem, how it sits in the context of other human and natural changes, and then, how greenhouse gas emissions could be mitigated with the elimination of […]

The Swiss army nuclear knife

Guest Post by Geoff Russell. Geoff is a mathematician and computer programmer and is a member of Animal Liberation SA. His recently published book is CSIRO Perfidy. His previous article on BNC was: Greenpeace’s Plan for India —————— Switzerland. It’s smaller than Tasmania, but rather more famous and never missing from maps of Europe. Cheese and chocolates, pocket knives and […]

Switching from coal to natural gas would do little for global climate

A common refrain from politicians and members of the business community is that moving from coal to natural gas is an effective way to cut carbon dioxide emissions and therefore address global warming. This argument is flawed, as I detailed last year in two posts, Santos Chief’s gassy vision (Parts I and II). Yet, gas is […]

Two responses to the U.S. BRC on the nuclear fuel cycle

The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear future was charged by President Barack Obama with recommending ways to move forward with used nuclear fuel in light of the closing of the Yucca Mountain used fuel repository project (details on NEI Notes). They released a 192-page draft in late July report that is currently open for public […]

Civil disorder and nuclear power

Nuclear fission, like any other energy source, carries benefits and risks. In discussion on future deployment of different sustainable energy sources, the commentary in this blog has placed a lot of emphasis on the rational weighting of factors such as: (i) lives lost per unit of energy delivered; (ii) costs expended and opportunity losses; (iii) […]

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