Bryan Walker

The unfettered rage of dismal denial

by Bryan Walker February 10, 2012

I knew that climate scientists were on the receiving end of some nasty emails, but it was still a shock to read James Hansen’s recent communication, in the course of which he gives a sample of the emails that he’d had in just the one week. They’re a dismal example of the unfettered rage which [...]

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Reframing the Problem of Climate Change

by Bryan Walker February 7, 2012

There’s no reason why facing up to the challenge of climate change should not result in wide benefits to human society, including economic benefits. That’s the argument of the multiple authors of Reframing the Problem of Climate Change: From Zero Sum Game to Win-Win Solutions. The book is based on papers presented at a 2010 [...]

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Uncomfortable parallels

by Bryan Walker February 4, 2012

I’ve often been struck by what I see as parallels between the defence of slavery in earlier times and today’s persistence with fossil fuel-based economies. I explored this in a post some time ago but an article in yesterday’s Guardian encourages me to return to the theme. Jean-François Mouhot, a visiting researcher at Georgetown University, [...]

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We’ll surpass government forecast says wind energy association

by Bryan Walker February 2, 2012

A mild protest from the NZ Wind Energy Association arrived in my inbox recently. It was in response to the Ministry of Economic Development’s latest Energy Outlook forecast, published last week. The Energy Outlook estimates that wind farm capacity will increase from the current 622MW, to around 1,410MW and produce close to 10% of the [...]

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Water is rising

by Bryan Walker January 31, 2012

A friend from Los Angeles mentioned when visiting us a few days ago that he had recently seen a striking performance at UCLA by dancers from the Pacific islands of Tuvalu, Tokelau and Kiribati. Climate change figured strongly in the concert, which was part of a project called Water is Rising. Intrigued, I tracked down [...]

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Stuck in the muddle with Obama

by Bryan Walker January 27, 2012

I look back with some embarrassment on my enthusiastic posts when Barack Obama was in the early days of his presidency.  I thought he was offering strong political leadership in addressing climate change.  His words seemed unequivocal. Here he is speaking at the UN in September 2009: That so many of us are here today [...]

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What Will Work

by Bryan Walker January 24, 2012

Kristin Shrader-Frechette of the University of Notre Dame is rigorous in the presentation of her argument in What Will Work: Fighting Climate Change with Renewable Energy, Not Nuclear Power. In recent times a number of leading environmentalists have concluded nuclear power has to be employed to enable the transition away from fossil fuels. Shrader-Frechette disagrees. [...]

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The wrong road to take

by Bryan Walker January 19, 2012

It’s difficult not to become repetitive when blogging about climate change. The basic science is well-established. The dangers global warming poses to human society are clear and in some places present. The solutions lie with drastically cutting the level of greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to changes already unavoidable.  The mitigation solution in particular continues [...]

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Climate ethics and the reckless endangerment of denial

by Bryan Walker January 18, 2012

An interesting-looking series of posts has begun on the climate ethics blog of Penn State’s Rock Ethics Institute. The series plans to put the the climate change disinformation campaign under the ethical spotlight. The introductory post written by Associate Professor Donald Brown examines some of the broad issues before planned subsequent posts look at the [...]

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Climate Change and Migration

by Bryan Walker January 15, 2012

It’s all too easy for wealthy America and Europe to treat climate-induced migration as a border security issue. Gregory White, Professor of Government at Smith College in Massachusetts, argues in his recent book Climate Change and Migration: Security and Borders in a Warming World that a security-minded response to the phenomenon is both inappropriate and [...]

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