Articles by Kit Stolz

Some call for action

When it comes to global warming, conservatism in this country is at a crossroads. Increasing numbers of business leaders, evangelicals, and conservative opinion-leaders are calling for action to reduce the risks associated with climate change, but the best-known conservatives continue to doubt the science of global warming, attack those who would act to reduce emissions, and deride those concerned by the threat to the planet.

To many sympathetic observers, it's puzzling. As Kerry Emmanuel pointed out in an essay for the Boston Review earlier this year, conservatives didn't have to react this way:

Antarctica ice may be OK after all

Environmentalists are often accused of enjoying "doom and gloom." This makes no sense, if you think about it for a second or two. No one accuses Republicans concerned about Islamic extremism of wanting to see another 9/11. Why should environmentalists who revere the beauty of this planet be accused of wanting to destroy it?

Nonetheless, this is one of those ideas that seems to have inserted itself in our body politic, like a tick half-absorbed. Only by going directly at it can enviros hope to dislodge this calumny.

In this spirit, let me bring up some remarkably good news from Antarctica.

Rhetorical cheapshots from a usual suspect

Global warming is complicated, and often counter-intuitive, which is one reason most scientists prefer the phrase "climate change" to describe it. But whether you call it climate change or global warming, its complexity offers easy opportunities for rhetorical cheap shots to right-wing zealots such as Drudge, who would like the whole issue to go away. Yesterday his popular tabloid ran an item about how a House hearing on the "warming of the planet" had to be canceled due to freezing rain.

One problem with the irony: this kind of "precipitation event" is exactly the scenario scientists predict for a warming planet.

In a statement prepared before his testimony about climate change to the same House Committee on Science and Technology last week, leading climatologist Dr. Kevin Trenberth, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research warned:

Can greed get us out?

Billionaire Richard Branson will announce today in London a prize of $25 million to the inventor of a device that effectively reduces greenhouse gas concentrations. Although the participants are under a media embargo, American climatologist James Hansen -- who will serve as a judge of the potential inventions, along with English scientist James Lovelock and Australian author Tim Flannery -- did discuss the topic of geoengineering a solution to global warming this week in front of a large crowd at U.C. Santa Barbara, as part of a lecture he gave on the dangers of human-caused climate change.