The ghost of link dumps past

So I was thinking to myself, self, you should do a link dump post so you can close out some...

Preventing dirty coal plants is the most urgent climate policy

A livable climate can (probably) survive the burning of almost all of the world's conventional oil and gas -- but not if we also burn even half the coal (see here [PDF] and figure below).

So the top priority for any climate policy must be to stop the building of traditional coal plants -- which is why that has become the top priority of NASA's James Hansen (see here). The next priority is to replace existing coal plants with carbon-free power, which could include coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS), as fast as possible. And that means a related priority is to encourage the introduction of CCS as quickly as possible, to see if that is a viable large-scale solution.

A climate policy that does not start by achieving at least the first goal, a moratorium on coal without CCS, must be labeled a failure. By that measure, the cap-and-trade system currently being employed by the Europeans looks to be a failure, as we'll see.

Biofuel boom leveling rainforest, Time reports

From an excellent article in Time: Indonesia has bulldozed and burned so much wilderness to grow palm oil trees for...

Richard Revesz responds to Lisa Heinzerling, defending cost-benefit analysis

This post continues a dialogue with professor Lisa Heinzerling: see Revesz's initial post and Heinzerling's response.

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Cost-benefit analysis, correctly applied to many environmental problems, will show that strong environmental regulation is often economically efficient. Although some environmentalists, including Lisa Heinzerling in a recent post, have expressed reservations about the use of cost-benefit analysis to evaluate environmental rules, rejecting cost-benefit analysis instead of seeking to reform it would be a major strategic error for the environmental movement.

Food prices and ‘level playing fields’

In last week’s Victual Reality, I took Alice Waters and Michael Pollan to task for praising recent hikes in industrial...

Recent studies: organic ag is just as productive, and better for you

For years, industrial-food enthusiasts such as Norman Borlaug have attacked organic farming on two grounds: 1) it produces essentially the...

Photosynthesis and invertibrate sex

Two new studies may upend previously accepted understanding of photosynthesis. A widespread type of cyanobacteria may not use as much carbon dioxide in photosynthesis as presumed, meaning the oceans are capable of less carbon dioxide absorption than scientists had thought ...

... in other cyanobacteria news, scientists discovered that viruses may play a key role in prompting the phytoplankton to consume carbon dioxide and release oxygen ...

... the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration dropped buoys into the water off the coast of Massachusetts that will record sound for the next 30 months in an attempt to understand the effect of ocean noise on marine wildlife ...

The challenges of reconciling science and policy

This is a post that I'm virtually certain will be misinterpreted. But it's an important enough issue that I'm going to bet that my writing skills are sufficient to provide clarity to a rather muddy issue.

First off, though, a disclaimer: Science is good. Policy informed by science is good. Leadership informed by science is good. The alternative to all of the above is bad. Nothing I am about to say is to be taken as support for creationism, global warming denial, diminution of White House science advisers or the re-excommunication of Galileo.

However, there is a conflict that lies between the fuzziness that is innate to scientific inquiry and the precision that is required for policy -- and more broadly, leadership. We see this conflict whenever global warming deniers trot out scientists who disagree with mainstream theories and we are forced to explain to the deniers that while the nature of scientific inquiry invites debate, the presence of a debate per se does not imply anything about the preponderance of evidence. As Joe Romm has pointed out, Einstein's revisions to the laws of motion did not prove that Issac Newton was an insufferable quack. It just meant that science is innately fallible and subject to revision. Or as Keynes famously said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"

So far, I don't think I've said anything novel or controversial. But here's the catch: The same logic that compels us to acknowledge that science is fallible and evolves must also compel us to acknowledge that policy based on science might be wrong. This is not to suggest that a 1-percent doubt ought to stand in the way of policy based on 99 percent certainty, but rather to recognize that good policy must retain sufficient flexibility to "change its mind."

Reflective paint and glaze can reduce the need for A/C in your car

The following post is by Earl Killian, guest blogger at Climate Progress.

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California's AB 32 cap on greenhouse gas emissions has its regulatory agencies working to find a set of measures that will amount to savings enough to cut 2020 emissions by about 30 percent. Since 12 years is too short to change California's vehicle fleet or its power plants, myriad measures are being considered, each rather small but hoped to make a difference cumulatively.

One such effort is to find paints and coatings to reduce how hot cars get when parked, so the driver is less likely to turn on the air conditioner: