While much of climate science is pretty firmly established, whatever Donald Trump may think, climatologists are still puzzling out some of the details. And some of those details are turning out to be very important. Feedback is one such critical detail. Feedback occurs when outputs of a system are routed back as inputs as part of…
Or at least partly right. Okay, maybe in a way he never intended. Two weeks ago, in a semi-coherent speech at a fundraiser hosted by the chairman of Nathan’s Hot Dogs, President Trump called “windmills” “an inferior source of energy.” The same day, the Department of Energy released its annual Wind Technology Report (PDF). The Report is…
It’s hard to be outdoors in the Western United States right now. It seems as if we have been in a cloud of wildfire smoke for months. Your eyes water and the back of your throat burns. Your clothes smell like a a drowned campfire. And thousands of fires have reduced too much of Western…
Dear Secretary Zinke – WC read your recent statement that the explosion of wildfires across the West has nothing to do with climate change. You were – belatedly – in Northern California to survey damage from the deadly Carr Fire, which has destroyed more than 1,000 homes. You said, “I’ve heard the climate change argument back and…
There are at least five active wildfires in Valley County, Idaho alone. One of those fires, the Mile Marker 73 Fire, sent WC and Mrs. WC on a gnarly detour along a ridge above the North Fork of the Payette River and Highway 55, our intended route. The detour was along a logging road with…
Fossil fuels are all variations on carbon. Coal, crude oil, natural gas: when burned, they generate carbon dioxide, CO2, a greenhouse gas. So which states among the 50 generate the most CO2? It depends on how you measure it. If we focus just on energy-related CO2 emissions, Texas is the worst in absolute terms. By…
It is painful to watch the state WC loves commit suicide. WC doesn’t mean to trivialize or misuse the term “suicide” here, because that’s what it is. Consider: according to the most recent reports, Alaska has warmed twice as fast as the rest of the United States from 1949–2011.1 Statewide, the average annual air temperature has…
