Four Climate and Decarbonization Commentaries by Professor Joel Eissenberg A collection of Joel Eissenberg’s posts. Read only. 1. Geoengineering and the global climate crisis – Angry Bear Global heating continues unabated. While decarbonizing our energy sources is certainly important, it is too late to prevent global disaster.  2. Why do we need carbon capture? – […]

Testing Oceanic Carbon Capture I’ve mentioned previously the hypothesis that iron fertilization of the ocean and consequent phytoplankton blooms is one feasible method to achieve global carbon capture. Small-scale experiments have been done already. The results have been mixed insofar as documenting the scale of phytoplankton blooms, but there has been no reported harm. Another […]

Analogies are risky things, but I think there’s a useful analogy between (1) the belief that global conservation is a sufficient antidote to rising atmospheric CO2 and (2) the belief that herd immunity is a sufficient antidote to pandemics. Herd immunity is the model in which, as a deadly pathogen moves through the population, enough […]

Yesterday, I posted about geoengineering the oceans as a promising form of carbon capture. But why do we need carbon capture at all? Can’t we just conserve our way out of global warming? No. Here are a couple of reasons why the *only* way to avert climate disaster is to start removing carbon from the […]

Global heating continues unabated. While decarbonizing our energy sources is certainly important, it is too late to prevent global disaster. Coastal flooding, desertification, wildfires will continue to increase, driving vulnerable populations to migrate and igniting resource wars for fresh water and arable land. It’s already driving migration and violence in the Middle East and Central […]

by Lloyd Alter Carbon Upfront! The size an style of these vehicles will not make you embrace them as an alternative form of transportation. The concept is solid though. The savings to be achieved is realistic. The impact on our environment would be enormous. It is about time America abandons the too big, too fast, […]

by Dean Baker Center for Economic and Policy Research That’s what readers must conclude after reading this Washington Post’s piece on President Biden’s plans to increase corporate taxes and taxes on the rich. At one point, the piece reports the response to these plans from Rep. Steven Scalise (R-La), the second-ranking Republican in the House: “He tries […]

Angry Bear has been posting articles on PFAS for a while now. Since I lived in Livingston County, Michigan, this was a problem. You could no longer eat the fish out of Strawberry Lake and some of the shallow wells were contaminated. Other commentaries . . . County shows higher levels of PFAS in blood […]

Parking where you should not park with your oversized toy. This picture was also on Reddit. I believe the original pic(s) are from here: “Driver shares photo high-lighting a parking problem with oversized vehicles: ‘These cars are pointless,’” The Cooldown. Pickup trucks have become incredibly popular in Arizona, with a Planning Commission member noting that […]

by David Zetland The one-handed economist Humans are not doing enough mitigation to slow — let alone reverse — climate change chaos. Average global temperatures are now +1.xxC, far above the 2015 Paris Agreement’s target of “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to […]