Category Archives: Anthropogenic

Electricity Generation

This week, I’m looking at the role of electricity in the ongoing global energy transition. Dieter Helm argued (see the February 13, 2018 blog about his book, Burn Out) that our increased usage of electricity is an indicator of our … Continue reading

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Primary Energy

As promised, this blog and the next (barring unforeseen circumstances) will focus on some key indicators of the global energy transition – specifically with regard to climate change and the IPAT identity. I am continuing my study of the same … Continue reading

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Markers for the Global Energy Transition

Last week I talked about Dieter Helm’s book, where he portrayed a future in which oil companies are going broke and fossil fuel prices are collapsing due to their practically infinite supply (via fracking and horizontal drilling). Growing awareness of … Continue reading

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Use of Computer Simulations in Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation

Figure 2 in last week’s blog demonstrated our most important tool for determining how we identify human contributions to climate change on both a local and global scale. The figure, taken from the NASA site, describes simulated 20th century global … Continue reading

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Local Attributions

Myles Allen, one of the pioneers of the emerging science of determining how we attribute extreme climate events to humans, featured prominently in a Scientific American piece earlier this month: But the radio voice added that it would be “impossible … Continue reading

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Fake News: Attributions

Figure 1 – Snow in the Sahara If you do a Google image search for “Snow in the Sahara,” you will get a screen full of images similar to this one. What would bring you to search for that particular … Continue reading

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Fake News

I am an old guy; my bucket list is modest but I am trying to check off the remaining items while I can still fully enjoy them. There’s only one that remains out of my reach: I want to travel … Continue reading

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“Natural” or “Anthropogenic”? – Climate Change

Last week’s blog looked at various methods of distinguishing “natural” vs. “artificial” vanilla. I used this as a jumping off point to facilitate answering the much more important question of how we distinguish anthropogenic climate change from “natural” climate change … Continue reading

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“Natural” or “Anthropogenic”? – Vanilla Extract and Climate Change

Figure 1 – My Christmas present Happy New Year!!! I got a yummy Christmas present from a family member that doubled as a hint to try to improve my cooking: homemade vanilla extract. They got the vanilla beans from Honduras … Continue reading

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Invasive Species, Collective Suicide, and Self-Inflicted Genocide

Recently, the NYT published some answers to questions posed by readers: “Are We an Invasive Species? Plus, Other Burning Climate Questions.” One of these questions was whether or not humans count as an invasive species: Are we an invasive species?  … Continue reading

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