Climate 411

Andy Darrell, today’s guest, is director of Environmental Defense’s Living Cities program, and a member of the advisory board that helped the mayor develop the plan.

For the past eight months I’ve been honored to be a part of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s advisory council to develop a city plan for sustainability. The team has been meeting to hammer out ideas for making New York a world model of a “green” megacity.

Frankly, when I joined the Advisory Board, I didn’t know where it would end up. With my colleagues at Environmental Defense, I put forward big ideas for healthy air, less traffic, green buildings and energy efficiency, more trees and parks and cleaned-up waterways. In December 2006, the mayor announced 10 bold goals, including achieving the cleanest air of any big city in the country, cutting greenhouse gases 30 percent from today’s levels by 2030 and making sure that every New Yorker can walk to a park within ten minutes.

Great goals — but could they be made real?

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Hi, folks. I’m back in town and glad to be back on the blog.

This weekend, Americans will observe Earth Day. ABC is getting started early, airing a daylong look at the state of our planet today (see preview).

I am especially anxious to tune into 20/20 tonight. I am told I will be featured on two segments: an interview on solar energy and a panel discussion on global warming.

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Lisa Moore is a scientist in the Climate and Air Program.

The EPA just released its most recent estimate of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, which shows that our global warming pollution continues to climb. Since 1990, emissions are up more than 16 percent. But the EPA is casting this as a victory. How?

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Lisa Moore is a scientist in the Climate and Air Program.

Bill Chameides is out of the office, but science, policy and news about global warming keep coming in. Yesterday, a group of military experts declared that climate change threatens national security (registration required). Their report [PDF] says:

Climate change can act as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world, and it presents significant national security challenges for the United States…. The increasing risks from climate change should be addressed now because they will almost certainly get worse if we delay.

ignoratio elenchi n.
A logical fallacy of presenting an argument that may in itself be valid, but has nothing to do with the proposition it purports to prove. Also known as “irrelevant conclusion”. [Lat. ignorance of refutation.]

Richard Lindzen, MIT’s most famous (infamous?) science denier, receives our Ignoratio Elenchi award this week for his article "No Such Thing as Perfect Temperature" in Newsweek International. Before critiquing the article’s logical fallacies, it’s worth noting what Lindzen concedes:

"There has been a net warming of the earth over the last century and a half, and our greenhouse gas emissions are contributing at some level. Both of these statements are almost certainly true."

Even Lindzen no longer questions that greenhouse gas emissions are causing global warming. Now let’s examine his other claims.

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Tomorrow (Tuesday, April 10th) from 8:00-9:00am EDT, I will be on the Michael Smerconish Show. If you live in the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, or Delaware area, you can listen to it on AM 1210. It will also be available on the web.

Listeners will be calling in with questions – here’s a sampling of what I’ll be talking about [MP3]. It should be interesting!