Archive by category | Jeff Tollefson

Curbing emissions, the old-fashioned way

Massive economic collapse is by no means the preferred method for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but there’s no denying that shuttering plants, halting shipments and laying off workers gets the job done. Indeed, the crisis is poised to provide a reprieve, however temporary, from the alarmingly rapid growth in emissions witnessed in recent years.  Read more

McKinsey: options for a low-carbon economy

McKinsey & Company has mapped out a couple of conceivable scenarios that would put humanity on a pathway to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations well below 550 parts per million, an oft-cited and somewhat arbitrary target that increases the odds of avoiding a temperature increase of more than 2 degrees Celsius. Whether or not such action would actually guarantee said result is a different matter, but McKinsey suggests it’s possible to come in at 480 ppm, which leaves a little room for error.  Read more

Ramping up the Montreal Protocol

The argument for using a cap-and-trade system, or a carbon tax for that matter, to control greenhouse gases comes down to marshaling the troops. Everybody needs to play this game, and the surest way to make everybody play is to make winning profitable – and conversely to make losing costly. In other words, make the market work for you instead of against you. It’s a noble and likely necessary goal, but it’s not necessarily fast, nor perfect.  Read more

Nature: Reforesting India

Planting trees seems like a cheap and easy way to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere while improving land and soil stocks that have been degraded over the decades. The international community recognized as much when it included reforestation in the Kyoto Protocol more than a decade ago.  Read more

US climate report comes under fire

The US Climate Change Science Program will revise and reissue its latest report following widespread criticism and a mountain of comments during the official review period. The news has spurred talk of sinister motives from groups like the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, as well as some media attention (Greenwire, subscription required) suggesting undue influence from global warming skeptics.  Read more

Climate research funding slashed

Climate research funding slashed

In this week’s issue of Nature, we look into an ongoing debate about research priorities within the National Center for Atmospheric Research, one of the United States’ main climate research facilities in Boulder, Colorado. Our story follows up on an earlier piece in the New York Times by Andrew Revkin, who initially broke the news that NCAR was laying off the well-respected political scientist Michael Glantz. Revkin also covered the story in his Dot Earth blog. Such stories frequently peel apart like onions, and this one was no different. Glantz is not alone in his belief that NCAR is turning  … Read more