More Doubts on “Green Jobs”
By Robert Murphy -- March 6, 2009As time passes, the skepticism grows about the ability of government funding for “green jobs” to simultaneously (a) pull the economy out of recession and (b) reduce the risk of climate change. In the March 4 edition of Slate–hardly a bastion of reactionary conservatism–Senior Fellow Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations took the greenwash off of “green jobs” in the essay, “Barking Up the Wrong Tree: Why green jobs may not save the economy or the environment.” Levi also directs CFR’s Program on Energy Security and Climate Change.…
Continue ReadingOpposite Views on Climate Feedbacks (and perhaps the answer lies in the middle)
By Chip Knappenberger -- March 5, 2009Just how much warming should we expect from rising levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs)? The answer largely hinges on how much extra warming might be generated by the initial warming—that is, how strong (and in what direction) are the feedbacks from water vapor and clouds.
By most estimates (including climate model outcomes), these feedbacks are positive and result in about a doubling of the warming that would result from greenhouse gas increases alone. By others, however, the total feedbacks are negative,…
Continue ReadingWind: Energy Past, not Energy Future (the intermittency curse then, as now)
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 4, 2009The disadvantage of windpower as a primary energy source has been long recognized. This 1838 textbook described the competitive situation of wind as follows:
William Stanley Jevons also detailed the problems of windpower…
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