writeaboutwarming

July 26, 2018 Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow with the Post Carbon Institute, has written a rebuttal to a recent article by Ted Nordhaus, co-founder of the Breakthrough Institute. Nordhaus's theory of planetary carrying capacity can be summarized as follows: we can engineer our way out of the problem. And he's willing to bet your life and mine that he's right! Nordhaus admits no constraints on human population of the earth, basing his theory on another specious assumption, called decoupling. Since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, Nordhaus, and other economists, maintain that "each increment of economic growth in developed economies has brought lower resource and energy use than the last." Heinberg is quick to point out that an analysis of decoupling thus far is merely the result of an accounting error. In other words, the numbers Nordhaus relies upon are fractions, barely supporting his claims. In order for the developing world to enjoy a standard of l...

July 8, 2018 I like to walk around each day to look at the flower beds I've planted, always in the morning. It's been an unusual growing year; our weather has been cool and overcast, the lack of sun slowing plant growth considerably. One plant that has kept me guessing since I planted it two years ago is a Blue Sea Holly, which I have in a flower bed facing south. It took forever, but this year it produced flowers - unusual, spiky-looking things that are still, gradually turning a dusty-looking gray-blue. One of the most notable features of the plant has been its ability to attract bees. For the past few weeks I've seen swarms of them hovering around the 3 foot tall mass of clover-like flowers each day. This makes me happy, because - like all of you, I suspect - I'm aware of the trouble bees are in. In past years, I've seen wooden boxes full of the creatures delivered to various farmers' fields in the area. This year, there were no deliveries; the fields hav...