Idiotprogrammer: Texas Literary Blog

Category: global warming

  • Best Books about Energy, Environment & Climate Change

    One sign you have become an energy geek is when your bedtime reading tends to be academic tomes about renewable energy. Despite my literary tendencies, I don’t deny that I find these volumes to be engrossing and fascinating; the subject seems to have an urgency missing from the software or publishing world.  I have come…

  • Natural Gas is Not Lobster

    This one chart summarizes what climate change is about. Below is another chart. Basically, for 10,000 years  of recorded human history, there has never been temperature variation of  than 1 degree Centigrade. (There have been other temperature variations during the last few million years, but humans haven’t been around). In the last 100 years, temperatures…

  • Carbon Neutral in Houston (Year 2)

    This report is my second year of carbon neutrality. (A description of my first year is here). This year saw some life changes which affected my carbon footprint. First,  I moved to a new place where among other things, I had great access to public transportation. I live near a supermarket and even more places…

  • How to Choose a Texas Electric Provider the Wrong Way

      Recently I read an analysis by Dr. Dan Wallach on Chuck Kuffner’s blog about how to find the best deal on electricity in Texas. Some areas in Texas allow consumers to choose the provider of electricity to their homes. (But not all – some cities – notably San Antonio and Austin – allow residents…

  • Being Carbon Neutral in Houston—Impossible? Well….

    Here is my carbon footprint for the year 2010. Before we do our calculations, some background. Per Capita Footprints Today According to the World Bank, the US per capita CO2 emissions is 19.3 metric tons (using 2007 data). That compares to per capita rates of 9.8 tons for Japan, 8.3 for Poland,  4.5 tons for…

  • Titanic as a metaphor for Climate Change

    Here’s my transcript of a compelling metaphor Steve Chu used to describe the climate change question: Imagine you are on a very very large vessel and perhaps decades ago people said way out ahead there is an iceberg looming; we have to be careful. But many people didn’t see it. But now — forwarding several…

  • Hypocrisy and Global Warming

    Obama Science advisor John Holdren compares climate change to driving a car with bad brakes: I sometimes say that the situation we are in is like driving a car with bad brakes toward a cliff in the fog. The fog represents the uncertainties that still surround many important aspects of the science and make it…

  • Achieving 450 ppm requires that US peak in GHG by 2015

    Two weeks ago I listened to a great lecture by John Holdren about planning our energy future in the light of climate change. Holdren is the White House director of the Office of Science and Technology.  It was broken down into 6 parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.…

  • Green Linkdump #1 November Edition (and it’s massive!)

    Long overdue and probably an overlong post. I’m dumping from Facebook and other places. To describe the predicament of climate deniers, Naomi Oreskes invokes  the metaphor of the waiter: “Imagine a gigantic, colossal banquet. Hundreds of millions of people come to eat. They eat and drink to their hearts’ content, eating food that is better…

  • Cool Protest Photos

    You may already know that today  is 10-10-10 (the official rally day about climate change by people all over the world).  I’ll be at Houston’s 350.org rally picking up and planting trees. Here are some beautiful photos I found on  flickr from last year’s  350.org protests.

  • Taking a chance with civilization

    You have to applaud how packed this chart is with information. But doesn’t  it scare you to death? To think, that the goal of all the nations is to limit the temperature increase to 2 degrees Centigrade by 2050.  There seems to be a lot of gloominess about whether that is achievable given the political…

  • August Green Linkdump 1:

    10 Indicators of a Human Footprint for Global Warming. Two great videos from the 2010 Net Roots nation conference about climate change. See the  79 minute video about Copenhagen and international agreements and how the failure of climate change in USA implies the need for better grass roots organizing (75 minutes). Here’s a report suggesting…

  • Various comments to posts

    I responded to various climate change posts over the last few days. Before I mention them, let me mention Dave Robert’s astute political analysis. He pins the blame on the broken political processes in the Senate: The U.S. Senate is already an unrepresentative institution: Wyoming’s two senators each represent 272,000 people; California’s two senators each…

  • Political crises: The Cold War vs. Climate Change

    Similarities (and differences) between the 20th Century Cold War/nuclear weapon crisis & the 21st Century climate change crisis. By Robert Nagle

  • Sen. Cornyn, your climate change position is atrocious

    My letter to Senator Cornyn about the need to pass climate change legislation

  • Green Linkdump 1: 392.04 and rising

    Well, the CO2 count is now 392.04. In totally  unrelated news, 2010 has been setting temperature records.  While reading James Hansen’s Storms of my Grandchildren,  he reminded me that George W. Bush promised during the 2000 presidential campaign that he would regulate CO2. 3 months later, he changed his mind. Hansen argues that this empty…