Three climate shorts here.
First, maybe others have already known this for years, but I'd been bothered by claims that Hansen's 1988 worst case emission scenario matched actual emissions while temps were far cooler. Of course that's not true. Actual emissions were slightly under Hansen's middle road scenario. Temps were also under the middle scenario, partly because of emissions. His model may have been slightly oversensitive for temperature reaction to GHGs but overall looks good. David Evans sadly has it wrong, is strongly criticized by William.
Second, in my comments elsewhere:
In my career, I've won much more often than I've lost when I'm on defense, trying to stop something I oppose, rather than trying to achieve something I support.We're on offense on many aspects of climate, but on Keystone we're on defense. I've also found in my career that delay is good when you're on defense. Keystone now has to spend money while waiting longer to make a profit, making it somewhat more likely that they'll throw in the towel. And even if they do build their monstrosity, doing it later makes it more likely to happen when the evil Harper/Santorum government of Canada is replaced by something reasonable that would put some restraints or mitigation on the project.
Third, Environmental Defense Fund did another of their irregular podcasts. Highlights include a non-rejection of a carbon tax approach to climate mitigation. OTOH, they say that in the end, groups should coalesce around a single approach at the national level, and we can predict what has the best chance of being that approach. They also say that things may get so bad that we might need to consider geoengineering and should be trying to figure out how we can research that approach carefully. Sounds reasonable enough, sadly.
Finally and unrelated: watching Star Wars movies in Machete Order. Good way to introduce them to newbies.
