Category Archives: Climate Change

Why the modern environmental movement must abandon its traditional left-right rubric

Posted on April 23, 2015 by Blair

On the event of Earth Day I spent some time thinking about the state of the environmental movement in Canada. As my regular readers know, I have written a lot of posts about the environmental movement including observations from a … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change Politics | 7 Comments

On "An Ecomodernist Manifesto", Mannsplaining and irony blindness in climate science

Posted on April 19, 2015 by Blair

A very interesting document, An Ecomodernist Manifesto, came out this week. For those of you not familiar with the Manifesto, it represents an attempt by a number of pragmatic environmental scientists, economists and policy experts (http://www.ecomodernism.org/) to put the planet’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change, Climate Change Politics, Environmentalism and Ecomodernism | 13 Comments

So Whatever Happened to the Environmental Moderates and Pragmatists?

Posted on April 1, 2015 by Blair

As I noted in my throwback post, the Ensia article about how Environmental activism needs “good cops” and “bad cops” really brought back a lot of memories. But one thing it also caused me to do is to look back … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change Politics, Environmentalism and Ecomodernism | 3 Comments

On “soft climate denial”, regionally-appropriate renewables and marginalizing potential allies in the climate change debate

Posted on March 26, 2015 by Blair

While reading my Twitter feed I was recently introduced to a brand new label in the climate change discussion: “soft climate denial/denier”. The label, based on my admittedly limited research, appears to have been introduced to our lexicon by a … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change Politics | 11 Comments

On “Bullies”, “shills” and using labels to shut down legitimate debate

Posted on March 1, 2015 by Blair

Last Wednesday was “Pink Shirt Day”, which for those of you not familiar with the event, is a day to “take a stand against bullying”. The day started as two boys’ response to bullying of a classmate and has become … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change | 4 Comments

Is the IPCC the IOC of Science?

Posted on February 16, 2015 by Blair

I was having a discussion online, on Twitter, about the field of Climate Science. The basis of the discussion was a simple question: what does it take to be considered a “climate scientist”? and the corollary: who is qualified to … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change Politics | 9 Comments

Carbon Offsets: a Basilica to Bad Policy

Posted on January 29, 2015 by Blair

Last week’s ridiculous display of private jets in Davos, Switzerland brought back to mind a topic I have meant to discuss in detail: carbon offsets.  For those of you in the back row, a carbon offset is simply a credit … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change Politics | 8 Comments

Black Carbon, a Climate Change Topic We Should all be able to Agree on

Posted on January 25, 2015 by Blair

One feature of the climate change debate I find particularly troubling is the extent to which CO2 has come to dominate the narrative. Certainly CO2 is a critical component of the climate change discussion, but there are other important areas … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change | 5 Comments

What is so Special about 2 degrees C in the Climate Change Debate?

Posted on January 22, 2015 by Blair

In my last post I promised to take a bit of time to discuss the 2o C target. You would expect that such an important target was picked through the use of a detailed scientific process with input from the brightest … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change, Climate Change Politics | 6 Comments

Why I think Climate Sensitivity is Essential for Developing Effective Climate Change Policy

Posted on January 16, 2015 by Blair

For those of you recent to this blog, my primary readership is not typically experts in climate change science but rather people interested in the policy implications of climate change science. This includes people with interests in renewable energy technologies and governmental decision-making. What … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change, Lukewarmers | 26 Comments