Environmental science of climate, carbon, and energy
This page is a copy of https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/News/Intercountry-Adoption-News/ukraine fact-sheet how-you-can-help.html. retrieved on 3 March 2025. Ukraine Fact Sheet: How You Can Help Last Updated: March 14, 2022 UNITED WITH UKRAINE How You Can Help We understand many people want to help Ukraine and those suffering from ongoing Russian aggression. We strongly advise against…
Over the past 50 years, the world has seen a substantial amount of global warming, And there has been substantial regional variability in the rate of warming. The world has also seen a lot of GDP growth, with substantial regional variation in the rate of GDP growth. These observations led us (Lei Duan and myself) Continue reading Multi-decadal country-level regressions on GDP growth and…
A colleague asked me about whether I would sign on to an effort that would effectively ban most research on solar geoengineering. Here is a lightly edited response. A few points: 1. The main problem with this letter is that it is an assault on freedom of research that is in-itself benign. I don t see Continue reading A ban on solar-geoengineering research?
I was asked by a journalist to comment on a paper. Here is an edited form of part of my response. Thought evolved over evolutionary time to mediate between sensory perception and muscular action. Models are tools for thought, and help us to mediate between our perceptions and our actions. Models are like crutches that allow Continue reading Thought, action and social-system models
Much of my work gets done by way of “productive procrastination”, that is, working on things other than what I “should” be working on. This in an example. There have been differences of opinion about how best to address the question of temporal discounting, especially with respect to intergenerational equity and the climate problem. In Continue reading Consumption value and asset value
A CURATED TWITTER FEED Twitter is interesting because if forces you to try to say things in 280 characters. This tends to lead one to speak in Yoda-like aphorisms or make gross over-simplifications. (And on Twitter, there is no shortage of people to remind you of the myriad ways in which you are over simplifying.) Continue reading Aphorisms and over-simplifications
A postdoc asked a question about being prescriptive and/or normative in academic papers, noting that some of the people with the most successful scientific careers were scientist/activists who did not shy away from saying in their technical work what we should do or what is good and what is bad. My response: It is fine Continue reading On prescriptive and normative statements in academic research…
ON ATTRIBUTING DAMAGE TO CLIMATE CHANGE To attribute damage to climate change, in principle we would like to fully understand the state of the system with climate change and then subtract out a counterfactual without climate change. If we wanted to estimate the impact of current climate change on flood damage we could seek to Continue reading Enough responsibility to go around
WHAT WOULD THE DICE MODEL DAMAGE AND UTILITITY FUNCTIONS SAY ABOUT RELATIVE VALUE IN ADDRESSING INCOME INEQUALITY VS. CLIMATE CHALLENGES? Nordhaus s DICE model represents utility as population times per capita utility, and it represents per capita utility as increasing with per-capita consumption to the 0.45 power. A lot of attention has been paid to the Continue reading Income Inequality and…
WE ARE LIVING IN AN AND/AND WORLD I am a geoscientist who thinks about energy systems and climate policy, and while I have some general knowledge of energy systems, I do not claim any policy expertise, so this is just me thinking out loud and in public WARNING: This blog post is more prescriptive Continue reading ADDRESSING MARKET FAILURES IN ENERGY TECHNOLOGY DEPLOYMENT AND DISCOVERY