Carbon risks and opportunities in the S&P 500 a report by TruCost, commissioned by IRRCi, finds the carbon intensity of companies varies widely even within sectors. This has important implications for investors: * Companies that are less carbon intensive than their sector peers stand to gain competitive advantage from proposed ‘polluter pays’ cap-and-trade regulation. * …
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Category:Climate Change
The Copenhagen Call
Business leaders issued “The Copenhagen Call” at the close of the World Business Summit on Climate Change. In their introduction they state: We call upon our political leaders to agree an ambitious and effective global climate treaty at COP15 in Copenhagen. Sustainable economic progress requires stabilizing and then reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Success at COP15 …
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The blind people and the elephant … I mean weather.
If you tried to judge whether the 2008-2009 winter in the Northern Hemisphere was colder or milder than usual based on the conditions where you lived, it would be something like the ancient Indian story of the blind men and the elephant. If you couldn’t see the whole elephant, and you could only touch its …
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Can we go “cold turkey” on fossil fuels?
Scientists now warn that we must effectively halt fossil fuel use if we are to avoid global climate warming of 2 degrees C by 2050. That’s probably a realistic estimate. But we are unlikely to do it. In fact we probably won’t even try. (See previous post.) But we could take a big step in …
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A sober perspective of the ecological crisis
In Bound to Burn, an article copied here, Peter Huber lays out a realistic perspective of the challenge of redirecting our energy consumption patterns. It is very sobering. He outlines the seemingly intractable and growing demand for carbon based fuels, comparing them with an insignificant impact of alternative fuels, concluding that carbon sequestration is the …
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Economic meltdown? Don’t forget the ecological meltdown …
Planet melt down is exceeding estimates.
The IPCC’s estimates of sea-level rising are now expected to be significantly exceeded according to scientists at a climate change summit. The IPCC took a conservative perspective and used old data. Today, with new data and refined models the rise in sea-level is expected to be large and soon – about 3x the IPCC estimates. …
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Global Warming Protest
Our planet – cool, but warm …
Calendar year 2008 was the coolest year since 2000, according to the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) analysis of worldwide temperature measurements, but it was still in the top ten warmest years since the start of record-keeping in 1880. Given the range of uncertainty in the measurements, the GISS team concluded that 2008 …
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Melting planet.
Another graphic reminder of the speed with which our planet is melting is shown in these two photos of Antarctica, taken less than a month apart. 13 December 2008 2 January 2009