Tony K's Blog

I have alienated most of my right-leaning friends, now I’ll work on the other side. I’m a bipartisan kind of guy.   Let’s talk climate change, specifically wildfire. We all agree that for wildfires to burn hot, spread, and be destructive you need to have fuel as well as generally warm and dry conditions. This is why there are seldom wildfires in the desert. Although conditions are hot and dry, there is little fuel, because it is hot and dry. The fuel needed for a wildfire never reaches a critical mass. So let’s look at the recent fires in California. People make a case that they are driven by climate change/global warming. I believe there is some truth in that. The August lightning storms that came through California were unusual. I have never seen that kind of weather in summer in California. Of course, if you attribute a weather event to climate change, it is disingenuous to say that other weather events are only weather—such as unseasonable snowstorms. If you do, you have an unf...

Ezra Klein recently published a blog post in response to a NY Times piece by David Brooks, the conservative on staff there. It was called "T he sad history of climate policy, according to David Brooks." It's interesting on some levels. It shows that the Republicans used their influence to kill initiatives to reduce carbon footprint, forcing the Democrats, who really wanted to do something about carbon into the corner of funding green startups as the only remaining available option. When some of those startups inevitably failed, the Ds became the bad guys on many levels. It is a sad story of the conversion of a bipartisan consensus going away for political gain. Klein makes the point that it is really quite clear who the bad guys are, the Rs. But there is a big assumption behind all this:  Catastrophic  global warming is happening. All the scientists say so. I sent this response to his column: "First, I completely agree with the premise that if Obama is for it, th...

--> I have mentioned previously that I am a big fan of Andrew Tobias. Recently, he posted on his blog  the claim that climate "deniers" were massively funded by corporate interests.  I sent him the following note. "You said, "The connection between the climate-change deniers and the Republican budget enthusiasts is that both are massively funded by corporate interests , now entirely unleashed by the Republican Supreme Court and its Citizens United decision.  That’s the one that stacks the political system even more heavily in favor of the rich and powerful, and allows their influence to be hidden. " "For the record, I am a big fan and we are on the same side politically. Scientifically we differ, and this thing about climate-change deniers being funded by corporate interests is simply not true as far as I can tell. People point to XOM funding someone for 25 M illion dollars or so. Compare that to the forces of climate change "proponen...