Climate Progress

“The Web's most influential climate-change blogger” — Time Magazine

Climate Progress is dedicated to providing the progressive perspective on climate science, climate solutions, and climate politics. It is a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

For any first time visitors here because of Tom Friedman’s column in the Sunday New York Times, “Mother Nature’s Dow,” this post is intended as an introduction to Climate Progress. [I will blog later Sunday about the column itself.] Tom described me in an earlier column as

Joe Romm, a physicist and climate expert who writes the indispensable blog climateprogress.org.

U.S. News & World Report features me in their April issue as one of five “key players” who are “Driving Public Policy in Washington,” writing:

In terms of his cachet in the blogosphere, Joe Romm is something like the climate change equivalent of economist (and New York Times columnist) Paul Krugman.

Rolling Stone has a list of 100 Agents of Change of which I’m #88. The RS tagline for me is “America’s fiercest climate-change activist-blogger lets it rip.”

And in 2008, TIME magazine named Climate Progress one of the “Top 15 Green Websites.”

I am a Senior Fellow at the Washington, DC think-and-act tank run by John Podesta, the Center for American Progress, whose Action Fund sponsors this blog. You can read a longer bio here.

I try to inform and entertain here — and be a one-stop-shop for anyone who wants the inside view on climate science, solutions, and politics. A key goal is to save readers’ time, save you from wading through the sea of irrelevant information — or outright disinformation — on climate and energy that pervades the media and blogosphere.

I write from what I call a climate realist perspective — the emerging scientific view that on our current greenhouse gas emissions path we will will destroy the livability of the climate for 1,000 years. Two posts that lay out that case are:

• An introduction to global warming impacts: Hell and High Water
• NOAA stunner: Climate change “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe

I also spend a lot of time describing the solution(s), having run the federal program that helps develop and deploy virtually all of the key technologies. Fundamentally we have most of the needed technology now (or soon will), and avoiding catastrophe requires only a very small fraction of the nation’s and world’s wealth — one tenth of a penny on the dollar:

• An introduction to the core climate solutions
• How the world can (and will) stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm: The full global warming solution
• McKinsey 2008 Research in Review: Stabilizing at 450 ppm has a net cost near zero.
• Must read IEA report, Part 1: Act now with clean energy or face 6°C warming. Cost is NOT high — media blows the story

And I also spend a lot of time keeping readers up on the politics of energy and climate action:

• George Stephanopoulos, Nate Silver, and Marc Ambinder all seem confused about global warming and budget politics
• Hill conservatives reject all 3 climate strategies and embrace Rush Limbaugh — what does that radicalism mean for Obama, progressives, and humanity?
• The first sustainable budget in U.S. history: Obama invests in clean energy, projects cap-and-trade revenue, seeks repeal of fossil industry subsidies

And then there is the offbeat stuff:

• Jack Bauer becomes first-ever carbon-neutral torturer as Rupert Murdoch says “Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats”
• I just learned two shocking things
• How to be as persuasive as Abraham Lincoln, Part 1: Study the figures of speech and Shakespeare

Oh, and peak oil stuff:

• Normally staid International Energy Agency says oil will peak in 2020
• Merrill: Non-OPEC production has likely peaked, oil output could fall by 30 million bpd by 2015

And the media criticism:

• How the press bungles its coverage of climate economics — “The media’s decision to play the stenographer role helped opponents of climate action stifle progress
• CNN, ABC, WashPost, AP, blow Australian wildfire, drought, heatwave “Hell (and High Water) on Earth” story — never mention climate change
• Media enable denier spin 2: What if the MSM simply can’t cover humanity’s self-destruction?

And here’s my best written recent post:

• Murder, He Wrote

Readers can offer their thoughts again if they like — but you can also check out the comments here from my last introductory post.

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You can send us e-mail at climate@americanprogressaction.org

Check out their very informative website by clicking here.