michael_nielsen

I'm not wild about gotcha journalism. But geez I'd love to ask some of the people writing about climate some basic questions. What are total CO2 emissions per year? What percentage is due to the US? To China? To coal? To power generation?

How does the impact of methane compare to CO2? How long does CO2 last in the atmosphere (& how do we know)? Etc. When reading I often have the sneaking suspicion that the person writing has no quantitative understanding at all of climate.

Good intentions + no detailed quantitative understanding is simply a recipe for bad outcomes, in my opinion.

It's tempting to say "well, people aren't interested in wonkish, number-and-model laden writing". Maybe. But I wonder. In sport, people seem to love it.

I'm trying to imagine writing about basketball that eschewed all quantitative accounts of last night's big game. Most general climate writing seems a bit like discussing how good or bad LeBron looked on court last night, while ignoring points, rebounds, assists etc.