Northeast states crafting plan to cut CO2 emissions from power plants The cantankerous Northeast -- last seen suing the U.S. EPA over mercury regulations -- is at it again. Fed up with the feds, nine states in the region have preliminarily agreed to reduce their carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants. The coalition -- organized by New York Gov. George Pataki (R), whose presidential ambitions are no secret -- proposes to cap annual CO2 output from the region's power plants at 150 million tons beginning in 2009, then cut that figure 10 percent by 2020. Each state's legislature would have to …

Russian skeptics bet British scientist $10K that earth will cool Guess this counts as putting your money where your mouth is: Two Russian climate-change skeptics have bet a U.K. climate scientist $10,000 that the earth will cool over the next decade. Solar physicists Galina Mashnich and Vladimir Bashkirtsev believe that changes in sunspot activity are a more significant factor in climate shifts than greenhouse-gas emissions. Since the sun is expected to be in a less-active phase over the next few decades, they believe global temperatures will drop, and they're willing to wager against Brit climatologist James Annan. The three scientists …

I remember when real environmentalists drove smoking VW vans with bumper stickers that said stuff like, "You can't call yourself an environmentalist if you eat meat." They didn't get the best gas mileage, but hey, you could do worse. They were replaced by the forest-green Subaru Outback (Eddy Bower edition if you were really cool), seen by the dozens in any REI parking lot. These are presently being eclipsed by the ubiquitous Prius. But, there is stiff competition from the diesel Jetta replete with biodiesel stickers all over the butt end. As we all know by now, biodiesel can be …

The Road to Detroit campaign is run by 11 student organizers from around the U.S., one big, beautiful biodiesel and veggie-oil bus, and many friends and allies. Road to Detroit is a campaign of Energy Action, a student and youth clean-energy and global-warming coalition. Friday, 19 Aug 2005 DETROIT, Mich. We know you know about fuel-efficient cars. You may even own one. Peak oil, the rising price at the pump, and new car technology have made headlines from coast to coast and back again; you've probably even considered naming your first born "Prius." This summer, a group of student organizers …

Northwest burger chain switches to pure wind power Fans of Pacific Northwest fast-food purveyor Burgerville will soon be noshing on burgers and onion rings cooked up with clean energy. The Holland Inc. -- parent company of both the Burgerville and Noodlin' regional chains -- has announced that all of its restaurants will use regionally produced wind power for 100 percent of their electricity needs. The move may increase the company's overall energy costs, but will reduce its carbon-dioxide contributions by about 17.4 million pounds a year -- the equivalent of taking 1,700 cars off the road. Burgerville has long felt …

Americans get creative at saving gas as price per gallon soars Ever since dinosaurs walked the earth, died, and decayed under high subterranean pressures to become the fossil fuels we so depend upon today, Americans have carried on a brontosauric love affair with gasoline. But with prices climbing toward $3 a gallon, that may change. Well, at least a little. More folks seem to be telecommuting and participating in car- and vanpools. Car-sharing firm Flexcar has reported a recent uptick in inquiries; it's been able to control fuel costs by making heavy use of hybrids. Some drivers are being more …

McCain, Clinton, other senators take global-warming tour in Alaska Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), and two other Lower-48 colleagues are touring Alaska this week to see for themselves the destructive impacts of climate change. They've flown over Yukon forests devastated by spruce bark beetles -- believed to be thriving thanks to unusually high temperatures -- and eyeballed receding glaciers at Kenai Fjords National Park. In Barrow, America's northernmost city, the senators spoke with scientists and met Inupiat native Alaskans who described how severe environmental changes are disrupting their hunts, homes, and lives. Coastal erosion and thawing permafrost are …

U.K. market leads the pack in lucrative carbon-emissions trading Newfangled carbon trading has become quite lucrative in the Old World, where the European Union's fledgling carbon market has taken off. Many doubted that the emissions-trading scheme (part of E.U. plans to meet Kyoto emissions-reduction targets) would prosper, especially since the U.S. -- world leader in market-driven economics -- didn't come to the party. But au contraire: The average daily volume of emissions trading increased threefold between January and June, to 1.1 million tons, and the value of a carbon credit more than tripled. London traders have embraced the new scheme, …

Another climate-skeptic argument bites the dust Another argument treasured by climate-change skeptics may be headed the way of the dinosaurs. For years, doubters have made much of the fact that the troposphere (the lower part of the earth's atmosphere) didn't seem to be warming as fast as the earth's surface, as climate models had predicted it would. But three new studies in the journal Science -- on weather-satellite data, weather-balloon data, and climate models -- together call into question the calculations by which past temperature measurements of the troposphere were produced, and show that accurate calculations reveal a warming trend. …

Siberia's fast thaw alarms scientists Siberia is melting. Meeelllting! Ahem. Of particular concern is a 386,000 square-mile expanse of western Siberian permafrost that's been icy cold for about 11,000 years and sits atop billions of tons of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. If the permafrost melts, the methane could escape, global climate change could pass a tipping point after which it is effectively unstoppable, and we, friends and neighbors, could be toast. Speaking of that, in today's New Scientist a research team reports seeing mud and lakes in the region, some more than half …