Well, it turns out Dave Roberts has been going about this talking to climate skeptics thing all wrong. If you want to get people to consider data that doesn't fit with their pet worldview, you should make them think really hard about how great they are. Then they'll be putty in your hands! And if you don't believe me, have I mentioned how fetching you look today? Here's how the study that showed this effect worked: Nyhan and Reifler once again confronted partisans with information on these subjects that (presumably) contradicted their beliefs—but there was a twist. This time, the …

A federal report, based on an investigation by the Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement, has officially placed the blame for the BP oil spill at the feet of -- who knew? -- BP. The report, released Wednesday, said in the days leading up to the disaster, BP made a series of decisions that complicated cementing operations, added risk, and may have contributed to the ultimate failure of the cement job. BP isn't alone in the stocks here -- cement contractor Halliburton (THOSE guys!) and Transocean, which owned the rig, also made mistakes. But …

If the world is getting hotter because it's absorbing too much sunlight, why not put up a sunshade? That's the question Montgomery Burns has often asked, and one that scientists in the UK will begin to answer this October when they will use a weather balloon to loft a hose a little more than half a mile into the sky. They'll then pump water up the hose into the atmosphere. If that sounds simplistic to you, maybe you just don’t understand science. The idea is that this is the prototype version of a system that could someday loft 11 million …

It should surprise no one that Mitt Romney's pro-coal, anti-carbon regulations energy plan was crafted by a coal zombie, but here are the deets anyway: Jim Talent, a key Romney advisor, leads a lobbying firm that took $125,000 from Peabody Energy to promote coal-related interests. “America has hundreds of years of coal reserves," writes Talent, a Republican and key Romney economic advisor, blaming government regulation for hampering domestic coal mining and other energy production. “The problem is not that America does not have energy. The problem is that our government – alone among the governments of the world – will …

Oh look -- America's most-read liberal just devoted an entire column to climate change, or should we say climate weirding. It's nice to see the talking points we feed you, our climate hawk minions, repeated so succinctly in a national forum. There were even a few new ones we hadn't thought of yet: [H]ere is the Texas governor rejecting the science of climate change while his own state is on fire — after the worst droughts on record have propelled wildfires to devour an area the size of Connecticut. As a statement by the Texas Forest Service said last week: …

New York is a big city, and most of its residents really hate driving (for good reason). So it seems appropriate that the city's planned bikeshare program, launching next summer, will be by far the largest in the U.S. Its 10,000 bikes will dwarf the 1,100 available from D.C.'s Capital Bikeshare, currently the country's largest. And the range will go from the Upper West Side all the way down into Brooklyn. None of the roughly 600 planned bike stations have fixed locations yet, but wherever they are, they're going to end up increasing the utility of New York's already highly …

The U.S. Geological Survey had a novel idea about how to better understand climate change and its impacts: ask the people most likely to be experiencing it. These researchers asked a group of people from Alaska's indigenous communities what their observations of climate change had been. Their basic response: Everything's all messed up. More specifically, they noticed more variability in temperatures … "Those old people noticed it first. … They used to tell me, 'What’s going on with this weather?' They noticed, sometimes it’s too hot, sometimes it’s too cold." … changes in weather patterns … “[August is the] month …

Lawmakers want to talk about Solyndra, its federal funding, and its bankruptcy. Solyndra execs realized that if they don't come to Washington, they don't have to talk about any of that. For good measure they may build a pillow fort to hide in. Congress is still going to talk about it, of course. And probably use some strongly worded language. A day before this hearing, Bill Gates and a bunch of other rich guys urged Congress to invest more in clean energy. #badtiming More than 250 of the world’s largest companies say they “put climate change central to their business.” …

Hey, what's even better than weed killer being sprayed on crops you eventually eat? How about if it then ends up in air, water, and even rain? AWESOME. I SEE NO POSSIBLE DOWN SIDE TO THIS PLAN. Seriously, this is pretty alarming news: Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey have detected the active ingredient of Roundup, a chemical called glyphosate, in waterways, air, and rain. On the one hand: Those raindrops have no weeds in them, by God. On the other hand: Everything else about this. Now, we're talking about some pretty tiny concentrations here, much less than what farmers …

The Etsy shop Atomic Attic makes upcycled pet beds and feeding trays out of old suitcases and vintage electronics, thus making use of a cat's natural tendency to sit on any damn thing you happen to have lying around. My dog wouldn't fit in a suitcase -- maybe a steamer trunk -- but I love this idea, especially TV kitty here.