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Biochemist Oliver Peoples explains how his polymer-producing microbes could transform the plastics i
Over at Seedmagazine.com, I have a brief interview with Oliver Peoples, a biochemist who hopes that his new bio-based plastic will upend the petroleum-based industry—and help clean up oceans and landfills in the process: Seed: So you’re turning corn into plastic in much the same way that the ethanol industry turns it into biofuels. As […]
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Lawsuit accuses Virginia power company of poisoning Dominican community with toxic coal ash
Here’s the damage from a coal ash spill in Tennessee.A civil lawsuit filed last week in state court in Delaware charges Arlington, Va.-based AES Corp. — one of the world’s largest power companies — with illegally dumping 160 million pounds of toxic coal ash waste onto beaches in the Caribbean nation of the Dominican Republic, […]
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More SuperFreakonomics climate change denial?
Is calling global warming a religion the same thing as denying global warming science? While the authors of Superfreakonomics, which is riddled with basic scientific errors, have started to issue some retractions, they continue to embrace self-contradictory denial of the basic science. In mid-October, economist Steven Levitt wrote a blog post titled, “The Rumors of […]
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Arctic ice reaches historic seasonal low
The multiyear ice covering the Arctic Ocean has effectively vanished…. “I would argue that, from a practical perspective, we almost have a seasonally ice-free Arctic now, because multiyear sea ice is the barrier to the use and development of the Arctic,” said Barber [Canada’s Research Chair in Arctic System Science at the University of Manitoba]. […]
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House passes landmark health-care bill with one GOP vote
In the first 40 minutes of Saturday’s debate on the landmark bill, representatives from the minority party objected — or threatened to object — no fewer than 75 times, throwing in 35 “parliamentary inquiries” for good measure. The debate was delayed by nearly 90 minutes. Anybody who wondered whether more active involvement by President Obama […]
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Three reasons to follow Climate Progress on Twitter
To follow Climate Progress on Twitter, click here. Here’s why you should: It’s a modern, portable version of a news teletype. I will be in Copenhagen and tweeting. Your (online) neighbors are doing it! Let me elaborate: 1. It’s like a modern news teletype. Some may think Twitter is only for dishing out 140 […]
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One error retracted, 99 to go
Superfreaknomics authors will, in future editions, correct their claim that Caldeira believes “carbon dioxide is not the right villain”
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El Niño-driven sea surface temperatures are soaring.
Last week I noted that the weak El Niño appears to be strengthening, as expected, so record temperatures will continue. The warming in the Nino 3.4 region of the Pacific is typically used to define an El Niño — sustained postive sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies of greater than 0.5°C across the central tropical Pacific […]
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WWF, Global Warming, and the Point of No Return
I put together a Microsoft Excel interactive pie chart that can be opened or downloaded (file downloaded from this link is guaranteed not to have a virus) that may help people to put into perspective various efforts (like doubling the efficiency of the US car fleet, or the elimination of coal for electricity generation) to […]
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Friday music blogging: Phosphorescent
Phosphorescent is a low-key, low-fi indie folk band along the lines of Iron & Wine or Bon Iver — your basic haunting, echo-y, twangy music for bearded folk. They’ve never really broken out, but if you’re among the bearded, trust me, they will richly reward your attention. Their new album is called To Willie, and […]
