Latest Articles

Jim Webb (D-Va.)

Jim Webb Sen. Jim Webb is a moderate, and Virginia is a coal state. His House colleagues won major concessions for the coal industry in the Waxman-Markey climate bill, but whether they’ll be enough to win over Webb remains to be seen. Virginia Rep. Rick Boucher, who led the pro-coal lobby in shaping the House […]

Game changer 5: RFK, Jr.: How to end America’s deadly coal addiction: natural gas!

Converting rapidly from coal-generated energy to gas is President Barack Obama’s most obvious first step towards saving our planet and jump-starting our economy. A revolution in natural gas production over the past two years has left America awash with natural gas and has made it possible to eliminate most of our dependence on deadly, destructive […]

Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.)

Jay Rockefeller Sen. Jay Rockefeller has expressed concerns about the impact a climate bill would have on West Virginia’s coal industry. He’s probably more likely to vote for a bill than his home-state colleague Robert Byrd, but he would need to be assured that whatever bill passes isn’t too hard on the coal industry. “Senator […]

When Sen. Dorgan finds out what’s in the climate bill he might just support it

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) has a “Probability of Yes” vote (PrY) of 22% for the climate bill, as it’s currently written (see “Who are the swing Senators?“).   That is notwithstanding his April remarks: North Dakota is the Saudi Arabia of wind. … I’m going to keep pushing for policies in Congress that help us develop […]

It’s time to save planet Earth. And our inspiration, once again, comes from JFK

July 19, 2009 I have a new article at Salon, “Goodnight, moon travel.” I discuss how the challenge of averting catastrophic climate change is quite different from the Apollo program – particularly in scale and participation.  The public and private sector of this country alone will need an Apollo-level effort every year for the next […]

Making Buses Cool Again

Transmilenio municipal buses are seen on a street of Bogotá, Colombia (from a post first published here). Transportation is responsible for roughly a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. This means that bold changes in transportation policies — for both the developed and developing world-must be part of solving the climate crisis. The trick is […]

Deniers misrepresent new study that finds climate models underestimate warming

Bizarrely, climate science deniers are touting a new study that finds we might return to the rapid global warming of the Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM) with much lower levels of CO2 than previously thought. The PETM’s climate would be quite inhospitable to human civilization.  A February Nature article concluded (see “The Garden of Eden had […]

Deniers are “full of passionate intensity”—and eating our lunch on climate bill

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. I have heard from multiple sources that many U.S. senators are now getting 100 to 200 calls a day opposing a climate and clean energy bill — and bupkes in favor. The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Why?  Well, the entire […]

NCDC: Second hottest June on record — and El Nino “to threaten previous record highs”

Fast on the heels of the fourth warmest May on record, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center reports: Based on preliminary data, the globally averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was the second warmest on record for June, and the January-June year-to-date tied with 2004 as the fifth warmest on record. NCDC notes that the […]

Sorry, Buzz Aldrin, we’re not sending people to Mars by 2029

The second man to walk on the moon has an odd op-ed in the Washington Post today, “Time to Boldly Go Once More.”  Not surprisingly, he wants to go to Mars, but a key reason he offers – to study climate change – is very strange indeed. Today is the 40th anniversary of the launch […]