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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 […]

The dangerous myth that the EPA’s endangerment finding can stop dangerous warming

Over and over again, in e-mails and comments and blog posts, I hear some enviros saying that it doesn’t matter if Waxman-Markey fails, since EPA can use the endangerment finding to regulate CO2 as well or better.  That dangerously mistaken view would appear to be creating a dangerous apathy among many progressives and environmentalists, as […]

Nuclear Bombshell: $26 Billion cost — $10,800 per kilowatt! — killed Ontario nuclear bid

We knew new nukes were absurdly expensive (see “Areva has acknowledged that the cost of a new reactor today would be as much as 6 billion euros, or $8 billion, double the price offered to the Finns.”).  Now we know they are literally unaffordable. Our friend and fellow blogger, Tyler Hamilton – who actually has […]