Latest Articles

Grist pulled no punches in covering all of George Bush's dirt

  A movie no one would make.   Imagine that back in 1999 you were a Hollywood studio executive and a movie producer brought you the following pitch: A bumbling, incurious child of privilege wastes his youth on Oedipal rebellion. After stumbling through a series of failed business ventures and an undistinguished stint as governor […]

Sundance goes green as environment takes spotlight

PARK CITY, Utah — Environmental movies with a message are taking center stage at the 25th Sundance Film Festival, with films ranging from vanishing bees and threatened dolphins being screened here. “We are ravaging the earth. We need to think how we treat our resources but more importantly how we treat the people,” said director […]

Eight years of Bush’s environmental actions — the good, the bad, and the ugly

Grist came of age over the past eight years, so it seems only fitting to compile George W. Bush’s environmental legacy in one place. From abandoning Kyoto to censoring climate science, all the bad (and, wherever we could find it, the good) is here. Note: This timeline is based on Grist’s extensive coverage of the […]

IPCC chief challenges Obama to further cut U.S. emission targets

Worldwatch just released its State of the World 2009: Into a Warming World, which finds:

The world will have to reduce emissions more drastically than has been widely predicted, essentially ending the emission of carbon dioxide by 2050 to avoid catastrophic disruption to the world's climate.

At a kick-off event, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said

President-elect Obama's goal of reducing emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 falls short of the response needed by world leaders to meet the challenge of reducing emissions to levels that will actually spare us the worst effects of climate change.

Told ya! (see "The U.S. needs a tougher 2020 GHG emissions target.")

Pachauri was the guy handpicked by Bush to replace the "alarmist" Bob Watson. But facts make scientists alarmists, not their politics, as I've said many times (see "Desperate times, desperate scientists"). At the end of 2007, Pachauri famously said:

Who's killing the plug-in hybrid?

This East Bay Express story is a must-read article. The same folks who decided the hydrogen highway was the road to the future now very well might kill the plug-in hybrid conversion industry.

I'd say we should send them a copy of Who Killed the Electric Car?, but chances are they only have Betamax.

Eight years of Bush inaction leave Obama with a near-impossible challenge

Given the sheer number of candidates for “worst legacy of the Bush years,” it may seem perverse to pick the hundreds of coal-fired power plants that have opened across China during his administration. But given their cumulative effect — quite possibly the concrete block that broke the climate-camel’s already straining back — I think they […]

The ocean is absorbing less carbon dioxide

Premier among their many unscientific beliefs, deniers cling to the notion that some magical negative feedback will avert serious climate impacts. Sadly, we will need magic to save humanity if we foolishly decide to listen to the deniers and to keep ignoring the one negative feedback that science says can certainly save humanity -- simply reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The scientific reality based on actual observations (not to mention the paleoclimate record) is that the climate models are not underestimating negative feedbacks -- the models are wildly underestimating the positive or amplifying feedbacks. Among the greatest concerns is the growing evidence that the major carbon sinks are saturating, that a greater and greater fraction of human emissions will end up in the atmosphere.

A new study in Geophysical Research Letters ($ub. req'd), "Sudden, considerable reduction in recent uptake of anthropogenic CO₂ by the East/Japan Sea," finds,

The results presented in this paper indicate that the rate of CO₂ accumulation in the deepest basin of the East/Japan Sea has considerably decreased over the transition period between 1992-1999 and 1999-2007.

The authors explain to the U.K.'s Guardian why this is an amplifying feedback, why warming is diminishing the ability of the ocean sink to absorb CO2:

The world's oceans soak up about 11bn tonnes of human carbon dioxide pollution each year, about a quarter of all produced, and even a slight weakening of this natural process would leave significantly more CO2 in the atmosphere. That would require countries to adopt much stricter emissions targets to prevent dangerous rises in temperature.

Kitack Lee, an associate professor at Pohang University of Science and Technology, who led the research, says the discovery is the "very first observation that directly relates ocean CO2 uptake change to ocean warming".

He says the warmer conditions disrupt a process known as "ventilation" -- the way seawater flows and mixes and drags absorbed CO2 from surface waters to the depths. He warns that the effect is probably not confined to the Sea of Japan. It could also affect CO2 uptake in the Atlantic and Southern oceans.

"Our result ... unequivocally demonstrated that oceanic uptake of CO2 has been directly affected by warming-induced weakening of vertical ventilation," he says ...

Lee adds: "In other words, the increase in atmospheric temperature due to global warming can profoundly influence the ocean ventilation, thereby decreasing the uptake rate of CO2."

This study matches other recent research on ocean sink saturation. In 2007, the BBC reported, "The amount of carbon dioxide being absorbed by the world's oceans has reduced" based on more than 90,000 ship-based measurements of CO2 absorption over ten years. The Global Carbon Project analysis of the "natural land and ocean CO₂ sinks" finds:

Few Americans are ever likely to see George W. Bush's greatest environmental legacy

Behold Bush’s environmental legacy. Photo: nasa.gov My assignment, which I chose to accept, is to offer a tangent of positive thoughts about the Bush administration’s environmental record before readers return to the barrage of verbal drubbing that other Grist writers are no doubt serving up. Rather than pick out nuggets that lie here and there […]

The Bush Team as characters from everybody's favorite cartoon show

 For Americans passionate about environmental issues, the last eight years often felt like a horror movie — all screams and monsters. So we could use a little laughter to change the mood. Now that we’ve survived the reign of 43, Grist presents the Bush administration’s cast of enviro villains as characters of Fox’s hit cartoon […]

Transportation projects get big money from state, feds

As the nation turns its attention toward the big Inaugural events next week, Washington Governor Chris Gregoire (D) danced her way (back) into office during her own Inaugural Ball Wednesday night. But the celebration was over the next day as she announced her economic stimulus plan for the state, which faces its biggest budget shortfall in history.

While a big chunk of change -- more than $800 million -- would go toward accelerating building and road projects, she also suggests funding greener ventures: Some $30 million would help construct water-pollution-control facilities, and $10 million would install alternative-energy equipment in government facilities.

Gregoire also hopes to create 20,000 new jobs in the next two years. There's no word on exactly how many of those are "green jobs," but there are likely to be quite a few openings in light-rail construction now that Sound Transit has been awarded a $813 million federal grant as part of the Federal Transit Administration's New Starts program.

The three-mile light-rail tunnel linking hot-spots in Seattle was awarded the FTA's top rating because of the city's dense population and high transit-ridership. The money, which covers about 40 percent of the $1.9 billion price tag, will come primarily from federal gas taxes.