Latest Articles

Conservative Dems push back against progressive green spending

Last week the Washington Post had a story on the tension between fast stimulus and green stimulus; this week they have another along the same lines. Smart growth groups and enviros are trying to push the balance as far as possible toward green infrastructure spending: public transit and smart grid. In contrast, Rep. Baron Hill […]

Finally, Roger Pielke Jr. admits he supports policies that will take us to 5-7°C warming

Roger Pielke, Jr. is usually very hard to pin down. But at least it is now plain for everyone to see that his climate policies are no different from Bjorn Lomborg’s, or George Bush’s for that matter (see Bush climate speech follows Luntz playbook: “Technology, technology, blah, blah, blah”). Following Pielke’s “specific policies” would inevitably […]

Climate youth activists target the Capitol Power Plant

The U.S. coal-fired power plant fleet is filled with geezers. Out of 1,522 existing generating units, 600 were running during the Nixon-Kennedy debates. Nearly 10 percent were built in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Still, it would be hard to find a coal plant that has seen more history than the Capitol Power Plant in […]

End of year musings on coal and its competitors

Some thoughts as we get closer to a new energy policy. Our total U.S. electric grid has a peak capacity of just over 1,000 GW. (That’s 1 billion kilowatts or, if you prefer, enough to power 10 billion hundred-watt light bulbs.) Of that total, here’s what we’ve installed just since 1995: ~200 MW of solar […]

New anti-coal ads repeat mistakes

The anti-clean-coal Reality Campaign is a coalition of some very serious groups and smart people. They have the same goal that all CSAs (climate science advocates) do, namely to stop building new dirty coal plants (and presumably to start shutting down existing ones). But I just don’t think they have figured out an effective way […]

Homo mitigation

Pope: Protecting tropical rainforests from climate change is important, but not as important as protecting humanity from TEH GAY!

Coal front group sets up ‘Blogger Brigade’ to fight reality

Originally posted at the Wonk Room. The coal industry is attempting to organize bloggers to promote their false “clean coal” propaganda. The Reality Coalition, a group of national environmental organizations, have begun airing the message that “There’s no such thing as clean coal,” to counter the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by coal-powered corporations […]

Goodbye to the clamshell?

I rarely buy be-clamshelled merchandise any more, but I remember it with horror, so this seems like excellent news:

Editing is really a good thing for the blogosphere

There is a kerfuffle in the blogosphere because Matt Yglesias’ employer forced a post into the blog Matt writes that disclaims something Matt said about a group called Third Way. And there are good reasons for raised eyebrows. It’s the wrong way to make such a disclaimer. The Center for American Progress could have asked […]

Evidence that Antarctica has warmed significantly over past 50 years

Scientists know the Antarctic ice sheet is losing mass “100 years ahead of schedule” (see here and here). Now, as Nature‘s climate blog reports, two studies presented last week at the AGU meeting document what should not be a surprise, but still is. New research suggests “the entire Antarctic continent may have warmed significantly over […]