Latest Articles

Fifteen years after the Great Flood of 1993, floodplain development is booming

Once it was a cornfield; now it’s a Wal-Mart, a Taco Bell, a Target. Here along a stretch of Missouri’s Highway 40, in the Chesterfield Valley area just west of downtown St. Louis, what’s said to be the largest strip mall in the country sits on about 46 acres of Mississippi River bottomlands. Less than […]

Energy could be harvested from mixing of fresh and salt water

Through an osmotic process we don’t pretend to understand, the mixing of fresh and salt water at the world’s river mouths produces enough energy to feed 20 percent of the world’s electricity demand, say Dutch scientists. Could we start running our gadgetry on salt power? Small projects in Norway and the Netherlands are testing out […]

A comprehensive solution to end congestion

On Monday, the Washington Post took a look at the ideas of a key Department of Transportation policymaker named Tyler Duvall, a man of bold plans who hopes to bring congestion pricing to highways across the nation. Congestion pricing is an idea with roots in the field of economics, widely supported by a broad spectrum […]

Hadley Center says we’re warming, not cooling

The deniers/delayer-1000s cite recent U.K. Hadley Center data to promote their "climate is cooling" disinformation. Even Roger Pielke, Jr. is peddling this nonsense with his recent inanely titled post, "Update on Falsification of Climate Predictions." Falsification? Give me a break!

According to the Hadley Center, the eight warmest years in the global temperature record of 150 are, in order, 1998, 2005, 2003, 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2007. Those are also the eight warmest years in the NASA record in a different order, starting with 2005, then 2007 tied with 1998. Where the heck is the cooling trend? Shame on you, Pielke, for lending your name and website to this delayer-1000 nonsense.

It is only fair to ask what the Hadley Center thinks its data shows (much as we've heard NASA explain that its data shows unequivocal warming). Answer: they believe it shows unequivocally that we are in a warming trend, including this decade. They make one of the best analytical points I have seen in the whole discussion of this cooling nonsense:

Rise in U.S. power plant emissions outpaced electricity demand in 2007

Carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants rose 2.9 percent from 2006 to 2007, according to data analysis by the Environmental Integrity Project. That’s the largest annual increase in nine years and outpaced demand for electricity, according to the report. And the impact will last well beyond a year, warns EIP Director Eric Schaeffer: “Because […]

What happened and who was there?

Well, I’m back home from the Good Jobs, Green Jobs national conference last week in Pittsburgh, and I’ve digested the speeches, the workshops, the press conferences, and the two major reports released at the event: “Green Collar Jobs in America’s Cities [PDF]: Building Pathways out of Poverty and Careers in the Clean Energy Economy” and […]

A cap-and-trade system will not by itself eliminate dirty energy’s unfair advantages

On p. 57 of Fred Krupp’s (generally excellent) new book Earth: The Sequel, it says this: In essence, renewable standards, subsidies, and other mandates assume that the government has all the answers, rather than letting the market figure out the best way to produce clean energy at the lowest cost. I’m never satisfied with how […]

Japan will shorten pro baseball games to cut emissions

Japan’s professional baseball league is aiming to reduce carbon emissions by using only renewable energy recycling everything aiming to shorten games by 12 minutes. Under new rules, no more than 2 minutes and 15 seconds may lapse between innings, and pitchers must throw the ball within 15 seconds of receiving it if no runners are […]

Delayers and doomsayers receive a chilly reception from pragmatic business leaders

There was a lot going on at the conference, but one underlying dynamic is particularly notable. I mentioned it in my post on Jeff Immelt’s panel, but it’s worth discussing at more length. The conservative ideologues — the WSJ editorial board, invited guests Fred Smith and Myron Ebell of CEI, Steve Milloy of JunkScience — […]

Umbra on burning paper

Dear Umbra, We heat our house primarily by wood, in an efficient, EPA-rated woodstove. My question is this: We recycle all of our paper, paperboard, cardboard, etc., but would it be better to burn it? As it is, we drive it to the recycle center, they ship it off somewhere, it is then processed, then […]