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China announces plans to modify weather for Olympics

The Olympic stadium in Beijing, China, will be dry during the opening ceremony, officials said, but not because the structure has a roof (it doesn’t). Instead, Chinese meteorologists claim they can stop rain from falling over the stadium, despite the fact that the games will take place during the monsoon season this August. The process […]

Environmental Capital

In case you didn’t know: The Wall Street Journal has started an environmental blog called Environmental Capital. It’s quite good. See, for instance, this post on the climate talks going on in Hawaii, and the centrality of global trade considerations thereto.

Hawaii climate conference ends, scant progress made

The U.S.-led climate talks in Honolulu, Hawaii, ended yesterday without much fanfare and without much progress achieved. By most accounts, it was a closed-door, bureaucratic nothing-fest wherein delegates from the 17 biggest-polluting countries spoke about the need to act, but no one actually did. The United States finally agreed to take part in forming climate-change […]

Focus the Nation events aim for interactivity, accountability

This week, college campuses across the country held events for Focus the Nation, a major education and action campaign around climate change. To see what it was all about, I headed to Seattle’s University of Washington campus to find out if the students behind Focus the Nation could teach me a thing or two. The […]

Obama parries ABEC

Obama gets buttonholed by a planted ABEC coal shill: Nothing he says here is particularly objectionable. The priority on reducing CO2 emissions is welcome. It is true that if we can figure out a way to cost-effectively sequester coal emissions, it will bring some benefit. More important, though, is what’s not said. He says we […]

Tonight’s climate-less Democratic debate: Brought to you on behalf of ABEC

I looked through the transcript, and as far as I can tell there wasn’t a single question about climate change in tonight’s Democratic debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. This is the fourth CNN debate sponsored by coal front group Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC). Not one of the four has contained a […]

Commission approves NYC congestion charge

A New York commission has approved a plan to charge a fee to drivers entering Manhattan during peak hours. The proposal, aimed at reducing traffic congestion and pollution, differs only slightly from what Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed in April; it would charge $8 to drivers entering a certain area between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m., […]

Bush drops mismanaged ‘NeverGen’ clean coal project

For those remaining seven or eight three or four people who still buy the Bush rhetoric that he cares about global warming and is committed to addressing the problem with new technology, Exhibit 435C for the prosecution is the just-canceled "clean coal" project called FutureGen.

[Amusing anecdote for FHA (Future Historians of America): I once had a boss at the U.S. Department of Energy who practiced repeating "clean coal" in front of a mirror so as not to break out smiling when uttering that oxymoron.]

Yes, I know Bush said as recently as Monday (in the most vetted of all presidential speeches), "Let us fund new technologies that can generate coal power while capturing carbon emissions." But he wasn't lying or flip-flopping or anything. He didn't say, "We are funding new technologies ..." or "Anyone who actually meant what they said would keep funding new technologies ..." Give the guy a break. He said, "Let us fund new technologies ..." He was imploring Congress for help in a "Let my people go" vein.

Yes, two months ago, "administration officials were calling it a 'centerpiece' of their strategy for clean coal technologies," but centerpieces are largely decorative, no?

This is sort of a setback for those who believe coal gasification combined with carbon capture and storage could be a major global warming solution. I say "sort of" for two reasons. First, the program was being horribly mismanaged:

"The idea of FutureGen makes complete sense," Dr. Moniz [undersecretary of energy during the Clinton administration] said. However, a study he helped direct concluded earlier this year that the FutureGen project was badly structured, with confusion about whether it was a research project or a demonstration. Among its problems, he said in a telephone interview on Friday, was that it has "a cast of thousands" ...

Warming oceans lead to more frequent hurricanes, says study

A new study published in Nature weighs in on the effect-of-climate-change-on-hurricanes debate, postulating that a warming north Atlantic has made hurricanes stronger and more frequent.

New report compares military and climate spending

The Institute for Policy Studies has a new Foreign Policy in Focus report out: "The Budget Compared: Military vs. Climate Security." As you’d expect from the name, it’s a close look at how federal dollars are allocated for military vs. climate protection, and as you’d expect from, you know, being awake, there’s an enormous disparity. […]