Latest Articles

Company will file application for new U.S. nuclear reactor

And so it begins: Tomorrow, NRG Energy will become the first company in nearly 30 years to file an application to build a new nuclear reactor in the U.S.

Moon base project sucks up potential climate research dollars

In the annals of self-delusion, NASA's Moon-Mars mission ranks right at the top. Today's NY Times, for example, carries details about NASA's plans for a moon base to be built sometime around 2020.

Let me be clear. There is a 0 percent chance that this Moon base or anything like it will ever be built, for the following reason: the moon missions in the '60s and early '70s cost something like $100 billion in today's dollars. There is no way that setting up a semipermanent lunar base will be anything other than many times more expensive. That would put the total cost at one to a few trillion dollars.

NASA, however, is spending a few billion dollars each year on this -- something like 1 percent of the money they would need to spend each year to actually accomplish this task, well short of the $100 billion or so actually required. Given this reality, there is no way we will ever actually do this.

A roundup of green financial services

Joel Makower’s got a good round-up of new green financial services — mortgages, loans, etc. The holy grail of green financing tools, far as I know, is "Connie Mae," Al Gore’s proposed carbon-neutral equivalent to Fannie Mae.

An interview with green pediatrician Alan Greene

If you were to give a check-up to Alan Greene, eco-pediatrician extraordinaire, you just might diagnose him with ASHD — Attention Surplus Hyperproductivity Disorder. It isn’t a real disorder, of course. But whatever Greene’s got — whatever blend of vim and vision allows him to stay at the cutting edge of environmentalism and e-medicine while […]

The ongoing humiliations of the tattered ‘climate skeptic’ movement

These last few years have not been kind to the climate flat-earthers. Their patron political party got drubbed in the mid-terms, the IPCC demolished their favorite talking points, numerous post-IPCC scientific results make the IPCC look conservative, and the impetus for action on climate change is growing at breakneck speed everywhere outside the U.S. executive […]

Senate testimony on yet another example of climate amplifying feedbacks

Global warming makes wildfires more likely and more destructive -- an amplifying climate feedback that releases more carbon into the atmosphere. The full committee of the Senate for Energy and Natural Resources is having a hearing on the subject today. You can get live video here -- click on Live Webcast.

I'm looking forward to this hearing since one of the witnesses is Dr. Thomas Swetnam, Director of the Laboratory of Tree Ring Research and Professor of Dendochronology, University of Arizona. He coathored the August 2006 Science cover story, "Warming and Earlier Spring Increase Western U.S. Forest Wildfire Activity" ($ub. req'd). The abstract is viewable online -- here is the conclusion:

California officials will poison lake to target nonnative fish

We’re not gung-ho about invasive species, but somehow poisoning an entire lake to get rid of them seems counterintuitive. Nonetheless, California’s Lake Davis will get that treatment from state Fish and Game Department officials tomorrow, in the latest attempt in 15 years to rid the reservoir of nonnative northern pike.

Gore recites climate woes in speech at U.N.

Al Gore's address to the U.N. General Assembly today was a much darker affair than I assumed it would be. Given that the stated goal today is to lay the groundwork for international institution-building and unity of vision, I expected he'd take a more inspirational approach. Instead, about three-quarters of his speech was a thorough enumeration of the effects global warming is already having on the planet.

Included in his litany of woes:

• The faster-than-expected melting of Arctic ice, the million of years it will take for the caps to reform if they melt entirely, and the pressure the melting puts on the Greenland shelf.
• The potential six-meter rise in sea levels associated with such melting.
• Glaciers retreating all over the planet.
• The total disappearance of Lake Chad.
• Stronger typhoons, cyclones, and hurricanes making landfall worldwide.
• Record floods in India, Bangladesh, and elsewhere.
• 35,000 people killed in 2003 European heat wave.

Goodness.

Umbra on green laundry detergents

Dear Umbra, What are the “green” high-efficiency detergents for washers? Thanks,Marilyn Dearest Marilyn, A perfect question for parenting fortnight. Children have such tiny clothing that you wouldn’t think it would add up to an increase in laundry volume. Until you saw the proof. Too bad keeping them naked (cuuuute!) and periodically hosing them off is […]

White House behind lobbying campaign to undermine California auto-emissions plan, Waxman charges

Arnold Schwarzenegger, who gave a rather good speech today here at the U.N. climate summit, is famously attempting to cut California's greenhouse-gas emissions. Now come accusations that the White House is behind a lobbying effort to get the U.S. EPA to reject Schwarzenegger's plan to regulate GHGs from cars and trucks.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chair of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, got wind of the situation. Writes Jesse Lee in "The Gavel," Speaker Pelosi's blog:

Chairman Waxman has obtained internal e-mails which show that Transportation Secretary Mary Peters personally directed a behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign approved by the White House to oppose EPA approval of California's landmark standards reducing greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles.