Climate Climate & Energy
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Critical List: Sarah Palin’s emails on oil; Firefighters gaining ground on wildfire
Sarah Palin's emails show that even in private that she's not Big Oil's best buddy. In Arizona, the population of two towns was allowed to return home, and firefighters said they were more confident about containing the fire. Obama is visiting an LED manufacturer before convening his jobs council today; NPR asks if investing in […]
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Critical List: Hurricane Adrian rises; Romney’s climate change problem
Here we go: first hurricane of the year. Wild elephants killed one person in a rampage through an Indian city. Poor guy, but also, poor elephants! They were probably only there because their habitat is shrinking. Obama's meeting with the heads of oil-rich African states. Romney believes in climate change, but not in doing anything […]
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Critical List: Kyoto will expire with no successor; Rock climbers scale wind turbines
Global fail: The Kyoto Protocol will expire without a deal to take its place, the top UN climate official said yesterday. China's own Ministry of Environmental Protection said in a report that the country's not doing so hot on the environmental front. The report ticked off problems like acid rain (half of the China's cities […]
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Critical List: Bean sprouts newest E. coli suspect; the ‘golden age’ of natural gas
German authorities are now accusing bean sprouts of causing the E. coli outbreak in Europe, but don't have inarguable proof, yet. Vegetables, unlike humans, are guilty until proven innocent, it seems. Climate delegates begin meeting today in Bonn, in the run-up to the Durbin round of climate talks. They've got a lot to hash over, […]
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How last year’s record emissions stack up to the worst-case scenario
Here's a little visual representation, from Climate Crocks, of how 2010's record carbon emissions stack up to various predicted scenarios. Hey, whaddya know … after a brief drop because of the recession, we're right back on track for the worst-case scenario! (And possibly set to blow right past it if we continue on this trajectory.)
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Bill Clinton: Go for the low-hanging fruit
Bill Clinton urged mayors at the Large Cities Climate Summit to go after a pollutant 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide: methane. By capturing it from landfills, from which it leaches in prodigious amounts, cities could use it to generate power. Wrestling CO2 could take years, but harnessing methane could make a big difference […]
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Why Republicans are fighting Obama’s commerce pick
President Obama nominated long-time successful energy executive John Bryson to be secretary of commerce yesterday, in a move representative Darrell Issa calls "deeply out of touch with our current energy challenge." Wait, what? See, before Bryson was the president of the California Public Utilities Commission, or the CEO of Edison International, or the director of […]
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Chris Christie takes a helicopter to a baseball game
I was going to put a joke in the headline, but is it really necessary? I mean, here are the facts without jokes: Chris Christie, the transit-killing, mall-building, climate-initiative-withdrawing governor of New Jersey, hopped on a state helicopter to go to his kid's baseball game — and once he alit, a private car took him […]
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Critical List: More Midwest deaths after storms; White House, NASCAR go green
More deaths in the Midwest after storms hit Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. Some areas of Texas have received less than one-fifth the normal amount of rain in the last six months. The drought has cost $1.5 billion so far. But these catastrophes are totally unrelated, right? Bill McKibben takes his sarcastic stick to anyone who'll […]
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Critical List: Scientists’ report pushes emissions policy, Greenlanders warm to climate change
A government report that Congress ordered back when most members believed in climate change recommends creating some — any — sort of policy to limit greenhouse-gas emissions. Newt Gingrich needs to admit his support for climate change solutions was "a brain fart," Republicans say. Democrats just wish he'd return to the '90s, where he belongs. […]