Climate Climate & Energy
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Data highlights on the global food supply
World agriculture today faces pressure from many sources. On the production side, the amount of unused arable land worldwide has dwindled. Overworked soils are becoming eroded and degraded, and overpumped aquifers are being depleted. Meanwhile, as the global population grows and increasing biofuel production converts grain into fuel for cars, demand for food continues to […]
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Earthquake wake-up call in Chicago
Road damage following an earthquake. Photo: NASA Marshall Space Flight Center CollectionI wonder if anyone on President Obama’s new Interagency Task Force on Carbon Capture and Storage felt a slight rumble of concern when a 3.8-magnitude earthquake struck across Kane County in Illinois on Wednesday. The earthquake, minor compared to the 5.2-magnitude earthquake that shook […]
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The 10 greenest and brownest things about Vancouver
Courtesy Ecstaticist via FlickrAll eyes are on are Vancouver this month — not just on the Olympics, but on the city itself. Is the world’s biggest athletic circus making the city a better place to live in the long term? A worse one? Or is it just putting the global spotlight on strengths and weaknesses […]
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Global weirding, East Coast snow storms, and Vancouver’s snow shortage
The other day someone made the cleverest quip: “Hey Al Gore, how do you like your global warming now that it’s snowing and snow is cold, Al Gore?” If only someone had made such a comment on the internet, or possibly Twitter; then I could link to it. Do such comments deserve serious responses? No. […]
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Policy fixes to unleash clean energy, part 2
In part 1, I outlined five questions that ought to be answered before we have any conversation about energy policy reform. Here is my answer to the first question: What are the primary existing regulatory barriers to the deployment of cleaner energy? They are legion. But they can be lumped into three broad categories: utility […]
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Massive moisture-driven extreme precipitation during warmest winter in the satellite record —
Memo to anti-science crowd: Precipitation isn’t temperature! Another massive mid-Atlantic precipitation event, another piece of nonsense from the anti-science crowd. Kevin Mooney of the American Spectator actually wrote an article titled, “Snowmageddon” Versus “Overwhelming Scientific Evidence,” which asserts: This is the first time since record keeping started that two storms of such magnitude have […]
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N.Y. Times and Elisabeth Rosenthal Face Credibility Siege over Unbalanced Climate Coverage
UPDATE: Climate scientist Ken Caldeira has just sent me an email titled, “I can’t believe the New York Times has done it again …” that I’ll reprint in its entirety at the end. You can contact the NY Times public editor, Clark Hoyt, at [email protected]. The NYT has published arguably its worst climate story ever, […]
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Obama plan would educate clean energy scientists and engineers
Last week, the Obama administration introduced a proposal that every college student and educator in the country should know about. It represents the nation’s first comprehensive federal program for clean energy education, and it’s a critical step toward regaining American leadership in one of the most important industries of our time. Over the past two […]
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The hidden costs and benefits of things we take for granted
Raj Patel has an interesting list of “things that aren’t as cheap as you think,” with an always-welcome reminder that many industries and social practices have costs that don’t appear in the sticker price. These “externalities” are offloaded to the public; they represent, in effect, enormous subsidies. Free marketeers hate market-distorting subsidies, right? For the […]
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Are utilities’ plans for shoring up hazardous coal ash dams good enough?
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released action plans submitted by 22 coal-fired power plants to improve the safety of the massive dammed surface impoundments where they store toxic coal ash, but environmental advocates question whether the plans do enough to protect the public from disaster. That’s because in the absence of federal regulations treating […]
