Climate Climate & Energy

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  • ‘SuperFreakonomics’ is ‘patent nonsense’

    Any religion, meanwhile, has its heretics, and global warming is no exception. That staggeringly anti-scientific statement (page 170) is just one of many, many pieces of outright nonsense from SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance. In fact, human-caused global warming is well-established science, far better established than any […]

    Joseph Romm Climate & Energy

  • Why solar won’t topple in Germany

    Since the new center-right coalition won the elections a few weeks ago in Germany, onlookers from the U.S. have been expecting the country to drastically cut its support for solar. Proponents of U.S.-style policies, such as tax credits and Renewable Portfolio Standards, have also been hinting that Germany will be yet another example of how […]

    Craig Morris Climate & Energy

  • Our old electric grid is no match for our new green energy plans

    The bowels of New York City’s electricity system.Often referred to as “the world’s biggest machine,” the North American electricity grid as a whole is an integrated network of generators and millions of miles of wires that crisscross the United States and Canada. It snakes across fields, over mountains, through tunnels, along highways, beneath sidewalks, under […]

    Amanda Little Climate & Energy

  • Can you taste the fuels in your food?

    Amanda Little on the farm. If you pinned a map of the United States to a dartboard, Kansas would be the bull’s-eye. Smack dab in the center of the country, the Sunflower State is one of America’s most productive agricultural hotbeds — the fifth-biggest producer of crops and livestock in the country. More than 90 […]

    Amanda Little Climate & Energy

  • The violent twilight of oil and a strategy to expose it

    MaassPhoto courtesy Erinn Hartman/KnopfNew York Times Magazine contributing writer Peter Maass spent eight years following the flow of oil around the world, from fields in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Russia, Venezuela, Nigeria, and Azerbaijan to corporate boardrooms. His new book, Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil, uses stories from these locales to show why the […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Climate & Energy

  • At SEJ, doom and gloom without the sense of humor

    It’s a wonder I continue to show up at Society of Environmental Journalists conferences when you consider how much of a downer some of these panels can be. And that’s doubly true about the ones on climate change. This afternoon’s session on global warming as a national security issue was an even darker affair than […]

    Robert McClure Climate & Energy

  • National Institutes of Energy needed to fill energy research and development gap

    Friday factoids time: The U.S. biomedical and pharmaceutical industry invests between 10-20 percent of revenues in research and development (R&D) and new product development, spending $58.8 billion on R&D in 2007. The U.S. government adds an additional $30 billion per year investment in biomedical R&D through the National Institutes of Health. In contrast, the U.S. […]

    Jesse Jenkins Climate & Energy

  • Meet your new national parks chief

    New Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis: Friendly.Photo: National Park ServiceOne weekend this summer, my wife and I ferried across Puget Sound to Olympic National Park, chose a hiking route with the help of an awesomely smart and patient ranger, and set forth from the highest trailhead in the park. We crossed alpine ridges, dropped into […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Climate & Energy

  • The place to be if you’re young and you care about the climate: Power Shift ’09

    Starting on Oct. 9, the Energy Action Coalition is kicking off 11 Power Shift youth summits across the country, where young people will gather to demand climate action from President Obama and Congress and get training and inspiration for on-the-ground activism.  In November 2007 and March 2009, there were big Power Shift confabs in the […]

    Grist staff Climate & Energy

  • Dirty energy fuels college campuses

    University of Washington campus.Did you know that many of our country’s colleges and universities — places that are supposed to be a source of higher-education and leadership — get their electricity by burning coal? And sometimes those coal-fired power plants are even on the campuses? I think many of us look back in disbelief at […]

    Bruce Nilles Climate & Energy