Climate Climate & Energy
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Game changer 5: RFK, Jr.: How to end America’s deadly coal addiction: natural gas!
Converting rapidly from coal-generated energy to gas is President Barack Obama’s most obvious first step towards saving our planet and jump-starting our economy. A revolution in natural gas production over the past two years has left America awash with natural gas and has made it possible to eliminate most of our dependence on deadly, destructive […]
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When Sen. Dorgan finds out what’s in the climate bill he might just support it
Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) has a “Probability of Yes” vote (PrY) of 22% for the climate bill, as it’s currently written (see “Who are the swing Senators?“). That is notwithstanding his April remarks: North Dakota is the Saudi Arabia of wind. … I’m going to keep pushing for policies in Congress that help us develop […]
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It’s time to save planet Earth. And our inspiration, once again, comes from JFK
July 19, 2009 I have a new article at Salon, “Goodnight, moon travel.” I discuss how the challenge of averting catastrophic climate change is quite different from the Apollo program – particularly in scale and participation. The public and private sector of this country alone will need an Apollo-level effort every year for the next […]
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Making Buses Cool Again
Transmilenio municipal buses are seen on a street of Bogotá, Colombia (from a post first published here). Transportation is responsible for roughly a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. This means that bold changes in transportation policies — for both the developed and developing world-must be part of solving the climate crisis. The trick is […]
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Deniers misrepresent new study that finds climate models underestimate warming
Bizarrely, climate science deniers are touting a new study that finds we might return to the rapid global warming of the Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM) with much lower levels of CO2 than previously thought. The PETM’s climate would be quite inhospitable to human civilization. A February Nature article concluded (see “The Garden of Eden had […]
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NCDC: Second hottest June on record — and El Nino “to threaten previous record highs”
Fast on the heels of the fourth warmest May on record, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center reports: Based on preliminary data, the globally averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was the second warmest on record for June, and the January-June year-to-date tied with 2004 as the fifth warmest on record. NCDC notes that the […]
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Sorry, Buzz Aldrin, we’re not sending people to Mars by 2029
The second man to walk on the moon has an odd op-ed in the Washington Post today, “Time to Boldly Go Once More.” Not surprisingly, he wants to go to Mars, but a key reason he offers – to study climate change – is very strange indeed. Today is the 40th anniversary of the launch […]
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The dangerous myth that the EPA’s endangerment finding can stop dangerous warming
Over and over again, in e-mails and comments and blog posts, I hear some enviros saying that it doesn’t matter if Waxman-Markey fails, since EPA can use the endangerment finding to regulate CO2 as well or better. That dangerously mistaken view would appear to be creating a dangerous apathy among many progressives and environmentalists, as […]
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Nuclear Bombshell: $26 Billion cost — $10,800 per kilowatt! — killed Ontario nuclear bid
We knew new nukes were absurdly expensive (see “Areva has acknowledged that the cost of a new reactor today would be as much as 6 billion euros, or $8 billion, double the price offered to the Finns.”). Now we know they are literally unaffordable. Our friend and fellow blogger, Tyler Hamilton – who actually has […]
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Tim Wirth to natural gas executives: "We're in deep trouble…"
UPDATE: Here is the video of the speech (courtesy of Clean Skies). It is worth seeing since Wirth does not keep to his text and he is very blunt in the Q&A: I have been running a multipart series on how new unconventional natural gas supplies may be a game changer for low-cost climate action […]