Climate Climate & Energy
All Stories
-
![]()
![]()
New Lancet report on health and social effects of climate change
The Lancet and the University College London (UCL) Institute for Global Health have been engaged in a year-long research project on the health and social effects of climate change. The final report was just released. The overall conclusion? “Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.” It’s grim, grim stuff. So […]
-
What happens when you mandate clean coal
A plan to build a “clean coal” plant in Washington state is officially dead: Energy Northwest officials said they could not produce a required plan for capturing carbon emissions from the proposed plant in the foreseeable future. A 2007 Washington law sets strict limits on carbon emissions from coal plants and requires that utilities show […]
-
Bike to work, bike from work
Today is Bike-To-Work day. If you don’t have a job and are feeling left out, you have other options. Frankly, I can’t think of a better way to wait out the recession than to take a bike tour. It’s cheap, especially if you camp. It’s the right speed to see a country. It’s carbon-free, natch. […]
-
![]()
![]()
Report: Climate change will bring big problems for small number of countries
Here’s one way to break down the effects of fiercer storm surges that will be wrought by climate change: Most land lost: Latin America Most people displaced: Middle East and North Africa Most economic losses: East Asia World Bank economists reached these conclusions in a new draft report [PDF] that assesses the effects sea-level rise […]
-
![]()
![]()
North Pole poised to be largely ice-free by 2020
It’s the ice thickness, stupid. The Arctic ice cover, which has endured for at least 100,000 years, will be all but gone within a decade according to a volume-based projection by a leading British scientist, the BBC reports. At the same time, “a gruelling 73-day” survey of sea-ice thickness found “the average thickness of the […]
-
![]()
![]()
BC voters back carbon tax
Carbon emissions met its first big electoral test this week, as British Columbia voters rewarded BC premier Gordon Campbell, who last July instituted North America's first major carbon tax, with a third four-year term.
-
World’s largest solar plant with thermal storage to be built in Arizona
Concentrated solar thermal aka solar baseload has definitely come of age in the United States. Just a few weeks ago, I posted “World’s largest solar power plants with thermal storage to be built in Arizona” about a 200-MW plant and a 280-MW plant planned for AZ. But “The technology that will save humanity” is on […]
-
![]()
![]()
Treating climate change as a security threat
Photo illustration by Tom Twigg / Grist Old soldiers, as they say, never die — and at 97 the legendary Vietnamese Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap seems intent on proving the point. But he does not seem to be that interested in fading away, either. For the man who drove out first France and then the […]
-
Changes in the sun are not causing global warming
A forthcoming study in Geophysical Research Letters (subs. req’d) finds what countless other studies in the past decade have found — changes in the sun are not responsible for the global warming in recent decades. In particular, the study debunks the notion that changes in cloud cover driven by cosmic rays are a major factor […]
-
Chevron hires former CNN correspondent to spin report on Amazon destruction
The New York Times has a great story about Chevron hiring a former CNN reporter to produce a “news” report to counter a 60 Minutes segment on the oil company’s contamination of the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador. On May 3, 60 Minutes ran a story on the $27 billion lawsuit against Chevron for environmental damage, […]
