Climate Climate & Energy
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Japan’s emissions hit record levels
Last year, Japan’s greenhouse-gas emissions reached record levels, hitting 1.5 billion tons of CO2 equivalent — an increase of some 2.3 percent. Much of the rise was due to an earthquake shutting down the world’s largest nuclear plant in northwestern Japan, which pushed utilities to rely more on fossil fuels. But critics have also said […]
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New report suggests that half of U.S. states could meet their energy needs with in-state resources
The New Rules Project just released a comprehensive new report containing some interesting results: The data in this report, while preliminary, suggest that at least half of the fifty states could meet all their internal energy needs from renewable energy generated inside their borders, and the vast majority could meet a significant percentage. And these […]
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Wisconsin doesn’t want no stinkin’ coal plant
Wisconsin regulators on Tuesday unanimously rejected Alliant Energy’s proposal to build a new coal-fired power plant, in large part due to concerns over — you betcha — climate change.
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What’s the best way to phase out the huge fleet of aging coal plants?
The anti-coal movement has a lot to celebrate right now. Of the 151 coal plants on the drawing boards as of the May 2007 report by the Energy Department, 82 have now been abandoned, blocked, or placed on hold. In September, Juliette Jowitt of the UK’s Manchester Guardian wrote: In a few years, the backlash […]
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The Economist blows it on the Green New Deal
The Economist is probably the smartest newsweekly going, so it’s pretty stunning how bad this editorial is. It shows an almost willful disengagement with Obama’s proposals. The editorial argues that the newly popular idea of a Green New Deal is misguided. Yes, we need to address climate change. Yes, we need public spending to stimulate […]
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Fossil-fuel power plants in U.S. to test using some solar energy
A utility group in the United States said it plans to test coupling solar thermal power with natural-gas and coal-fired power plants in an apparent bid to reduce fuel costs and greenhouse-gas emissions.
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Brother, can you spare a country?
“We do not want to leave the Maldives, but we also do not want to be climate refugees living in tents for decades.” — Mohamed Nasheed, newly elected president of the Maldives, on a plan to use tourism revenue to buy a new homeland, since climate change-driven sea-level rise is expected to swallow the current […]
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It’s getting out there
Newsweek: But there are also powerful voices being raised amid the din of despair, saying that now is precisely the time to seize the initiative and launch the “global revolution” the IEA is calling for. And not just because it will stave off disasters two or three decades away, but also because it can provide […]
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Stabilize at 350 ppm or risk ice-free planet, warn NASA, Yale, Sheffield, Versailles, Boston et al
The good news: We can avoid multimeter sea-level rise, the loss of the inland glaciers that provide water to a billion people, rapid expansion of the subtropical deserts, and mass extinctions — each of which is all-but inevitable on our current path of unrestrained greenhouse gas emissions. The not-so-good news: We will probably need an […]
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A new record for the hurricane season of 2008
As Jeff Master, our favorite meteorologist and hurricane blogger, wrote on Saturday: This year is now the only hurricane season on record in the Atlantic that has featured major hurricanes in five separate months. The only year to feature major hurricanes in four separate months was 2005, and many years have had major hurricanes in […]
