Climate Climate & Energy

World’s glaciers melting rapidly, report says

The world’s glaciers are melting quite rapidly and will likely cause all sorts of environmental problems, according to data from the World Glacier Monitoring Service. The WGMS tracks the health of 30 “reference” glaciers throughout the world and has said that their rate of melt has sped up significantly in recent years. Between 1980 and […]

The athletics news you can’t live without

Here’s a fun game for the whole family: You name a sport; I’ll tell you how it’s jumping on the green bandwagon. Ready? OK! Baseball: Milwaukee Brewers first basement Prince Fielder has become a vegetarian after his wife gave him a copy of the book Skinny Bitch. He’s probably not in their target demographic, but […]

Some of world’s purest water and pristine ecosystems under threat

International Rivers is fighting to preserve biodiversity against the large companies that want to dam this river:

The Pascua River, in Chilean Patagonia, is one of the most pristine and unknown regions on the planet. Why? For one, it is extremely difficult to even get there. Secondly, once you actually see the river, doing anything other than standing with your mouth open and hands over your ears is virtually impossible. This is a rip-roaring, roller-coaster of a river with rugged, impassable canyons and unsurvivable Class 6+ whitewater.

CO2’s connection to global warming is not murky

I like the L.A. Times. They do some of the best reporting on environmental issues. So I'm reading a pretty good piece on how the EPA administrator overruled his science advisers on the recent ozone ruling (more on that in a later post), and I come to this remarkable paragraph that shows how the president himself actually intervened to weaken the EPA regulations:

President Bush intervened at the 11th hour and turned down a second proposal by the EPA staff that would have established tougher seasonal limits on ozone based on its harm to forests, crops and other plants, according to documents obtained by The Times. Federal scientists had recommended those growing-season limits as a way to keep vegetation healthy and capable of trapping carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas linked to global warming.

No, no, a thousand times, no!

Can't the LAT do better than "linked to global warming"? The media use the word "linked" to deal with as-yet-uncorroborated or unproven allegations, as in the NY Times' recent blockbuster: "Spitzer Is Linked to Prostitution Ring."

Carbon dioxide has been proven conclusively to help warm the globe -- there is no serious scientific dispute of that. Why do you think scientists and everyone else calls it a "greenhouse gas"? Why do you think your own story calls it a "greenhouse gas"?

Time for the Times to stop soft-pedaling climate science.

[Note to the L.A. Times: I really really hope assume you know that greenhouse gases cause global warming. So were you afraid to say, " ... carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that causes global warming" because that means you are acknowledging that global warming is a real phenomenon and caused by humans? If so, that is perhaps even lamer.]

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Green building may be quickest path to decreased emissions

Reuters has the skinny on a new report on green building. The report concluded that building green would reduce greenhouse emissions more quickly than any other approach.

According to the article:

North America's buildings release more than 2,200 megatonnes, or about 35 percent of the continent's total, of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. If the construction market quickly adopted current and emerging energy-saving technologies, that number could be cut by 1,700 megatonnes by 2030, the report said.

Alas, there are "obstacles" preventing the rapid adoption of green building techniques:

One is the so-called split incentive policy, where those who construct environmentally-friendly buildings do not necessarily reap the benefits of using them.

Also, governments and other institutions separate capital and operating budgets instead of budgeting for the lifetime of a construction project, creating a disincentive to build "green," the report found.

Oh well, I guess I'll have to make do with a nice cozy place on the Street of Dreams until green building catches on. Uh, scratch that.

Tony Blair to lead international climate team

Photo: Monika Flueckiger / World Economic Forum Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he’s heading up a new international climate team with the goal of securing a meaningful agreement on climate change in the next two years. Blair said he thought he could get the major emitting countries of the world, including the United […]

Where is the media coverage of February’s incredible warming and extreme weather?

Well, that record cooling trend in January, which was solid evidence (to some) that human-caused global warming was at an end, melted away as fast as the summer ice in the Arctic. Not only did February begin a frighteningly unsustainable warming trend for this year, it saw a record number of tornadoes.

Climate change is making a comeback! In your face, delayer-1000s! And as Jon Stewart -- or the Pope -- might say, damn you, polluters! But where is the news coverage? This is just more proof (as if we needed it) that the media is fundamentally conservative.

Let's start with the temperature. NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies has their monthly global temperature dataset out through Feb. 2008 (it starts in Jan. 1880). January was only 0.12 degrees C above the 1951-1980 mean (for that month) and a full 0.74 degrees C colder than Jan. 2007 (the warmest January record).

But Feb. 2007 was 0.26 degrees C above the monthly mean, and a mere 0.37 degrees C colder than Feb. 2008. The "legitimate science writer" David Appell explains the staggering implications (if we used the same reasoning as typical delayers):

... the world is warming up at 0.14 degrees C/month, or 3 degrees F per year, or a dramatic 30 degrees F per decade! By 2018, Fairbanks Alaska will be like Atlanta was this year. Atlanta will be ... well, like Hell ...

More seriously, this February ripped the tornado record books to shreds as if they had been caught in a giant whirlwind whose intensity had been amplifed by global warming. The country suffered through a stunning 232 tornadoes -- almost triple the previous record, a mere 83 tornadoes in 1971. (Reliable records go back to 1950.)

There is some recent research by NASA that "the most violent severe storms and tornadoes may become more common as Earth's climate warms." More interestingly, the famed blogging nonalarmist meteorologist Jeff Masters explains:

Florida Power & Light on wind power

Florida Power & Light is fairly notorious as a utility that embraces competition so long as it doesn't happen in their service territory. On the regulatory side, they have worked pretty hard to make sure that no one can build power in their state except themselves. But on the unregulated side, their sister company FPL Energy has been one of the leading installers of wind turbines. (Not coincidentally, you will find that they tend not to do projects anywhere near Florida. Mind the hand that feeds you ... )

Needless to say, there are some conflicts there. Which have recently come back to bite them.

More on B.C.’s carbon tax shift

On February 19, one of my colleagues at Sightline applauded British Columbia's new carbon tax shift. I've now had time to digest the plan. It's even better than we said, and the province could tweak it to make it better still.

This policy is the purest instance of a tax shift that I've ever seen. It's an exceptionally faithful implementation of tax shifting -- a policy innovation Sightline has been promoting since 1994 and especially since our 1998 book. (A small brag: Gordon Campbell read the book that year and told me he was going to shift taxes in his second term as premier. I didn't hold my breath, but now he has delivered.) The carbon tax shift (as opposed to the larger government budget it's wrapped in) is almost entirely untarnished by handouts to special interests. It is built on four principles:

Denver hopes to reduce car emissions by encouraging better driving

The city of Denver has unveiled a “Driving Change” pilot program designed to reduce vehicle greenhouse-gas emissions by encouraging drivers to ease off the lead foot. Starting in May, 400 public and private Denver vehicles, including that of Mayor John Hickenlooper, will have a device installed to monitor time spent braking, idling, accelerating, and speeding. […]