Climate Climate & Energy

Wildfires are raging — why isn’t concern about climate change?

Earlier this month, Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert delivered a provocative Los Angeles Times op-ed explaining why the public is more scared of terrorism than global warming. Gilbert’s basic premise was that human beings are conditioned by evolution to react most strongly to situations that have certain characteristics: they must be personal (have a face or […]

‘Cane Do Spirit

Hurricane researchers unite in call to curb coastal development The media has made much of the disagreement among hurricane researchers about the effects of global warming on storm strength. So much, in fact, that it’s starting to annoy the hurricane researchers. Yesterday, 10 prominent experts in the field — who have disagreed among themselves about […]

NASA Lapso

NASA deletes planet-protecting phrasing from mission statement The phrase “to understand and protect our home planet” was quietly deleted from NASA’s mission statement in February; the agency’s mission now is “to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery, and aeronautics research.” NASA’s 19,000 employees were neither consulted nor informed ahead of time of the […]

Come Fry With Me

Heat wave causing deaths, power outages North America and Europe are suffering under a sweltering heat wave that’s caused deaths, widespread irritability, and a powerful thirst. So far, some 21 deaths are reported in France, two in Spain, and at least 29 in the U.S. In southern England, they’re facing what may be the worst […]

Nothing to Seep Here, Folks

BP shuts down wells on North Slope after whistleblowers report leaks Oil giant BP is voluntarily shutting down 12 oil wells on Alaska’s North Slope after employees alleged they were leaking. Whistleblowers told London’s Financial Times that in some places, insulating material used to keep pipes from freezing — usually crude oil or diesel — […]

Home Sweat Home

Heat wave leads to record power use in U.S. Many areas of the U.S. broke record highs for power use yesterday, as a coast-to-coast heat wave caused sweaty citizens to crank up the AC. Power grid operators are calling for conservation, and the utility industry is declaring a national need for more power plants and […]

Early warning system set up to detect global warming

This sounds cool:

MOUNT ALBION - University of Colorado biologists began installing an alarm system atop this craggy summit Friday, near the Continental Divide west of Boulder.

Like the alarm systems in your car or home, this one is designed to detect intruders.

But in this case, the invaders are tundra plants moving up from lower elevations in response to global warming. The alarm system is a cluster of mountaintop vegetation plots that will be monitored periodically for decades to come.

(Via Digg)

Cool’s Out for Summer

2006 is already setting heat records January to June 2006 was the warmest first half of the year in the continental U.S. since record-keeping began in 1895, and the sixth-warmest in the world as a whole, according to the National Climatic Data Center. Alaska, far eastern Europe, and parts of Russia posted cooler-than-average temperatures, but […]

An interview with Jeff Goodell, author of Big Coal

In 2001, around the time Dick Cheney’s secret-recipe energy plan made its debut, Jeff Goodell went to West Virginia to report on coal’s rising fortunes. He’d been sent to do a story for The New York Times Magazine, but the material spilled over into a book, Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future, […]

Mr. Gore goes to Hollywood

You know global warming's time has come when Al Gore and climate change are the cover story of Entertainment Weekly.