Climate Climate & Energy

Media Shower: UK edition

Welcome to the (not-so-special) U.K. edition of Media Shower!

First off, we have the BBC's focus on climate change chaos. Over at the BBC website, you'll find eight short documentaries (which don't want to play for me), in-depth coverage of climate change (including this guide), and a SETI@home-inspired climate change experiment.

And then we have this:

This commercial is part of the Friends of the Earth "The Big Ask" campaign, which is about "tackling the biggest question the world faces -- how do we stop dangerous climate change?" Doubt you'd see an ad like this here in the States.

Adaptation

The other issue that's come up in Pielke-Roberts Mild Disagreement '06 is the relative importance of mitigation vs. adaptation, climate-change wise. A couple of issues need to be distinguished here.

First, the substance: According to Roger, the "Kyoto Protocol, as is the FCCC under which it was negotiated, is in fact strongly biased against adaptation." It frames money spent on adaptation as money directly drained from mitigation (which it says would make adaptation unnecessary). I'm no expert on the FCCC, but this jibes with what I've read, and I agree with Roger that it's not a smart way of framing things.

A new reliance on coal could sap green cred from the ethanol industry

As ethanol boosterism spreads far and wide — from Bush’s bully pulpit to the New York Times to green-group press releases — a quietly emerging trend is threatening to undermine the biofuel’s environmental credibility. editorial page How green is this ethanol plant? Photo: iStockphoto. More and more ethanol manufacturers are looking to power their plants […]

The Tropic of Cancerous Growth

Warming atmosphere is expanding the tropics, study finds The globe’s tropics are expanding — and if you’re thinking coconuts and palm trees, don’t. Think deserts and drought. According to a new study in Science, satellite measurements show that the lowest level of the atmosphere in torrid subtropical regions on either side of the equator is […]

Umbra on canola oil

Dear Umbra, I recently saw “organic canola oil” on a salad dressing bottle. I looked up the origin of canola oil, and it looks like it is a genetic modification of rapeseed. I thought organic certification disallowed genetically modified foods. What’s the scoop? Tom Grundy Nevada City, Calif. Dearest Tom, Have you noticed yet that […]

Al Gore on Today show

Hey, NBC's Today is focusing on -- wait for it -- climate change! Check out Katie Couric's interview with Al Gore. (Sigh, requires IE.)

Kennedy You Hear Me Now?

Another wind-power project proposed for Massachusetts waters Wind-power developers can’t get enough of Massachusetts, it seems. Nantucket Sound has the contentious Cape Wind project; now a new wind farm is being proposed for nearby Buzzards Bay. The South Coast Offshore Wind project would consist of three clusters of 30 to 40 turbines each, up to […]

Old Pipeful

National parks’ air and land under threat from energy development Thousands of miles of new pipelines and power lines could soon snake through national parks, national forests, and other public lands in the West. The energy bill signed into law last year called on federal agencies to speed up approval of new energy corridors by […]

Gone to Speed

Globe will warm faster than predicted, new studies say Global warming won’t be as bad as we thought, says new research — it’ll be worse. Two separate climate-change studies factored in increased carbon dioxide released from warming soil, forests, and oceans, and came up with similar results: current climate models may underestimate warming by 15 […]

Gore-backed group will spend big to convince Americans climate change is real

Al Gore wants you to understand climate change. Photo: © 2006 Paramount Classics.  Think you’ve been hearing a lot about global warming lately? If a new climate-focused group hatched by Al Gore has its way, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. After nine months of behind-the-scenes planning and wrangling, the Alliance for Climate Protection is now […]