Climate Climate & Energy
All Stories
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Overwhelming Scientific Consensus Grows Overwhelminger
Climate really changing, oceans reveal to researchers Hey, did you know that the globe is warming? Really and for true! A new study by researchers at NASA, the U.S. Department of Energy, and Columbia University, published in the journal Science this week, concludes that global warming is real. Really. Lead scientist James Hansen calls the […]
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Access of Evil
Gas drilling limited by equipment, workers — not access to federal land To hear the Bush administration tell it, domestic energy production is limited by lack of access to federal lands. Vice President Dick Cheney is galled that “large parts of the Rocky Mountain West are off-limits.” But according to government records, industry experts, and […]
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Little-known facts from a country on the edge of your consciousness
293,966 — population of Iceland3 4,117,827 — population of Kentucky2 10 — percentage of Icelanders who believe elves “definitely” exist4 0 — number of successful elf surveys conducted in Kentucky 11.5 — percentage of Iceland that is covered by glaciers1 3,240 — square miles covered by the largest glacier, Vatnajökull1 2 — tectonic plates visible […]
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Shock and Thaw
New Yorker launches three-part exploration of climate change Writer Elizabeth Kolbert must have single-handedly accelerated global warming with the jet fuel she burned visiting the Arctic, Iceland, Greenland, Alaska, and the Antarctic to research a big three-part series on climate change for The New Yorker. What did she find? Well, it’s all melting. The Alaskan […]
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Ice Hassles
Antarctic glaciers rapidly melting Wanna travel to Antarctica, but worried about all that ice? Worry no more. On the Antarctic Peninsula, a 1,200-mile-long mountain chain 600 miles south of Argentina, about 212 of the 244 glaciers are retreating, fast. Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey and the British Antarctic Survey studied photos and satellite data […]
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Stats on how far we’ve come (or haven’t) since the first Earth Day
3.7 billion — world population in 19701 6.4 billion — world population in 20051 1,535 billion — kilowatt-hours of electricity used in the U.S. in 19702 3,837 billion — kilowatt-hours of electricity expected to be used in the U.S. in 20053 6.0 — percentage of electricity in U.S. consumed in 1970 produced from renewable sources4 […]
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Former journalist Stephanie Roth is battling against a gold mine in Romania
Stephanie Danielle Roth. Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize. The Apuseni Mountains of west-central Romania are rich in gold, iron, and history. The area’s gold once supplied the Roman Empire, and it is home to Rosia Montana, the country’s oldest documented mining settlement. But this past is threatened by the present: five years ago, the Romanian government […]
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Umbra on the climate-change literacy of Umbra readers
Dearest Readers, Happy Earth Day. I have mixed feelings as I look forward to the planet’s special holiday tomorrow. Happiness on the occasion of anniversaries: Grist (six years), me at Grist (three years), Earth Day (35 years). Sadness, for this column shall be my last edited by my august editor, and we are having an […]
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EIA, EIA … Oh
Greenhouse-gas limits affordable, study says; “Told ya so,” E.U. replies A new study by the Energy Information Administration, an independent arm of the U.S. Energy Department, reveals that mandatory limits on greenhouse-gas emissions would not significantly affect the country’s economic growth through 2025. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, the report contradicts the principal argument the Bush […]
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How to Win Friends and Influence People
Iran using oil, natural gas resources to find fast friends Much in the way the kid with the backyard swimming pool and the trampoline always manages to rustle up friends, Iran is turning to its oil and gas reserves to leverage alliances with influential Eastern nations — and rather urgently, as it faces the threat […]
