Climate Climate & Energy
All Stories
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Like a Tundra of Bricks
Arctic tundra may produce rather than absorb CO2, accelerating warming It’s not often that drama emerges from the Arctic tundra, but there seems to be genuine excitement around revelations from a 20-year study just completed and published in the journal Nature. Researchers have long assumed that Arctic tundra would be a carbon dioxide “sink,” absorbing […]
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Global dimming? Global warming? What’s with the globe, anyway?
Raise a toast to solar radiation. The director of the Zurich-based World Radiation Monitoring Center, the organization that measures the amount of solar radiation hitting the ground around the globe, has a strange talent. Give Atsumu Ohmura a glass of white wine and tell him only its vintage, and he’ll swish a mouthful and — […]
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Sturm Und Dang
Climate change and urbanization lead to more natural-disaster fatalities Thanks to global warming and the increasing concentration of the earth’s denizens in densely populated urban centers, more and more people are vulnerable to natural disasters — floods, droughts, storms, fires, landslides, and the like. The number of reported natural disasters rose from 261 in 1990 […]
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Umbra on finding solar-power stats
Dear Umbra, Are there any statistics that show what percentage of solar power is generated state by state, and which states are more solar-friendly? Also, do power companies give out any figures on how much energy they buy back from home solar producers? Thanks from Los Angeles, Calif. Dearest Los Angeles, Life is great. As […]
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A Bridger-Teton Over Troubled Water
Chalk up a win for Wyoming wildlands Here’s a rare victory for the wilderness crowd: The U.S. Forest Service announced this week that it will suspend plans to open 157,000 acres of Wyoming’s Bridger-Teton National Forest — much of it roadless — to oil and gas drilling. Enviros say the forest is one of the […]
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Umbra on installing solar panels
Dear Umbra, My husband and I have decided to install a solar electric system. We live in the high desert and enjoy sun 360 or more days a year. We have been surfing to find information and are increasingly befuddled. Nanosys will have new technology out, but I don’t know when. Should we wait a […]
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Igloom and Doom
Arctic Feeling the Heat From Climate Change Global warming is messing with the Arctic more and faster than any other part of the world, to the detriment of the indigenous peoples and animals who call the region their home. Inuit living around the Arctic Circle have seen their ecosystems transformed. Shrinking ice cover means the […]
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He Said, She Said — Except He’s Right
Study Shows Systematic Deficiency in Climate-Change Reporting An analysis of climate-change coverage in four major U.S. newspapers from 1988 to 2002 confirms what many enviros have long charged: Media coverage of global warming is woefully deficient. A growing chorus of media critics says that the journalistic convention of “balance,” which dictates that in order to […]
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I Hope You Like Dammin’, Too
Bush Administration Won’t Remove Northwest Dams to Save Salmon The Bush administration announced yesterday that it will not remove dams from the Columbia and Snake rivers in the Northwest as part of its efforts to save endangered salmon runs. According to Bob Lohn of the National Marine Fisheries Service, “Our work shows that you can […]
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Don’t Ask, Don’t Shell
Nigeria Hits Shell With $1.5 Billion Pollution Claim The Nigerian parliament has hit Shell with a $1.5 billion claim after the Ijaw tribe of the Niger Delta demanded compensation for health and economic hardship caused by the company’s polluting operations. The oil giant admits to 262 oil spill incidents in Nigeria in 2002, and that […]
