Climate Climate & Energy

Tank You Very Much

A technique invented to reduce corrosion of steel components on ships could also prevent exotic species from stowing away in the ballast water of cargo ships. The technique, which was designed by Mario Tamburri of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in collaboration with Japanese scientists, involves pumping nitrogen gas into ballast tanks, thereby virtually […]

Coal bed methane extraction threatens Wyoming’s Red Desert

OREGON BUTTES, Wyo. Tom Bell remembers how plush the carpet was in Interior Secretary Stewart Udall’s Washington, D.C., office. Bell spent time on his hands and knees there during the 1960s, poring over a large map while making the case for preserving Wyoming’s Red Desert as a national pronghorn antelope refuge. The Pinnacles in the […]

Coughing in a Winter Wonderland

Be glad you’re not on the planning committee for the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. First there was terrorism to worry about; now there’s the weather. Salt Lake’s squeaky-clean image could suffer a blow if the world gets a glimpse of the woeful air pollution that plagues the city in the winter. Snow in Salt […]

Suddenly Sizzlin'

Global warming is typically thought of as a gradual process, but a report released this week by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences warns that greenhouse gases and other atmospheric pollutants could cause massive, sudden, and potentially disastrous climate shifts. The authors of the report relied on paleontological evidence, the historical record, and computer modeling […]

On Bjorn Lomborg and energy

When it comes to the world's energy problems, Bjorn Lomborg's unbridled optimism is quite enough to ruin anyone's day.

On Bjorn Lomborg's use of statistics

Extraordinary claims demand an extraordinary level of documentation and supporting analysis, and warrant the healthy skepticism of those who would review or pronounce judgment on them. Bjorn Lomborg's new book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, is missing the documentation and analysis, and the outpouring of media coverage the book has generated is missing the skepticism.

Yes, Virginia, There Is Global Warming

On Bjorn Lomborg and climate change

Bjorn Lomborg's chapter on global climate change is a clever polemic; it seems like a sober and well-researched presentation of balanced information, whereas in fact it makes use of selective inattention to inconvenient literature and overemphasis of work that supports his lopsided views. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports and other honest assessments don't have the luxury of using such tactics, given the hundreds of external reviewers and dozens of review editors.

Zuni Day, Sweeping the Clods Away

The Zuni Pueblo tribe is joining forces with the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, and other enviro groups to fight a utility’s plans to strip-mine coal from 18,000 acres of state, federal, and private land in western New Mexico. The coalition says the mining would draw water from the Zuni Salt Lake, where […]

Redefining the "American way of life"Nonsense and Sensibility

It takes only the first raw scent of the smoldering piles of debris at Ground Zero and a quick glance at the guts of the blasted, black-charred remains of the World Trade Center to immediately agree with President Bush that the Sept. 11 attacks were a direct strike at what he called “the American way […]