Climate Climate & Energy
All Stories
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New King Coal
Coal has a reputation as the dirtiest fuel around, but the U.S. Department of Energy hopes to reinvent the stuff as clean energy by building an experimental, coal-fired, emissions-free power plant. The project, known as FutureGen, will be built within 10 years and will cost just 10 percent more than an ordinary coal plant to […]
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Gorging Themselves
China’s controversial Three Gorges dam looks like small potatoes next to the country’s latest proposed water project, a gargantuan network of dams and canals designed to divert water from the south to thirsty northern cities such as Beijing. The project would cost $60 billion over 50 years (twice as much as Three Gorges) and would […]
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The Fire Down Below
Forget about car emissions for a moment; coal fires, hundreds of which are raging out of control around the world, pump so much carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the atmosphere that researchers at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science yesterday called them a “global catastrophe.” Coal fires burn […]
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Umbra on jet streams
Dear Umbra, Why does the jet stream move from west to east? Joe Pittsburgh, Penn. Dearest Joe, To get a decent bagel? Image: NASA. There are actually two main global jet streams, the “polar” in the Northern Hemisphere and the “subtropical” in the Southern Hemisphere. The ridiculously simple answer to your question is that jet […]
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Salem Switch Trials
Massachusetts is sticking to its guns on clean air, Gov. Mitt Romney (R) announced this morning. The state refused to extend a deadline for heavily polluting power plants to reduce their emissions, meaning they’ll have to clean up their acts by 2004. In 2001, then-acting Gov. Jane Swift (R) imposed the deadline on the state’s […]
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And other words from readers
Re: Always a Big Turn-off Dear Editor: I just read Umbra’s responses to the lighting questions and must tell you that I have heard significantly different answers. I was informed that it does indeed take more energy to turn on a florescent light and that if you were going to be returning to a […]
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Raging Kabul
Twenty years of war in Afghanistan have not only taken an appalling human toll; they’ve laid waste to the nation’s environment, according to a survey just completed by the United Nations Environment Programme. The survey found that more than 50 percent of the forests in three Afghan provinces have been destroyed in the last quarter-century, […]
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Drinking Problems
As concerns grow about possible global water shortages, the United Nations Environment Programme has published a new report on the quantity, quality, and availability of worldwide water supplies. But unlike many scientific studies that are all-but-incomprehensible to the general public, this report uses simple visual images to convey its message. The graphs and photos illustrate […]
