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  • Open letter to a conservative climate change convert

    Mr. Tucker, Your story about transitioning from climate skepticism to climate realism has gotten quite a bit of attention and interest among folks on “my side” of that debate, as you can imagine. I had wondered if it were still possible for people to be “defeated by facts” and change their minds about issues tangled […]

  • Me, in NYT’s Room for Debate, on the Endangered Species Act

    Photo: Reed LakefieldLast week, Todd Woody wrote a great piece in The New York Times about the growing crisis around the Endangered Species Act, as the Fish and Wildlife Service is overwhelmed with new applications for species in danger. NYT’s Room for Debate asked me and some other folks to weigh in on the piece. […]

  • Everyone’s apparently psyched to kill some wolves now

    Well, Sarah Palin will like this one: Congress has quietly removed wolves from the endangered species list in almost every state, leading hunters in the Rocky Mountain states to gear up for an unprecedented wolf-slaughtering party. Wolf numbers have grown to 1,700 since 1994, and proponents of the delisting say the new healthier population of […]

  • Texas governor launches bold prayer-based climate initiative

    Texas is facing unprecedented droughts and wildfires that have consumed more than a million acres. Combating climate change could mean staving off conditions that would make droughts and fires on this scale much more common. So Rick Perry, the Texas governor, is taking swift action to remediate the climate by … calling for three days […]

  • How much could climate change cost your state?

    No idea why they got someone's dad to narrate this video, but the information in it is pretty startling. According to this group, the American Security Project, costs racked up by climate change could include: $9.3 billion a year in lost agriculture revenues in the Plains states $3.6-$6.1 billion over 20 years in infrastructure costs […]

  • Charles Manson does his best to kill green credibility

    Boy, the green movement is just racking up the valuable allies these days, isn't it? Apparently cult leader/murderer/#1 Beatles fan Charles Manson has incorporated global warming into his particular brand of crazy, telling Spanish Vanity Fair: "Everyone's God and if we don't wake up to that there's going to be no weather because our polar […]

  • Here’s what Earth was like last time CO2 was this high

    Last time there was this much CO2 in the atmosphere was 3 million years ago, in the Pliocene era. What can that tell us about what we're in for? The world will probably keep warming. Sea levels will probably keep rising. Ice sheets will probably keep melting. Saber-tooth tigers? NOT OUT OF THE QUESTION. Okay, […]

  • Stalking the wild salamanders of Manhattan [UPDATED]

    Perfectly at home.Photo: Sarah GoodyearIf I asked you where the picture above was probably taken, I don’t think your first answer would be Manhattan. But that’s exactly where I found this fine-looking red-backed salamander: In a brushy, overgrown part of a park in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City. This is the second […]

  • Supreme Court set to weigh in on whether we can hold companies responsible for climate change

    Tomorrow, the Supreme Court is set to rule on American Electric Power vs. Connecticut, a case where the state of Connecticut is suing a power company for contributing to global warming. Trying to research the legal details of this case is making me cry, so I hope you people appreciate the following bullet points, which […]

  • Bill McKibben’s must-watch speech at Power Shift

    Bill McKibben gave a fiery speech to young climate activists Saturday night at Power Shift 2011. Here’s the video and transcript: All right, listen up. Very few people can ever say that they are in the single most important place they could possibly be, doing the single most important thing they could possibly be doing. […]