carbon dioxide

Watch Stephen Colbert yell at a plant

Stephen Colbert understands the Republican candidates’ aversion to big words, logic, facts, and critical thinking. That’s why he wants to applaud how good they are at being as dumb as possible as fast as possible without stopping for any reason. Here, he highlights some notable moments where the candidates simplify climate and energy policy issues […]

Jess Zimmerman Politics

Curbing Power Plant Carbon Pollution

This item cross-posted from NRDC’s Switchboard. Willie Sutton is famously supposed to have said that he robbed banks because that’s where the money is (apparently this quote is apocryphal but it’s just too good to not keep using it). I have focused a number of recent posts on power plants because that’s where the carbon […]

Dan Lashof Uncategorized

Critical List: Durban climate talks begin today; UK secretly supporting tar sands

This year's international climate negotiations begin today in Durban, South Africa. This round of talks is basically the opposite of Copenhagen: hopes for anything at all happening are very, very low. The British government has been supporting Canada's tar sands projects in secret. One new study found that the climate is less sensitive to carbon […]

Sarah Laskow Science

Study: We have five years to stop climate change, or it will be too late

According to a comprehensive analysis by the International Energy Agency, the point of no return on climate change is fast approaching. Either we halt it in five years, or … well, imagine I'm drawing my finger across my throat while making a "kkkkkhhhhhh" sound. Basically, any fossil fuel infrastructure that goes up in the next […]

Jess Zimmerman Science

Scientists build machine to suck carbon from the air

This machine sucks carbon out of the air like a Ghostbusters beam snarfing up ectoplasm. The idea is that if we can build millions of these babies, and find a good place to stick the carbon they capture, we can start to bring down Earth's already-dangerous levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Christopher Mims Technology

Where do greenhouse gases come from?

This chart from the United Nations Environment Programme (click to embiggen) looks complicated, sort of like a traffic sign cross-bred with a banyan tree. But it basically just traces the path of greenhouse gases from polluting industries, through uses, out into the atmosphere. So you can tell at a glance, for instance, that energy industries […]

Jess Zimmerman Technology

Climate change will cause Finding Nemo to lose hearing, die

Would Finding Nemo's Nemo have found his dad if he couldn't hear? Probably not! Which is why it's so sad that all of the Nemos out in the ocean (technically, they're called "adorable baby clownfish") are going to lose their hearing, and therefore their sense of when it's time to swim as fast as they […]

Sarah Laskow Science

Record carbon emissions show world has not been listening to a thing we’ve said

Despite a global recession, high oil prices, a growing awareness of the seriousness of carbon emissions, those reusable grocery bags you bought, and constant scolding from Grist et al., the world managed to put out a record amount of greenhouse gases last year. The International Energy Agency estimates that burning fossil fuels added 30 billion […]