‘Climate’ Archives
Dirty Utilities Cry Wolf on Electricity Reliability to Block Health Protections
Experts in Government and Industry Call Their Bluff Natural gas plants have considerable capacity to increase generation to offset the loss of coal capacity. Efficiency can offset even more at lower cost. Even so some utilities and coal companies want to water down new mercury emissions reductions. By Daniel J. Weiss, Jackie [...]
Arctic Sea Ice Hockey Stick: Melt Unprecedented in Last 1,450 Years
JR: The Arctic sea ice Hockey Stick is more of a cliff….. by Rob Painting, in a Skeptical Science cross-post Many climate change “skeptics” obsess over the ‘hockey stick‘, and their discussion inevitably leads back to 1998, when climate scientist Michael Mann first published his paper indicating that current global [...]
In Durban, Growing Criticism of Canada’s Position on Kyoto and Push for Tar Sands
Canada has long prided itself on being a progressive leader in North America. But that image is changing in the eyes of some world leaders who are concerned about Canada’s regression in climate policy. As the country threatens to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol at the Durban climate talks, and pushes aggressively to extract and export [...]
Offshore Wind Could Meet 14% of Europe’s Energy Demand by 2030, Leveraging $193 Billion in Investments
The European Union, long the global leader in offshore wind, will likely stay that way for the next decade — even with the fast-growing wind market in China catching up. That’s according to new figures released by Europe’s wind trade group, the European Wind Energy Association. In a report issued earlier this month, EWEA projects [...]
Podcast: Former Climate Czar Carol Browner on Obama’s Environmental Record
President Obama has been criticized heavily for not doing enough to stand up to the vicious blitz on climate science. He’s also being attacked aggressively on the right for using his presidential powers to act on environmental issues outside of Congress. So where does he stand? For those who’ve seen the words “climate [...]
Ice age constraints on climate sensitivity
There is a new paper on Science Express that examines the constraints on climate sensitivity from looking at the last glacial maximum (LGM), around 21,000 years ago (SEA). The headline number (2.3ºC) is a little lower than IPCC’s “best estimate” of 3ºC global warming for a doubling of CO2, but within the likely range [...]
Media Misleads On Flawed Climate Sensitivity Study: Avoiding “Drastic Changes Over Land” Requires Emissions Cuts ASAP
A new, deeply flawed study on the climate’s sensitivity to greenhouse gas emissions reveals just how poorly the media understand key climate science issues. It also reveals how eager some in the media are to push the mistaken message that failure to act quickly and aggressively on GHG emissions would not be catastrophic. Here’s what [...]
Is This North America’s Greenest Building?
JR: The University of British Columbia makes its case for North America’s ‘greenest’ building in this video and the following news release. Feel free to link to other buildings that might vie for this title. South America’s green building of the moment is here. The University of British Columbia has opened the most sustainable [...]
Clean Energy Stunner: Renewable Power Tops Fossil Fuels for First Time
Renewable energy is surpassing fossil fuels for the first time in new power-plant investments, shaking off setbacks from the financial crisis…. Electricity from the wind, sun, waves and biomass drew $187 billion last year compared with $157 billion for natural gas, oil and coal, according to calculations by Bloomberg New Energy Finance using [...]
Clean Energy Stunner: Renewable Power Tops Fossil Fuels for First Time
Renewable energy is surpassing fossil fuels for the first time in new power-plant investments, shaking off setbacks from the financial crisis…. Electricity from the wind, sun, waves and biomass drew $187 billion last year compared with $157 billion for natural gas, oil and coal, according to calculations by Bloomberg New Energy Finance [...]
