Revkin’s headline was “When Narrative Comes Before Truth.” Obviously that isn’t Gleick. It is, however, the Heartland Institute. As several leading climate scientists have explained, it is Heartland who spends their time “spreading misinformation” and “personally attacking climate scientists to further its goals.” Who is guilty of wanting their narrative to trump scientific truth? That would be…
Category: Environment
90 Degrees in Winter: This Is What Climate Change Looks Like
The National Weather Service is kind of the anti–Mike Daisey, a just-the-facts operation that grinds on hour after hour, day after day. It’s collected billions of records (I’ve seen the vast vaults where early handwritten weather reports from observers across the country are stored in endless rows of ledgers and files) on countless rainstorms, blizzards…
Counting the cost: the hidden price of coal power
Each year, the US sets off the equivalent of 20-30 atomic bombs worth of explosives, effectively obliterating entire features of its own landscape. Why? To get at the coal that’s inconveniently located beneath the mountains of Appalachia. That jaw-dropping figure came towards the end of a session at last month’s meeting of the American Association…
Coal Is Expensive And Not Getting Any Cheaper
The study found that coal is the most expensive energy when “externalized costs” are factored in. These are the costs of coal use paid for by society, rather than by ratepayers. This includes the impact on public health and property from increased air pollution. Our reliance on coal has cost the economy between $345 and…
Brazil bars Chevron executives from leaving over spill
A federal court in Brazil has issued an order barring 17 executives from U.S. oil giant Chevron and Transocean Ltd. from leaving the country while it mulls criminal charges against them for an oil spill last year. Among the 17 who were ordered Saturday by a federal judge in Rio de Janeiro to give up…
Science: Ocean Acidifying So Fast It Threatens Humanitys Ability to Feed Itself
That is to say, it’s not just that acidifying oceans spell marine biological meltdown “by end of century” as a 2010 Geological Society study put it. We are also warming the ocean and decreasing dissolved oxygen concentration. That is a recipe for mass extinction. A 2009 Nature Geoscience study found that ocean dead zones “devoid of fish…
Senators Take Emergency Oil Reserve Hostage to Force Keystone Approval
The Senate is trying to force a pipeline route through Nebraska that is not yet identified, let alone evaluated to determine whether its impact on air and water quality. Because much of the tar sands oil refined in the U.S. would go overseas, Americans would bear the environmental risks while other nations get the oil….
Is it time to kill off the phone book?
Over at Sightline, Clark Williams-Derry is declaring war on the white pages. You remember the white pages, right? Those thick phone books that thud onto everyone’s doormat each year. In the age of Google and unlisted cell phones, phone books are used less and less: One Gallup survey found that, in 2008, just 11 percent…
BP Made $3 Million An Hour In 2011, While Spill Victims Continued To Suffer
BP’s 2010 Gulf of Mexico spill is still a recent memory for many Americans, particularly the tens of thousands that have not settled lawsuits with the company. Yet the company has bounced back from the billions it lost in the wake of the spill. BP announced today that its 2011 profit totaled $26 billion, a…
NASA: Human Activity, Not Solar Activity, Drives Global Warming and Returning to 350 ppm Is Needed to Stop It
A new NASA study underscores the fact that greenhouse gases generated by human activity — not changes in solar activity — are the primary force driving global warming. The study offers an updated calculation of the Earth’s energy imbalance, the difference between the amount of solar energy absorbed by Earth’s surface and the amount returned…
U.S. ‘Seems to Have Largely Escaped Winter.’ Failure to Mention Global Warming Is ‘Journalistic Malpractice’
For reasons that no major U.S. news outlet can apparently explain, it has been really, really warm in the middle of winter over much of the country. How warm is it? It is so damn warm: “Dick Cheney waterboarded himself.” “Charlie Sheen was snorting actual snow.” “I saw Rupert Murdoch trying to hack his way…
Keystone XL Jobs Claims Draw Complaint To SEC
ThinkProgress Green has learned that TransCanada, the foreign tar sands company behind the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, is facing a potential inquiry into whether it deliberately deceived investors by inflating the job-creation potential of the project. Greenpeace has filed a complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission SEC over TransCanada’s “false or misleading statements about…
Germany Installed 3 GW of Solar PV in December — The U.S. Installed 1.7 GW in All of 2011
In the lead up to another 15% reduction in Germany’s feed-in tariff (the price paid for solar electricity fed into the grid), the German solar industry finished 2011 off with a bang — installing 3,000 megawatts of solar photovoltaic systems in December. Let’s put those figures in perspective: In just one month, Germany installed almost…
Remarkably Dry and Warm Winter Due to “Most Extreme Configuration of the Jet Stream Ever Recorded”
Flowers are sprouting in January in New Hampshire, the Sierra Mountains in California are nearly snow-free, and lakes in much of Michigan still have not frozen. It’s 2012, and the new year is ringing in another ridiculously wacky winter for the U.S. In Fargo, North Dakota [Thursday], the mercury soared to 55°F, breaking a 1908…
In Texas’ worst drought on record, trees dying by the millions
The National Weather Service has officially declared last year as the driest on record in Texas and the second hottest. Meteorologists predict the situation wont improve much this year. That means water restrictions will continue, and well lose millions of trees.Record-setting heat and little rain in 2011 has left North Texas in a severe drought….
14,000 U.S. DEATHS TIED TO FUKUSHIMA REACTOR DISASTER FALLOUT
An estimated 14,000 excess deaths in the United States are linked to the radioactive fallout from the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear reactors in Japan, according to a major new article in the December 2011 edition of the International Journal of Health Services. This is the first peer-reviewed study published in a medical journal documenting…
More Radioactive Leaks From Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant
Nearly nine months after Fukushima Daiichi was ravaged by an earthquake and tsunami, the plant continues to pose a major environmental threat. Before the latest leak, the Fukushima accident had been responsible for the largest single release of radioactivity into the ocean, threatening wildlife and fisheries in the region, experts have said. The new radioactive…
Obama Delays Keystone XL Pipeline
In a statement Thursday, Obama stressed the importance of “strengthening our nation’s energy security” while addressing both the environmental and procedural concerns raised by critics. “Because this permit decision could affect the health and safety of the American people as well as the environment, and because a number of concerns have been raised…
When do we hit the point of no return for climate change?
Based on everything we know about climate science, the basic game plan is that if we want to limit global warming below 2 degrees Celsius (or 35.6 Fahrenheit and avoid the most dangerous and unpredictable impacts), we’ll need to prevent the amount of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere from rising above 450 parts per million. Currently,…
‘Miners’ risk lives for gold in landfill ravine
A torrent of gray, toxic water spews from a drainage tunnel and surges along the ravine, tumbling along garbage that has fallen from the Guatemalan capital’s main landfill 1,000 feet above. Despite the foul odors, the danger of unstable piles of garbage collapsing and the chance for heavy rain to suddenly raise the…