Environment

Andrea Germanos writes at Commondreams.org: The "years of climate departure" for various cities across the globe. (Image: University of Hawaii/Abby Frazier)If global warming continues its trajectory, the year average temperatures surpass historical norms is just over a few decades away, bringing huge threats to global biodiversity, a new study shows. Researchers at the University of […]

Energy

Why “Fracking” should be against the Law (Giesen)

Juan Cole

Tom Giesen writes in a guest column for Informed Comment: As our stocks of cheap and easy gas and oil diminish, we seek oil in remote places – in rock formations 10,000’ below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico; in the Arctic; and held in essentially impermeable geologic formations. Those impermeable geologic formations are […]

Environment

Stop it Now! Keystone XL will Bring Us the Dirtiest Oil on the Planet (Giesen)

Juan Cole

Tom Giesen writes in a guest column for Informed Comment The US already imports over 2.5 million barrels of Canadian oil each day. Much of it is tar sands oil. The proposed Keystone XL pipeline in the US for tar sands oil is a huge and irreversible mistake. Tar sands processes have contaminated huge quantities […]

Energy

The Great Solar Car Race begins in Australia: Can it save Humankind?

Juan Cole

On Sunday, the every-other-year great solar car race (the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge) began in Australia, as vehicles powered by sunlight competed to get from Darwin to Adelaide (3000 km/ 1800 miles) as quickly as possible. An electric car with the right range and speed is crucial to solving the problem of climate change, since […]

Environment

Oceans turning Acid, Lifeless faster than any time in 300 million Years from Human CO2 Emissions (Queally)

Juan Cole

Jon Queally writes at Commondreams: The latest audit by an international team of marine scientists at the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) found that the world's oceans and marine life are facing an unprecedented threat by combination of industrial pollution, human-driven global warming and climate change, and continued and rampant overfishing. […]

Climate Change

Scientists: Certain that Human-Caused Climate Change Threatens our Planet (Queally)

Juan Cole

Jon Queally writes at Commondreams.org “Unequivocal.” If the public and policymakers want a single adjective to describe the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's new assessment report that's the word. Released Friday, the IPCC report states, that "warming in the climate system is unequivocal and since 1950 many changes have been observed throughout […]

Energy

Stand up to Global Warming or just Observe it? Ice Cover down 40% since 1980 (Naidoo@ Moyers)

Juan Cole

Bill Moyers interviews Kumi Naidoo of Greenpeace International on the urgency of action on climate change: The program’s blurb: “On this week’s broadcast, the charismatic Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo joins Bill to discuss the politics of global warming and the urgency of environmental activism. As of this moment Vladimir Putin’s government is holding […]

Climate Change

With a Solar Minimum and La Nina’s, Why isn’t it Really, Really Cold?

Juan Cole

2013 is witnessing another year of very low sunspot activity, showing that we are in a years-long solar minimum. It may not last much longer, but something is going on more than just the usual drop in solar activity every 11 years. Even that 11-year cycle affects the weather. But we’ve seen remarkably low sunspot […]

Energy

Top Five Wind Energy Successes Today

Juan Cole

Wind energy at the moment is by the apparent numbers less expensive than solar, and huge wind farms are being opened throughout the world. There is good news on this front from Denmark, Germany, and some other places. 1. Denmark has just opened its largest wind farm. Denmark gets a third of its electricity from […]