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Sierra Club admits taking money to promote natural gas over coal

February 7, 2012 by Rod Adams
with 368 views
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On February 2, 2012, the Sierra Club allowed a Time magazine blog to break a poorly kept “secret” whose existence had threatened to get out of hand. In a post titled Exclusive: How the Sierra Club Took Millions From the Natural Gas Industry—and Why They Stopped Bryan Walsh described how one of the oldest, largest, and best endowed... [read more]

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Australia: Solar Flagships extends deadline, re-opens bidding

February 7, 2012 by Bea Gonzalez
with 84 views
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The Australian government has given the Areva-led Solar Dawn project a six month reprieve, and has re-opened bidding for the PV portion of its national solar program. The Solar Dawn consortium proposing to build a 250MW solar thermal plant in south-west Queensland as part of Australia’s Solar Flagships program has won a six month... [read more]

Is Climate Change Bringing the Arctic to Europe?

February 7, 2012 by Joseph Romm
with 573 views
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Less Summer Arctic Sea Ice Cover May Mean Some Colder, Snowier Winters in Central Europe [For Now] [T]he probability of cold winters with much snow in Central Europe rises when the Arctic is covered by less sea ice in summer. Scientists of the Research Unit Potsdam of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in... [read more]

Public Opinion, the Media and Climate Change

February 6, 2012 by Joseph Romm
with 419 views
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A must-read study published Monday in the journal Climatic Change debunks some pervasive myths about public opinion and climate change. The lead author, Dr. Robert J. Brulle of Drexel University, gave me an exclusive interview. [read more]

Why I am opposed to Northern Gateway

February 6, 2012 by Simon Donner
with 165 views
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After a few months of thinking, I came to the conclusion that there is no choice but to oppose the construction of the Northern Gateway pipeline. There are many worthy arguments on either side of this issue, from the economy to First Nations rights, and from the preservation of the BC coastline to the reality of oil consumption here and... [read more]

Decarbonizing California requires relying more on electricity, once it's low carbon

February 4, 2012 by Karen Street
with 186 views
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A 2006 California law, Assembly Bill 32, obligates the state to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 (30% below business as usual), and to 80% below that level by 2050 (90% below business as usual). How is it to done? A team from UC, Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, and elsewhere examines this... [read more]

Science, risk management or just politics?

February 3, 2012 by David Hone
with 356 views
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An opinion piece that appeared in the Wall Street Journal (Europe) on Tuesday (a few days earlier in the USA) presented the views of sixteen scientists on the issue of climate change under the heading “No Need to Panic About Global Warming“. Unfortunately there isn’t much in the way of science discussed and the reality of the policy world is very different from the story they have written. [read more]

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Audio Archive: The Future of Oil & Gas: Exploring New Innovation in Old-Fashioned Energy

February 3, 2012 by Henry Spethmann
with 225 views
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While renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and biofuels experience unprecedented levels of growth and attention, such projections seem to confirm that these fossil fuels will make up large parts of our energy mix for quite some time to come.With that in mind, it's important to ask: What significant innovations, if any, are... [read more]

Predicting the Top Sustainability Stories of 2012

February 3, 2012 by Gil Friend
with 460 views
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Last month I offered my picks for the Top Sustainability Stories of 2011. Here are my predictions for the Top Sustainability Stories of 2012. (It's a rugged mix of bad news and good.) Climate heats up and hides out The sheer pressure of the hard-to-escape evidence -- more record-breaking temperatures, more disastrous weather events, big... [read more]

Who to trust about climate change

February 2, 2012 by Simon Donner
with 356 views
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My sister is a neurologist. She's highly active in her field and is often asked by the media to comment about her particular area of expertise within the field of neurology. It is great having a sibling who is a medical doctor. Though she and I do technically both have the title "Doctor", I have zero medical expertise, outside of some... [read more]

UN panel urges phase-out of fossil fuel subsidies

January 31, 2012 by Jake Schmidt
with 368 views
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Why the UN recommends phasing out fossil fuel subsidies and moving to low carbon energy production. Think anyone will remember this by the time Rio+22 happens? [read more]

Changing the tone of the Climate Change discourse

January 26, 2012 by Simon Donner
with 207 views
2

In a short article on the Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media, Keith Kloor compares online climate change discourse to a "roller derby" and a "street fight" Taken together, the intimidation tactics of climate science bashers and the new pressure campaigns, by allies of the concerned climate community, promise to, if nothing else... [read more]

What's the deal with personal carbon trading?

January 25, 2012 by David Thorpe
with 147 views
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Personal carbon trading is at the heart of a new proposal from academics to reducing energy use in buildings and help meet the aims of the Green Deal. It comes in the form of a strategy document, Achieving Zero, being launched today by Dr. Brenda Boardman of Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute, which she hopes will help... [read more]

Why Natural Gas is a Bridge to Nowhere

January 24, 2012 by Joseph Romm
with 393 views
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President of American Gas Association, 1981:  “In fact, gas energy — currently America’s largest domestically produced fuel — could prove to be the keystone to solving the nation’s energy crisis by serving as the ‘bridge fuel’ to the next century’s renewable energy technologies.” VP of AGA, 1988, “refers to natural gas as a bridge... [read more]

Is Economic Contraction a Climate Solution ?

January 24, 2012 by Matthew Stepp
with 189 views
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Matthew Stepp and Jesse Jenkins examine whether voluntary economic contraction is a key strategy in reducing emissions “as quickly as possible.” What do you think? [read more]