global warming
-
Now, it's war, in the words of California's lead emission regulator. In what Bloomberg News called a "wide-ranging interview" with EPA chief Scott Pruitt, he indicated the agency does not intend to let California set the agenda for national emission limits on vehicles. Bringing California into line would require eliminating the state's 50-year history of regulating vehicle emissions within its borders by revoking the current waiver to national rules, the latest in dozens of such waivers spanning decades. DON'T MISS: CAFE proposal due March 30: automakers hope national rules survive The Trump...
-
Clean energy won't happen, climate change will be bad: a contrarian perspective
The most recent detailed studies on the likely warming of Planet Earth are grim indeed, suggesting that we are collectively at "very high risk" for the most extreme effects of climate change. To stem that, mankind collectively will have to reduce its ongoing emissions of carbon dioxide radically...
John Voelcker -
How much does it matter that Trump officials deny climate science? Twitter poll results
It is now abundantly clear that the Trump administration in the U.S. is staffed with climate-science denialists and committed promoters for the greater extraction, sale, and combustion of fossil fuels. That includes coal, the dirtiest major fossil fuel of them all, with the highest emissions of...
John Voelcker -
Planet at "very high risk" for extreme warming, per leaked UN report; every 5-year delay matters
The processes of climate change don't care about politics. Or economics. Or public sentiment about science. Last December, an analysis showed the most accurate climate-science models to date predicted the worst effects in future years. Now, two more grim assessments have arrived. DON'T MISS...
John Voelcker -
How much does it matter that top Trump officials deny climate science? Take our Twitter poll
Throughout the world, the accepted science of climate change is no longer in dispute. Every nation on earth has now signed the Paris Climate Treaty to develop plans to reduce the carbon emissions that contribute to global warming. Only one plans to withdraw from that treaty: the United States of...
John Voelcker -
Trump to slash clean-energy funding 72 percent, lauds "beautiful clean coal"
If a marketer talked enthusiastically about "healthy delicious cyanide," what would you think? You may wish to apply those judgments to mentions of "beautiful clean coal" by President Donald Trump, who used the phrase in Tuesday's State of the Union address. Trump claimed his administration had...
John Voelcker -
You may recall that President Donald Trump made some ambitious and audacious campaign promises about his plans to revive America's dwindling coal industry. Two weeks ago, The Washington Post fact-checked the president's delivery on those promises after his first year in office—in multiples of "Pinocchios," its measure of untruthfulness for claims and statements by public figures. Good news: Trump's poor grades from The Washington Post instantly makes any ninth-grader's miserable attempts at algebra seem honorable. DON'T MISS: U.S. regulator rejects coal, nuclear bailout, says renewable...
-
Trump administration to work with Saudis on carbon capture for fossil fuels
Last month, U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry signed an agreement with Saudi Arabian officials to research "carbon capture" technology for fossil fuels, the Department of Energy announced. Perry and Khalid Al Falih, the Saudi Minister of Energy, Industry, and Mineral Resources, signed a memorandum...
Aaron Cole -
Exxon and climate change: two lawsuits, in opposite directions, on same grounds
One of the world's largest oil producers is about to enter a tit-for-tat battle over climate change with government officials from multiple states. New York, Massachusetts, New York City, and a slew of cities in California have brought multiple lawsuits against oil producers for a lack of...
Mark Stevenson -
Earth continues to warm fast; is climate change lost in political turmoil?
Mother Nature doesn't pay attention to politics. As a pair of articles in The Washington Post last week highlighted, climate change proceeds apace regardless of the daily news cycle. In other words, unless the U.S. and the world ramp up the pace of reducing carbon-dioxide emissions from all...
John Voelcker -
More efficient gas engines as well as electric cars required to cut carbon emissions
As nations, automakers, and utilities contemplate how to tackle climate change in real terms, a perfect storm of competition is brewing that will—ideally—produce positive change for the rest of us. Automakers and electric utilities have been incentivized to build electric vehicles and...
Mark Stevenson -
How optimistic are you on efforts to address climate-change impacts? Twitter poll results
It remains entirely unclear if the world as a whole will be able to cut its emissions of carbon dioxide fast enough to keep the global temperature rise below 2 degrees C over the next few decades. That's the level at which scientists say the most dire effects of climate change may be lessened or...
John Voelcker -
Norway was one of the earliest nations to set a coherent and broad-based national plan to cut its carbon emissions, and then stick to it. For road transport, it plans to phase out sales of cars with internal-combustion engines by 2025 using a variety of carrots (financial incentives and special privileges) and sticks (very high taxes on conventional vehicles) to get there. Sales data for 2017 reveal that the country is well on its way to achieving that goal. DON'T MISS: Norway's Goal: All New Cars Will Be Emission-Free By 2025 To Cut Carbon (Aug 2015) The Norwegian Road Federation, or OFV as...
-
How serious is Norway about climate change? So much that its streetlights self-dim
As children, we're all taught to turn off the lights behind us as we leave an empty room. But it seems Norwegians have taken that lesson one step further. Along a 5.5-mile stretch of road in Hole, Norway, smart streetlights automatically dim when nobody's around—then come back to full power...
Mark Stevenson -
Are you optimistic about efforts to address climate change? Take our Twitter poll
Ten years ago, energy security may have been as much a driving force behind electric cars for U.S. policymakers as climate change. Now, with continuous growth in domestic oil and gas production over that period, you just don't hear energy security discussed as much. Scientists agree that the...
John Voelcker -
Is 'Drawdown' the climate-change action map the world needs?
We often speak of methods and technologies we can employ as a society to curb climate change, either by reducing carbon emissions or through other means. But less frequently do we talk about them in real terms, including how much excess carbon these methods and technologies can pratically remove...
Mark Stevenson -
Fossil fuels only part of human carbon emissions; land use, deforestation matter too
In discussions of climate change, much of the focus has been on the combustion of fossil fuels: coal, oil and its gasoline and diesel-fuel derivatives, and natural gas. Collectively, the trillions of tons of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere by man since the start of the industrial...
John Voelcker -
China's aggressive plan to counter climate change leaves US government in the dust
As the Trump administration abandons numerous U.S. efforts to rein in emissions of the climate-change gas carbon dioxide over time, another large polluter is pushing ahead with an aggressive plan to slash pollution from energy producers. China, currently the top carbon emitter and largest consumer...
Mark Stevenson -
The denial of accepted climate science by the Trump Administration has now put the U.S. at odds with essentially every other nation in the world. Meanwhile, the news on the effects of higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is, if anything, getting worse. A recent analysis of studies and models of those effects seems to indicate that climate models that are the most accurate in predicting recent events suggest the most dire effects of future changes. DON'T MISS: Global carbon emissions to rise after staying flat for three years: report The study by the Carnegie Institution...
-
World Bank will stop funding oil, gas exploration in 2019
It's not just the world automotive industry that's grappling with rapid changes brought about by the need to reduce the effects of climate change. The world's fossil-fuel extraction, refining, and delivery industries are also faced with the reality that two centuries of burning their core products...
John Voelcker -
Effect of Trump's attempts to end U.S. climate-change efforts: Twitter poll results
By now it's clear that the Trump Administration is doing everything it can to end U.S. government efforts to address climate change. Climate-science deniers sit in powerful government positions, language on climate change has been eradicated from websites, and the U.S. is now the sole nation in the...
John Voelcker -
US governors release own plans to cut carbon at climate-change summit
While President Trump has announced the U.S. will pull out of the Paris Climate Accord, the United States cannot formally exit the agreement until November 5, 2020. Despite the administration's stance and its many efforts to end U.S. action to reduce carbon emissions, numerous U.S. governors...
Sean Szymkowski -
EPA head: new report that climate change is manmade has 'no bearing' on plans to end climate action
When top U.S. scientists released the fourth National Climate Assessment, it spelled out one blunt conclusion: human activity in releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere caused the climate change that has warmed the globe. Mandated for release every four years, the report will apparently have...
Sean Szymkowski -
Syria to sign Paris Climate pact, leaving US alone; Trump disinvited from climate summit
Following President Donald Trump's decision to pull the United States from the Paris Climate Accord—a global pact to reduce carbon output and curb climate change—only two other nations had not signed the treaty. Now, the U.S. sits alone and isolated internationally on climate policy...
Sean Szymkowski