global warming

The Industrial Revolution that started around 1750 in England was powered largely by coal. With Watt's invention of the steam engine and the emergence of railways in the mid-nineteenth century, the carbon-dense fuel was central to the change from an agricultural economy to an industrial one. Last...

As the Trump Administration nears its 100th day, it seems fair to say that it is still emitting mixed messages on multiple issues, from foreign policy to climate change. On that latter, it's important to reiterate that the president and many of his appointed agency and department heads deny the...

It's mixed news these days for those concerned about continuing manmade climate change. On the one hand, global carbon emissions were flat for the third year in a row, increasing numbers of global corporations have lined up to support climate-change reduction efforts, and electric power is getting...

The Clean Power Plan’s future looks uncertain at best under President Donald Trump. The commander-in-chief appears to be urging American utility companies to pivot back towards burning coal to produce electricity. Ending the so-called “war on coal” is intended to create jobs in...

Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has gone on record saying publicly what most analysts have discussed privately: the notion that Washington can direct the energy market back towards coal is wrong. In fact, Bloomberg is willing to go further: he believes that the U.S. can still meet the...

The new U.S. administration has made it clear that it does not accept the scientific consensus on climate change. From President Donald Trump down through his nominees for key roles—Scott Pruitt for EPA adminstrator, Rick Perry for Department of Energy head, and others—key elected and...

During negotiations for the Paris Climate Treaty signed last fall, a major concern among critics was whether the carbon emissions of China's sprawling and inefficient energy sector could be reined in. With China, the U.S., and dozens of other countries signing the agreement, the world's most...

If there were any doubt that U.S. policy on climate change would change drastically under President Donald Trump, it should have been laid to rest shortly after noon yesterday. Following inauguration ceremonies for the 45th president of the United States, the Obama White House website was replaced...

Despite scientists having reached a consensus years ago, considerable debate still appears to be raging over the reality of climate change. Climate-science deniers can count several people appointed to key environmental-regulatory positions in the incoming presidential administration among their...

Cars that run entirely or partly on electricity from a battery pack have no tailpipe emissions, but to judge their overall impact, you have to look at lifetime wells-to-wheels emissions. That includes emissions associated with extracting, refining, and burning the fuel used to make the electricity...

A carbon tax would be a useful tool for curbing emissions, many economists believe.

Buyers have many different reasons for choosing a plug-in electric car. Creating marketing campaigns that address all of them has bedeviled highly-paid professionals for five years. A new campaign urging North American drivers to make their next car an electric vehicle inadvertently highlights the...

The COP21 climate summit in Paris is now in its second week. Presentations, conferences, trade shows, and probably thousands of individual meetings are being held among attendees from almost all the countries of the world. Last week, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk spoke to a group of college students...

Governments incur significant costs from dealing with the effects of fossil-fuel pollution, the International Monetary Fund finds.

Mexico is one of the first countries to submit an emissions-reduction plan ahead of U.N. climate-change negotiations.

Remember when your parents sat you down to have a little chat about how you should behave? It may be time for us to have one of those chats with a small fraction of our readers, just to point out this site's requests, customs, and no-nos. Here's our compilation of things that will see your comments...

Would you trust a politician who believes the earth is flat? Or that the sun revolves around the earth? Or that the Holocaust never happened? No? Then what do we make of politicians who continue to deny the accepted scientific consensus that human activity is affecting the climate? DON'T MISS: U.S...

For the first time ever, China has agreed to limit its greenhouse-gas emissions, under a deal announced this morning between Chinese president Xi Jinping and U.S. president Barack Obama. In exchange, the U.S. set a goal of cutting its own carbon emissions more deeply by 2025, building on a...

While mankind has been pumping carbon into the atmosphere since the discovery of fire, the modern era of carbon emissions began roughly 250 years ago. Now a new report by global scientists goes further than any before: Carbon emissions must ultimately be cut to levels so low that they approach...

The Rockefellers will divest fossil-fuel stocks from their charity.