science

  • Flooded Car

    While the name of EPA administrator Scott Pruitt is often preceded by "embattled" these days, his agency is now on record as rejecting its own recommendation of just 16 months ago. It concluded in July 2016 that the auto industry had handily met lower carbon-emission limits from 2012 through 2017—at lower cost and with more conventional technologies, requiring less costly electrification, than anticipated when the rules were drafted in 2010. Those conclusions were issued in July 2016 in the form of a 1,217-page Draft Technical Assessment Report. DON'T MISS: 8 things you should know...

  • Flooded car in parking lot. Photo via Flickr user waitscm/CC2.0
    EPA staffers told how to downplay climate change in leaked memo

    EPA administrator Scott Pruitt would be controversial even if he hadn't flown to Morocco in December (first-class, on the taxpayer dime) to lobby the country on the benefits of liquified natural gas while living in a condo owned by a lobbyist for the country's largest LNG exporter. He is likely the...

  • Global carbon dioxide emissions, 1850-2030 [CO2 Information Analysis Center, World Energy Outlook]
    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...

  • President Donald Trump (Photo courtesy Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons)
    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...

  • Mercedes-Benz SL-Class stalls in Maryland flash flood
    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...

  • Flooded car in parking lot. Photo via Flickr user waitscm/CC2.0
    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...

  • Flooded Cars 01

    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 averted. Recent news has been both positive and negative. DON'T MISS: Global carbon emissions to rise after staying flat for three years: report The cost of renewable energy at scale has fallen consistently in recent years and will continue to do so. That's good. Global carbon emissions, however...

  • Flooded car in parking lot. Photo via Flickr user waitscm/CC2.0
    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...

  • 2018 Smart ForTwo Electric Drive Cabriolet, First Drive
    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...

  • Big square baler harvesting wheat straw for production of cellulosic ethanol
    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...

  • Flooded car in parking lot. Photo via Flickr user waitscm/CC2.0
    Most-accurate climate-change models suggest worst effects on global weather

    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...

  • President Donald Trump (Photo courtesy Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons)
    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...

  • ebee streelight charging station

    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 arrived at the Global Climate Change Summit in Bonn, Germany, to lay out new actions to be taken by their individual states. On Monday, several Northeast and Mid-Atlantic governors announced plans to voluntarily reduce carbon output in transportation, in accordance with the goals of the Paris agreement...

  • Global carbon dioxide emissions, 1850-2030 [CO2 Information Analysis Center, World Energy Outlook]
    Climate change all manmade, say actual scientists: awkward for Trump science deniers

    When the Environmental Protection Agency quietly issued its new four-year plan in mid-October, the phrase "climate change" did not appear anywhere in the 38-page document. It is now clear the Trump Administration intends to delay, halt, or erase government efforts to limit U.S. emissions of carbon...

  • International Paper Company mill, 1973 [From EPA Documerica series]
    Climate change worse, faster than projected, scientists tell Trump in leaked report

    It is abundantly clear that the Trump Administration does not believe in science. In its six months to date, it chose a climate-science denier to lead the Environmental Protection agency; rolled back two dozen regulations limiting air, water, and land pollution; and announced a U.S. withdrawal from...

  • The White House, Washington, D.C.  [Creative Commons license by dcjohn]
    U.S. government climate scientists restricted, sidelined, limited

    Months into Donald Trump's presidency, it is clear the administration has worked diligently to downplay the role of science in setting policy on energy. Some moves to diminish scientists' roles have been more evident than others, but a new report details what has gone on behind the scenes. In...

  • Natural gas flaring from oil well [licensed under Creative Commons from Flickr user Sirdle]
    EPA science advisers axed; execs from regulated industries to replace them (updated)

    While much of the nation's capital is preoccupied with the unpredictable Trump administration and its possible ties to Russia, the fate of the Environmental Protection Agency generates less news coverage. That's not to say there hasn't been news. Administrator Scott Pruitt is proceeding swiftly...

  • EPA website redirect page replaces scientific information on climate change, April 30, 2017
    EPA website removes climate-change pages, because science contradicts Pruitt policy goals

    On Saturday, tens of thousands of people joined a Science March in Washington, D.C., to support use of data-based science to set government policy on climate change. The day before, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency removed detailed climate data and scientific information because it appeared...

  • Coal, by Flicker user oatsy40 (Used Under CC License)

    The Trump administration is either having a robust internal debate on its climate positions or floundering incoherently as various interests vie for the president's attention. Its intentions for the Paris Climate Agreement that the U.S. signed last year remain entirely unclear. On Monday, Trump's EPA administrator Scott Pruitt reportedly asked a powerful coal lobbying group to request that the U.S. pull out of the Paris pact. DON'T MISS: Pruitt won't kill EPA 'endangerment' finding on climate change The head of the agency charged with protecting the U.S. from air, land, and water pollution...

  • EPA administrator Scott Pruitt  [photo from 2014]
    Pruitt won't kill EPA 'endangerment' finding on climate change

    The current EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, does not accept the scientific consensus on human contribution to climate change, though he has given some contradictory statements on that matter. His views correspond closely to those of his boss, President Donald Trump, who notoriously compared the...

  • Donald J. Trump in November 2016       [photo: The Trump Organization]
    U.S. exit from Paris Climate Agreement unclear; Trump team clashes on policy

    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...

  • Chrome exhaust pipe
    Is the science of climate change open to debate? Poll results

    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 White House, Washington, D.C.  [Creative Commons license by dcjohn]
    Green groups gird for battle with White House: is it 'war'?

    Last Wednesday, a broad coalition of environmental groups sued the Trump Administration over an executive order that lifted a moratorium on issuing new leases for coal mining on federal lands. That order would have eliminated the requirement for an environmental impact study on the impacts of any...

  • U.S. Capitol Building
    Bill making it harder for scientists to sit on EPA Science Board advances

    Since the election of Donald Trump, considerable attention has focused on how a candidate who campaigned on promoting fossil fuels would treat the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies charged with regulating those industries. But potential changes to the EPA do not come solely...

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