This is notable: The dangers of nuclear power are real, but the accidents that have occurred, even Chernobyl, do not compare to the damage to the earth being inflicted by the burning of fossil fuels — coal, gas and oil. That’s from an editorial in today’s New York Times, which will make for uncomfortable reading…Continue Reading…
Guest post by Candace Sheppard Wind energy production in New York State is expected to double in the next five years. Photo by U.S. Department of Energy. A day after a study was released last week about wind turbines killing more than 600,000 bats in the United States in 2012, the Environment America Research Policy Center released its second report about…Continue Reading…
All you people indifferent to climate change, listen up: Global warming is accumulating in the Earth’s climate system at a rate equivalent to about 4 Hiroshima atomic bomb detonations, 2 Hurricane Sandys, or 4 magnitude 6.0 earthquakes per second. This, according to a new widget created by the folks at Skeptical Science. Such a handy little…Continue Reading…
When James Hansen, the newly-retired NASA scientist talks, people who care deeply about energy and climate change pay attention. For example, when Hansen says “game over” for the climate if Canada’s oil sands get developed, people take to the streets. When he publishes a study that says global warming has caused recent heat waves and…Continue Reading…
George Monbiot is throwing a twitter fit, claiming that I’ve used a quote of his out of context in my current Slate piece. He’s asserting that I’ve conflated his repudiation of anti-nuclear greens with a repudiation of anti-GMO greens. I disagree and have told him so. He also seems to think that I’ve done this…Continue Reading…
I know the environmental movement will have truly matured when the leader of a big mainstream green group can say something like this: We won’t meet the carbon targets if nuclear [power] is taken off the table. That’s from Jeff Sachs, director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute. Here’s the opening to the Guardian story: Combating climate…Continue Reading…
At Grist, there is a box with a rotating set of five images that highlights content from the site. When I went over there recently, my eye gravitated to the colorful pictures in the box, including one with this subheadline for a blog post: Germany aims to trade nukes for a fully renewable power system….Continue Reading…
Greens who care most about global warming are in a tough spot. One of the biggest climate killers is coal, a 19th century fuel that may bake the planet well into the 21st century. As Jeff Goodell notes in Rolling Stone, We still burn nearly a billion tons of it a year in America, almost…Continue Reading…
Despite the immense human tragedy of the earthquake/tsunami that struck Japan one year ago, many media stories in the West this past week have focused on the Fukushima meltdown, which led Mark Lynas to tweet: I find the total silence about the 20,000 victims killed by the tsunami a year ago horrifying, current nuclear angst…Continue Reading…