Climate News and Resources

If there's one thing to which the world of Democratic economics is utterly unaccustomed, it's agreement. Democrats fight with each other all the time on trade. They disagree about whether to push for balanced budgets or increased spending. Some emphasize growth; others call for greater distributional fairness.
By Harold Meyerson, courtesy of the Washington Post

Has anyone stopped to think about what political slogans really mean?
An Editorial by Thomas L. Friedman, courtesy of the New York Times

Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska was indicted on seven counts of falsely reporting income.
By David Johnston and David M. Herszenhorn, courtesy of the New York Times

Giant sheets of ice totaling almost eight square miles broke off an ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic last week and more could follow later this year, scientists said on Tuesday.
By David Ljunggren from Reuters, courtesy of the Washington Post

Will global warming give Greenland its independence?
By Stephan Faris, courtesy of the New York Times

Democratic senators called on Tuesday for the resignation of Stephen Johnson, head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, saying he sided with polluters instead of fighting global warming and other ecological problems.
By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent from Reuters, courtesy of the Washington Post

Two of the most interesting new clean electron wildcatters are T. Boone Pickens and Shai Agassi.
An Editorial, courtesy of the New York Times

Drilling or slapping Wall Street around are not quick and easy solutions to America’s energy woes. There aren’t any.
An Editorial, courtesy of the New York Times

Campaign contributions from oil industry executives to Sen. John McCain rose dramatically in the last half of June, after the senator from Arizona made a high-profile split with environmentalists and reversed his opposition to the federal ban on offshore drilling.
By Matthew Mosk, courtesy of the Washington Post

Climate change will carry a price tag of billions of dollars for a number of U.S. states, says a new series of reports from the University of Maryland's Center for Integrative Environmental Research (CIER). The researchers conclude that the costs have already begun to accrue and are likely to endure.
Courtesy of ScienceDaily

The Arctic may contain as much as a fifth of the world’s yet to-be-discovered oil and natural gas reserves, the United States Geological Survey said Wednesday as it unveiled the largest-ever survey of petroleum resources north of the Arctic Circle.
By Jad Mouawad, courtesy of the New York Times

There he is, the sound of money in a wizened Texas drawl, the tired realist looking a bit like the John Huston character from “Chinatown” as he warns in national television ads that we should just listen here and do as he says.
By Timothy Egan, courtesy of the New York Times

A sheen of oil coated the Mississippi River for nearly 100 miles from the center of this city to the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday following the worst oil spill here in nearly a decade. The fuel-laden barge that collided with a heavy tanker on Wednesday was still leaking.
By Adam Nossiter, courtesy of the New York Times

Environmental Protection Agency chief Stephen Johnson has declined to explain before Congress how a conclusion he made last year that global warming put the public in danger could lead to a decision not to regulate greenhouse gases.
By Dina Cappiello, courtesy of the Washington Post

Voluntary pollution-reduction programs touted by the Bush administration as part of the solution to global warming have "limited potential" to reduce greenhouse gases, according to an internal government watchdog.
By Dina Cappiello, courtesy of the Washington Post

Seven Western states are joining four Canadian provinces to propose a plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions through use of a "cap and trade" system.
By Brad Cain of the AP, courtesy of the Washington Post

Under a subpoena threat from Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the Environmental Protection Agency late Wednesday sent the panel a copy of its Dec. 5 proposal to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act -- as a brief loan.
By Juliet Eilperin, courtesy of the Washington Post

A controversial British documentary called “The Great Global Warming Swindle” unfairly portrays several scientists and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Britain’s television watchdog agency ruled on Monday.
By Andrew C. Revkin, courtesy of the New York Times

Administration Ordered Calif. Emissions Plan Quashed, Former Deputy Testifies
A former Environmental Protection Agency official yesterday contradicted EPA administrator Stephen L. Johnson's congressional testimony on one of the administration's key global warming decisions, saying the White House ordered Johnson to block California's bid to regulate vehicles' tailpipe emissions.
By Juliet Eilperin, courtesy of the Washington Post

The Texas governor is leading a coalition seeking to waive the federal ethanol mandate because of costly grain.
By David Streitfeld, courtesy of the New York Times

For six decades since they loped across frozen Lake Superior to reach this rocky island, wolves have roamed 45-mile-long Isle Royale, the nation's least-visited national park.
By Kari Lydersen, courtesy of the Washington Post

In an election all about change, environmental groups are doing the usual - endorsing the Democratic presidential candidate.
By Dina Cappiello of the AP, courtesy of the Washington Post

The Washington region needs to slash greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades, but without serious changes in the way residents live, the area's growing suburbs, teeming traffic and always-on laptops will combine to increase emissions, according to a new report.
By David A. Fahrenthold, courtesy of the Washington Post

The thing about visionaries like Al Gore is that they don't imagine what's easy. They imagine the benefits to be reaped once all the obstacles are overcome.
By Bob Herbert, courtesy of the New York Times

Former Vice President Al Gore said on Thursday that Americans must abandon electricity generated by fossil fuels within a decade and rely on the sun, the winds and other environmentally friendly sources of power, or risk losing their national security as well as their creature comforts.
By David Stout, courtesy of the New York Times

Shintaro Ishihara, 75, an outspoken nationalist and three-term governor of Tokyo, has pushed for mandatory limits on greenhouse-gas emissions in Japan's largest city in an effort to fight climate change.
By Blaine Harden, courtesy of the Washington Post

Climate change will pose "substantial" threats to human health in the coming decades, the Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday -- issuing its warnings about heat waves, hurricanes and pathogens just days after the agency declined to regulate the pollutants blamed for warming.
By David A. Fahrenthold and Juliet Eilperin, courtesy of the Washington Post

Just as John F. Kennedy set his sights on the moon, Al Gore is challenging the nation to produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun and other Earth-friendly energy sources within 10 years, an audacious goal he hopes the next president will embrace.
By Ron Fournier and Dina Cappiello of the AP

President Bush’s decision on Monday to lift the moratorium on offshore oil drilling first imposed by his father 18 years ago is designed to ratchet up the pressure on Congress to do likewise. Congress should resist. Offshore drilling will not bring short-term relief from $4-a-gallon gasoline, nor can it play much more than a marginal role in any long-term strategy for energy independence. The oil companies already have access to substantial unexplored resources.
An Editorial, courtesy of the New York Times

Exelon, the electric company based in Chicago, will promise on Tuesday to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 by an amount larger than its total emissions in 2008, in a bid to shape the debate on carbon dioxide rules and to get a jump on compliance.
By Matthew L. Wald, courtesy of the New York Times

To hear Bush touting Western oil shale as the answer to $4 per gallon gasoline, as he did again yesterday in the Rose Garden, you would think it was 1908 . . . or 1920 . . . or 1945 . . . or 1974. Every couple of decades over the past century, the immense reserves of the oily rock under Colorado and Utah reemerge as the great hope for our energy future.
By Ken Salazar, courtesy of the Washington Post

Rising temperatures and increased dehydration linked to global warming will boost kidney stone rates in the United States and around the world, new research suggests.
By Alan Mozes, courtesy of the Washington Post

The Bush administration, dismissing the recommendations of its top experts, rejected regulating the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming Friday, saying it would cripple the U.S. economy.
By Dina Cappiello, courtesy of the Washington Post

New Mexico architect Edward Mazria has a proposal to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. His target: buildings.
By Katherine Salant, courtesy of the Washington Post

The EPA's call for public input on greenhouse gas regulation continues a pattern of avoidance. CARBON DIOXIDE and other greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change are a danger to public health and welfare. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson could have come to that conclusion. The science certainly would have been on his side.
An Editorial, courtesy of the Washington Post

The Bush administration yesterday unveiled but immediately disparaged a proposal to seek public comment on whether the government should regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act, declaring at the outset that the proposed approach would be unworkable.
By Juliet Eilperin, courtesy of the Washington Post

Russian scientists are evacuating a research station built on an Arctic ice floe because global warming has melted the ice to a fraction of its original size, a spokesman said.
From the AP, courtesy of the Washington Post

President Bush’s move is mostly symbolic because another ban on drilling enacted by Congress remains in place.
By Steven B. Myers, courtesy of the New York Times

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said on Sunday the Bush administration did not believe it should do anything about global warming and that any last-minute action before leaving office would be "bogus.".
From Reuters, courtesy of the New York Times

The Bush administration has decided not to take any new steps to regulate greenhouse gas emissions before the president leaves office, despite pressure from the Supreme Court and broad accord among senior federal officials that new regulation is appropriate now.
By Juliet Eilperin and R. Jeffrey Smith of the Washington Post

The sobering reality behind the G-8 summit was that it ended without an agreement on firm targets on reducing greenhouse gases, some experts said.
By Andrew C. Revkin, courtesy of the New York Times

Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, said anxiety over fuel oil costs is at crisis proportions in her state. Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, said oil drilling advocates weighed in from the sidelines as she marched in a Fourth of July parade.
By Karl Hulse and David M. Herszenhorn, courtesy of the New York Times

Poorer countries are holding out until rich nations like the United States take more aggressive steps to cut pollution.
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg, courtesy of the New York Times

When the founding fathers declared our independence, they could not have imagined that, 232 years later, the United States would be so spectacularly dependent on foreign countries. It would be roughly eight more decades before oil gushed from a well in Titusville, Pa., marking the beginning of the global oil economy; it took eight decades more for the United States to become a net oil importer. But the republic's disastrous dependence on foreign oil has increased by leaps and bounds ever since.

By Gal Luft, courtesy of the Washington Post

Prospects that the G8 would reach a meaningful agreement to how best to fight global warming at their annual summit dimmed on Sunday as leaders began arriving in northern Japan with a raft of global problems on their minds.

By Linda Sieg and Chikafumi Hodo of Reuters, courtesy of the Washington Post

African leaders urged the Group of Eight rich nations on Monday to keep promises to help their continent and pleaded with them to remember that soaring oil and food prices were making their poverty worse.

From Reuters, courtesy of the New York Times

The U.S. has done the least among the world's eight largest economies to address global warming, a study released Thursday found.

By Patrick McGroarty, courtesy of the Washington Post

At Talks in Japan, President Faces Opposition on Goals, Role of Developing Nations

In his final months in office, President Bush is mounting a last-ditch effort to forge a new global deal to limit greenhouse-gas emissions but finds himself once again at odds with much of the rest of the world on how to address climate change.

By Michael Abramowitz and Blaine Harden, courtesy of the Washington Post

One of the most vivid symbols of global warming is the torrents of melt water that drain from the lakes that form each summer on Greenland’s ice sheet.

By Andrew C. Revkin, courtesy of the New York Times

With its towering furnaces and clanging conveyer belts carrying crushed rock, Taiheiyo Cement’s factory looks like an Industrial Revolution relic. But it is actually a model of modern energy efficiency, harnessing its waste heat to generate much of its own electricity.

By Martin Fackler, courtesy of the New York Times

Bjorn Lomborg's June 26 op-ed column, "A Better Way Than Cap and Trade," got it backward when it comes to solving climate change. He proposed massive, taxpayer-funded subsidies for government-selected technologies instead of rules that let the market find the best and cheapest way to solve the problem.

A letter to the Editor, courtesy of the Washington Post

Global investors plowed $148 billion into new wind, solar and other alternative energy assets last year, in what the United Nations describes as a "green energy gold rush" gaining speed the last several years.

By John Heilprin of the AP, courtesy of the Washington Post

Oil prices are rising after the government reported U.S. crude oil supplies fell more than expected last week, although trading is volatile as the report also showed gasoline stockpiles unexpectedly grew.

From the AP, courtesy of the New York Times

Civic leader Scott Nelson says he is as worried as anyone about global warming, but that does not make him happy to be one of the first North Americans to pay a carbon tax to curb climate change.

From Reuters, courtesy of the New York Times

Congress has always had a soft spot for “experts” who tell members what they want to hear, whether it’s supply-side economists declaring that tax cuts increase revenue or climate-change skeptics insisting that global warming is a myth.

An Editorial by Paul Krugman, courtesy of the New York Times

The world already knows that global warming is a serious problem and the time has come for politicians and experts to come together to map out a practical solution, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Friday.

From the AP, courtesy of the New York Times

The bitter arguments in the Senate this month over the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill, which would have required major emitters to pay for the right to discharge greenhouse gases, proved that climate change caused by humans has come to the fore of U.S. policy debates.

By Bjorn Lomborg, courtesy of the Washington Post

Agency Was Responding to Ruling About Clean Air Act

White House officials last December sought to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from submitting a proposed rule that would limit greenhouse-gas emissions on the grounds they pose a threat to public welfare, agency sources said yesterday. And upon learning that EPA had hit the "send" button just minutes earlier, the White House called again to demand that the e-mail be recalled.

By Juliet Eilperin, courtesy of the Washington Post

One shudders to think about how much carbon dioxide was emitted into the atmosphere by members of the United States Congress yesterday as they bemoaned high gas prices.

By Dana Milbank, courtesy of the Washington Post

California on Thursday took a major step forward on its global warming fight by unveiling an ambitious plan for clean cars, renewable energy and stringent caps on big polluting industries.

From Reuters, courtesy of the New York Times

A federal appeals court refused Thursday to make a resistant Bush administration speed up a decision on whether greenhouse gases and global warming threaten public health and welfare.

From the AP, courtesy of the New York Times