Russ McBee

Today, GOP obstructionists in the Senate filibustered a bill which would have provided tax incentives to build out renewable energy sources and which would have extended tax credits for individuals to purchase plug-in hybrid automobiles. The bill would have cost $17 billion over ten years, which is roughly the same amount the Pentagon wastes on ...

The Wilkins Ice Shelf is a region of ice in Antarctica roughly the size of Connecticut, and it is collapsing much faster than scientists had predicted. In 1993, the British Antarctic Survey issued a forecast that the shelf would collapse within 30 years; based on the latest observations however, it may instead melt completely within the next ...

Within the coming years, one (or both) of the following phenomena will force us to apply the brakes to our reckless production of carbon dioxide and our insane habit of burning hydrocarbons for fuel: 1) Peak oil will limit the amount of hydrocarbons we have to burn, and/or 2) Global warming will cause such dramatic shifts in human civilization ...

This is incredible: a study conducted by NOAA has concluded that the practice of ''flaring'' natural gas (burning it at the outlet of an oil well) wastes an amount of gas worth $40 billion per year, resulting in an unnecessary annual injection of 400 million tons of extra carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That equals half the current CO2 ...

This is fascinating: The world's richest corporations and finest minds spend billions trying to solve the problem of carbon emissions, but three fishing buddies in North Wales believe they have cracked it. They have developed a box which they say can be fixed underneath a car in place of the exhaust to trap the greenhouse gases blamed for ...

An article in Friday's New York Times by Matthew Wald bears the provocative title, ''Wind Farms May Not Lower Air Pollution, Study Suggests.'' This is, of course, completely ridiculous. The article is about a report by the National Academy of Sciences on the subject, but doesn't provide a link to the report itself (the ...

Last evening, one of those strange questions came up that I'll spend an inordinate amount of time researching, just out of curiosity. The question was this: If we tried to provide all the electricity the United States needs using only photovoltaic solar cells (where sunlight is converted directly into electricity), how much area would it ...