Russ McBee

The International Energy Agency has published an updated forecast of the world's energy consumption and the current trajectory of our changing climate, and the outlook isn't very optimistic. The usually staid organization opens its World Energy Outlook with this stark paragraph (PDF is here): The world's energy system is at a crossroads. ...

A Supreme Court decision from 2007 (PDF here) mandated that the Environmental Protection Agency was required under the Clean Air Act to determine if anthropogenic carbon dioxide represents a threat to human health. In December, the EPA sent an email to the White House outlining its findings; the White House simply refused to open the email, ...

This is hardly shocking: Members of Vice President Cheney's staff censored congressional testimony by a top federal official on the health threats posed by global warming, a former Environmental Protection Agency official said today. In a letter to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, ...

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 1958 Frank Capra educational film The Unchained Goddess contains a specific and prophetic warning about excess carbon dioxide emissions from industry and transportation, and their potential to trigger catastrophic global warming: Even now, Man may be unwittingly changing the world's climate through the waste products of his ...

We've ignored the climate change problem for too long, and it may already be too late to do anything about it. The international targets for atmospheric carbon dioxide are currently pegged at 550 parts per million. According to James Hansen, that level is nowhere near low enough; he is asserting that 350 ppm is the level we need to achieve to ...

Two stories from yesterday illustrate the Bush administration's use of foot-dragging as a tactical maneuver in their war against the proper role of government. First, the EPA is refusing to comply in a timely manner with a Supreme Court decision from nearly a year ago which ordered the EPA to begin regulating greenhouse gases: EPA ...

Three very cool stories caught my eye today. 1) Researchers have managed to decipher and play back a recording made nearly two decades before Edison's phonograph. The phonautogram was made in France in 1860 and represents the earliest known recording of any sound. Although the recording (and others like it) have been known for a long time, only ...

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 ...

In a fairly surprising move, leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention have adopted a position on global warming which stands in direct contradiction to their position taken only a year ago: Signaling a significant departure from the Southern Baptist Convention’s official stance on global warming, 44 Southern Baptist leaders have decided to ...