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. ...

Perhaps the most frequently cited canard used as an argument against reducing carbon dioxide emissions is the allegation that it would be prohibitively expensive; some extreme analyses have placed the estimate as high as $20 trillion. A new study shows that the actual costs could be as low as a few billion, and may generate even greater economic ...

Two mostly unrelated things struck me today. First, of course, was the news of Al Gore and the IPCC winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Any man who can push right wing zealots and their libertarian enablers to extremes of rage merely by winning an award is OK in my book. The fact that he's doing so by promoting science over greed and fact over dogma ...

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 ...

Uh oh (via Tom Paine): In the wake of skyrocketing insurance claims due to natural disasters—hurricanes, wildfires, droughts, blizzards and the like—insurers have been imposing steep rate hikes and, in some cases, fleeing high-risk areas, leaving consumers out in the cold. It's gotten so out of hand, consumer advocates say, that insurers ...

Among other already-tangible effects, climate change has begun to have a negative impact on the coffee crop in Uganda: ''Climate change has affected coffee production already,'' said Philip Gitao, executive director of the East African Fine Coffees Association. The crop has had less time to mature because rain is falling at the wrong times, ...