By Brad Plumer 7 July 2015 (Vox) – If you only focused on the United States, you might think coal’s days were numbered. The dirtiest of all fossil fuels once provided more than half of America’s electricity. That has since dropped to 39 percent, thanks to competition from cheap natural gas, a tireless campaign by […]
By Alex Pashley10 July 2015 (RTCC) – A UN piggy bank to help poor countries deal with climate change partnered with a leading coal funder on Thursday, sparking an outcry from green groups. At a meeting in its South Korean headquarters, the Green Climate Fund approved Deutsche Bank and 12 other financial entities to receive […]
By Adam Voiland24 June 2015 (NASA) – People living in polluted areas inhale vast quantities of fine particulate matter, which is called PM2.5 because the pollution particles have diameters less than 2.5 micrometers. Such particles are so small—30 times smaller than the width of a human hair—that they can easily infiltrate human respiratory and circulatory […]
17 June 2015 (Carbon Counter) – Last year China installed more new wind and solar capacity than any country in history. This is a fact, and it has led some to talk of China being a “renewables powerhouse” and of there being a “renewables revolution”. But out of context, this fact can be much less […]
17 February 2015 (BP) – Despite the dramatic recent weakening in global energy markets, ongoing economic expansion in Asia – particularly in China and India – will drive continued growth in the world’s demand for energy over the next 20 years. According to the new edition of the BP Energy Outlook 2035, global demand for […]
By Emma Graham-Harrison5 June 2015 (The Guardian) – The country is grappling with the direct costs of that coal, in miners’ lives, crippling air pollution, expanding deserts and “environmental refugees”. Desire for change contends with fears that cutting back on familiar technology could dent employment or slow growth, and efforts to cut consumption do not […]
[To my eyechrometer, it looks like progress halted in 2009. It’s possible that this curve has bottomed out, and Germany can’t reduce carbon emissions further without restarting its nuclear plants. –Des] 21 May 2015 (Carbon Counter) – Some of us are slow learners. In 2011, Germany made the decision to shut 8 nuclear reactors and […]
By Karl Mathiesen, Harry Davies, and James Ball23 May 2015 02.00 EDT (The Guardian) – Senior scientific figures, including influential climate researcher Michael Mann, have called on the world’s two leading health charities to review their fossil fuel investments in light of a series of Guardian investigations published this week. The Big Carbon investigations uncovered […]
7 May 2015 (AFP) – Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s top business advisor on Friday claimed climate change was a ruse encouraged by the United Nations to create a new authoritarian world order under its control. Maurice Newman, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council, said the real agenda was “concentrated political authority. Global […]
5 April 2015 (Desdemona Despair) – Recently, there’s been discussion about a possible decoupling between global financial growth and carbon dioxide emissions, so Desdemona decided to check in on recent CO2 emission data. The Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) maintains a database of fossil-fuel CO2 emissions, which has been updated with preliminary data to […]
