UK plans first new coal power station since 1974 – and it burns forests too!

By Almuth Ernsting    17 March 2015 (The Ecologist) – A new coal and biomass-fired power station could soon be built at Drax in Yorkshire, already the UK’s biggest coal burner, writes Almuth Ernsting. It comes with a weak promise of possible ‘carbon capture and storage’ – an expensive, inefficient technology shunned elsewhere. As the Government’s […]

Drought boosts California’s dependence on natural gas as hydroelectric shrivels

By Chris Clarke   18 March 2015 (KCET) – In a typical year, California gets almost a fifth of its energy from dams on its rivers and streams. But the last several years have been anything but typical: the ongoing drought has shrunk the state’s reservoirs and cut the amount of hydro power the state can […]

China has already exceeded its 2015 ‘cap’ on coal production

4 March 2015 (Carbon Counter) – China has put in place plans to “cap” coal consumption and production in 2020. For whatever reason, this is regularly rendered as “China has plans to peak coal consumption by 2020″. This is not exactly correct. The cap itself can, and probably will, simply increase after 2020. Another case […]

Peak Coal in China? Not so fast

By Robert Wilson27 February 2015 (Carbon Counter) – China’s coal consumption officially fell by 2.9% last year for the first time in 14 years. Is this evidence of “peak coal” in China as some are already claiming or a temporary blip? Let’s begin with an obvious problem. China’s coal demand officially declined 14 years ago. […]

Photo gallery: China disappearing into haze of air pollution – ‘We have reached a point in history where we seriously have to think about how we want to proceed as a species and how we want to treat the world we inhabit’

By Nick Kirkpatrick 2 March 2015 (Washington Post) – China is disappearing into a haze of pollution. In the capital, it’s a “life-or death situation,” as Beijing’s mayor bluntly put it in January. In February, he went so far as to declare his city unlivable. “Everyone must decide for himself if he wants to care […]

Video: Aerosol pollution and transport, 1 September 2006 – 10 April 2007

By Clara Chaisson29 January 2015 (OnEarth) – Increasingly intense storms in the United States might have an unexpected origin: Asian air pollution. Researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have found that aerosols from across the Pacific strengthen extratropical cyclones—a type of storm system that drives much of our country’s weather. Asia is home to the […]

Leave fossil fuels buried to prevent climate change, study urges – ‘We’ve binged to the edge of our own destruction’

By Damian Carrington7 January 2015 (The Guardian) – Vast amounts of oil in the Middle East, coal in the US, Australia, and China and many other fossil fuel reserves will have to be left in the ground to prevent dangerous climate change, according to the first analysis to identify which existing reserves cannot be burned. […]

Inside Beijing’s airpocalypse, a city made almost uninhabitable by pollution – ‘Now we have the dome, it’s perfect weather all year round’

By Oliver Wainwright16 December 2014 BEIJING (The Guardian) – The scene could be straight from a science-fiction film: a vision of everyday life, but with one jarring difference that makes you realise you’re on another planet, or in a distant future era. A sports class is in full swing on the outskirts of Beijing. Herds […]

NASA’s carbon dioxide satellite mission returns first global maps

By Jonathan Amos18 December 2014 (BBC News) – NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2) has returned its first global maps of the greenhouse gas CO2. The satellite was sent up in July to help pinpoint the key locations on the Earth’s surface where carbon dioxide is being emitted and absorbed. This should help scientists better understand […]

Leaked: The oil lobby’s conspiracy to kill off California’s climate law

By Brad Wieners      25 November 2014 (Bloomberg Businessweek) – […] As they say, it’s not paranoia if they really are out to delay, rewrite, or kill off a meaningful effort to reduce the build-up of carbon in the Earth’s atmosphere. A Powerpoint (MSFT) deck now being circulated by climate activists—a copy of which was sent […]

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