Climate Climate & Energy
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Cheese-Eating Efficiency Monkeys
France has made big strides in energy efficiency After the global oil crises of the 1970s, both the U.S. and France took steps to increase energy efficiency and reduce their vulnerability to oil price fluctuations. Unlike the U.S., however, France stuck with them. Since 1973, U.S. oil use has risen by 16 percent, while France’s […]
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Little Red Tibet
Tibet suffers melting glaciers and nuclear dumpage As if living under the heel of a repressive communist neighbor wasn’t bad enough, Tibet now has to contend with a coming ecological catastrophe and nuclear waste it didn’t produce. According to a survey conducted by some 20 U.S. and Chinese scientists, Tibet’s glaciers — which have been […]
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Da!
Russian government approves Kyoto; treaty now likely to go into effect After years of mixed messages, coy feints, and internal drama, the Russian government at last approved the Kyoto Protocol today, virtually ensuring that the treaty will go into force worldwide by the end of the year. After the U.S. (responsible for 25 percent of […]
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An excerpt from Feeling the Heat sizes up the ominous Asian Cloud
The Indian city of Mumbai, formerly Bombay, is home to one of Asia's largest slums and endures among the worst air quality on earth. Half the city's population lacks running water or electricity, and the smoke from countless wood-burning cooking fires joins with the acrid haze from two-stroke auto rickshaws, diesel buses, and coal-fired power plants to all but choke the city. Breathing Mumbai's air, reports the Lonely Planet travel guide, is equivalent to smoking 20 cigarettes a day. Comparable air quality wraps New Delhi, Bangalore, and 69 of India's 70 principal cities year-round, according to a 1997 study by India's Central Pollution Control Board.
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Baked Alaskans
Global warming is destroying Eskimo villages While debates over the “precautionary principle” and economic tradeoffs take place down in the cozy lower 48, global warming is entirely less abstract to Inupiaq Eskimos on the coast of Alaska. They’re not so much worried about losing jobs as losing, well, their villages. The annual mean air temperature […]
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Go West, Young Pollutocrat!
Bush administration makes big push for oil and gas drilling in West With unprecedented speed, the Bush administration has opened vast swaths of environmentally sensitive land in the West to oil and gas drilling — this by-now-familiar story is told comprehensively in articles in The Washington Post and The Seattle Times. The situation is summed […]
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Like a Tundra of Bricks
Arctic tundra may produce rather than absorb CO2, accelerating warming It’s not often that drama emerges from the Arctic tundra, but there seems to be genuine excitement around revelations from a 20-year study just completed and published in the journal Nature. Researchers have long assumed that Arctic tundra would be a carbon dioxide “sink,” absorbing […]
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Global dimming? Global warming? What’s with the globe, anyway?
Raise a toast to solar radiation. The director of the Zurich-based World Radiation Monitoring Center, the organization that measures the amount of solar radiation hitting the ground around the globe, has a strange talent. Give Atsumu Ohmura a glass of white wine and tell him only its vintage, and he’ll swish a mouthful and — […]
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Sturm Und Dang
Climate change and urbanization lead to more natural-disaster fatalities Thanks to global warming and the increasing concentration of the earth’s denizens in densely populated urban centers, more and more people are vulnerable to natural disasters — floods, droughts, storms, fires, landslides, and the like. The number of reported natural disasters rose from 261 in 1990 […]
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Umbra on finding solar-power stats
Dear Umbra, Are there any statistics that show what percentage of solar power is generated state by state, and which states are more solar-friendly? Also, do power companies give out any figures on how much energy they buy back from home solar producers? Thanks from Los Angeles, Calif. Dearest Los Angeles, Life is great. As […]
