Determined Ignorance on Climate Change: Still Impervious to Facts
Climate change is a hard policy question to address because it pits those who believe in evidence against those committed to knowing as little as possible.
Read more...Category Archives: Environment
Will the U.S. Follow the U.K. Into Power Shortages?
Britain endeavors to build new nuclear power plants to avert an electric crisis in 20 years – with the retirement of nearly all the nation’s installed capacity, as it falls prey to age. Is the United States is destined for the same crisis?
Read more...Michael Klare: In the Carbon Wars, Big Oil Is Winning
Listening to President Obama’s State of the Union address, it would have been easy to conclude that we were slowly but surely gaining in the war on climate change. Of course, by now, you should know that when Obama claims to have made progress, a reality check is very much in order.
Read more...The Embattled Climate Scientist Who Fought Back
Real News Network interviewed climate scientist Michael Mann, who has come under vicious and persistent attack by right-wing groups who decided to play a reductivist game and focus their attack on one chart Mann developed which became important in popular discussions of climate change.
Read more...As Drought Hits, Fracking Poses Threat to Water Supply
A new report describes how hydraulic fracturing is posing a growing risk to water supplies in several regions around the country.
Read more...Tom Engelhardt: Ending the World the Human Way – Climate Change as the Anti-News
Here’s the scoop: When it comes to climate change, there is no “story,” not in the normal news sense anyway.
Read more...Wikileaks on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Environment Chapter: “Toothless Public Relations Exercise”
Wikileaks has thrown yet another wrench in the negotiations over the sellout-to-multinationals-masquerading-as-trade-deal otherwise called the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Read more...Are Fracking Fluids to Blame for Rail Car Explosions?
Over the past year or so there seems to have been far more train derailments of cars carrying crude oil that have resulted in huge, deadly explosions, and it is not a coincidence that the oil in these explosions originated from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota.
Read more...Michael Klare: Have the Obits for Peak Oil Come Too Soon?
Among the big energy stories of 2013, “peak oil” — the once-popular notion that worldwide oil production would soon reach a maximum level and begin an irreversible decline — was thoroughly discredited. The explosive development of shale oil and other unconventional fuels in the United States helped put it in its grave.
But this assessment may be premature.
Read more...The Three Card Monte of Generational Warfare
Stock speculator Jay Gould remarked, “I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.” That, sports fans, is the real foundation of the generational warfare propaganda effort.
Read more...Should Taxpayers Subsidize Insuring Homeowners Against Climate-Change-Induced Flood Damage?
The problem of who should bear the costs of climate-change-induced rises in flood frequency in coastal communities is difficult even before throwing in the not-trivial problem that is it also highly politicized.
Read more...Michael Hoexter: Malign Confusion about Growth, Economic Growth or “Degrowth”: Which Way Forward? – Part 2
Yves here. One of the big problems with the growth v. “de-growth” debate is how terrible our measures of productive activity are.
Read more...“Can Societies Be Commodities All the Way Down?”
Get a cup of coffee while you settle down to watch this video of Nancy Fraser discussing the crisis as a joint problem of ecological, financial, and social systems.
Read more...Ohio’s Official Fracking Water Damage Denialism
Yves here. It is not hard to imagine that the position taken by Ohio officials regarding what sure looks like fracking-induced damage to water supplies is being replicated in other states.
Read more...New Study Finds Higher Methane Emissions from Fracking
Fracking skeptics have been concerned about methane releases, since methane is a vastly more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. This report is particularly grim and calls the entire case for shale gas into question.
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