According to World Nuclear News, the Swedish utility Vattenfall is suing Germany at the Washington-based International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes concerning the closure of the Brunsbüttel and Krümmel nuclear power plants. As announced by Vattenfall on October 10: “The hearing on Vattenfall’s claim against the Federal Republic of Germany at the International Centre for
Ever wished that you could actually see carbon dioxide emissions as they occur? That people could actually see the huge quantities of the heat-trapping gas that are released from the industrial facilities and machines that cover our modern landscape? That would certainly make it easier to explain anthropogenic climate change to people who have trouble
One way of getting the message of global climate change across to people in a simple and easy to understand manner is to compare it to something that’s a lot more accessible to them, such as a video game, and in this case, Joss Fong uses the Tetris to explain how CO2 emissions affect the
How come Normal, Illinois–about 150 miles south of Chicago–has ten times as many electric vehicles per capita than the U.S. average? (You’re right; it’s not just coincidence.) A coalition of business, industry, nonprofits, all levels of government, and farsighted individuals has converged to transform Normal into an EV town. And it’s not an exclusive community.
When a programmer offered a homeless NYC man, Leo Grand, the choice of receiving a one-time gift of $100 in cash or instead receiving coding lessons for an hour a day (plus the loan of a laptop and some programming textbooks), Leo chose to invest in himself instead of taking the cash, and the results
Everyday, multiple times a day, you make an important choice that will determine your personal carbon footprint. It’s not necessarily the car you drive or even the fuel you burn (although these are important sources as well) — rather, it is the food you choose to consume. When it comes to your personal carbon
Like huge, ravening monsters, the top causes of global warming are ignoring man’s attempts to stop them and continue to hit record highs, according to the World Meteorological Organisation. The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the biggest single cause of global warming, rose by 2ppm (parts per million) in 2010-2011, reaching a
A study conducted by researchers at MIT found that increased levels of carbon dioxide cause ice to weaken and make it more likely to split and fracture, regardless of the temperature. With the increase in global temperatures and CO2, the polar ice caps could melt at a faster rate than experts previously projected. The study was published
The global levels of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel combustion reached a record high of 31.6 gigatonnes (Gt) in 2011, only 1 Gt beneath the necessary levels required to keep global temperatures to a 2°C increase. The figures are part of the preliminary estimates provided by the International Energy Agency (IEA) released Thursday. Global
New Worldwatch Institute report stresses the urgent need for cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions. Although global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) declined slightly in 2009, the beginnings of economic recovery led to an unprecedented emissions increase of 5.8 percent in 2010. In 2011, global atmospheric levels of CO2 reached a high of 391.3 parts per
A new study published in the journal Nature confirms yet again what climate scientists have been warning us about for decades — global warming follows CO2 increases. In particular, this study found that considerable global warming followed increases in CO2 in the world’s last deglaciation. Global warming deniers have often argued that warming has
ExxonMobil either slipped up big time recently by not reporting approximately 30,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from its Scottish Fife Ethylene Plant. As a result, the oil giant has been hit with a record €3.3-million fine (€3,296,600 to be exact). The fine came from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) “An Exxon spokesman told BusinessGreen the under-reported emissions accounted
{Note to the reader: this is my entry into the UNEP’s World Environment Day (WED) blogging competition, addressing the 2012 theme: The Green Economy – Does It Include You? After considering many examples of who the ‘you’ in the title could refer to, I’ve decided to hand over this blog entry to my GAIA (General
I’ve covered this good infographic on CO2 emissions, other pollution, and the health effects of various sorts of pollution on a couple of our other sites already, but thought it should be shared here as well.
In an effort to stop CO2 emissions in Australia, they have come up with one proposal that is completely absurd. They are talking about killing off their wild camel population because they are farting too much, supposedly creating too much CO2.
Several months ago, back in June of 2010, I wrote up a story on the environmental impact of eating meat based on a new-at-the-time United Nations (UN) report on the matter. I recently ran across another good story on this topic on a friend’s site, Global Warming is Real, titled “Eating Less Meat to Cut CO2 Emissions” that resulted in a follow-up.
Originally published on WWF. WWF today launched a global benchmarking tool for pulp and paper products at PaperWorld in Frankfurt, Germany. Check Your Paper is an online database to help paper buyers find products with the lowest environmental impact. The tool rates the environmental quality of the paper-making process for a given product, including how
Other than what we’ve already covered, of course, here’s our weekly global weirding news link drop. A little more than normal given our extensive coverage of the mass bird and fish deaths that are occurring right now (and, thus, our inability to get to other important news). Coal prices soar as warmest sea surface temperatures
Lester R. Brown We are entering a new era, one of rapid and often unpredictable climate change. In fact, the new climate norm is change. The 25 warmest years on record have come since 1980. And the 10 warmest years since global record keeping began in 1880 have come since 1998. The effects of rising temperature
Continuing on with our Going Green Tips series, Going Green Tip #6 should be no surprise (we’re starting with the big boys). The general tip is to stop using coal power. Easier said than done, right? Maybe, but it is VERY important, and there are a lot of reasons why it’s easier now than ever.
The global warming news I have to share this week transitions from the floods and fires we discussed last week to the issue of food and water (including how they are affected by floods and fires) and other effects of global climate change you may not be thrilled to hear about. Additionally, I have a
The latest EPI release is on carbon emissions trends and the potential results. by Amy Heinzerling In 2009, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in China—the world’s leading emitter—grew by nearly 9 percent. At the same time, emissions in most industrial countries dropped, bringing global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use down from a high of 8.5 billion
In a recent paper published on the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences website (Greenhouse gas mitigation by agricultural intensification, by Jennifer A. Burney, Steven J. Davis, and
David B. Lobell), the authors estimated the GHG emissions from U.S. agriculture for the period from 1961 through 2005–a period of great agricultural intensification–and show a massive decrease in GHG emissions as a result of this intensification.
Leading experts at the 2009 Aspen Environment Forum called ocean acidification caused by high levels of CO2 emissions a “planet changer”, and predicted that all coral in the ocean would be in danger of dying off by mid-century if we continued to burn fossil fuel at our current rate. Ken Caldeira of Carnegie Institution, Martin
“Now should be environmental vegetarianism’s big moment. Global warming is the single biggest threat to the health of the planet, and meat consumption plays a bigger role in greenhouse gas emissions than even many environmentalists realize.” – Ben Adler[social_buttons] This quote above is from an article by Ben Adler in American Prospect, titled “Are Cows
This is a guest post by Meg Hamill, a freelance writer, also working at the environmental non-profit LandPaths in Sonoma County, California This summer at the University of Calgary in Canada, great strides were made in an air capture system, built to filter CO2 emissions from diffuse sources. Professor David Keith, director of the Institute
