Category Archives: Climate Change

Republican Meteorologist: Conservatism and Conservation Aren’t Mutually Exclusive

ThinkProgress posts a message from a critically endangered species: a Republican who believes climate change is occurring: I’m going to tell you something that my Republican friends are loath to admit out loud: climate change is real. I am a … Continue reading

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Speaker to address fracking impact | Denton Local News – News for Denton, Texas – The Denton Record-Chronicle – Denton Record-Chronicle

Speaker to address fracking impact | Denton Local News – News for Denton, Texas – The Denton Record-Chronicle – Denton Record-Chronicle.

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Syria: Climate Change, Drought and Social Unrest

Syria’s current social unrest is, in the most direct sense, a reaction to a brutal and out-of-touch regime and a response to the political wave of change that began in Tunisia early last year. However, that’s not the whole story. … Continue reading

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NSF: Oceans Acidifying Faster Today Than in Past 300 Million Years

The oceans may be acidifying faster today than they did in the last 300 million years, according to scientists publishing a paper this week in the journal Science. “What we’re doing today really stands out in the geologic record,” says lead … Continue reading

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Low-carbon technologies ‘no quick-fix’, say researchers

A drastic switch to low carbon-emitting technologies, such as wind and hydroelectric power, may not yield a reduction in global warming until the latter part of this century, research published today suggests. Furthermore, it states that technologies that offer only … Continue reading

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Don’t Worry, Be Happy

Don’t be too worried about the environment – it’s bad for your health. Or so goes the sophistical argument presented in this analysis of risk perception: Even today, when media warnings about the latest health or safety risk are commonplace, … Continue reading

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Gleick apology over Heartland leak stirs ethics debate among climate scientists

The outing of the researcher who exposed the Heartland Institute’s efforts to discredit climate change has thrown the scientific community into tumult, with fierce debates raging on Tuesday over whether to brand his actions heroic, or misguided… “Heartland has been subverting … Continue reading

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Tighten fracking regulations, scientists urge US officials

Tighten fracking regulations, scientists urge US officials | Environment | The Guardian.

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Leak exposes how Heartland Institute works to undermine climate science

The inner workings of a libertarian thinktank working to discredit the established science on climate change have been exposed by a leak of confidential documents detailing its strategy and fundraising networks… The papers indicate that discrediting established climate science remains a core … Continue reading

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A Dangerous Shift in Obama’s ‘Climate Change’ Rhetoric

Maxwell Boykoff, assistant professor at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder, gives a trenchant critique of the Obama administration’s strategy to address climate change solely in terms of clean energy: A … Continue reading

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Who Wins if We All Lose?

As he belligerently wades into the debate around the Keystone XL pipeline, NY Times op-ed columnist Joe Nocera seems unaware that the tragedy of the commons is, in fact, a tragedy: Over the past two decades, energy companies have invested tens of … Continue reading

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Climate: “Expect the Unprecedented”

A postdoc scholar in STS (science, technology, and society studies) at UCSB interviews meteorologist Jeff Masters on topics such as the relationship between climate and weather, why this winter has been so mild, and why most meteorologists shy away from … Continue reading

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More Weather/Climate Confusion

How can a major newspaper article about abnormally dry and warm winter weather fail to mention global warming even once? The meteorological phenomena of La Niña and the Arctic Oscillation are discussed, but not the climatological trends amplifying their effects. Talk … Continue reading

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No Need to Panic About Anti-Regulatory Propaganda

Not that you didn’t know that Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal carries its fair share of anti-regulatory propaganda, but here’s a refresher in the form of an op-ed co-authored by 16 “concerned” scientists: “No Need to Panic About Global Warming.” The … Continue reading

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Cornell Study Links Fracking Wastewater with Mortality in Farm Animals

A recently completed study by two Cornell University researchers indicates the process of hydraulic fracturing deep shale to release natural gas may be linked to shortened lifespan and reduced or mutated reproduction in cattle—and maybe humans… In one case, an accidental … Continue reading

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Urban gardens: The future of food?

I’m not so sure urban agriculture is going to develop along the lines of the “hipster boutique” model described below. Not only is it far too energy and capital intensive, it’s easily criticized as culturally elitist (with some justification), which … Continue reading

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Communities can drive corporations away

Maybe we are entering into a new age – a time where we can no longer rely solely in the government to protect us from the big corporations (and perhaps other obstacles). But is this a good or a bad … Continue reading

Posted in Accountability, Degrowth Economics, Environmental policy, institutionalizing interdisciplinarity, Sustainability, Risk Management, & Long-Term Security | Leave a comment

The Natural Gas Bridge to Nowhere

Natural gas is often touted as a “bridge fuel” to get us from coal to renewable sources like wind and sun. I have long been suspicious of this metaphor…we should remember that coal used to be described as a bridge … Continue reading

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Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Ignorance

The less people know about important complex issues such as the economy, energy consumption and the environment, the more they want to avoid becoming well-informed, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. And the more urgent the … Continue reading

Posted in Accountability, Climate Change, Degrowth Economics, Environmental policy, Occupy Wall Street, Philosophy & Politics, Sustainability, Risk Management, & Long-Term Security, TechnoScience & Technoscientism | Leave a comment

‘Fracking’ (and its risks) Goes Global

Ian Urbina at the New York Times has written another excellent piece on the character of the economic momentum behind and environmental risks of hydraulic fracturing: this time in a global context. He focuses on South Africa, but Poland, Peru, … Continue reading

Posted in Accountability, Climate Change, Degrowth Economics, Environmental policy, Gas Fracking, Occupy Wall Street, Open Access, Science and technology ramifications, Sustainability, Risk Management, & Long-Term Security, TechnoScience & Technoscientism | 3 Comments

The Uneasy Technocratic Alliance

John Siegmund set the tone for the City of Denton’s appointed Gas Well Task Force. He articulated a classic engineering technocratic position that goes as follows. The problem with fracking is capitalism. The short-term profit motive of capitalists leads to … Continue reading

Posted in Accountability, Environmental policy, Gas Fracking, Philosophy & Politics, Public Philosophizing, Science and technology ramifications, Sustainability, Risk Management, & Long-Term Security, TechnoScience & Technoscientism | 2 Comments

Ohio – Sites of Two Earthquakes Nearly Identical – NYTimes.com

Just as the Oil & Gas industry ramps up their attempts to have the public go along with fracking, the earth herself keeps bucking at the “opportunity.” Maybe it would be good for the superstitious animal part of us to … Continue reading

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Overcoming Climatology

Meteorologist Jeff Masters’ discussion of atmospheric circulation, global warming, and climate modelling in the context of a massive weather disaster, the recurrent East African drought, seems to me to be moving towards the kind of interdisciplinary thinking needed to grapple … Continue reading

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Environmental Alarm Grows in Urban China

An incipient environmental awareness is increasingly emerging among the urban middle-class in China, but the almost apocalyptic scale of the pollution must be discouraging to activists, to say the least: The statement posted online along with a photograph of central … Continue reading

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NASA: Climate Change May Bring Big Ecosystem Changes

A very interesting article posted by the NASA JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) on their blog. It talks not only about the already known effects of the human-induced climate change upon ice caps, rising sea levels, and so forth. Their goal … Continue reading

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