“A concerned citizen” steps up to the mic at international summit “I’m honored to be here today, I stand before you not as an expert but as a concerned citizen, one of the 400,000 people who marched in the streets of New York on Sunday, and the billions of others around the world who want […]
Just because regulations are lifted doesn’t mean you’re obligated to flush values into the nearest stream A person could be forgiven for bemoaning the rapaciousness of the times. In the midst of the highest monthly-average temperatures ever recorded, and having been warned by top climatologists to stop carbon pollution immediately, the executive branch of the […]
We hear a lot from moneyed interests and government, but what about regular citizens? Like it or not, we in the U.S. tend to think of governance in “top-down” terms. We forget that our nation was founded with “We the People” governing from the “bottom” up. All three branches of government are meant to act […]
Recent breaks at Alabama and California no match for oil industry avarice Let me start off here with a basic fact that is somehow “the emperor wears no clothes” in the overall fossil fuel debate. Much of America, almost every scientist, and even many oil industry insiders know, full well, that petroleum’s time as a […]
Scientists have never been among the larger global-warming denier demographics. Most of us have received years of training, not only in our fields of study, but also in scientific methods which exclude political considerations and financial motivations. I’m speaking of the processes of hypotheses, experimentation, and results, not of the business side, which of course […]
Some say we will never again dip below 400 parts per million, even with emissions rollbacks As it begins to wind down, the year 2016 seems to be striving for notoriety in the history of man. This week, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) climatologists, at their state-of-the-art Mauna Loa observatory, announced that the normal […]
The evidence that “supercharged” weather is caused by manmade global warming is overwhelming In his shows, American (by way of England) comedian John Oliver puzzles over what he describes as “America’s problem with facts.” The crux of the bit – funny, in part, because it’s true – is that, when faced with a fact, Americans […]
At a meeting of the G20 organization of nations held in Hangzhou, China over the weekend, both the United States and the host country announced ratification of the Paris accord on climate change. To put the importance of these developments into perspective, the 23 nations which previously ratified the December 2015 agreement account for less […]
Scientists say it’s a new epoch in the history of Earth How much has modern man influenced the Earth, its geology, its atmosphere, its oceans? According to a broad consensus of scientists worldwide, so much so that they believe we are living in the “Anthropocene” epoch of natural history – anthropo-, from Greek for “human” […]
And when ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet. -Mark 13:7 Apocalyptic scripture sits readily on the lips when big floods hit. Fire, too, is a biblical symbol of damnation, among other things. The U.S. sometimes seems […]