Sustainability News and Events at Evergreen
Presidential Candidates Speak out on Climate Change! | OnEarth Magazine.
I’m getting really sick of all these complaints about how the presidential candidates in the 2012 elections won’t mention the dreaded words climate change. It just isn’t true; they’ve been talking about it all year, regardless of their politics — whether those are liberal, conservative, or veering to the center at the last minute to capture undecided voters.
Everywhere, that is, but here.
The North Carolina House of Representatives voted today to revise controversial legislation that would have barred state planning officials from considering the possibility that a changing climate might accelerate sea level rise. Climate scientists who had been highly critical of the former proposal gave a lukewarm reception to the changes, noting the bill still places a 4-year moratorium on the ability of planners to draw on the most up-to-date science…
via Update: Revised North Carolina Sea Level Rise Bill Goes to Governor – ScienceInsider.
Déjà Vu at Senate Climate Hearing – ScienceInsider.
Same as it ever was. After a 3-year hiatus, a key U.S. Senate committee today once again examined the science of climate change, sparking feisty and predictably partisan sparring over the reality of climate change and what, if anything, the United States should do about it…
Fracking laws by state: wastewater, notifications, and chemical mixes – Slate Magazine.
Are frackers in your state allowed to keep secrets?
A new analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council shows that the majority of states where fracking occurs have no disclosure laws at all, and that those that do are woefully behind when it comes to revealing behind-the-scenes details of their operations…
A Deeper Look at Undisclosed Conflicts of Interest in ‘Frackademia’ – NYTimes.com.
Opponents of expanded gas drilling have coined the term “frackademia” for university research on the potential impacts of the boom in shale gas drilling that involves industry money or experts with industry ties. The effort, of course, is aimed at conveying that industry money or relationships leads to bad science…
The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic – NYTimes.com.
CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause…
Highly transparent solar cells for windows that generate electricity.
UCLA researchers have developed a new transparent solar cell that is an advance toward giving windows in homes and other buildings the ability to generate electricity while still allowing people to see outside. Their study appears in the journal ACS Nano.
We’re All Climate-Change Idiots – NYTimes.com.
CLIMATE CHANGE is staring us in the face. The science is clear, and the need to reduce planet-warming emissions has grown urgent. So why, collectively, are we doing so little about it?
Yes, there are political and economic barriers, as well as some strong ideological opposition, to going green. But researchers in the burgeoning field of climate psychology have identified another obstacle, one rooted in the very ways our brains work. The mental habits that help us navigate the local, practical demands of day-to-day life, they say, make it difficult to engage with the more abstract, global dangers posed by climate change.