Purple Haze
As Australia scorches under a record heatwave and the US records its hottest year ever, the climate deniers and oil industry carry on regardless.
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Golden Opportunity or Wasted Opportunity?
It is always difficult writing something positive about the UN climate change talks. So will the latest round of climate talks at Doha be any different?
World Bank starts swimmin’, but still might sink
Then you better start swimmin’ Or you’ll sink like a stone For the times they are a-changin’. – Bob Dylan After decades of campaign efforts to get the World Bank to stop investing in fossil fuels, it appears that the institution that was for many years the largest source of multilateral public support for the … Read More
Oil’s new supply boom is a bust for the climate
What if you knew that smoking that one last packet of cigarettes was going to give you cancer? Imagine if our understanding of cancer was so precise as to allow doctors to predict with virtual certainty that smoking that particular pack, which you just picked up at the corner store, would definitely be the last … Read More
Will We Ever Wake Up?
For the last few weeks scientists have been warning about the record sea loss in the Arctic. Last Friday, in a great piece of journalism, John Vidal, the veteran environment correspondent from the Guardian, reported from the front line of climate change. Vidal is a few hundred miles from the north pole on board Greenpeace’s … Read More
Support the Texas KXL Protestors!
As I write three anti-tar sands protestors remain in jail in Texas for stopping the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. They are being held on $1,000 each. Four other protestors have been released. The seven had spent the day locked onto trucks carrying the KXL pipeline. They closed the pipe yard for five hours. … Read More
Oz Gas Industry Failing to Live up to Hype
It is a given in the oil industry that the easy oil and gas is long gone. That is why we have raging debates about exploiting unconventional oil and gas such as the tar sands in Canada and fracking of gas in the US. Another unconventional gas that has attracted huge interest is coal bed … Read More
Arctic Ice Heading for Record Loss
Sometime later this month, the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is likely to shrink to its smallest ever size. “A new daily record … would be likely by the end of August,” Ted Scambos, lead scientist at National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder Colorado said yesterday. “Chances are it will cross the … Read More
A big mess at Motiva and why Gulf Coast refiners are making a killing
While Chevron’s Richmond refinery has been making the news lately with a very visible incident, our attention has been drawn to less noticed recent events in America’s biggest refining center on the Gulf Coast, where what was to become the country’s largest refinery also ran into a spot of trouble. You’d think that if you … Read More
Fracking Can Pollute, Confirms Study
Slowly but surely the evidence is growing against fracking, as the authorities struggle to protect public health and drinking water. A report published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Duke University professors found that there could be natural paths in the rock that connects the frack zone with drinking water. … Read More