With no end in sight to the GOP war on democracy, shutdown edition, all “nonessential workers” are off the job of protecting the American public. This includes ninety-four percent of the Environmental Protection Agency staff, who are on the couch watching football instead of watching the polluters who threaten public
Continue readingAuthor: Brendan DeMelle
DeSmogBlog: International Climate Science Coalition Lacks Credibility, Launches Heartland Institute Anti-Science Report
The self-proclaimed experts at the International Climate Science Coalition have today launched another fanciful flight into the realm of climate denialism and United Nations conspiracy theories. The ICSC, headed by Tom Harris, a former Canadian energy company public relations consultant, is trying to grab media attention with a new report
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Climate Denial Playbook: Marc Morano’s History of Bullying Scientists
If you’ve even heard of Marc Morano, you probably watched him angrily attacking a climate scientist, journalist or Al Gore on Fox News or on his blog Climate Depot, a project of the Donors Trust and oil industry-funded CFACT. Morano is so agitated in his climate denial that he once advocated
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Monckton Challenged To Put Up Or Shut Up By John Abraham
John Abraham, a Professor of Thermal Sciences at the University of St. Thomas and a Guardian Environment blogger, has challenged the loud-mouthed potty peer, Lord Christopher Monckton, to put his money where his mouth is. Abraham offers Monckton two bets to provide proof of his outlandish and wrong claims about
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Keystone XL Decision Delayed Again? Inspector General Pushes Report on ERM Scandals to January
Did the Obama administration’s decision on the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline just get delayed again? Quite possibly, since the State Department Inspector General announced today that it has delayed until January the release of its review of the scandals surrounding Environmental Resources Management, Inc., the contractor chosen by TransCanada to
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Powerful Video Contrasts Obama Climate Speech with Expanded Coal Leases on Public Lands
Greenpeace US released this powerful video today, contrasting the laudable statements that President Obama made during his climate change address in June with his administration’s efforts to greatly increase the amount of public lands leased for coal mining. Watch: Next week, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) intends to auction
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Deadly Quebec Oil Train Disaster and Athabasca River Spill On Same Day as Tar Sands Healing Walk
Today, as hundreds of people joined First Nations leaders to walk 14 kilometers through the tar sands in Fort McMurray on the Tar Sands Healing Walk, news of several new oil disasters spread through the crowd and over social media networks. Details are sparse so far on an oil spill
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: President Obama Pegs Fate of Keystone XL On Climate Change Impact; Slams Climate Denial Flat Earth Society
“I refuse to condemn your generation, and future generations, to a planet that is beyond fixing. And that’s why today I’m announcing a new national climate action plan, and I’m here to enlist your generation’s help in keeping the United States of America a global leader in the fight against
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Frackalypse Now: Mark Fiore Spoofs Oil Industry’s PSYOPS Campaign To Derail Fracking "Insurgency"
DeSmogBlog partnered with Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Mark Fiore to produce this spoof video in the vein of Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now.” Making its debut today in honor of Gasland 2, which features the details of the gas industry’s psychological warfare scandal, here is “Frackalypse Now“: Read below the fold
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Climate Denial’s Death Knell: 97 Percent of Peer-Reviewed Science Confirms Manmade Global Warming, Consensus Overwhelming
A new survey conducted by a team of volunteers at Skeptical Science has definitively confirmed the scientific consensus in climate science literature – 97 percent of peer-reviewed papers agree that global warming is happening and human activities are responsible. It does not get any clearer than this. It should
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: DeSmog’s Graham Readfearn Joins Guardian Environment Blog, First Post Jumps to Guardian UK Front Page
On his first day joining the Guardian Environment blog, DeSmogger Graham Readfearn’s first post – How climate scientists are being framed – quickly gained traction and ended up featured on the Guardian’s UK front page. Bookmark the Environment Guardian blog, and keep your eyes peeled for Graham’s column, called Planet
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Animation of Arctic Sea Ice Minimum Volume 1979-2012
If your roof is leaking, do you ignore it and hope it will fix itself? This new animation created by Andy Lee Robinson depicts Arctic Sea Ice minimum volumes reached every September since 1979. It’s a depressing sight, for sure. Andy makes it a little less difficult to view with his own
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Fox Snooze: Global Warming Name Game Debunked By Media Matters (Again)
Media Matters put out a video this past week with clips of all the recent FOX News mentions of a global warming name conspiracy. The Fox ‘conspiracy’ is that ‘liberals’ stopped calling it global warming and started calling it climate change. Little did they realize, apparently, that the man responsible
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: President Obama Slams Climate Deniers on Twitter
You don’t see this every day. President Barack Obama used Twitter today to call out climate deniers in Congress who are blocking political action to address climate change. The tweet links to this video released by Organizing for Action, the 501(c)(4) campaign group that promotes the President’s national agenda. Tags:
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Breaking: Enbridge Pipeline Spills in Minnesota (Updates original)
Enbridge’s Line 2 **Line 67 tar sands** pipeline has leaked an estimated 600 gallons of crude oil at its pump station near Viking, Minnesota. Line 2 was built in 1956 and has a history of spills. Regulators ordered Enbridge to reduce its Line 2 operating pressure in October 2010 following the company’s
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: DeSmog’s Kevin Grandia Featured in Rolling Stone’s Fossil Fuel Resistance Edition
Kevin Grandia, DeSmog’s former Managing Editor and current senior consultant, is featured in this month’s Rolling Stone magazine. Kevin Grandia: The Muckraker, as Rolling Stone aptly calls him, is recognized for his excellent work in the aftermath of Climategate especially. As long-time DeSmog readers will remember well, Kevin read every
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Alberta Govt Hires Bipartisan Team of Lobbyists to Woo Washington on Risky KXL Tar Sands Pipeline
The Alberta government has hired a team of “foreign special interest groups” to lobby the U.S. Congress and the White House in a desperate attempt to garner support for the risky Keystone XL pipeline that would carry (and certainly spill) tar sands crude through the heartland of America to the Gulf Coast and
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: New York Times Shuts Down Popular Green Energy & Environment Blog
Only a few weeks after The New York Times announced it would be dismantling its environment reporting desk, a visit today to the popular New York Times Green blog finds that it has been shut down as well. In a post titled “A Blog’s Adieu,” they write: “The Times is
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Study Confirms Tea Party Was Created by Big Tobacco and Billionaires
A new academic study confirms that front groups with longstanding ties to the tobacco industry and the billionaire Koch brothers planned the formation of the Tea Party movement more than a decade before it exploded onto the U.S. political scene. Far from a genuine grassroots uprising, this astroturf effort was
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: 16 Year Old Testifies on Northern Gateway: What the Hell Were You Thinking?
This: What the hell were you thinking? from Catherine Wallace on Vimeo. Tags: Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline Enbridge Hearings
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