The Year In Dirty Energy: Keystone XL
tarsands protests.jpg This year, a deal between TransCanada and the U.S. government almost allowed one of the most disastrous plans in energy history to win aproval. The deal would have…
Government Policy
House Republicans Working On Huge Polluter Giveaways
House-Republicans-Boehner-Pence-Cantor.jpg The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives is playing hardball with President Obama’s proposal to extend a payroll tax cut extension, and now they’ve found a way to use the…
EPA Connects Dots Between Groundwater Contamination and Fracking in Wyoming
niobrara-shale-map1.png The tables turned on the gas industry today with the release of a new report by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) connecting the dots between fracking and groundwater contamination…
Bowing to Republican Pressure, EPA Eases Boiler Emission Standards, Threatening U.S. Economy and Health
boiler emissions.jpg The U.S. EPA has bowed to pressure from Republican members of Congress and relaxed the proposed rules for boiler emissions. By allowing utility industry companies to make “upgrades”…
Congress Says No To Free Climate Service
NOAA.jpg This week, the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives sent a strong message to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – they’re not concerned about climate change. The NOAA…
Bogus Job Numbers Used To Sell Keystone XL Pipeline
tarsands protests.jpg As thousands of protestors gather at The White House today to voice opposition to the Keystone XL Pipeline plan, one of the major selling points from the pipeline…
Oil Industry Co-Opts Occupy Movement to Sell the Keystone XL Pipeline
99percent.jpg The AFL-CIO's America's Building Trades Unions and Oil and Natural Gas Industry Labor-Management Committee are attempting to co-opt the Occupy movement with a new initiative...
Harry Reid to Hillary Clinton: Drop Keystone XL Pipeline Plan
NV_HarryReid.jpg Opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline have gained a new ally in the fight to prevent this disastrous oil boondoggle from moving forward: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D&ndas...
Why Communicating Science is So Money
schmidt2-300x300.jpg I’ve been meaning to thrown in my congratulations to Gavin Schmidt of NASA and RealClimate.org, who is the first recipient of the American Geophysical Union’s new...
New Jersey Environmental Group Targets Anti-Environment Legislators With New Ad Campaign
CA_Inhaling_backup_300x250_v1_ALL.jpg Environment New Jersey has announced an aggressive new online advertising campaign to hold so-called “environment-friendly” state representati...
The Old War on Science Returns Under Rick Perry
Galveston Bay.gif In an August post about the return of the “war on science”—prosecuted by the political right—I drew a key distinction between attacks on knowledge that h...
Once And For All: The Precautionary Principle is Not Unscientific
Sharp Edges.jpg Some conservatives are immensely more fun to debate than others. In the past month, a debate over left-right science abuse with Kenneth Green of the American Enterprise Insti...
New Federal Report Says Gulf of Mexico Cleanup Needed “Urgently”
oil water.jpg A preliminary report released Wednesday by the federal Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force says that cleanup is needed for the Gulf of Mexico “urgently,” in orde...
Oil Lobbyists Targeting “Super Committee”
oil_subsidies.jpg As the so-called “Super Committee” works to figure out how to trim $1.2 trillion from the U.S. government’s federal deficit, the dirty energy industry has thei...
Evolution and Climate Deniers: Natural Allies?
Churchsign(1).jpg On the face of things, there is no clear reason why the same person—like, say, Rick Perry—ought to deny accepted science about both evolution, and also global warmin...
Michele Bachmann Envisions a World Without Food Industry Safety Standards
shutterstock_79460026.jpg Republican Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann believes that the government needs to stay out of the business of protecting the foods we eat. At a campaign stop this...
New Record or Not, the Arctic Sea Ice Alarm Bells Keep Ringing
N_daily_extent_hires.png Last week, the National Snow and Ice Data Center came out with the estimate that we did not quite set a record for the minimum extent of Arctic sea…