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David Fitzsimmons, Cagle Cartoons, The Arizona Star —
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John McNab (CC-BY)
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Increasingly chaotic weather, potentially habitable planets and closing in on the elusive Higgs boson are just a few of the developments observed and discoveries made by the scientific community in 2011. The editors at LiveScience asked university scientists to describe what they think were the most important advances of the year.
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By Amy Goodman — The “American way of life” can be measured in per capita emissions of carbon. In the United States, on average, about 20 metric tons of CO2 is released into the atmosphere annually, four times as much as in China.
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Tavis Ford (CC-BY)
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From its perch above one of the world’s biggest polluters, Canada’s conservative government decided it would be too expensive and pointless to meet its obligations to the Kyoto Protocol.
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NASA / Glenn Research Center
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By Eugene Robinson — After the summit ended Sunday, initial reaction basically ranged from “Historic Breakthrough: The Planet Is Saved” to “Tragic Failure: The Planet Is Doomed.”
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Karmen Meyer (CC-BY)
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Another round of climate negotiations, another vague promise to commit to something in the distant future and another slow-motion step toward disaster for the world’s poor and vulnerable. The Durban deal puts the U.N.’s 194 nations on track to begin negotiating a legally binding pact by 2015, six years after we were told to expect such a treaty in Copenhagen. (more)
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WWF@COP17 (CC-BY)
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John Vidal and Fiona Harvey with The Guardian describe the latest collection of blowups at the U.N. climate talks in Durban, South Africa, where negotiators from 194 countries, in their third consecutive round of all-night talks, seem powerless to come to any sort of agreement.
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AP / Schalk van Zuydam
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By Amy Goodman — High above the pavement, overlooking Durban’s famous South Beach and the pounding surf of the Indian Ocean, and just blocks from the United Nations Climate Change Conference, where up to 20,000 people gathered, seven activists fought against the wind to unfurl a banner that read “Listen to the People, Not the Polluters.”
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U.S. Air Force / Staff Sgt. Jonathan Snyder
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By William deBuys, TomDispatch —
Consider it a taste of the future: the fire, smoke, drought, dust, and heat that have made life unpleasant, if not dangerous, from Louisiana to Los Angeles.
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This week, “Democracy Now!” is broadcasting from Durban, South Africa, where the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 17, is taking place. Host Amy Goodman points to the high-stakes issues on the table at the conference, including the future of the Kyoto Protocol, and covers the action from last weekend’s marches.
Posted on Dec 5, 2011
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Friends of the Earth International (CC-BY)
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How will nations finance the effort to slow and adapt to climate change? What role will the U.S. play? And will the countries that ratified the Kyoto Protocol vote to renew it? These are some of the questions journalists are looking to answer during the U.N. climate talks under way in Durban, South Africa, this week. (more)
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AP / Schalk van Zuydam
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By Amy Goodman — The United Nations’ annual climate summit descended on Durban, South Africa, this week, but not in time to prevent the tragic death of Qodeni Ximba.
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By Amy Goodman — More than 10,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C., last Sunday with a simple goal: Encircle the White House.
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Elvert Barnes (CC-BY-SA)
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Friday, just two days before thousands of protesters encircled the White House, the State Department inspector general’s office said it would launch an investigation into the vetting process for a controversial oil pipeline that would snake its way from Canada to the Gulf Coast.
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WWF Greater Mekong
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A subspecies of rhino native to Southeast Asia has been wiped out. There are now just 50 members of its parent species, the Javan rhino, left in the world. It’s a reminder that the danger in endangered is real, and we can’t just sit back and hope conservationists can keep human beings from annihilating Earth’s biodiversity. (more)
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Flickr / gademocrats (CC-BY)
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One day before this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner is to be announced, President and Nobel laureate Jimmy Carter said that he still hopes President Obama will make good on the promises he made that ultimately won him the prize two years ago.
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Dr. Tom Wagner of NASA is remarkably cheerful as he explains how the historic melting of sea ice in the Arctic threatens to exacerbate climate change across the globe.
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OMI/Aura/NASA
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Unusual weather ripped a sizable hole in the ozone layer above the Arctic last winter, exposing people in northern Russia, parts of Greenland and Norway to high levels of UV radiation. Human activity did not cause the hole’s sudden appearance, scientists said in a report released Monday. (more)
Posted on Oct 3, 2011
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Flickr / tarotastic (CC-BY)
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Researchers in the U.K. will begin an experiment next month that, by imitating a volcanic eruption, could eventually lead to a climate-cooling method that would work by putting sun-reflective particles into the stratosphere.
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MFA Norway / Tomas Solli
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With the proportion of Americans concerned about climate change dropping from 62 percent four years ago to 48 today, Al Gore is poised to turn the tide in a daylong lecture on the subject, with an hour devoted to every time zone in the world. (more)
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tarsandsaction (CC-BY)
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By Amy Goodman — The White House was rocked Tuesday, not only by a 5.8-magnitude earthquake, but by the protests mounting outside its gates.
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Flickr / Shadia Fayne Wood / tarsandsaction
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Author, activist and founder of the global environmental movement 350.org Bill McKibben was arrested outside the White House on Saturday along with 64 others protesting the construction of a pipeline from Canada’s tar sands sites to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. (more)
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Flickr / longhorndave (CC-BY)
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It’s not just a political stereotype: Conservative white men really do make up a disproportionate percentage of climate change deniers. (more)
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moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com
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Physical scientist Robert Grumbine crunches some numbers to determine that “the last time the global mean was below the climate normal was March 1976.” Basically Grumbine is looking for “normal” climate, and he sees things diverging after 1940. So tell us, old-timers, what was it like before the planet started melting? (more)
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Kap, Cagle Cartoons, Spain —
Posted on Aug 1, 2011
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National Weather Service
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Texas is suffering through one of the worst droughts in the state’s history, and things have gotten so bad that news of a tropical storm—that thing just below a hurricane on the bad-weather scale—is being greeted with cautious optimism. Texas Gov. Rick Perry named three days in April “Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas.” (more)
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This week on Truthdig Radio in collaboration with KPFK: the politics of global warming; the ever more complicated fight to legalize marijuana; Robert Scheer’s update on the debt; the director of the new documentary “Honest Man”; and the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
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Photo illustration from an image by Colin Grey
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This week on Truthdig Radio in collaboration with KPFK: The politics of global warming; the ever more complicated fight to legalize marijuana; Robert Scheer’s debt update; the director of the new documentary “Honest Man,” and the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Posted on Jul 27, 2011
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By Amy Goodman — “The troubled sky reveals | The grief it feels.” Those two lines were written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his poem “Snow-Flakes,” published in a volume in 1863 alongside his epic and better-known “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.”
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Paresh Nath, Cagle Cartoons, The Khaleej Times, UAE —
Posted on Jun 6, 2011
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Anonymous9000 (CC-BY)
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This weekend, hackers from around the world met at “hackathon” events to tackle climate change and disaster-risk management during the semiannual Random Hacks of Kindness global conference. (more)
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The Last Mountain / Vivian Stockman
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. beamed from the big screen this weekend, featured prominently in documentary filmmaker Bill Haney’s latest film, “The Last Mountain,” which opened Friday to positive reviews in New York and Washington, D.C.
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Flickr / Gage Skidmore
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Presidential candidate Mitt Romney held his stance on climate change Friday, recognizing that humans have contributed to global warming even though GOP leaders have typically disputed this scientifically supported concept. (more)
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AP / Lori Mehmen
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By Chris Hedges — The rapid and terrifying acceleration of global warming, which is disfiguring the ecosystem at a swifter pace than even the gloomiest scientific studies predicted a few years ago, has been confronted by the power elite with self-delusion.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — While the United States remains utterly frozen in a debate about budget deficits and all the things that government shouldn’t do, other countries are marrying public and private resources to make themselves stronger and more competitive.
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Flickr / derekkeats
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For all the advantages that record snowpacks offer regions susceptible to summertime drought, a sudden warming of temperatures could soon release millions of gallons of water into river channels and narrow canyons, flooding cities and towns throughout the American West. (more)
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Mike Keefe, Cagle Cartoons, The Denver Post —
Posted on May 6, 2011
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Pat Bagley, Cagle Cartoons, Salt Lake Tribune —
Posted on May 1, 2011
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This is one instance in which we would hope that Naomi Klein wouldn’t get it right, but as the “Shock Doctrine” author explains in this “Democracy Now!” interview, certain current events (ahem, Gov. Scott Walker) point to a troubling trend taking hold in the U.S. ...
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AP / Mahesh Kumar A.
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By Chris Hedges — We seem condemned as a species to drive ourselves and our societies toward extinction, although this moment appears be the denouement to the whole sad show of settled, civilized life that began some 5,000 years ago.
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By Dan Becker and James Gerstenzang —
In a largely hidden component of its attack on the federal budget, the House of Representatives has approved a key Republican campaign promise to big business: protecting it from what the new majority calls the handcuffs of environmental safeguards.
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AP / Shawn Poynter
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By Chris Hedges — The writer and philosopher Wendell Berry, armed with little more than a copy of William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” and his conscience, has been camped out for three days with a handful of other activists in the governor’s outer office in Frankfort, Ky.
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By Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica —
The United States is poised to bet its energy future on natural gas as a clean, plentiful fuel that can supplant coal and oil. But new research by the Environmental Protection Agency is casting doubt on the assumption that gas offers a quick and easy solution to climate change.
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By David Sirota — “Welcome to the New Normal.” Those words should be displayed at New York’s airports as a welcome to bedraggled travelers during the Northeast’s latest “snowpocalypse.”
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