Tag Archives: pollution

Ocean Cooling, Not Pollution, Halted Global Warming in Mid-20th Century

photo: Alan Strakey via flickr A new paper in the journal Nature explains what happened during the mid-twentieth century to halt the ever-increasing global temperature rise that continues to this day. Rather than warming in the Northern Hemisphere being stopped by a greater build-up of air pollution as had been supposed, the researchers say an unexpectedly a… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Ocean Cooling, Not Pollution, Halted Global Warming in Mid-20th Century

Last Pure Air Particles on Earth Captured for Climate Science

Photo via MyFavoritePetSitter In order to know what the emissions and pollution created since the industrial revolution have really done to our air quality, researchers need to know what the air was like before we discovered our affinity for factories. To do that, they have to scout out the last places on earth where the air has stayed unaffected by everything we’ve pumped into it. It sounds like an impossible task, but researchers have found a spot above the Amazon Basin of Manaus that seems to fit the bill. They’v… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Last Pure Air Particles on Earth Captured for Climate Science

US $50 Million Pledge For Cleaner Cookstoves is Big Win For Women, Forests & Climate

photo: Procsilas Moscas via flickr Today Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to announce a $50 million pledge of seed money, distributed over five years, to help the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves provide 100 million clean-burning biomass cookstoves by 2020 to people in Africa, Asia and South America… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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US $50 Million Pledge For Cleaner Cookstoves is Big Win For Women, Forests & Climate

Black Carbon Soot’s Climate Warming Effect May Be Canceled by Its Increasing Cloud Production

photo: Jose Roberto V Moraes via flickr In the past eighteen months or so there’s been a greater acknowledgment that black carbon soot , from burning fossil fuels and biomass , plays a bigger role in increasing global warming and glacier melting than we had thought. Well, a new paper in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (hat tip… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Black Carbon Soot’s Climate Warming Effect May Be Canceled by Its Increasing Cloud Production

Pollution May Be to Blame for Swan’s Killing Spree

Swans may be regarded as symbols of love and harmony , but sometimes they too can be downright mean — and one such bird in Wales may be the meanest of them all. Aptly named ‘Hannibal’, this bird has been on a rampage since the beginning of the year, killing 15 of his pond-mates and attacking dozens more. “I’ve never come across such an aggressive bird,” said one wildlife worker, who describes Hannibal as a “horrible swan.” But it may not be entirely his fault. The bird is so aggressive, officials suspect

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Pollution May Be to Blame for Swan’s Killing Spree

BP’s Deepwater Horizon Accident Report Disperses Blame, Glosses Over Big Questions

BP has just released it’s report on the events leading up to the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon and subsequent record-breaking oil spill . As was expected, BP attempts to spread blame across all the companies involved and says “a complex and interlinked series of mechanical failures, human judgements, engineering design, operation implementation and team… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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BP’s Deepwater Horizon Accident Report Disperses Blame, Glosses Over Big Questions

Captain Planet Turns 20, and Get His Own Holiday

Image Credit: Captain Planet @ 20 If you’re like me, when you think of Captain Planet, you’re hit with a wave of nostalgia for your 1990s childhood. But even if you’re a bit older (or younger), I’ll bet you’re excited to hear that the world’s first and only eco-superhero is turning 20 years old this month, and is getting a party to celebrate. The Captain Planet Foundation , an organization dedicated to educating youth about the environment, has declared September 15, 2010 “National Captain Planet Day.” To mark the occasion, a group of adult “Planetee… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Captain Planet Turns 20, and Get His Own Holiday

Open Thread: Glenn Beck Makes Deval Patrick Wish It Weren’t a Free Country

“It’s a free country,” the Massachusetts Governor said. ” I wish it weren’t, but it’s a free country and we’ve got to respect that .” Relevant portion at about 1:12 (via Morrissey ): What could Patrick possibly offer as a defense of this statement? Any guesses on what the Governor will say?

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Open Thread: Glenn Beck Makes Deval Patrick Wish It Weren’t a Free Country

Inconvenient Truth: Discovery Gunman ‘Awakened’ By Gore’s Film

James Lee, the crazed environmentalist that took hostages at Discovery Channel’s Maryland headquarters only to be shot and killed by police Wednesday, was “awakened” by Nobel Laureate Al Gore’s schlockumentary “An Inconvenient Truth.” As readers are likely aware, armed with several bombs, Lee took three hostages at the Silver Springs facility. When negotiations broke down, police stormed the building killing the gunman (see Eyeblast reports here and here ). Before the incident began, Lee posted the following demands at his website savetheplanetprotest.com : The Discovery Channel MUST broadcast to the world their commitment to save the planet and to do the following IMMEDIATELY: 6. Find solutions for Global Warming, Automotive pollution, International Trade, factory pollution, and the whole blasted human economy. Find ways so that people don’t build more housing pollution which destroys the environment to make way for more human filth! Find solutions so that people stop breeding as well as stopping using Oil in order to REVERSE Global warming and the destruction of the planet! This was not the first time Lee protested Discovery. MSNBC.com reported Wednesday evening: Court records show that Lee was arrested Feb. 21, 2008, on the sixth day of a protest at the Discovery building. At the time of his conviction in March 2008, he was identified as being from San Diego. Police were called to the scene when a crowd that had gathered began growing “unruly” as Lee threw thousands of dollars of cash into the air, some of it still in shrink-wrapped packages, police said at the time. (Lee was found not guilty of littering.) Lee said at the time that he experienced an ‘‘awakening” when he watched former Vice President Al Gore’s environmental documentary ‘‘An Inconvenient Truth.” This incident points to another inconvenient truth: despite the absurdity espoused by many liberal media members in the past 19 months that conservative talkers are inciting “right-wing extremists” to acts of violence, there are indeed disturbed individuals on both sides of the aisle that can be provoked by any number of things. As NewsBusters’s Melissa Clouthier noted Thursday: The left…has spent the last year and half trying to pin every act of terrorism and evil on the vast, white, racist, homophobic, bigoted Tea Party. They do it without shame. They impugn, malign and besmirch repeatedly. Best Tea Party sign? “You’ll say I’m racist anyway.” Lefties generalize from anecdotes unless the crazy person is one of their own (and yes, that was just a generalization). Then, of course, the crazy is an “outlier”. He’s a depraved individual. And often, there are compelling reasons for the outburst. Those compelling reasons demand more examination. And upon examination, well, it turns out the context is complex and nuanced. However, when their own crazy gets caught, they want the more reasonable and reasoned and logical response of not smearing a whole group of people (say, all people who watched and liked the Al Gore movie An Inconvenient Truth).  Indeed. To suggest that this incident was caused by Gore’s film is akin to the inanities put forth by the left about those on the right.  As AOLNews opinion editor John Merline wrote Wednesday evening: It’s an unfortunate reflex these days among pundits and politicians trying to score cheap political points against their ideological opponents. Just find the thinnest thread to tie them to the actions of some deranged nut job who happens to espouse somewhat similar views. See how dangerous and extremist their positions are? So, liberal talk show host Keith Olbermann once blamed competing talk show host Bill O’Reilly for the murder of abortion doctor George Tiller. Conservatives once tried to draw parallels between the Unabomber and Gore. President Bill Clinton attempted to connect the horrible Oklahoma City bombing to the rhetoric coming from right-wing talk shows. It’s all bad logic of the reductio ad absurdum variety. And we’d all be better off if everyone took this opportunity to forever swear off this pathetic rhetorical device. Yes we would, John, but if this man was a Fox News-watching Tea Party member whose demands were that the Discovery Channel stop showing programs blaming carbon dioxide for global warming, you can bet that every so-called news outlet in America would be proudly making this connection regardless of it representing bad logic of the reductio ad absurdum variety. As such, calls for sanity in the coverage of these horrible incidents are noble, but such good intentions will be completely forgotten the next time something happens that can be blamed on a conservative regardless of how absurd the nexus. Sadly, that’s just the way the liberal media work. Readers are encouraged to review Brent Baker’s ” Miracle on West 57th: CBS Ties Lee to Gore and Quotes Assessment of Bush as ‘Intelligent.’ ”

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Inconvenient Truth: Discovery Gunman ‘Awakened’ By Gore’s Film

Like a Good Neighbor, the Clean Air Act is There

Since 1970, the Clean Air Act has been the EPA’s most effective tool for combating air pollution. When it was first enacted, the Clean Air Act only covered five pollutants. But over the last 40 years it has been amended to protect the public from dozens of additional dangerous pollutants. But air pollution doesn’t stop at state lines, and as a result people throughout the country are forced to breathe unhealthy air. EPA’s proposed Good Neighbor Rule will help states be good neigh… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Like a Good Neighbor, the Clean Air Act is There