Keep Up on the Story... The Scale of the Problem Cleaning Up Energy Ethanol Fossil Fuel Power

 

Keep Up on the Story...

The Wall Street Journal: Environmental Capital
The Journal's blog covers the day-to-day business of the environment, tracking investments, energy prices and emerging technologies.

Dot Earth: Nine billion people. One planet.
A blog from The New York Times that tracks environmental news from the perspective of sustainability and population growth.

ClimateProgress.org
Energy expert Joseph Romm's blog covering the latest debates in global warming science and policy.

The Scale of the Problem

Global Warming Basics
The Pew Center on Global Climate Change maintains this primer on global warming, including facts and figures on the roots of the problem and frequently asked questions, as well as a series of more in-depth reports and a kids page.

Global Warming 101
This Union of Concerned Scientists Web site explains the causes and effects of climate change, refutes the arguments of global warming skeptics, examines solutions to the problem and details the effects a changing climate will have on your region of the United States.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
The United Nations climate organization headed by Dr. Rajendra Pachauri allows you to download its exhaustive studies of global warming. Read the panel's 2007 summary report, or its issue-by-issue breakdowns of the scientific evidence, predicted impacts, and mitigation strategies.

Crisis Guide: Climate Change
An interactive audio slideshow feature from the Council on Foreign Relations that includes video interviews and several sub-sections of context and background.

National Resources Defense Council
The environmental group provides quick answers to frequently asked questions regarding climate change.

Tracking the Himalaya’s Melting Glaciers
Photographs, analysis and video from David Breashears for Yale University's Environment 360.

Arctic Meltdown
A Foreign Affairs article from spring 2008 analyzing the changing land- and seascape of the Arctic, and its wider implications for global security and trade.

The American Arctic
A video segment from The Atlantic magazine on two researchers' voyage through the Arctic's receding polar ice cap, observing firsthand the changing seascape. The magazine also provides a map illustrating the ice cap's dramatic shrinkage in recent years.

Climate and Health
This World Health Organization fact sheet indicates that the impact on human health isn't just in a long-term problem: Their research has "concluded that the effects of the climate change that has occurred since the mid-1970s may have caused over 150,000 deaths in 2000."

Cleaning Up Energy

The Future of Energy
In June 2008, The Economist reported on the broad spectrum of cleaner energy technologies -- both those available today and those expected to be deployable in the near future. See the sidebar on the right for the topics covered, particularly carbon storage, wind energy and the future of cars.

Slump May Limit Moves on Clean Energy
The New York Times reports on the stagnation of alternative energy projects in the midst of the current financial crisis. Included is T. Boone Pickens' decision to delay his wind energy plan. (Nov. 24, 2008)

The Island in The Wind
A July 2008 New Yorker profile of the Danish island community of Samsø, which, over the past decade, stopped importing electricity and began generating its own from renewable sources.

20% Wind Energy by 2030
This 2008 Department of Energy report explains how the United States could generate 20 percent of its electricity by harnessing wind energy and building a transmission system to reach low-wind areas of the country.

Big Foot
Trying to live greener? According to this February 2008 New Yorker essay, "The calculations required to assess the full environmental impact of how we live can be dazzlingly complex."

Ethanol

The Ethanol Scam: One of America's Biggest Political Boondoggles
In this 2007 Rolling Stone article, Jeff Goodell examines the politically motivated subsidies behind the U.S. corn ethanol boom, and the fuel's negative impacts on our food supply.

How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor
This May 2008 essay from Foreign Affairs reports that "the enormous volume of corn required by the ethanol industry is sending shock waves through the food system."

Biofuels: The Promise and the Risks
A 2008 World Bank report on the promise of biofuels as sustainable and profitable sources of fuel, and the risks they carry in the form of increased food costs, water shortages and deforestation.

Fossil Fuel Power

Video: Canadians ponder cost of ruch for dirty oil
London's Guardian newspaper travels to Alberta, Canada, to report on the production of oil from "tar sands," asking representatives from Shell and the Canadian petroleum industry why they're investing in a process that creates three times the amount of greenhouse gases compared to traditional oil production.

Energy In Brief
If you're wondering where your energy comes from, have a look at this series of fact sheets from the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration. Two areas covered: How Dependent Are We On Foreign Oil? and How is my electricity generated, delivered, and priced?.

The Future of Coal
You may want to begin with the executive summary (PDF) of this exhaustive 2007 study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Start on page 10 to see why the panel concluded that "coal use will increase under any foreseeable scenario," and why we're still years away from being able to capture and store our CO2 emissions.