The world's glaciers are continuing to melt away with the latest official figures showing record losses, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) announced today. Data from close to 30 reference glaciers in nine mountain ranges indicate that between the years 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 the average rate of melting and thinning more than doubled. The findings come... Continue Reading →

What do you do when government scientists come to the inevitable conclusion that, despite the presidents assertions that doing anything to combat climate change will kill the economy, it is possible to both grow the economy and tackle climate change. If the administration is honest it admits it was wrong, it releases the report and... Continue Reading →

On issue after issue, the US environmental protection agency has ignored its own science advisers and ruled in favour of polluters. Why is it that, in the Bush administration, the desires of well-heeled polluters always trump the analyses of government scientists? The answer is that the top political appointees - and the president himself -... Continue Reading →

One more reason to vote for Dion's Liberals, and lets face it, currently there are very few reasons to vote for them. Liberal Leader Stephane Dion has embraced the idea of a national consumer-based carbon tax as part of a way to fight global warming. In a speech in Vancouver on Friday, Dion said it... Continue Reading →

Ottawa will unveil new climate-change regulations this week that would force new oil sands projects and coal-fired electricity plants to capture and store the bulk of their greenhouse gases rather than spew them into the air... Canada has set a target of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by 20 per cent below 2006 levels by the year... Continue Reading →

Recently I came across a quote that perfectly describes the actions of many climate change deniers. What is even more interesting is that the quote comes from the book Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design, and describes the strategy of the proponents of creationism. The new strategy is wonderfully simple. Here is how... Continue Reading →

Imagine a vat of liquid cow manure covering the area of five football fields and 33 feet deep. Meet California's most alternative new energy. On a dairy farm in the Golden State's agricultural heartland, utility PG&E Corp began on Tuesday producing natural gas derived from manure, in what it hopes will be a new way... Continue Reading →

Governments will have to grapple with tough choices under any global emissions policy strategy. We can't escape the fact that somebody somewhere--and soon--will need to start paying the price for such a policy. It's not useful or fair to represent mitigation as a costless endeavor or--as some have claimed--as "good business." It can certainly be... Continue Reading →

Who said: I will tell you with $55 oil we don't need incentives to oil and gas companies to explore. There are plenty of incentives. It was Bush who said that in 2005, yet with oil at nearly twice that price, and with oil companies making record profits Bush still refuses to cut subsidies. Instead... Continue Reading →

This blog has seen it's fair share of rather in depth debates on the science of climate change, but regardless of the outcome, debates on a random blog are pointless. The video bellow takes a risk management view of the whole debate, and sets aside the question of the science, it is video is a... Continue Reading →

Joseph Romm, has an interesting article in Salon, discussing the problems with the using the term 'consensus' to describe the state of the scientific knowledge of the earth climate to the public. A is usually the case in situations like this, the problem stems from the fact that certain words have a scientific definition, that... Continue Reading →

The Harper government has rejected a new report that calls for the introduction of a levy on pollution to be coupled with a 50% income tax break for the average Canadian. The report, released on Monday by environmentalist David Suzuki and economist Mark Jaccard who heads a consulting firm that conducted the study, suggests that... Continue Reading →

When I was in University I read a paper by renown biologist EO Wilson, about his dream to create an online database that contained the sum of human knowledge on all the millions of organisms that inhabit our planet. That dream is now coming to fruition with the Encyclopedia of life. The potential impact this... Continue Reading →

Another favorite skeptic argument has been debunked... again. The supposed "global cooling" consensus among scientists in the 1970s — frequently offered by global-warming skeptics as proof that climatologists can't make up their minds — is a myth, according to a survey of the scientific literature of the era... But Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic... Continue Reading →

The federal government prefers environmental regulations to new taxes to fight climate change and won't be following British Columbia's lead when it comes to a carbon tax, says Environment Minister John Baird. Does this mean we can expect the Conservative government to introduce effective regulations to reduce Canada's greenhouse in the near future.

Even though the myth that the current warming trend is due to changes in the sun has been debunked numerous times, climate change skeptics continue to insist that the sun is responsible. Scientists at the recent AAAS meeting again tried to correct the misinformation coming out of the skeptic tank. It's widely known that the... Continue Reading →

[BC] Finance Minister Carole Taylor introduced an escalating carbon tax on most fossil fuels Tuesday, one she says recycles revenues back to taxpayers and businesses and is designed to ignite an environmental social movement in British Columbia and across Canada to fight climate change. This is the type of policy that could truly make a... Continue Reading →

These studies published in Science highlight a point I have been making for years. 'Green" technologies have real environmental costs that need to be considered by policymakers. Unfortunately as soon as something is labeled 'green' many people assume that environmental costs are no longer a concern, and unfortunately as these studies point out that is... Continue Reading →

Prof. Naomi Oreskes, of the University of California-San Diego Science Studies Program, lectures on the history of the global warming disinformation campaign, led by corporate-funded policy operatives and ideologically-driven scientists, who employed the “tobacco strategy” to manipulate public opinion to create an exaggerated sense of uncertainty about scientific evidence on global warming and climatic disruption.... Continue Reading →

According to Tom DeLay, the conservative position on climate change is to ignore the science and claim that it is arrogant to suggest that man can affect climate change. So according to DeLay the IPCC the National Academies of Science from Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, the Caribbean, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan,... Continue Reading →

The Conservative government has an abysmal record on environmental issues, and is now finally doing something about it. Environment Canada has "muzzled" its scientists, ordering them to refer all media queries to Ottawa where communications officers will help them respond with "approved lines." The new policy, which went into force in recent weeks and sent... Continue Reading →

This should worry all Canadians regardless of what political party or ideology they support. There are many issues that require that politicians truly understand science. To make matters worse in many of these issues special interest groups have large incentives to ensure that politicians don't understand the science, and unfortunately few politicians have the science... Continue Reading →

One of the oddest arguments against taking action to tackle climate change has been that the extra CO2 would increase plant productivity. While on paper a case can be made that an increased concentration of CO2 increases plant productivity, the reality of the situation is much more complex. Now new research (PDF) claims that climate... Continue Reading →

At first glance the it appears that the list of 400 'prominent scientists' who dispute the consensus on climate change complied by Senator James “global warming is a hoax” Inhofe is a serious challenge to the commonly accepted consensus on climate change. Over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries recently voiced significant... Continue Reading →

If climate change wasn't enough of a reason to cut CO2 emissions, it now seems that increased ocean acidity (caused by an increase in atmospheric CO2) will be devastating to coral reef ecosystems. The survival of the world's coral reefs will be seriously threatened by 2050 if atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) and the... Continue Reading →