This post is by Lisa Moore, Ph.D., a scientist in the Climate and Air program at Environmental Defense Fund.
There’s an email making the rounds lately – an invitation to take a Global Warming Test. It starts off reasonably enough (yes, global warming is real), but then quickly devolves into ridiculousness – ridiculousness presented in a way that looks misleadingly "scientific".
For those interested in truth, here are the real answers to the Global Warming Test.
This post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.
Climate change is already happening. If you don’t believe it, just ask anyone in the insurance industry, which has been bearing most of the costs. Insurance companies are scrambling to contain their exposure by hiking deductibles, limiting coverage, and often pulling out of risky markets altogether (see my previous post, "Insurance Coverage Crumbles in Coastal States").
This week, ClimateWire reporter John Fialka published a report on how climate change may shrink the insurance industry, and the "seismic economic shock" this would deliver to homeowners and businesses. He says that one solution under discussion is for the federal government to act as a backstop, shielding the private insurance industry from risk.
But that’s a bad idea – for two reasons.
This post is by Ramon Cruz, Senior Policy Analyst for Living Cities at Environmental Defense Fund.
It’s ironic. In many parts of the world, there is no clean drinking water. Here in the U.S., pure, drinkable water flows out of every tap, and yet Americans buy a staggering amount of bottled water. We pay big bucks for it, too – over $15 billion a year.
Worse of all, the bottles are overflowing our landfills, and contribute to global warming. Take a look at this video from Doug James, and then check out these surprising facts.
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/OZbTXDkrD1o" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
This post is by Lisa Moore, Ph.D., a scientist in the Climate and Air program at Environmental Defense Fund.
According to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, this past winter was the coolest since 2001. A single season can’t determine a long-term trend any more than a single month can (see my previous post, "Did Global Warming Stop in January?"). But the recent cooler temperatures do offer an opportunity to talk about La Niña – a climate pattern that causes short-term cooling.
This winter’s La Niña is the strongest (coldest) since 1989, so we’d expect the weather to be cooler than usual. But even so, the cooling didn’t come close to offsetting the warming of the past 50-100 years. As you can see in the graph below, the cooling barely takes us back to 2001.
Data source: NASA. Each dot is a three-month period (season).
This post is by Tony Kreindler, Media Director for the National Climate Campaign at Environmental Defense Fund.
This post is part of a series on the work of the Environmental Defense Action Fund to enact an effective climate law. You can help by writing to Congress.We’re closer than ever to passing national climate legislation:
But we need to maintain grassroots pressure to keep legislators focused on the need to pass a bill this year.
This post is by Sheryl Canter, an Online Writer and Editorial Manager at Environmental Defense Fund.
Earth: The Sequel, the new book by EDF President Fred Krupp and Miriam Horn, is filled with interesting facts. Here are ten numbers that may surprise you.
China spends 200 times more on solar energy than does the U.S., and the U.S. spends six times more on subsidies to the gas and oil industries than it does on renewable energy research. Hmmm…
