Tag Archives: greenhousegases
Dear Donald Trump: ‘Clean coal’ doesn’t exist
"Clean coal" is an oxymoron. Even if you took a hunk of coal, doused it in bleach and scrubbed it for six hours with a soapy horsehair brush, it would still cause lung cancer and fill the air with carbon emissions when you burned it. Anyone who says...
Trump rolls back Obama-era climate change policies
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that rolls back policies designed to combat climate change implemented by former President Barack Obama. The order is a broad stroke, touching everything from federal policy-making to Energy Star r...
Trump’s EPA proposal cuts funding for climate change, pollution programs
Ever since the election, we've been wondering what the new presidential administration has in store for environmental programs, and the proposed new EPA budget may provide answers. First, the Washington Post reported the proposal would cut EPA staff...
Republicans poised to roll back environmental protections
With astonishing speed, US Republicans are set to strike down laws or vote on a new bills that eliminate environmental protections for the air, streams and national parks. The measures are being tabled so quickly that it has been difficult for enviro...
NASA mission will study Earth’s ‘breathing’ from space
Scientists know that the Earth "breathes" carbon, particularly through plants that absorb carbon through photosynthesis when they're healthy and give it up when they lose their leaves or die. They haven't had an extremely detailed look at that breat...
Kigali Amendment reached to cut use of planet-warming HFCs
Today, more than 170 nations have settled on a plan to cut the use of hydrofluorocarbons (or HFCs), a refrigerant that causes warming in the Earth's atmosphere. Called the Kigali Amendment for the location of negotiations in Rwanda, it's the result o...
EPA findings should lead to caps on aircraft emissions
It's no secret that aircraft contribute to harmful emissions like road-going vehicles, and the Environmental Protection Agency is one step closer to keeping that pollution in check. It recently finalized findings showing that some aircraft produce a...
Climate change is pushing clouds up and toward the poles
For the first time, a researchers have found evidence that global warming caused by humans is affecting clouds -- and not in a good way. A study by team from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography shows that clouds are being pushed up and out of mid...
Human climate influence means we’re skipping an ice age
According to a new study published in Nature, human-generated climate change -- specifically the massive additions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere -- is causing the Earth to effectively delay the start of the next ice...