January 17th, 2013
Since his re-election, President Obama has made it clear that he sees action on climate change as a major piece of unfinished business from his first term. In his election night victory speech, he said he wants “our children to live in an America that isn’t burdened by debt; that isn’t weakened by inequality; that isn’t threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet.” Read More
January 9th, 2013
In his Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), James Boswell famously quotes Dr. Johnson as remarking that second marriages are the “triumph of hope over experience.” Today the same might be said of a second Obama administration working with a divided Congress to achieve meaningful bipartisan solutions to climate change. Read More
December 6th, 2012
During his first term, President Obama made history by setting the first ever global warming emissions standards for both cars and trucks and putting our nation on a course to double new vehicle fuel economy by 2025, fulfilling his 2008 campaign promise to cut oil use 2.5 million barrels per day. Now it is time for him to cement his legacy on oil by going where none of his predecessors have gone before — President Obama must commit the nation to a realistic path to cut our projected oil use in half over the next twenty years. Read More
December 3rd, 2012
A new paper in Nature magazine summarizes a project to delineate the DNA code of bread wheat. The results add to the growing number of crops and other plants whose genomes have been decoded, which facilitates genetic comparisons for evolutionary studies, crop improvement through breeding, and other biological work. Read More
November 16th, 2012
Hurricane Sandy is a powerful reminder of just how vulnerable our country’s electricity infrastructure is to extreme weather, and how a more localized, renewable energy system can strengthen the resilience of state and regional grids. Read More
October 31st, 2012
As Hurricane Sandy approached Virginia Beach, I watched churning surf form a troublesome backdrop to two skateboarders harnessing the wind to propel themselves rapidly along the boardwalk. Those same winds were piling up water to form a dangerous storm surge and portended a powerful blow that would ultimately cause widespread devastation throughout the region. Since that moment, I have been asked many questions about Hurricane Sandy. Here are answers to the most common ones. Read More
October 24th, 2012
Last night, FRONTLINE premiered its new documentary, Climate of Doubt, a chilling chronicle of the decade-long-plus campaign to confuse the public and policy-makers about the reality of human-induced climate change. As the PBS press release puts it, “Climate of Doubt describes the individuals and groups behind an organized effort to attack science by undermining scientists, and to unseat politicians who say they believe there is current climate change caused by human activity.’ Read More
September 27th, 2012
A mother cradles her baby while she juggles a large stamp loaded with fresh red ink to press “Not Science” over misleading climate science claims in a larger-than-life size Wall Street Journal Opinion piece. This symbolic act occurred soon after the Union of Concerned Scientists released a new snapshot analysis of Fox News Channel’s prime time shows and the Wall Street Journal opinion pages — an analysis that revealed a staggering proportion of misrepresentation of climate science. Read More
September 27th, 2012
Scientists find themselves under scrutiny now more than ever before, and that scrutiny intensifies when their research is at the center of a public policy debate. Sometimes, this scrutiny helps educate the public and clarify what we know; at other times, this scrutiny is designed to confuse the public and policymakers. Today, UCS is releasing a guide that helps scientists deal with harassment and other unwarranted attacks on their integrity and their work. Read More
September 26th, 2012
California leads the nation in plug-in car sales, but the state isn’t resting on its laurels to maintain dominance in the emerging market for zero tailpipe emission vehicles. Read More
© 2013
