For The First Time In 40 Years, Economic Growth Did Not Lead To More Carbon Emissions In 2014

More than 160 countries are now consciously uncoupling from fossil fuels by adopting renewable energy policies and targets, which helped make 2014 the first year in the past four decades that economic growth was not accompanied by a rise in carbon emissions, according to a new report. The 10th annual edition of REN21‘s Renewables Global […]

New Research Confirms Earthquake Swarms Caused by Oil and Gas Industry

The evidence establishing that the oil and gas industry is causing earthquakes grew much stronger last week, as two scientific papers clarified exactly how human activity is driving the swarm of quakes that has afflicted Oklahoma for the past six years. For decades, earthquakes were rare in the central US. Since the 1970’s, two dozen quakes […]

Matt Ridley Spins Conspiracy Theories and More in a Classic Denial of Science

This article has been cross-posted from HotWhopper. Was it Pope Francis who pushed deniers over the edge? Is it the climate negotiations taking place this year? Matt Ridley, a science denier from the UK who claims to be a “lukewarmer”, has written a Gish gallop worthy of Tim Ball. It’s as if he collected up all […]

Was the Climate Deniers' Hunt for Flaws in Michael Mann's Hockey Stick Successful?

We continue our DeSmog UK epic history series with the sceptics’ endless search for any evidence that Mann had manipulated science in producing his hockey stick graph. The climate deniers’ hunt for any shred of evidence that Michael Mann had manipulated science in producing his hockey stick graph went unabated, and in the mid-2000s started to […]

Will These Five High Profile Catholics Head For Confession Over Pope’s Climate Encyclical?

The Roman Catholic Church did some catching up last week with a clear and definitive statement calling for decisive action on global greenhouse gas emissions. In Pope Francis’ “encyclical”, the head of the world’s one billion or so Catholics described climate change as “one of the principal challenges facing humanity”. In Laudato Si’ – On Care For […]

So How Has the New House of Commons' Climate Committee Chair Voted On Climate Measures?

Angus MacNeil MP has been elected unopposed by his party colleagues to chair the influential House of Commons’ Energy and Climate Change Committee. MacNeil is the Scottish National Party representative for Na h-Eileanan an Iar in the Western Isles – which suffers from the highest levels of fuel poverty in Britain. He said when making the […]

Dirty Money vs. Clean Power: How the Fossil Fuel Industry Hopes to Kill EPA’s Climate Rule

This is a guest post by Patrick Parenteau, Professor of Law, Vermont Law School The fossil fuel industry is pulling out all the stops in an effort to derail President Obama’s Clean Power Plan being developed by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Clean Air Act. The proposed plan, which aims to cut carbon emissions […]

American Tea Party Supporters Base Climate Claims on Ideology not Science, Study Confirms

The image of polar ice caps is being used by both sides of the climate debate, but in the United States there’s one political faction whose claims may be more ideologically driven than others. According to a new study by the University of New Hampshire, American right-wing Tea Party supporters are most likely to base their […]

Oil and Gas Industry-Funded Website FrackFeed.com Off to Shaky Start

FrackFeed.com is a new oil and gas industry-supported website whose mission is to challenge the negative public perception of fracking. That’s a tall order since public awareness and opposition to fracking is growing following the passage of a fracking ban in Denton, Texas, as well as a de-facto ban in New York and other high-profile efforts to protect public […]

Cost of Doing Business? Oil Companies Agree To Pay For Some of Lac-Megantic Damages, But Not to Solve the Real Problems

Although insisting the industry is not to blame, several of the oil companies involved in the fatal Lac-Megantic oil train accident in 2013 have agreed to contribute to a fund to compensate the families of the 47 victims in that accident. The Wall Street Journal reported recently that oil companies Shell, ConocoPhillips, Marathon and Irving have all agreed to […]