Alaskans Ring Alarm Bells Over Potential for More Mount Polley Disasters As B.C. Pushes Forward With New Mines
Worried Alaskans who fear lucrative fisheries and tourism industries are at risk from lax B.C. oversight of mine safety are meeting with state officials next week to ask the U.S. State Department to push for more input on mine development along the border of northwest B.C. and southeast Alaska. “We are calling for an equal seat […]
Low Oil Prices, High Oilsands Emissions Should Influence Keystone XL Decision: EPA
A letter submitted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the State Department gives new weight to concerns the proposed $8 billion Keystone XL pipeline, destined to carry crude from the Alberta oilsands to export facilities along the Gulf of Mexico, will have significant climate impacts. The EPA letter suggests existing analyses – which downplay the importance […]
How Tobacco Shills Inspired Climate Denial
DeSmog UK’s history series examines how the tobacco industry’s PR tactics proved inspirational for the army of climate change deniers. Dr Fred Singer and his sceptic Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) would become an increasingly important platoon in the army assembling against climate science. Along with the late Dr Frederick Seitz – a founder of the […]
David Cameron on Carbon Knife Edge
David Cameron’s government may have failed to meet the crucial carbon budget set by the Climate Change Act – despite a 2.4 percent drop in CO2 pollution. Figures released today by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) show that greenhouse gas emissions in the UK fell by 2.4 percent in 2013. But this is not […]
California Regulators Allowed Oil Industry To Drill Hundreds Of Wastewater Injection Wells Into Aquifers With Drinkable Water
Update 02/11/15: The problems with California’s underground injection control program are far worse than originally reported. It has now been revealed that California regulators with DOGGR not only permitted hundreds of wastewater injection wells but also thousands more wells injecting fluids for “enhanced oil recovery” into aquifers protected under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. […]
Bjørn Lomborg Sings WSJ’s Same Old Climate Change Song: Don’t Worry, Be Happy
This is a guest post by Climate Nexus. Bjorn Lomborg’s latest op-ed in the Wall Street Journal resurrects repeatedly demolished distortions of fact to downplay the real and increasingly documented threats of climate change. His trademark tactic is to acknowledge that climate change is real and human-caused, only to then dismiss the solutions—reducing emissions and […]
You Don't Want to Miss DeSmog UK's Most Important Stories From January
It has only been one month into the New Year and already so much has happened. We’ve scored some amazing achievements in the fight to clear the PR pollution clouding climate science. So as we head into February – and incidentally the sixth month anniversary of DeSmog UK – we share here with you our January […]
Owen Paterson and the Spectre of Enoch Powell
He who pays the piper picks the tune, as the saying goes. Those with particularly sensitive political antennae may have picked up an echo of the rhetoric of Enoch Powell, author of the infamous rivers of blood speech, in the speeches of sacked environment secretary Owen Paterson. Powell was a classical scholar and Health Minister […]
Fracking Failure: Frackers In Pennsylvania Violate Health And Environmental Regulations On A Daily Basis
From the American Petroleum Institute’s claim that fracking is “safely unlocking vast U.S. reserves of oil and natural gas” to Chris “Frack Master” Faulkner himself insisting “fracking isn’t contaminating anything,” the oil and gas industry constantly tells us that fracking can be done safely, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. But just to be […]
Was Shell the First Big Oil Company to Publicly Accept the Science of Climate Change and its Consequences?
The DeSmog UK epic history series investigates the divide that opened up between chief executives and shareholders who were anxious that company operations and profits could be undermined by climate change. The heavy-handed attack from lobbyists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that arose during the 1990s presented a new risk: that the oilmen […]