It seems the news media never wants to portray Americans as refugees. The press can describe folks in poorer countries as refugees when they’re fleeing a war or something, but I’ve never heard citizens of any rich country like America described as refugees. In the area near Paradise California, thousands…
Paradise California has been destroyed by a massive wildfire and while the news has focused on the devastation in Paradise, there is another story. PG&E is surely to be blamed for starting the fire, because a PG&E power line went down outside of Pulga at the same time. But, why…
The November 8, 2018 wildfire called the Camp Fire destroyed the town of Paradise California. But, it did not destroy the entire town. Some buildings and houses survived the firestorm, but not because of flukes of fate, instead some homeowners prepared ahead of time because they knew about the fire…
Subsequent to the “Camp Fire” which destroyed Paradise California, on November 8, 2018, President Trump blamed California’s forestry policies saying that “There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor,” and Trump threatened to withhold federal payments to…
In 2012 the Obama Administration achieved a major win, with the full endorsement of the automobile industry, to require tighter fuel efficiency standards. The new CAFE Standards would reduce fuel consumption, reducing air pollution, and saving the US Economy zillions of dollars a year in fuel expenditures. Given the friendliness…
While we try to focus on energy and transportation issues on LongTailPipe, the current USA political climate under the President Trump administration has us nervously watching political news. One issue affecting the project of eliminating fossil fuel consumption is the EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt. Coming from an oil state (Oklahoma),…
The Trump Administration is having its Katrina-moment this week. Katrina being the hurricane that struck New Orleans during the Bush32 Administration, and became the poster-child for both horrible government policy and the cost of ignoring the effects of climate change. We’ll leave the government policy issues to other people who…
Today California Governor Jerry Brown thumbed his nose in the direction of President Trump, and signed legislation extending California’s Cap-and-Trade program and defining certain non-vehicular emissions as air pollutants and toxic air contaminants. Well, he didn’t actually thumb his nose, but by taking this step California is taking a…
Last winter saw alarmingly warm temperatures stretching from the North Atlantic deep into the Arctic. I wrote about this at the time, all through the winter the coast of Norway, in North Scotland, in Iceland, and as far west as Sweden or St. Petersburg Russia, the weather was at or…
An arrest earlier this week in the Dieselgate scandal brings with it validation that upper Volkswagen Group management were indeed aware the company was fraudulently reporting inflated emissions results. At the time the management group claimed the scandal was the work of a few rogue engineers acting on their own. But,…
The above map is showing abnormally warm temperatures reaching into the middle of the Arctic. The map was captured at 6 PM PST on December 17, 2016, equating to about 2 AM UTC, meaning the area shown was in the middle of the night and experiencing the coldest temperatures for…
After over 20 years of negotiations, the COP (Conference of Parties) UN Climate Change negotiation process has finally produced an “accord”. French President François Hollande spun it as “The decisive deal for the planet is here.” But environmentalists lamented the climate change deal reached in Paris did not do enough. In…
This is a historic agreement, as flawed as it is. After over 20 years of negotiations, the COP meetings have produced a full agreement on climate change mitigation/adaptation. Final document retrieved from: http://unfccc.int/documentation/documents/advanced_search/items/6911.php?priref=600008831
At the UNFCCC COP21 Climate Summit in Paris, France, eleven banks including the World Bank, European Investment Bank and Credit Agricole, announced the launch of ‘Five Voluntary Principles for Mainstreaming Climate Actions Within Financial Institutions’. The potential importance of this is that banks have a great deal of control over…
Electric Vehicle adoption should make a big contribution to reducing the urban heat island effect, significantly lowering temperatures in big cities during the summer, causing a large decrease in electricity consumption because there’ll be less need for air conditioning. That’s the claim of a research paper published in Nature in…
