“With geoengineering outlawed, will only outlaws have geoengineering?” – Stephen Dubner, writing in today’s Freakonomics blog at the New York Times. Where to begin on the lameness of this comment? First, no one’s really seriously talking about outlawing geoengineering at the moment– climate scientists like Ken Caldeira merely say we need to study it further, just in case we need to use it. There is no Montreal Protocol-type global agreement on banning, or e... Read Full Story

Jurdy’s on the ropes in defense of the world’s rainforests … Related posts:Jurdy: A piquing peek at peakJurdy: A rough tackleJurdy: One step at a time Read Full Story

The Greenland ice sheet is losing mass at an accelerating rate, researchers reported this week in a study published in Science. Two factors are contributing equally to the loss: an increase in the number of icebergs released into the ocean as the flow of Greenland’s outlet glaciers speeds up, and an increase in the amount of meltwater flowing off the ice sheet’s surface. Using satellite observations and a state-of-the art regional atmospheric model, the researchers determined that... Read Full Story

The following is a guest commentary by Aydin Kurt-Elli, CEO of Lumison, a UK-based business ISP: If I learned one thing this week from Green IT Expo in London it’s that irony is alive and well and appears to be the most sustainable of all energy supplies, powering entire marketing departments in some cases. The event took place at the Barbican centre in London (10 & 11 November) and on the surface appeared to be like any other IT show. Looking back I can imagine the preparation many... Read Full Story

Doubt that environmental tipping points can change the Earth’s climate in a geologic blink of an eye? Doubt no more. Using unprecendented fine-scale measurements from a mud core taken from an Irish lake, researchers have found evidence that the Younger Dryas mini-ice age — which started about 12,800 years ago and lasted some 1,300 years — came on within just 12 months or less. The rapid and dramatic cooling essentially shifted Ireland to an Arctic climate in less than a year... Read Full Story

Are you a UK-based cleantech startup that’s looking for funding? Let us know, and — if your technology fits the bill — we might be inviting you to our inaugural investment event. We’re looking for firms seeking up to £500,000 on this round. For now, we’ll stay mum on further details (where and when, for example), but we’ll be in touch shortly if your company qualifies. Just send an email to Dan Ilett at dan@greenbang.com, and we’ll follow up with more... Read Full Story

While a shift to electric cars is widely touted as a brilliant way to reduce carbon emissions and dependence on oil, less attention goes to the issue of where the electricity for those cars will come from. That’s a big question to leave sitting out there unanswered. If we plan to power tomorrow’s fleet of e-cars with electricity from solar, wind and tidal power — heck, even nuclear — that’s great: net greenhouse gas emissions and oil use go down and we continue o... Read Full Story

While the world has 60 years’ worth of recoverable natural gas resources, it doesn’t tap that energy source as much as it could, largely because methane requires either costly pipelines to transport as a gas or uneconomical processing to convert it to a more easily transported liquid fuel. Researchers in Germany, though, believe they might have might have found a more affordable and efficient way to convert gaseous methane into liquid methanol. Scientists at the Max Planck Institu... Read Full Story

While the world has 60 years’ worth of recoverable natural gas resources, it doesn’t tap that energy source as much as it could, largely because methane requires either costly pipelines to transport as a gas or uneconomical processing to convert it to a more easily transported liquid fuel. Researchers in Germany, though, believe they might have might have found a more affordable and efficient way to convert gaseous methane into liquid methanol. Scientists at the Max Planck Institu... Read Full Story

As international leaders prepare for December talks on tackling climate change, European and North African scientists are studying ways to protect some of the world’s most historic structures from global warming. The EU-backed “Climate for Culture” project, which kicked off this week, aims to assess how climate change will affect selected UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Europe and North Africa and to develop preventative strategies for preserving those sites. Among the sites ... Read Full Story