NewsTrust - Sci/Tech - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

Climate Warnings, Growing Louder

Sat, 18 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By By THE EDITORIAL BOARD - May. 18 (Opinion) - Given new evidence on carbon pollution, President Obama should get moving on global warming.

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Energy Exports Are Good!

Sat, 18 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By By JOE NOCERA - May. 18 (Opinion) - Op-Ed Columnist: Energy Exports Are Good!

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Annise Parker: The Modern American Boomtown

Sat, 18 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Annise Parker - May. 18 (Opinion) - Houston's mayor—an openly gay Democrat friendly to business—talks about why her city is the country's fastest growing and most diverse.

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The Coming GOP Civil War Over Climate Change

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

National Journal - May. 15 (Opinion) -

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Climate change 'will make hundreds of millions homeless'

Sun, 12 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Robin McKie - May. 12 (Comment) - Carbon dioxide levels indicate rise in temperatures that could lead agriculture to fail on entire continents It is increasingly likely that hundreds of millions of people will be displaced from their homelands in the near future as a result of global warming. That is the stark warning of economist and climate change expert Lord Stern following the news last week that concentrations of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere had reached a level of 400 parts per million (ppm). Massive movements of people are likely to occur over the rest of the century because global temperatures are likely to rise to by up to 5C because carbon dioxide levels have risen unabated for 50 years, said Stern, who is head of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change. "When temperatures rise to that level, we will have disrupted weather patterns and spreading deserts," he said. "Hundreds of millions of people will be forced to leave their homelands because their crops and animals will have died. The trouble will ...

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Climate change: swift political action can avert a carbon dioxide crisis

Sun, 12 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - May. 12 (Editorial) - Carbon dioxide levels have reached an all-time high. But there is some hope if governments take the figures seriously The news that concentrations of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere reached a level of 400 parts per million last week might not appear to have immediate significance. The level is only a couple of units higher than last year, after all. Yet the development has undoubted importance. With the realisation that carbon dioxide levels have achieved that symbolic 400ppm figure, it is now clear that two decades of warnings from scientists have fallen on deaf ears and that our leaders have failed completely to curtail rising outputs of greenhouse gases across the world. Indeed, they have allowed them to accelerate. In the 1960s, levels rose at 0.7ppm a year. Today, they rise at 2.1ppm, as more and more nations become industrialised and increase outputs from their factories and power plants. As a result, the most conservative of scientific calculations suggest Earth now faces a 50-50 ...

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Beyond Unlocking: Don't Let Them Kill the First Reasonable Copyright Reform Bill

Sat, 11 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - May. 11 (Opinion) - Beyond Unlocking: Don't Let Them Kill the First Reasonable Copyright Reform Bill

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Op-Ed Columnist: Bernanke, Blower of Bubbles?

Fri, 10 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - May. 10 (Opinion) - Bubbles can be bad for your financial health — and bad for the health of the economy, too. The dot-com bubble of the late 1990s left behind many vacant buildings and many more failed dreams. When the housing bubble of the next decade burst, the result wa

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Best of the Web Today: 'Stop Being a Baby'

Thu, 09 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - May. 09 (Opinion) - Infanticide and the infantilization of women.

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Save the Wolves of Isle Royale National Park

Thu, 09 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By By JOHN A. VUCETICH, MICHAEL P. NELSON, ROLF O. PETERSON - May. 09 (Opinion) - Moose first appeared on this Michigan island in the first decade of the 20th century, apparently by swimming from the mainland. With no predator to challenge them, the moose population surged (interspersed by two crashes, from starvation) and devastated

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Has Pakistan’s Nawaz Sharif changed his stripes?

Thu, 09 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Richard Leiby - May. 09 (Opinion) - What kind of prime minister was Nawaz Sharif, who twice held Pakistan’s premiership in the 1990s, defied Washington and tested a nuclear bomb, and is now touted as likely to win a third term in Saturday’s national ...

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Japan’s Shift From Nuclear Energy

Tue, 07 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By By NASSRINE AZIMI - May. 07 (Opinion) - Op-Ed Contributor: Japan’s Shift From Nuclear Energy

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The Dirt on Oil Sands

Mon, 06 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Scientific American - May. 06 (Opinion) -

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Does Shale Gas Production Alter Climate Change?

Sun, 05 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Forbes - By Ken Silverstein, Contributor - May. 05 (Opinion) - The shale gas industry has long thought that the Environmental Protection Agency may undercut its possibilities. But the regulator’s latest unveiling is now fueling the unconventional natural gas, noting that its heat-trapping emissions are much less than originally thought.

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Plans to Harness Chinese River's Power Threaten a Region

Sat, 04 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Andrew Jacobs - May. 04 (Editorial) - Plans to Harness China’s Nu River Threaten a Region

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The nudge unit – has it worked so far?

Thu, 02 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - May. 02 (Opinion) - Since 2010 David Cameron's pet project has been tasked with finding ways to improve society's behaviour – and now the 'nudge unit' is going into business by itself. But have its initiatives really worked? When the day comes to write the obituary of this curious coalition, a day that many feel can't come too soon, it won't be "the big society" that it is remembered for creating. It seems unlikely to be "fairness" either. There may, however, be a large section on "the nudge unit", otherwise known as the cabinet office's behavioural insights team . Set up in the summer of 2010 shortly after this government came to office, and well known to be a pet project of David Cameron's, it is essentially a little band of academics looking for ways to run the country better. (There used to be nine of them, but there are now 13, mostly economists and psychologists.) In part, the unit owes its reputation to Cameron, and to its nickname, a reference to the 2008 book Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, ...

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Canada’s Oil Minister, Unmuzzled

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By By JOE NOCERA - Apr. 25 (Opinion) - Op-Ed Columnist: Canada’s Oil Minister, Unmuzzled

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Carbon bubble will plunge the world into another financial crisis

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Damian Carrington - Apr. 19 (Opinion) - Trillions of dollars at risk as stock markets inflate value of fossil fuels that may have to remain buried forever, experts warn The world could be heading for a major economic crisis as stock markets inflate an investment bubble in fossil fuels to the tune of trillions of dollars, according to leading economists. "The financial crisis has shown what happens when risks accumulate unnoticed," said Lord (Nicholas) Stern, a professor at the London School of Economics. He said the risk was "very big indeed" and that almost all investors and regulators were failing to address it. The so-called " carbon bubble " is the result of an over-valuation of oil, coal and gas reserves held by fossil fuel companies. According to a report published on Friday, at least two-thirds of these reserves will have to remain underground if the world is to meet existing internationally agreed targets to avoid the threshold for "dangerous" climate change. If the agreements hold , these reserves will be in effect ...

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The Keystone Pipeline Fight Is Not Over

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By By MARY PIPHER - Apr. 18 (Opinion) - I GREW up in Nebraska. My great-grandparents homesteaded here. Generally, Nebraskans are a polite, cautious people more interested in weather than politics, and in pie than causes. That is, until recently. In 2008 TransCanada announced plans for its Keys

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Basketball Giant Keeps Pressing China on Rhinos and Ivory

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By By ANDREW C. REVKIN - Apr. 17 (Opinion) - Dot Earth Blog: Basketball Giant Keeps Pressing China on Rhinos and Ivory

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Applicants wanted: One way ticket to Mars

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - Apr. 17 (Comment) - Would you apply for a one-way ticket to the Red Planet

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The Antisocial Network of Bitcoins

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By By PAUL KRUGMAN - Apr. 15 (Opinion) - Bitcoin’s wild ride may not have been the biggest business story of the past few weeks, but it was surely the most entertaining. Over the course of less than two weeks the price of the “digital currency” more than tripled. Then it fell more than 50 perce

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Somaliland gets wind in its sails for revamping power sector

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Nicholas Parkinson, Matthew Newsome - Apr. 15 (Comment) - The region's antiquated, piecemeal power grid is constraining growth – but a new energy bill may change that In 2009, Hassan Ahmed Hussein brought an industrial bread-making machine from abroad to install in his hotel in downtown Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland. Hassan's idea was part business, part self-interest. Wholewheat bread is not available in Somaliland, and he envisioned selling it to small-scale vendors. He baked bread for four months before coming to the unfortunate conclusion that the machine wasn't cost effective. Electricity in Somaliland is too expensive. While the rest of the world pays an average $0.15-0.30 per kilowatt hour, Hargeisa's residents pay $1 per kWh. He abandoned the bakery and, in 2009, bought a diesel generator, poles, wires and transformers to start his own power company, Iftin, which rapidly gained nearly 2,000 customers in a catchment area of 10,000 residents. He has since merged his power stations with the city's largest provider, KAAH, and now ...

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Climate change: how a warming world is a threat to our food supplies

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By John Vidal - Apr. 14 (Comment) - Global warming is exacerbating political instability as tensions brought on by food insecurity rise. With research suggesting the issue can only get worse we examine the risks around the world Infographic: the impact of climate on food When the Tunisian street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi , set himself on fire on 17 December 2010, it was in protest at heavy-handed treatment and harassment in the province where he lived. But a host of new studies suggest that a major factor in the subsequent uprisings, which became known as the Arab spring, was food insecurity. Drought, rocketing bread prices, food and water shortages have all blighted parts of the Middle East. Analysts at the Centre for American Progress in Washington say a combination of food shortages and other environmental factors exacerbated the already tense politics of the region. As the Observer reports today, an as-yet unpublished US government study indicates that the world needs to prepare for much more of the same, as food prices ...

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Millions face starvation as world warms, say scientists

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By John Vidal - Apr. 14 (Comment) - World is unprepared for changes that will see parts of Africa turned into disaster areas, say food experts Millions of people could become destitute in Africa and Asia as staple foods more than double in price by 2050 as a result of extreme temperatures, floods and droughts that will transform the way the world farms. As food experts gather at two major conferences to discuss how to feed the nine billion people expected to be alive in 2050, leading scientists have told the Observer that food insecurity risks turning parts of Africa into permanent disaster areas. Rising temperatures will also have a drastic effect on access to basic foodstuffs, with potentially dire consequences for the poor. Frank Rijsberman, head of the world's 15 international CGIAR crop research centres , which study food insecurity, said: "Food production will have to rise 60% by 2050 just to keep pace with expected global population increase and changing demand. Climate change comes on top of that. The annual ...

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