For two decades, the world’s governments have failed to meet their own commitment to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas. As frustration builds among scientists, some of them have begun to argue for research on a potential last-ditch option in case global warming starts to get out of control. It is called geoengineering — or directly manipulating the Earth’s climate.

The idea sounds like science fiction, but it is not.

Congress, particularly the House of Representatives, cast many major environmental votes during July.

Most significantly, spending bills have become vehicles for an unprecedented number of anti-environment policy riders -- provisions that block environmental protections without reducing federal spending at all. After passing the debt limit agreement in early August, Congress recessed until after Labor Day.

Well-known authors and artists publish an open letter demanding the council rethink its 'extraordinary' move

A group of some of Britain's best-known authors and artists has condemned the British Council's "extraordinary" decision to all but end its groundbreaking international work on climate change and demanded the decision be reconsidered.

Julie Bass faces the prospect of going to jail for what she's growing in her front yard.

The illegal growth is tomatoes. And zucchinis, peppers and other edible and what normally would be legal plants.

Got hope and change?

The situation at the damaged nuclear reactors in Fukushima is dire. Two days ago, three workers were exposed to water containing radioactive materials 10,000 times the normal level in the basement of Reactor No. 3.  This reactor is especially dangerous because it contains MOX fuel, a mixture of uranium and plutonium.  And, things got worse yesterday.  The Japanese authorities have now said that the reactor vessel in unit 3 may have breached, which means that much greater amounts of radiation from the MOX fuel could be released.

Here in the United States, the nuclear industry’s lobbyists and propagandists work to downplay concerns.  “Earthquakes of that magnitude would never happen here.”  “We’ll do a thorough safety review.” “Nuclear power needs to be part of our energy future.”  And so on. What they aren’t saying is that that massive public subsidies to bring this old reactors online would go 7-10 times further if spent on renewable energy and energy efficiency. Nuclear energy development is one of the biggest blockages to and energy revolution that can slow climate change.

The US EPA is the source of most air quality impact assessment models used in the US for regulatory purposes, such as predicting the potential impacts from proposed stationary sources of air pollutants and mobile sources such as motor vehicles. Since motor vehicle emissions vary with regulatory changes in required emission level, it is important that impact modeling be performed with the most up-to-date models.

EPA recently announced that an updated version of the Motor Vehicle Emission Simulator (MOVES) model — MOVES2010 — is now available for use to estimate air pollution from cars, trucks, and other on-road mobile sources. The model can also calculate the emissions reduction benefits from a range of mobile source control strategies, such as inspection and maintenance programs and local fuel standards.

My sense of these things is that this will happen five or six times before what will be termed as an “historic agreement” is signed, but this one does sound fairly serious:

Jeremy Hobbs, Executive Director of Oxfam put out this statement:

A MAJOR group of developing nations, including China and most African nations, have walked out of working groups, triggering a major stalemate between developed and developing countries at the Copenhagen climate change negotiations.

LUCY KNIGHT IN COPENHAGEN

'Get to work', urges climate head

By Richard Black