climate

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--A group of academics on Friday considered the ultimate engineering challenge: building machines to stabilize the earth's climate.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology convened a symposium here to discuss the potential benefits and pitfalls of geoengineering, also called climate engineering. Everything from shooting light-blocking particles into the atmosphere to "artificial trees" is being seriously studied, despite trepidation among researchers and opposition from others.

During talks Friday morning, academics said climate engineering techniques are not well understood and, because of the complexity of the global climate system, individual approaches are pockmarked with uncertainties.

Still, speakers at … Read more

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--President Barack Obama on Friday called on the U.S. Congress to pass energy-and-climate legislation, a move he said would stimulate technology innovation and improve the economic competitiveness of the United States.

Obama delivered a speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology here after touring student laboratories and before attending a fund-raiser for Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.

A "comprehensive" energy-and-climate bill will address both environmental and economic problems, Obama said. Countries around the world recognize that energy supplies are limited while demand is rising. That situation is giving rise to a "peaceful competition" among … Read more

The Obama administration is pushing for a "comprehensive" energy and climate bill because it will provide the economic foundation to spur investment in clean-energy technologies, said Carol Browner, the president's assistant on energy and climate.

Browner, the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, was interviewed on Friday along with other business and political leaders at the Atlantic's First Draft of History conference at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. The interview was streamed live online.

She argued that U.S. businesses will invest more in clean-energy technologies once Congress passes a law with incentives for … Read more

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--A change in national energy policies would help spur innovation around green technologies, but policymakers are motivated by power and pet projects rather than energy security or environmental protection, a panel of energy and business experts argued here Thursday.

The speakers--three academics with expertise in energy and economics and a venture capitalist from Khosla Ventures--delved into the question of what role government should play in energy at the EmTech emerging technology conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Thursday. On the whole, they were pessimistic about the prospects of effective legislation for promoting a cleaner energy industry. … Read more

Contraception would be the cheapest and most effective way to reduce carbon emissions worldwide between 2010 and 2050, according to a study by the London School of Economics.

The report, "Fewer Emitters, Lower Emissions, Less Cost," (PDF) determined that if contraception was made widely available between 2010 and 2050 to women and men around the world who wished to use it, the reduction in unwanted births could result in saving 34 gigatonnes (one billion tonnes) of carbon emissions. That's roughly 60 years worth of U.K. emissions or 6 years worth of U.S. emissions.

The cost … Read more

Editors' note: Declan responds to critiques of this post in a subsequent piece he wrote in his Taking Liberties blog at CBSNews.com: "Cap And Trade Redux: $1,761 Annually Per Family? Or Not?"

The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent.

A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper … Read more

It always happens when you try to do some good, doesn't it?

You try to help an old lady cross the road, and she looks at you harshly and says, "So I look old to you?" You tell that special someone that you love her, and she tells you that she's actually enjoying the company of your best friend.

Such is the painful, ironic circumstance at the United Kingdom's Met Office. ("Met" is short for "meteorological.")

You see, according to the Daily Mail, the agency's large weather brains decided to … Read more

Can't donate your personal time to a good cause? Intel is providing what may be the next best option.

Intel teamed up with GridRepublic on Monday to launch a Facebook application that allows the spare processing power in a PC to be used to fight diseases and study climate change.

The massive amount of data crunching necessary for high level research is often extremely expensive or not readily available--or both. Intel's solution is Progress Thru Processors, a computing application built on the Facebook platform that allows people to donate their PC's available data processing capacity to research … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--How will a shift in carbon reduction play out with the world's poor? This is an issue The World Bank is grappling with as it prepares for the international climate change summit in Copenhagen this December.

Katherine Sierra, the vice president for sustainable development at The World Bank, and Awais Khan, the director of KPMG's Clean Tech Venture Capital Practice, spoke on this topic Tuesday here at the Commonwealth Club.

Along with higher temperatures, climate change is causing rising sea levels, shifts in rain/snow patterns, and an increase in weather-related natural disasters. Although the impact is … Read more