Some coal-industyry front groups have begin a campaign to frighten Penn State into cancelling a speech by climate scientist Michael Mann -- who will be talking about coal industry efforts to silence climate scientists. Penn State has refused.
Oct. 17-21, 2012 in Lubbock. Find multimedia coverage here. It's never too late to send us your story links for inclusion. If you attended the conference, we would love your feedback; please complete our online survey. The Texas Observer published on Dec. 11 a deeply flawed story about SEJ's 2012 conference. Please go here for SEJ's formal response through letters to the Observer's editor and publisher, from SEJ President Don Hopey and Board Member Roger Witherspoon, setting the record straight, as well as replies received from Texas Observer editor Dave Mann. © Photo: Communicating Climate Change plenary by Lindsey Hoshaw.
"TIME has learned that between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club accepted over $25 million in donations from the gas industry, mostly from Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy—one of the biggest gas drilling companies in the U.S. and a firm heavily involved in fracking—to help fund the Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.
"Insurance commissioners in California, New York and Washington State will require that companies disclose how they intend to respond to the risks their businesses and customers face from increasingly severe storms and wildfires, rising sea levels and other consequences of climate change, California’s commissioner said Wednesday."
"Half the authors of a controversial Wall Street Journal opinion piece denying the Earth's warming trend have ties to the oil and gas industry, a DailyClimate.org investigation finds."
NOAA, the USFWS, and the NY State Dept. of Environmental Conservation (representing all state and wildlife agencies) released on Jan. 19, 2012, a draft of the first national strategy for responding to climate change effects on plants, fish and wildlife. The public comment period is open until March 5, 2012, and public meetings and a webinar will occur until Feb. 22, 2012.
Finally, after numerous delays amid allegations of political interference by people who don't want to see documented evidence of climate shifts, the wait is over. The new detailed interactive map is based on data from 1976-2005, and is the first official revision since the 1990 update.
The American Horticultural Society and the National Arbor Day Foundation offer generalized hardiness maps as a starting point, until the US Department of Agriculture gets around to unveiling its own update.
One day, EPA may propose rules for regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and petroleum refineries. But the process continues to drag out, with the consent of the state and local governments and environmental advocacy groups that have been litigating for about five years to make the agency take action.
TV weathercasters, who are not trained in climate science, are often misleading many members of the public into doubting the well-established science which indicates that human activities are warming the planet.
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