The Congressional Research Service produces expert nonpartisan backgrounders on many subjects of interest to environment and energy journalists. But Congress won't release them. Thanks to the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy, you can read them now.
"In the course of a 17-year experiment on more than 1 million plants, scientists put future global warming to a real world test — growing California flowers and grasslands with extra heat, carbon dioxide and nitrogen to mimic a not-so-distant, hotter future. The results, simulating a post-2050 world, aren't pretty. And they contradict those who insist that because plants like carbon dioxide — the main heat-trapping gas spewed by the burning of fossil fuels — climate change isn't so bad, and will result in a greener Earth."
"In the Northwest Pacific, already a hotspot for tropical cyclones, the storms that strike East and Southeast Asia have been intensifying more than those that stay out at sea over the last four decades, a new study finds."
"U.S. companies that have expressed the most fervent public support for President Barack Obama’s environmental agenda are also funding its biggest enemies - the scores of U.S. lawmakers who are climate change skeptics and oppose regulation to combat it, according to a Reuters review of public records."
For the latest installment of Between the Lines, an author Q & A, SEJournal book editor Tom Henry interviewed award-winning children’s nature book author Lynne Cherry, best known for“The Great Kapok Tree,” which sold more than a million copies and became a staple in elementary schools. Cherry speaks about her career, as well as her longstanding collaboration with the late Gary Braasch, a renowned photojournalist and past SEJ member who passed away March 7.
"The United States has joined China to formally ratify the Paris agreement to curb climate-warming emissions, the world's two biggest economies said on Saturday, which could help put the pact into force before the end of the year."
"Pope Francis has called for urgent action to stop climate change and proposed that caring for the environment be added to traditional Christian works of mercy such as feeding the hungry and visiting the sick."
"California will spend $900 million in revenues raised by its cap-and-trade program for carbon emissions and hold back $462 million for later under a deal reached yesterday by Gov. Jerry Brown (D) and Senate and Assembly leaders."
"President Barack Obama snorkeled on Thursday in the electric-blue water off Midway Atoll, a remote coral reef that serves as a reminder of both modern global climate challenges and the United State's dominance in the Pacific since its World War Two victory there."
"The chairman of the House Science Committee has announced a hearing next month into the refusal by two state attorneys general to comply with subpoenas seeking information on their investigations into ExxonMobil."
Advertisement 
