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Today, Purdue University students, community members, faculty, alumni and staff breathed a sigh of relief as the Board of Trustees voted to nix plans to build a new coal boiler on campus.  For nearly a year, a broad coalition including Campuses Beyond Coal fought the university’s plans to build a new coal boiler on campus, and today their hard work paid off. 

Prior to today’s cancellation, Purdue was the only university in the United States that still planned to expand its coal power plant.  While school officials touted the upgrade as “green”, students, activists and community members weren’t convinced.  They feared that University officials were keen to cling to the “coal is clean” myth while other universities were leading the shift to cleaner power sources. (The coal industry cooked up the “clean coal” myth and continues trying to convince the public through a $40 million astroturf advertising and PR campaign by organizations like the “American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity”.  But the public, especially young people, are seeing right through the industry’s propaganda.)

Purdue was initially hesitant to revisit its plans.  But effective grassroots organizers at the university and in the community hosted protests, rallies, and several events to convince the school to move away from its reliance on dirty coal.  

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A year ago, these groups seemed to be at the peak of their influence, needing only the Senate’s approval for a landmark climate-change bill. But they lost that fight, done in by the sluggish economy and opposition from business and fossil-fuel interests.

Now the groups are wondering how they can keep this loss from becoming a rout as their opponents press their advantage and try to undo the Obama administration’s climate efforts. At two events last week in Wisconsin, environmental groups seemed to be trying two strategies: defiance and pleading for sympathy.Neither one drew enough people to fill a high school gym.

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Among the many conservative think tanks faithfully pushing the skeptic message in Washington, D.C., few are as prominent—or, should I say, infamous—as the Heartland Institute. The “independent” research and non-profit group has the dubious distinction of having organized the first major denier-palooza, the “International Conference on Climate Change,” last year. Despite a less than stellar showing, and an even more lukewarm follow-up in March, it’s hoping that the third time will be the charm.

The likes of Senator James Inhofe, Lord Christopher Monckton and Anthony Watts will be descending on the Washington Court Hotel this week to discuss the “widespread dissent to the asserted “consensus” on the causes, consequences, and proper responses to climate change.” Its ostensible purpose will be to “expose Congressional staff and journalists to leading scientists and economists in the nation’s capital” and demonstrate that “global warming is not a crisis and that immediate action to reduce emissions is not necessary”—which it calls the emerging consensus view of (the handful of) scientists outside the IPCC.

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Scientists have said that a controversial experiment has “dampened hopes” that dumping hundreds of tonnes of dissolved iron in the Southern Ocean can lessen global warming.The experiment involved “fertilising” a 115-sqare-mile area of ocean with six tonnes of dissolved iron. As expected, this stimulated growth of tiny planktonic algae or phytoplankton. However, the scientists did not count on these phytoplankton being eaten by tiny crustacean zooplankton.

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The party’s over, we had us a time..
We burned all the kindling…
Watched the last coals dwindling
And the ice melting down…

— Eliza Gilkyson

Is the party over?

According to a new study by scientists at the NSICD (National Snow and Ice Data Centre), there’s a good chance that Arctic sea ice has melted beyond the point of no return.

Joseph Romm points us to a story in today’s edition of the UK’s Independent.  The news is not good:

Scientists have found the first unequivocal evidence that the Arctic region is warming at a faster rate than the rest of the world at least a decade before it was predicted to happen.

Climate-change researchers have found that air temperatures in the region are higher than would be normally expected during the autumn because the increased melting of the summer Arctic sea ice is accumulating heat in the ocean. The phenomenon, known as Arctic amplification, was not expected to be seen for at least another 10 or 15 years and the findings will further raise concerns that the Arctic has already passed the climatic tipping-point towards ice-free summers, beyond which it may not recover.

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As forecast, China has overtaken the U.S. in carbon-dioxide emissions due largely to China’s heavy reliance on coal. Another factor is its well-publicized population of 1.3 billion. But per-capita emissions are much higher in developed countries, where populations are exploding due to immigration. The U.S. already releases four times the carbon per-capita each year as China. And the U.S. population, which has been doubling every 40 years, is headed for one billion by the end of this century!