Tagged: climate change

Wondering how much carbon dioxide is being emitted in your country, state, county or Congressional district? I  just came across a cool database produced by CARMA (Carbon Monitoring for Action) that has all of that information.

The Louisville Free Public Library is launching a new series called "What's Next" to look at important issues coming up in the future. The first lecture in the series? A discussion about climate change.

From the news release:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has designated another 68 Kentucky counties, including Jefferson, as drought disaster areas.

With the new drought declaration, Bell, Harlan, Leslie and Perry counties are the only Kentucky counties not officially in a drought. These counties are all clustered in the southeast part of the state.

University of Kentucky meteorologist Matt Dixon says the drought has been months in the making.

A recent deal to send millions of tons of Appalachian coal to India could bring billions of dollars to Kentucky coal producers over the next twenty-five years. But it’s not very good news for climate change.

The deal will ship up to nine million tons of Appalachian coal to India for the next 25 years. This is a lot of coal—nine million tons is actually about equivalent to the amount of coal purchased by the state of Virginia in 2010.

The Associated Press reports that the amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere is at the lowest level in two decades. The information is from the Energy Information Administration, and though the story doesn’t mention this, it’s actually just a measure of the CO2 being released by the nation’s energy sector.

Government officials are pointing to a drop in coal burning and an increase in natural gas for the decline.

Louisville’s Air Pollution Control District is taking a look at Louisville’s rising temperature. In a meeting today, board members discussed the city’s declining tree cover and how a lack of protective legislation is contributing to the problem.

Louisville recently placed first on a list of fifty cities suffering from rising temperatures. Georgia Tech University Professor Brian Stone described the city as the “climate change center of the United States.” 

It's official: last month's heat wave (which cooked Louisville as well as most other states in the region) was the hottest ever on record in the continental U.S. According to an Associated Press story, this beats the record set during the Dust Bowl in the 1930s.