![Smokestacks [CREDIT: Global Climate Budget 2018]](https://images.hgmsites.net/tmb/smokestacks-credit-global-climate-budget-2018_100682094_t.gif)
A new UN report on global climate change isn't quite as dire as one it issued last October. That special report on warming of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) showed that the effects of climate change could become catastrophic by 2040, at least 10 years earlier than scientists had predicted. Another report in December by private energy... UN global climate report restores hope, lays out roadmap
A new UN report on global climate change isn't quite as dire as one it issued last October. That special report on warming of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) showed that the effects of climate change could become catastrophic by 2040, at least 10 years earlier than scientists had predicted. Another report in December by private energy... 
As Volkswagen ramps up to build a new generation of mass-market electric vehicles in the aftermath of its diesel scandal, regulators and environmental groups will likely be paying close attention to their emissions—especially the emissions created in making them. The Financial Times, in a Sunday report, presented some interesting pieces of... 
For some, the evidence of global warming is hard to accept, especially when it has been difficult to draw the link between individual storms and an increase in atmospheric greenhouse gasses. Now a new study by a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University has done just that. By studying the pattern of the jet stream, Professor Michael Mann... 
With automotive emissions regulations again coming under political pressure, we thought we'd re run this Earth Day question from 2014 in an attempt to answer the question: Why all the fuss? Why do we still focus on green cars some 40 years after the EPA imposed the most significant emissions limits on cars? We hope it will provoke thought engender... 
![EPA administrator Scott Pruitt [photo from 2014]](https://images.hgmsites.net/tmb/oklahoma-attorney-general-scott-pruitt-2014_100584650_t.gif)
Despite the sturm und drang around the announcement by embattled EPA chief Scott Pruitt that he will relax emission limits for 2022 through 2025 vehicles, not much will happen immediately. His determination last week that the Obama administration was "incorrect" and that the limits on those vehicles weren't needed kicks off a lengthy process of... 
President Trump has taken a lot of flack for pulling out of the Paris climate accords, claiming they were a bad deal for the country he leads. Perversely, the problem with the global climate treaty may not be that Trump's action made the potential for devastation worse, but rather that the effects of climate change are already on track to be so... 
While the name of EPA administrator Scott Pruitt is often preceded by "embattled" these days, his agency is now on record as rejecting its own recommendation of just 16 months ago. It concluded in July 2016 that the auto industry had handily met lower carbon-emission limits from 2012 through 2017—at lower cost and with more conventional... 
EPA administrator Scott Pruitt would be controversial even if he hadn't flown to Morocco in December (first-class, on the taxpayer dime) to lobby the country on the benefits of liquified natural gas while living in a condo owned by a lobbyist for the country's largest LNG exporter. He is likely the first EPA head to axe scientists from the... 
Last Tuesday, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt said the agency does not intend to let California set the agenda for national emission limits on vehicles. He suggested to Bloomberg the EPA plans to cut emission rules aggressively to respond to carmakers' pleas for easing of the corporate average fuel economy rules for 2022 through 2025 that they had... 
![Exhaust emissions from tailpipe [photo: Simone Ramella, 2005, used under Creative Commons 2.0]](https://images.hgmsites.net/tmb/exhaust-emissions-from-tailpipe-photo-simone-ramella-2005-used-under-creative-commons-2-0_100644014_t.gif)
Well, that's awkward. At its annual media briefing on Wednesday, Volkswagen Group executives said the costs of meeting new emission tests in the EU, lowering carbon emissions globally, and launching multiple new electric models would eat into the company's profits. With the company's diesels in disfavor even in Europe and unlikely to reappear in... 
The first major emission controls on motor vehicles were introduced in 1975 with the advent of the catalytic converter. Today's cars emit less than 1 percent of the three "criteria" pollutants that came out of their tailpipes half a century ago. They emit relatively so little carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and hydrocarbons that the collective... 
![Electric-car wells-to-wheels emission equivalencies in MPG, Mar 2018 [Union of Concerned Scientists]](https://images.hgmsites.net/tmb/electric-car-wells-to-wheels-emission-equivalencies-in-mpg-mar-2018-union-of-concerned-scientists_100646029_t.gif)
More good news about electric cars in the U.S.: the emissions associated with the electricity used to charge them have fallen. Again. Based on the latest data on powerplant emissions from the EPA, an electric car on the road in the U.S. now has average emissions as low as an 80-mpg car. DON'T MISS: Electric cars cleaner than any gas-only car for... 
![Global carbon dioxide emissions, 1850-2030 [CO2 Information Analysis Center, World Energy Outlook]](https://images.hgmsites.net/tmb/global-carbon-dioxide-emissions-1850-2030-co2-information-analysis-center-world-energy-outlook_100631742_t.gif)
The most recent detailed studies on the likely warming of Planet Earth are grim indeed, suggesting that we are collectively at "very high risk" for the most extreme effects of climate change. To stem that, mankind collectively will have to reduce its ongoing emissions of carbon dioxide radically and immediately. Now, one longtime advocate of... 
It is now abundantly clear that the Trump administration in the U.S. is staffed with climate-science denialists and committed promoters for the greater extraction, sale, and combustion of fossil fuels. That includes coal, the dirtiest major fossil fuel of them all, with the highest emissions of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour when used to... 
The processes of climate change don't care about politics. Or economics. Or public sentiment about science. Last December, an analysis showed the most accurate climate-science models to date predicted the worst effects in future years. Now, two more grim assessments have arrived. DON'T MISS: Most-accurate climate-change models suggest worst... 
It's been clear that under the Trump administration, the NHTSA and EPA plan to roll back linked fuel-economy rules and emission limits on new vehicles. Now a possible justification that will be used has emerged—and it's not the one many advocates had expected. According to a Bloomberg report on Monday, the fuel-economy proposal due March 30... 
Today, there are roughly 750,000 plug-in electric vehicles on U.S. roads and about 3,800 powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Proponents of each type of vehicle argue strenuously that their powertrain is a better way to produce vehicles with zero emissions from the tailpipe. Electric cars can be charged at home overnight, and electricity in many areas...