RSS Feed
Author Archive
Keystone XL wasn’t about jobs or the climate — it was all politics
Posted by FiveThirtyEight: Christie Aschwanden on November 7th, 2015
FiveThirtyEight: During Keystone XL’s seven-year review process, the pipeline’s political significance ballooned far beyond its measurable consequences. In partisan narratives, it was often framed as a fight pitting jobs against the climate and energy security against environmental concerns. In reality, the pipeline stood to make little difference in any of these arenas.
On Friday, President Obama announced that he was rejecting TransCanada’s request to build the 1,179-mile Keystone XL pipeline. It would have...
Posted in 
We could see more and more ‘hot droughts’ like California’s
Posted by FiveThirtyEight: Christie Aschwanden on December 15th, 2014
FiveThirtyEight: Last week, California’s dry spell got a temporary reprieve thanks to an onslaught of Pacific storms. But the storms won’t be enough to turn back the state’s drought - one that, researchers say, is the region’s worst in the last 1,200 years.
California’s drought began in late 2011 and rapidly intensified. Reservoirs stand empty, and as of this month, the U.S. Drought Monitor has classified conditions in 79.7 percent of the state as being in “extreme” or “exceptional” drought.
To compare the...