Linked: aerosol pollutants and rainfall patterns | Watts Up With That?

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – Increases in air pollution and other particulate matter in the atmosphere can strongly affect cloud development in ways that reduce precipitation in dry regions or seasons, while increasing rain, snowfall and the intensity of severe storms in wet regions or seasons, says a new study by a University of Maryland-led team of researchers.

The research provides the first clear evidence of how aerosols — soot, dust and other small particles in the atmosphere — can affect weather and climate; and the findings have important economic and water resource implications for regions across the United States and around the world, say the researchers and other scientists.

The chemistry of ocean pH and “acidification” « JoNova: Science, carbon, climate and tax

Ocean life evolved and survived far higher levels of CO2 for millions of years in the past.

Rent-Seeker Glee: It Did Not Begin with Solyndra (remembering Enron’s triumphant Kyoto Memo) — MasterResource

Kids in the taxpayer candy store. That describes the heady days when Solyndra executives and lobbyists gleefully found out that the politicians loved their speculative, defective product. It turns out that Solyndra was a photo-op for President Obama and his “dream ‘green’ team”–one that may well end up being their undoing. (Does Obama use the term ‘green jobs’ anymore?.)

Enron was the canary in the renewable-energy coal mine. Ken Lay had a vision for Enron to become the world’s leading renewable energy company, part of the company’s green and Corporate Social Responsibility imaging.

Al Fin: Science: Heretics as Heroes & Why Peer Review is F*cked Up

Modern science is badly inbred and constipated in areas of funding, review, publishing, tenure, and scientific organisations and conferences. Being an intelligent and scrupulous heretic in today's world is a lesson in institutional corruption in high places.

But that is no reason to give up or sell out. In the world of "new media," there are growing numbers of ways to get one's information out to those who really matter, in the long run. Explore your options and take your best shot.

Clean Energy Has Highest Documented Rate of Return of Any Federal Program, But the WashPost Cluelessly Smears the Effort | ThinkProgress

The United States is an amazing venture capitalist when it comes to clean energy R&D.