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California may give natural gas suppliers all of their CO2 permits for free - News - Point Carbon

SAN FRANCISCO, July 16 (Reuters Point Carbon) – California’s natural gas suppliers will be given all of the carbon allowances they need to comply with the state’s cap-and-trade program when it expands to cover them in 2015, although they will be required to use their value to protect ratepayers from higher rates, according to a new proposal.

Could Living as a Virtual Cow Make You Go Vegan? | Motherboard

Stanford researcher Jeremy Bailenson and his colleagues at the Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL) are transforming people into cows. Participants in their immersive virtual reality programs not only see themselves as bovines in a virtual mirror, but they also get virtually poked with cattle prods and eventually are helplessly dragged to the virtual slaughterhouse.

Superficially, this might seem a little bizarre, but there is a purpose: Bailenson hopes that by spending a few moments in a cow’s hooves, his subjects will gain a sense of empathy about what the animals experience. The implications, from his point of view, are huge: this empathy may translate into people eating less meat, which in turn translates into less energy consumption. By making climate change, an otherwise “slow, gradual, and nonlinear” process, seem more immediate and consequential, these experiments can alter human behavior.

Is Climate Change Action Doomed? - YouTube

[At the 56-second mark, Cara Santa Maria says "The world has not been this warm since 3-5 million years ago"]

CIA Backs $630,000 Scientific Study on Controlling Global Climate | Mother Jones

The Central Intelligence Agency is funding a scientific study that will investigate whether humans could use geoengineering to alter Earth's environment and stop climate change. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) will run the 21-month project, which is the first NAS geoengineering study financially supported by an intelligence agency. With the spooks' money, scientists will study how humans might influence weather patterns, assess the potential dangers of messing with the climate, and investigate possible national security implications of geoengineering attempts.