There is a growing enthusiasm for biomass, as pundits like Arne Jungjohann look at small towns in Europe that are able to get 100% of their energy by burning wood and other biomass. But when these cases are presented out of context, I'm afraid some may draw unwarrantedly optimistic conclusions. Biomass power is not, in itself, a bad idea. It was a long time between the invention of fire and the use of anything but biomass to supplement muscle power for humans. Biomass has been part of the power mix for humans since well before our particular human species came into …

David Roberts is right that the anti-renewable right is likely to turn Solyndra into the next "Climategate", an exaggeration of a minor or non-existent scandal into a major attack. One contribution to blunting this would be if "Climate Hawks" would agree on a single talking out of the many true things that could be said. My choice: "If no DOE innovation fails, DOE is being too cautious." My reason for that choice: 1) It is short enough for twitter, with characters left over. 2) Unlike comparisons to military or oil scandals, we are not reinforcing the scandal meme by comparing …

There's a perspective that seems to be gaining ground in the energy policy debate: emissions taxes may not be very effective in fighting global warming, but we should support them anyway. Centrist liberal Kevin Drum's lays it out: My own take is that even if a carbon tax accomplishes only a third of what its supporters hope for, that still makes it a better way of raising revenue than an income tax, a payroll tax, an excise tax, a capital gains tax, a sales tax, or a dividends tax. If I'm going to discourage an activity, even just a little …

Sam Smith at the Progressive Review was taken by a press release that shouted "New gas MPG rules will cost over $6000 per car." Mostly Sam knows that a basic rule of good journalism (as opposed to what the corporate media does) is think a bit about such press releases and looks for the flaws. But this one slipped by him. Let's do the arithmetic. Measure of gas mileage for CAFE purposes over states efficiency slightly, so it would be reasonable to assume that these rules will double mileage to 50 mpg. Right now gas is around $3.50 a gallon. …

I have cancer, but thanks to modern medicine, in terms of health it may be no big deal. The surgeon will use a scalpel to remove a thin layer of tissue from the floor of the mouth along with a tiny bit of the connection to the tongue. Then a laser will cauterize it, minimizing bleeding, killing microorganisms that stray from my mouth into the wound, and sealing off nerve endings, reducing soreness. The  surgeon has  asked me several times not refer to this as a "slice & sear". Since the odds are the cancer is encapsulated, they will send …

Every now and then I see studies that try to estimate the real cost of fossil fuels, what we don't pay up front. Normally they contain numbers that seem unbelievably low to me, like this one from the National Academy of Sciences that was reported on Grist. We blow the tops off mountains, kill miners quickly in accidents and slowly through black lung, pollute massive amounts of water, pollute the air, put mercury into the ecosystem, and on and on. All that only costs $62 billion a year? That's a lot of money, but for the damage we're seeing, it still seems …

A new review of the literature [PDF] by Resources for the Future (RFF) suggests that gas taxes motivate drivers to use less gasoline far more cheaply than auto efficiency standards like the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. There are a number of reasons to be suspicious of this conclusion. In order to argue that CAFE has high costs, the study dismisses the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) [PDF] estimate -- that less than $900 is added to the cost of the average passenger car -- as an "engineering" approach, preferring econometric modeling. There is nothing wrong with modeling …

Environmentalists who want to solve the climate crisis need to stop using institutional barriers and opponents' unfair tactics as an excuse for failure, and instead build a grassroots movement that can overcome both. Such a grassroots movement must put forth exciting, attractive policies to fight climate chaos, rather than limp, pre-compromised proposals nobody can work up enthusiasm for. David Roberts, probably as close to an official voice as Grist magazine has, blames the climate bill failure on five obstacles: 1) The broken Senate, especially the filibuster, 2) The economy, 3) Republican obstructionism, 4) Centrist Democrats, 5) Obama. Brad Plumer at …

Because it has been documented that today's technology could replace all or most fossil fuel consumption with renewable sources[1], the most important focus for writing on technical solutions to the climate crisis is what can be done today. There is too much yammering about "innovation", and not enough attention paid to mature conservation, efficiency and renewable technology we already know how to build, and simply need to deploy. But that does not mean potential technical breakthroughs are unimportant. While conservation and efficiency that save energy are cheaper than today's fossil fuels, renewable sources of heat and electricity are mostly more …

Months after the Waxman-Markey/Kerry-Lieberman bill died, Harry Reid and environmentalists have finally admitted it is dead, and may even be ready to remove its rotting corpse from the living room and give it a decent burial. Though the death was clearly murder by Republicans and "centrist" Democrats, malpractice from mainstream environmental groups helped kill a chance for the climate that a different treatment might have saved. The fundamental error was to try and pass a bill via deal-making rather than grass-roots pressure, partially on the assumption that the Obama administration shared environmentalist priorities, and would spend political capital to pressure …