Biggest U.S. offshore wind farm planned for Texas coast Yesterday, officials approved a plan to build the biggest offshore wind farm in the U.S. off the coast of Padre Island, Texas. Say it with us now: everything's bigger in Texas. Superior Renewable Energy LLC plans to erect as many as 170 turbines, with the capacity to power about 125,000 homes. Some conservation groups are up in arms, as the farm will be built in a major migratory route for several rare birds, but SRE vice prez Michael Hansen said the firm would study bird migration patterns and use turbine blades …

Pipeline explosion kills up to 200 in Nigeria Between 150 and 200 Nigerians were instantly incinerated when locals siphoning gasoline from an overground pipeline near Lagos, Nigeria, caused an explosion today. Nigeria is the biggest oil producer in Africa and the fourth-largest supplier of crude oil to the U.S.; as a consequence, it's become quite wealthy. But in keeping with the notorious "resource curse," that wealth is not widely shared. Most of the country's citizens are poor and desperate, and attempts to siphon off gas and oil from pipelines are common. In other news, citizens of the wealthiest country in …

So, it seems they're going to build the nation's largest wind farm off the coast of Padre Island in Texas. Environmentalists are up in arms about ... wait for it ... the birds. Oy. This bit from Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson is amusing: "Those who are concerned about view sheds shouldn't have a problem," he said. "There's nobody there to look at it." Nice bank shot! Speaking of view sheds and wind farms, I confess I haven't been following the latest drama over the much-discussed Cape Wind project all that closely, cause it makes me want to pull my …

In the same vein as the half-pint shill with a skateboard who's "stoked" about how clean coal is, this greenwash site for Peabody Coal tries to appeal to the bumpersticker platitude crowd in its latest ad: ENERGY FOR THE 21st CENTURY Flip a switch. Play a tune. Warm your home. Fuel your car. Yeah ... coal can do that. And really, what can't coal do? Insipidity and people's high tolerance for it never cease to amaze. But the technologies and promises for a bright, clean future don't reflect the costs being incurred right now. So I thought of another ad …

Canada is totally over the Kyoto Protocol O, Canada. What are we going to do with you? Besides invade when oil gets too expensive, we mean. Canuck greenhouse-gas emissions are 35 percent above Kyoto targets, and Environment Minister Rona Ambrose has declared that to meet them, Canada would have to cease using all trains, planes, and automobiles. (Great flick, by the way -- thanks for John Candy.) The country's newly elected Conservative government has already indicated they're just not that into Kyoto. Next week, Ambrose is due to chair an international meeting on how to strengthen the protocol; yesterday, a …

Oil leaks all over everything Oil, oil everywhere! And not in a good way. In its dubiously named Sustainability Report, oil behemoth Royal Dutch Shell reports that oil spills at its facilities rose 50 percent from 2004 to 2005. Hurricane damage was responsible for a goodly portion of the spillage, and sabotage of a major pipeline in Nigeria didn't help either. The amount of oil spilled leapt from 6,724 tons to 9,921 tons. We would advise not trying to convert that to a mental picture. Nor this: a ship that sank off the coast of Freeport, Texas, in 1976 has …

Pollutants contribute to Arctic warming some more The Arctic climate is already sensitive to global warming; now it turns out human pollutants are kicking it -- or rather, warming it more -- while it's down. According to a new study in Nature, particulate pollution (mostly from cities in Europe) changes the size and number of water droplets in clouds above the Arctic, increasing their ability to trap heat. On particularly hazy days, especially in the winter when there's little precipitation to wash out pollutants, the effect causes the Arctic surface to grow 2 to 3 degrees warmer than it would …

The New York Times is running an interesting article called "The High Cost of Cheap Gas and Vice Versa." The author calculates the current average cost of driving at 15 cents a mile, up from 6.6 cents in 1998, and down from 20.1 cents in 1980 (in 2006 dollars). He also puts up a cost-per-mile calculator, in case your math skills have deteriorated since you last took the SAT. My colleague JP Ross tells me that a Toyota Prius in electric-only mode uses .26 kWh to go a mile. If you are filling up with peak electricity rates, say 12 …

Dear Umbra, I love the scientific ins and outs, really I do, but what oh what can we do about global warming? And I mean us ordinary folks with a house and mortgage and some percentage point of kids and a few compact fluorescents and maybe even a hybrid in the driveway. We're right there with you, so please don't leave us hanging. Peter Kelley College Park, Md. Dearest Peter, Right. Sorry. I got frowny last month, and forgot to put a "we can do it!" sheen on everything. (Which reminds me -- has anyone else noticed that everything in …

China builds new airports; still not as pollutey as U.S. China plans to build 48 new airports in the next five years, spending $17.5 billion on construction and continuing expansion of existing hubs. The country is already the premier buyer of Boeing and Airbus planes, and has vowed to buy 100 planes every year until 2010. (For perspective: China's new hubs will bring its total to 190 airports, serving a population of 1.3 billion people -- a far cry from the U.S., where more than 10,000 airports serve less than a quarter that many people.) Expansion of the energy-sucking, pollution-spewing, …