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Stopping Congressional Attacks on the Clean Air Act

It’s a shame that so many in Congress are more concerned about Big Oil and King Coal than they are about public health and our children’s future – sadly, that’s what we’ve seen unfold over the past 24 hours, as the Senate voted on legislation attacking the Clean Air Act. The House is expected to […]

Clean Energy: It’s Complicated

“American ingenuity” is the key to developing renewable energy resources, said President Obama last week, in his address on energy policy. That is surely true, and here in San Francisco, there are many examples of ingenuity being deployed to good effect. But ingenuity alone is not enough. Our electricity regulatory system is in need of […]

2012 Election: Newt Gingrich Talks Energy in New Hampshire

Cross posted from New Hampshire Primary 2012: Green Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was back in New Hampshire on Monday, where he shared his views on cellulosic biofuels and oil drilling in North Dakota with local talk show host Al Kulas: Al: “You mentioned in your talk that in Iowa unemployment was 2% because everybody […]

Climate change breaks NASA temperature chart

The temperature anomaly in the Arctic — the amount that current temperatures differ from historical norms — is now so severe that NASA's James Hansen had to add a new color to his charts in order to accurately depict it: Hot pink. In other words, last winter the Arctic was more than 10 degrees C […]

Why does Washington DC have so many more deficit hawks than climate hawks?

The GOP is launching yet another massive assault on future generations today, proposing deep cuts in the clean energy solutions that are central to averting catastrophic climate change.  Many of the ideas in the GOP’s ‘austerity budget for the poor and middle class’ are typically considered political suicide — like gutting Medicare.  And they may […]

Yes, wind and wave power are renewable; New Scientist pulls a Charlie Sheen

In the annals of absurdly sexed up science stories crying for attention like, oh, some addled TV star, we have a new contender.  The once-excellent New Scientist, which has started running seriously flawed climate stories, as we’ve seen, now runs this stunner: Wind and wave energies are not renewable after all Build enough wind farms […]

Salazar blasts Gulf disaster company Transocean for touting “best year in safety”

On Friday, Transocean, the company that operated the infamous Deepwater Horizon oil rig, told its shareholders that it gave its executives multi-million-dollar bonuses based on the company’s “best year in safety performance.” CAP’s Kristen Bartoloni has the what-were-they-thinking story of week. Today, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar lashed out at the global offshore drilling company, which […]

Like a magnifying glass to ants, concentrating PV a cost-effective distributed solar option

This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. Concentrating solar typical fills people energy nerds with visions of large fields of mirrors focusing sunlight to make heat/steam/electricity, but concentration technology is also available for photovoltaics (PV).  In fact, using lenses to focus sun onto […]

WattsUpWithThat: Psychic seals have evolved ability to predict future climate

On March 21, the ’science’ blogger Anthony Watts actually published the following headline story and lede: Canadian Harp Seals In New England (“prediction” of cooling?) Yes, Watts is suggesting that Canadian Harp Seals are psychic, or, technically, have developed precognition — although a bizarre form of precognition whereby they incorrectly predict the future based on discredited […]

Friday music blogging: G. Love

I have very distinct memories of the moment in time when G. Love & Special Sauce came out. It was May 1994, just as I was graduating from college, and it was part of my life’s soundtrack as I left Tennessee behind and set out for Bozeman, Montana, where, er, adventures ensued. G. Love got […]