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Search giant plans to devote more IT expertise to energy issues

If you're a fan of Google's efforts to encourage energy efficiency and the development of renewable energy (i.e. RechargeIT, Clean Energy 2030, and PowerMeter), get ready for more.

A post on the official Google blog says the company plans to "to put even more engineers and technical talent to work on these issues and problems."

Larry Brilliant, the "chief philanthropy evangelist" at Google.org, offered up that bit of news in a post about a larger change at the Google philanthropy arm -- that Google exec Megan Smith will take over day-to-day management of Google.org, allowing Brilliant to "spend more time motivating policy makers, encouraging public and private partnerships, and generally advocating for the changes that we must make as a global society to solve these problems."

More from Brilliant's post:

In this global economic crisis, the work Google.org is doing, together with our many colleagues around the world, to help develop cheap clean energy, find and fight disease outbreaks before they sweep the globe, and build information platforms for underserved people globally, is more important than ever. We stand behind the commitment made in 2004 to devote 1% of Google's equity and profits to philanthropy, and we will continue to iterate on our philanthropic model to make sure our resources have the greatest possible impact for good.

Eat fried food, save the planet

“You’ll be able to eat fried chicken and save the environment. We’ll be working on our marketing for that …” — former Walmart CEO Lee Scott, discussing the company’s plan to retrofit part of their truck fleet to run on grease from their frying operations

NASA scheduled to launch carbon observatory early Tuesday

  Editor’s Note: The rocket carrying NASA’s Carbon Observatory into orbit failed early Tuesday morning, destroying the satellite. Updates to follow. NASA hopes to start solving one of climate science’s most vexing mysteries Tuesday morning when it launches the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO), its first spacecraft dedicated to measuring atmospheric carbon dioxide. The satellite is […]

If Obama stops dirty coal, as he must, what will replace it? An intro to biomass cofiring

Biomass cofiring will be the focus of a couple of posts since, although rarely-discussed, it is probably the cheapest, easiest, and fastest way to provide new renewable baseload power without having to build any new transmission lines.

I first started analyzing the carbon benefits of cofiring biomass with coal in 1997 when I was overseeing a study by five U.S. national laboratories that examined what an aggressive technology-based strategy built around energy efficiency and renewable energy could achieve in terms of emissions reductions. (See full study here and some history on it by California Energy Commissioner Art Rosenfeld here [PDF].) With supporting analysis done by the Electric Power Research Institute, the Five Lab Study concluded that biomass cofiring was the single biggest potential contributor to near-term greenhouse gas reductions of any renewable energy strategy.

Cofiring is a well demonstrated strategy with multiple benefits. From a practical perspective, most of the existing coal plants are mostly paid off. Plus they are fully permitted and have all the necessary transmission plus they are connected to freight train lines and water supply. Plus this is baseload power. So you avoid all of the problems associated with citing new renewables in the Midwest or Southwest. Cofiring is thus a key near-term strategy for meeting climate goals -- and renewable standards -- in the Midwest and Southeast.

Is the New York Times coverage of global warming fatally flawed?

Two dreadful, tunnel-vision articles in the New York Times suggest the "paper of record" must rethink how it covers the most important issue of our time.

Yes, the NYT has the biggest climate team, but their reporting by stovepipe (rather than by team), renders that staff largely useless. Indeed, it may be less than useless, as these articles make clear.

Let's start with today's front-page story "Severe Drought Adds to Hardships in California" on the state's record drop in snowpack and rainfall. Even though there is abundant science that both impacts are precisely what we would expect from human-caused climate change, reporter Jesse McKinley never mentions the subject at all. Quite the reverse, he opens the piece:

The country's biggest agricultural engine, California's sprawling Central Valley, is being battered by the recession like farmland most everywhere. But in an unlucky strike of nature, the downturn is being deepened by a severe drought that threatens to drive up joblessness, increase food prices and cripple farms and towns.

So not only does McKinley ignore a likely contributor to the drought and snowpack loss, he attributes the whole damn thing to "an unlucky strike of nature."

No wonder the public is not terribly concerned about global warming and fails to understand that humans are changing the climate now. The only surprising thing is that the NYT itself is surprised that the public is under-informed (see here).

The NYT did not make this mistake when it reported on Australia's drought -- because it used team-based reporting (see here). I will return to this point at the end.

Moreover, the impacts California is experiencing are not some obscure or distant prediction of climate change -- they are so well-known and well accepted that even that bastion of climate denial, the Bush administration, not only acknowledged them in a December 2008 U.S. Geological Survey report, Abrupt Climate Change, but warned they may be just around the corner (see here):

In the Southwest, for example, the models project a permanent drying by the mid-21st century that reaches the level of aridity seen in historical droughts, and a quarter of the projections may reach this level of aridity much earlier.

Indeed, these impacts in California should be incredibly well known to the media now that Energy Secretary Stephen Chu has spoken out about them (see here):

Biosphere still being fed to our cars, threatening rainforests

The battle between science and the profit margin is heating up. In case you missed it, the American Association for the Advancement of Science held its annual meeting in Chicago a few Saturdays ago (Al Gore was one of the speakers). This is the same group that publishes the journal Science. Following is an excerpt from a blog post by Erik Stokstad titled Fill 'Er Up With Rainforest [$ub. req'd.]:

Update [2009-2-23 14:46:46 by biodiversivist]: Erik Stokstad just informed me that you don't need a subscription to read the blog.

Two real financial thinkers venture into CNBC fantasy world; comedy ensues

Okay, this is priceless -- and anyone who wants to understand not only our economic calamity but also why we're still screwed has to watch it. Oh, and don't worry -- it's also absolutely, laugh-out-loud hilarious (in a bittter sort of way).

Nouriel Roubini and Nassim Taleb are two of our most trenchant and learned commenters on finance. It's time to start listening to them -- if Obama is serious about running a centrist administration, it's a scandal that he tapped Robin Rubin acolytes Summers and Geithner, not Roubini and Taleb, to run economic policy.

For years, the two men have been making the point that the U.S. economy is way too hinged on debt, speculation, obsession with short-term gain, and philistine optimism -- the very things raised to the level of fetish by the Rubin crowd. Roubini and Taleb predicted a cataclysmic tumbling of the house of cards built on that shaky foundation. They gained a small following, but were widely ignored -- particularly by the TV financial media, which became a craven, self-parodying machine for turning Wall Street and corporate hucksters into folk heroes.

Unforgiving math

"This not a matter of politics or morality or right or wrong. It is simply the unforgiving math of accumulating emissions."

-- U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern, accompanying Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on her first visit to China

Two encouraging signs that global climate treaties might be having the intended effect

Although rumors of its death may be exaggerated, the Kyoto Protocol hasn't so far been anyone's idea of a rip-roaring success. The question remains: is the international treaty fundamentally flawed, or is it a fixer-upper that bureaucrats are slowly tweaking into an effective carbon-fighting regulatory framework?

Two pieces of recent evidence boost the fixer-upper view. The first is a report from a prominent research group suggesting that a large part of the European Union's drop in carbon emissions last year are attributable to the cap.

EU emissions dropped by 3 percent in 2008. According to New Carbon Finance, 40 percent of this drop is due to Kyoto. Another 30 percent is due to the recession. Much of the drop came from a switchover from coal to natural gas.

To be sure, this is a modest improvement. The drop itself is small, and natural gas is still a fossil fuel. Nevertheless, this is how a carbon price works: gradual, steady pressure yields incremental movement toward cleaner technologies. The mechanism appears to be sound, and legislators are presently engaged in the political task of making the cap more stringent.

Life advice from the Oscars

"All my life, I've had the choice between love and hate. I chose love. And now I'm here."

-- A.R. Rahman, winner of two Academy Awards for his music in Slumdog Millionaire