Uncategorized

Monbiot on nuclear

George Monbiot writes a column about nuclear power and conditions under which he would not oppose it.

1972 Datsun dominates drag strip

I put up a post in March of 2007 titled Electric cars: Going nowhere fast. It contained photos of electric cars available at the time. Erik Hoffner sent me this link in an email the other day. Coincidentally I ran across this same clip while channel surfing on TV that same night.

Conversions may outstrip production cars in the not too distant future, if somebody out there would just give us the battery we need at prices that we can afford. I've got my eye on this company.

Also, we need new resources …

"The time for implacable opposition, for going it alone, has passed. We need new approaches and greater adaptability if we are to achieve acceptance of fossil fuels as sustainable resources."

-- ConocoPhillips CEO James Mulva [PDF]

Geoengineering what?

China fires chemicals into the clouds to try to stimulate rain to end the drought. Days later, a huge and unexpected snowfall closes the highways into and out of the northern provinces, effectively shutting off economic activity.

Discuss.

Heading to Denmark in December? Book a room now

The average December in Copenhagen has 17 days of rain and a temperature of 2 to 4 degrees Celsius. So, those readers planning to travel there for the U.N. Climate Change Conference at the end of this year will want to book a warm, dry bed for recovering from all the talking, negotiating, talking about […]

Friday music blogging: Slumdog Millionaire

In honor of the Academy Awards, here's a song from the odds-on favorite to win Best Picture: Slumdog Millionaire.

I've had somewhat mixed feelings about the movie itself. I enjoyed it immensely while I was watching it (how could you not?). Later I read a bunch of grumpy backlash -- it's manipulative; it romanticizes poverty; the female character is inert; etc. -- and found myself revising my original assessment. And later still, I said to myself, you know what? Screw you grumpy backlashers. It was a fairy tale, an effort to marry the exuberance of Bollywood with independent American filmmaking; social realism wasn't the point. It was a celebration of life and transcendence amidst suffering, and I'm by-god going to trust my gut and love it.

(Yes, I'm extremely neurotic.)

One thing was never in doubt, though: the music is awesome. It is absolutely an essential character in the movie, as much a polyglot, life-affirming mess as the film itself. It's easily one of the best soundtracks of the last five years, and one of my favorite albums of the year. Incidentally, the producer, A.R. Rahman, is an enormous international celebrity -- but no one in America knows his name. Hopefully this album will change that.

While we're at it, we might as well use this thread for Oscar thoughts and predictions. Who are you rooting for/against? What are your predictions? Did you see any of the movies this year?

Chu creates team to distribute stimulus cash 'wisely but also quickly'

Greenwire ($ub. req'd) reports:

The Energy Department has created a "special organization" to distribute $40 billion contained in the economic stimulus package for energy projects, Secretary Steven Chu said today.

"It's a challenge and something we take very seriously: how to spend that money wisely but also quickly," Chu told reporters after speaking at DOE's National Electricity Delivery Forum in Washington. Chu said he has assembled a team to start streamlining ways of delivering the cash. "We are looking at everything," he said.

Leading the advisory team is Matt Rogers, director at McKinsey & Co.'s San Francisco office, Chu said. Rogers consults in many fields, including electric power, oil and gas, and private equity, as well as strategic transformations for industrial companies. Rogers is also a leader of McKinsey's North American Petroleum Practice.

This is a very encouraging sign that the administration takes this seriously, since they have a staggering amount of clean tech to deploy (see here). The story continues:

Urgent letter from Bo Webb on Coal River

Bo Webb, a Vietnam veteran and Coal River Mountain resident in West Virginia, just penned this urgent appeal to President Obama. His family's homeplace, dating back to the 1820s, is being rattled by explosives from mountaintop removal operators today. This letter bears witness to the terror of mountaintop removal on American citizens.

Every American should be forwarded this letter, and then they should go to ilovemountains.org, put in their zip code, and see if their coal-fired plant electricity comes from coal stripped from West Virginia. And then they should contact their member of Congress to support the Clean Water Protection Act.

-----

Dear Mr. President,

As I write this letter, I brace myself for another round of nerve-wracking explosives being detonated above my home in the mountains of West Virginia. Outside my door, pulverized rock dust laden with diesel fuel and ammonium nitrate explosives hovers in the air, along with the residual of heavy metals that once lay dormant underground. The mountain above me, once a thriving forest, has been blasted into a pile of rock and mud rubble. Two years ago, it was covered with rich black top soil and abounded with hardwood trees, rhododendrons, ferns and flowers. The under-story thrived with herbs such as ginseng, black cohosh, yellow root, and many other medicinal plants. Black bears, deer, wild turkey, hawks, owls, and thousands of birds lived here. The mountain contained sparkling streams teeming with aquatic life and fish.

Now it is all gone. It is all dead. I live at the bottom of a mountain top removal coal mining operation in the Peachtree community.

Mr. President Obama, I am writing you because we have simply run out of options. Last week, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court in Richmond, Va. overturned a federal court ruling for greater environmental restrictions on mountaintop removal permits. Dozens of permits now stand to be rushed through. As you know, last December, the EPA under George W. Bush allowed an 11th hour change to the stream buffer zone rule, further unleashing the coal companies to do as they please.

States agree to mercury treaty talks

NAIROBI — More than 140 countries agreed Friday to launch negotiations establishing a treaty on mercury to limit pollution affecting millions of people across the world, the UN environment body said. They also agreed an interim plan to curb pollution while awaiting the treaty because “the risk to human health was so significant that accelerated […]

… and all we got were ‘clean energy’ promises …

Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper get dual climate fingers this week for a thoroughly disappointing meeting in Ottawa on Thursday. Rather than coming forward with fightin’ words on climate change, the two promised to talk about talking about global warming a “clean energy dialog” that commits senior officials from both countries to […]