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Finally, Roger Pielke Jr. admits he supports policies that will take us to 5-7°C warming

Roger Pielke, Jr. is usually very hard to pin down. But at least it is now plain for everyone to see that his climate policies are no different from Bjorn Lomborg’s, or George Bush’s for that matter (see Bush climate speech follows Luntz playbook: “Technology, technology, blah, blah, blah”). Following Pielke’s “specific policies” would inevitably […]

End of year musings on coal and its competitors

Some thoughts as we get closer to a new energy policy. Our total U.S. electric grid has a peak capacity of just over 1,000 GW. (That’s 1 billion kilowatts or, if you prefer, enough to power 10 billion hundred-watt light bulbs.) Of that total, here’s what we’ve installed just since 1995: ~200 MW of solar […]

New anti-coal ads repeat mistakes

The anti-clean-coal Reality Campaign is a coalition of some very serious groups and smart people. They have the same goal that all CSAs (climate science advocates) do, namely to stop building new dirty coal plants (and presumably to start shutting down existing ones). But I just don’t think they have figured out an effective way […]

Homo mitigation

Pope: Protecting tropical rainforests from climate change is important, but not as important as protecting humanity from TEH GAY!

Editing is really a good thing for the blogosphere

There is a kerfuffle in the blogosphere because Matt Yglesias’ employer forced a post into the blog Matt writes that disclaims something Matt said about a group called Third Way. And there are good reasons for raised eyebrows. It’s the wrong way to make such a disclaimer. The Center for American Progress could have asked […]

Evidence that Antarctica has warmed significantly over past 50 years

Scientists know the Antarctic ice sheet is losing mass “100 years ahead of schedule” (see here and here). Now, as Nature‘s climate blog reports, two studies presented last week at the AGU meeting document what should not be a surprise, but still is. New research suggests “the entire Antarctic continent may have warmed significantly over […]

The VC models are to blame, not the green technologies

It’s worth reviewing this great presentation from the folks at @Ventures: [vodpod id=Video.16097730&w=425&h=350&fv=] If they’re right — as I believe they are — we are soon going to see lots of greentech venture capital funds lose money. Given the potential for that loss to be skewed as “green technologies aren’t profitable” rather than “greentech VCs […]

Grist predicted the ass-fat trend that could land one Beverly Hills doc in the slammer

Back when I was a Grist underling intern, I wrote a piece about the world’s strangest biofuel sources, including, ahem, ass fat. Now it appears that using that trunk junk to power your car is not only gag-worthy, but also illegal. Beverly Hills doctor Craig Alan Bittner is under investigation for using his patients’ flab […]

Giant pond of coal ash escapes, floods Tennessee homes

A giant flood of coal ash — the toxic sludge left over after coal burning — broke through an earthen retaining wall at a plant in Harriman, Tenn., Monday. Five hundred million gallons of nastiness flowed into tributaries of the Tennessee River and inundated a dozen nearby homes. Either Santa has it out for Harriman […]

TVA coal disaster is toxic wake-up call

An estimated 500 million gallons of coal-ash sludge are seeping along the I-40 Knoxville-Nashville corridor in eastern Tennessee, after an earthen wall gave way on Dec. 22 at the TVA Harriman coal-fired plant. While no casualties were reported, the coal-ash spill — the refuse left over after the plant burns the coal — should be […]