Latest Articles
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Ford won’t sell 65-mpg diesel car in U.S.
The Ford Fiesta ECOnetic, a small, sporty five-seater that gets an impressive 65 miles per gallon, will the hit the road in November — but only in Europe. “We just don’t think North and South America would buy that many diesel cars,” says Ford America President Mark Fields. The new generation of diesel cars, which […]
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Phoenix NBA team to add solar system to arena’s roof
Going solar is a slam dunk for the Phoenix Suns, who are installing a 196 kW solar system on their arena’s roof. This installation was made possible by the state’s Renewable Energy Standard and Tariff, which was implemented by the state’s Corporation Commission and is currently under threat on several fronts. Arizona’s primary was last […]
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Palin’s ‘energy expertise’
Alaska is basically a petrostate — to the extent oil prices rise, it benefits. Thus politicians in Alaska develop a very sophisticated ability to encourage Alaskan energy exploration and to use the resulting revenue to garner support among their constituents. It’s difficult to see how that sort of “expertise” is going to translate to the […]
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Conservative heavy-hitters discuss what makes for a safer world
Kate and I mostly spent our time at the RNC seeking out energy/environment-related events, but I wanted to go to at least a few on other subjects, just to see if our issues popped up anywhere outside their normal silo. In that spirit, on Wed. afternoon I attended a panel discussion called "Building a Better, […]
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Nature: Hurricanes are getting fiercer
Nature has published a major analysis that supports my recent two–parter. As Nature explains: … scientists have come up with the firmest evidence so far that global warming will significantly increase the intensity of the most extreme storms worldwide. The maximum wind speeds of the strongest tropical cyclones have increased significantly since 1981, according to […]
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Germany opens world’s first carbon-capturing ‘clean coal’ demo plant
Germany will next week open the world’s first “clean coal” plant actually ready to capture and store its carbon-dioxide emissions. The 30-megawatt, $100 million Schwarze Pumpe demonstration plant will burn coal in an atmosphere of oxygen instead of regular air, producing some 10 tons per hour of compressed CO2 that can be captured and buried […]
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The dynamic behind the GOP’s mockery of community organizing
Lots of folks have been talking (angrily) about Wednesday night’s GOP effort to make “community organizer” an object of mockery — see, for instance, Joe Klein, Chris Hayes, Sally Kohn, and the excellent Jay Smooth: This is all right on, but I think one aspect is being overlooked, one contrast between community organizers and mayors […]
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Media drops the ball on drilling
The Center for Economic and Policy Research has a new analysis out looking at the way the media is presenting the drilling issue. Suffice to say, educating its audience about the facts has taken a back seat: This paper examines television news coverage of proposed drilling for oil in environmentally sensitive zones in the United […]
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Nature magazine gives short-shrift to baseload solar
Nature recently ran an article ($ub. req’d) on “Energy alternatives: Electricity without carbon.” Like most discussions written by people who don’t follow clean energy closely, the article lumped baseload solar (also known as concentrated solar thermal power) in with solar PV and generally treated it as an afterthought. Here is everything that they wrote about […]
