Latest Articles

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Half of GM’s manufacturing plants to go “landfill-free” by 2010

Automaker GM is planning to make half of its 181 manufacturing plants worldwide “landfill-free” by 2011 through initiatives to reuse or recycle some 90 percent of its waste, according to USA Today. The not-reused, not-recycled portion of the waste would potentially be incinerated to produce energy. GM has yet to formally announce the program, but […]

BLM finalizes plan for leasing oil shale in U.S. West

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has finalized plans to open some 1.9 million acres of public lands in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming to oil-shale development, a necessary step on the road to tapping the vast reserves. The technology for turning oil shale into usable crude oil is energy-intensive and heavily polluting, but the Bush […]

McCain talks energy in his big acceptance speech, but eschews talk of environmental concern

John McCain. Photo: johnmccain.com Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s acceptance speech in St. Paul this evening had plenty of references to the nation’s energy concerns, calling for drilling here and now, as well as nuclear, “clean coal,” and renewables. There was not, however, a single mention of climate change, an issue he has in the […]