Latest Articles
-
Did I say darndest? I meant stupidest
From Deltoid, Tim Lambert provides this exchange between Tim Flannery (climate realist) and Adam Shand (climate skeptic) from an Australian TV show:
Tim Flannery: No one can predict the weather three months ahead, that's absolutely true. But if I asked you if January next year was likely to be warmer than June this year, what would you say?
Adam Shand: I'd have no idea!
TF: You'd say yes because that's what we always see. Summers are warmer than winter. And in terms of predicting general global trends, that exactly the sort of science that we're doing. It's not like predicting the weather on a certain day three months out, it's like predicting whether January is likely to be warmer than June.
AS: But that's just an assumption, we sort of assume that summer is hotter than winter. -
An interview with author James Howard Kunstler
Author and social critic James Howard Kunstler, known for predicting our post-peak-oil future in nonfiction works such as The Long Emergency, has also brought his forecasts to life through fiction. His newest novel, World Made By Hand, describes the near future in a small town in upstate New York — not unlike the place Kunstler […]
-
Umbra on carbon trading
Dear Umbra, I don’t understand carbon credits and how people can buy/sell/trade them. How is this good for our environment? Elizabeth Columbus, Ohio Dearest Elizabeth, I believe you speak of the carbon credit, rather than the carbon offset? The carbon offset is a consumer product that you or I could buy, enabling us to mildly […]
-
More than half of today’s electricity, more than 16 percent of today’s energy
Enough sunlight strikes unshaded U.S. rooftops to replace all the coal and some of the natural gas we use to make electricity. Backup via ground source heat pumps, and smart grid technology would allow this variable energy source to displace base-load coal with today's technology. Whether this is the most cost effective way to displace coal is another question. Also rooftop solar is a silver BB rather than a silver bullet: Even after massive efficiency improvements we will need to get many times the power from non-rooftop sources than from rooftops.
According to a 2003 study by the Energy Foundation (PDF), solar PV that converts 15 percent of sunlight to electricity could produce 710,000 Megawatts on rooftops that will be available in 2050. Doug Wood thinks that with concentrating PV using advanced aerospace quality cells we could convert solar at 30 percent rather than 15 percent efficiency. Scaling back to rooftops available today (using 2003 numbers from the same study and extrapolating forward) we could produce around 1.05 billion megawatts today. We normally assume 22 percent capacity factor (PDF) for PV. So that would give us about 2.3 billion megawatt hours, or around 56 percent of today's electrical production -- more than coal provides.
Further, waste heat from this process could provide much of our heating and cooling needs as well. The EF study I cited suggests that about 65 percent of commercial roof space is unshaded compared to about 22 percent of residential roof space. Since some commercial scale chillers run on low to medium temp heat today, with enough storage solar CHP could provide close to 100 percent of commercial heating and cooling. But that much storage takes a lot of capital for a small incremental gain. So more realistically, we would put 16 to 24 hours of low temp Phase Change Material storage and use ground source heat pumps to provide the other 15 percent of low temp needs. As a side effect, the overnight storage would let us run those heat pumps when the electricity was cheapest -- which will prove more important than it might appear at first glance.
-
Protesters demonstrate against British eco-towns
Hundreds of protesters gathered outside Britain’s Parliament Monday to protest the government’s plan to build 15 eco-towns. The government is proposing communities characterized by sustainable construction, public transportation, green space, and walkability. It hopes to have five eco-towns built by 2016, and five more by 2020. Monday marks the last day of the government’s first […]
-
U.S. Defense Department fighting EPA orders to clean up Superfund sites
Defying environmental law, the U.S. Defense Department has resisted repeated orders lately from the U.S. EPA to clean up some of the nation’s most contaminated places. The DoD/EPA standoff has turned into a bureaucratic pissing match wherein the EPA has asserted its authority to order and oversee cleanup of ultra-polluted Superfund sites the DoD owns, […]
-
N.H.’s Shaheen puts energy issues at center of her campaign for Senate
In New Hampshire, former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen (D) is challenging incumbent John Sununu (R) for his U.S. Senate seat, and she’s making energy concerns a centerpiece of her campaign. Here’s her most recent ad, targeting the “Enron loophole”: Previous Shaheen ads have called for tougher regulation of the oil industry and increased investment in renewable […]
-
-
-
Newsweek political journalist transcribes McCain campaign spin on energy
Last October, Barack Obama laid out a detailed, ambitious, and comprehensive energy plan, and he’s been talking about it ever since. A couple weeks ago, John McCain let loose a flurry of one-off energy gimmicks — a gas tax holiday, offshore drilling, a prize for a car battery — which he crammed together under the […]
