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Delaware to have offshore wind farm in 2012

The following post is by Earl Killian, guest blogger at Climate Progress.

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On Tuesday, the utility Delmarva announced a 25-year contract with Bluewater Wind Delaware, a subsidiary of the Babcock & Brown, to purchase 200 megawatts of power from a wind farm that would be constructed 11.5 miles in the Atlantic off Delaware's Rehoboth Beach. First power is expected in 2012. The contract locks in the price Delmarva will pay per kilowatt-hour. Bluewater has previously built offshore energy near Denmark.

The wind farm will be located in ocean waters 75 feet deep. The turbine mounts will extend 90 feet into the sea floor and 250 feet above he waterline. Each of the three blades will be 150 feet long.

Newt thinking on energy arousal (and domestic oil production)

"... when the American people are aroused, they can in fact coerce the Congress ..."

-- Newt Gingrich on "Energy Independence Day"

Select Committee hears testimony on Bush administration’s proposals for fuel economy standards

Amid a flurry of votes on energy issues in the House today, the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming held a hearing on the role of automobile fuel economy as gas prices continue to increase. “Because 70 percent of oil goes into transportation, any solutions to the oil crisis must focus on the […]

Living on the ice shelf

This essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom's kind permission.

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Farewell to the Holocene

Our world, our old world that we have inhabited for the last 12,000 years, has ended, even if no newspaper in North America or Europe has yet printed its scientific obituary.

This February, while cranes were hoisting cladding to the 141st floor of the Burj Dubai tower (which will soon be twice the height of the Empire State Building), the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London was adding the newest and highest story to the geological column.

The London Society is the world's oldest association of Earth scientists, founded in 1807, and its Commission acts as a college of cardinals in the adjudication of the geological time-scale. Stratigraphers slice up Earth's history as preserved in sedimentary strata into hierarchies of eons, eras, periods, and epochs marked by the "golden spikes" of mass extinctions, speciation events, and abrupt changes in atmospheric chemistry.

In geology, as in biology or history, periodization is a complex, controversial art and the most bitter feud in 19th-century British science -- still known as the "Great Devonian Controversy" -- was fought over competing interpretations of homely Welsh Graywackes and English Old Red Sandstone. More recently, geologists have feuded over how to stratigraphically demarcate ice age oscillations over the last 2.8 million years. Some have never accepted that the most recent inter-glacial warm interval -- the Holocene -- should be distinguished as an "epoch" in its own right just because it encompasses the history of civilization.

House approves two measures to address energy prices, third fails

The House of Representatives took up a triumvirate of environment and energy-related bills today, passing two that would increase funding for mass transit and curb oil market speculation. A third, more controversial measure would have forced oil companies to drill on the land they already own. The votes highlighted the split between Democrats and Republicans […]

Snippets from the news

• Greens will sue EPA over haze in parks. • North Pole could be ice-free this summer. • Water crisis worsened by corruption. • Dairy industry will reduce carbon hoofprint. • Wisconsin board OKs plan to cut mercury emissions by 90 percent.

California plans to cut 169 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent by 2020

How do you return greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 while promoting jobs, competitiveness, and public health? Conservatives in the U.S. Senate think it can't be done. California knows it can.

The Air Resources Board has just published their "Scoping Plan." How do they cut 169 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent by 2020? Efficiency, efficiency, renewables, renewables, and even some conservation:

Britain lays out plans for renewable-energy ‘revolution’

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown set out goals Thursday to increase renewable-energy use in Britain tenfold by 2020. Brown’s vision for a “green revolution” is heavily reliant on wind power, with plans for 7,000 new turbines — 4,000 onshore and 3,000 offshore. The North Sea could turn “into the equivalent for wind power of what […]

U.K. economist testifies to House subcommittee on the costs of inaction on climate change

U.K. economist Nicholas Stern, author of the 2006 report, that argued that costs of inaction on climate change far outweigh the costs of acting, said yesterday that the planet is warming faster than previously predicted, which may increase the costs of action. Today he testified before the a House subcommittee on the increasing need for […]

All new homes to sport solar hot water

Hawai'i is highly dependent on imported oil for its electricity needs -- I've heard Jeff Mikaluna, Director of the Hawai'i chapter of the Sierra Club, quip that the state is one supertanker accident away from becoming Amish.

Which makes this press release great news: