Latest Articles
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Water, world
Left: All the water in the world (1.4087 billion cubic kilometres of it) including sea water, ice, lakes, rivers, ground water, clouds, etc. Right: All the air in the atmosphere (5140 trillion tonnes of it) gathered into a ball at sea-level density. Shown on the same scale as the Earth.
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Is ‘ethanol’ short for ‘laundered coal’?
Wow! Now that the caucuses are safely behind us, an Iowa paper notices that "ethanol" is how corporations and troglodyte utilities pronounce "laundered coal," AKA, The Enemy of the Human Race.
Specifically, 300 tons a day, per plant. Here's an Orwell-Award winning statement for you:
Officials with Alliant Energy, which has proposed a new coal-fired plant in Marshalltown, told the Iowa Utilities Board recently that if Iowans want renewable energy, they will need more electricity from coal plants.
Apparently if you don't want coal you need to use more of it. QED.
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Umbra on organic bananas
Dear Umbra, Why are organic bananas always smaller and almost always greener than non-organic? BG Tallahassee, Fla. Dearest BG, Hmm. Fresh organic fruits and vegetables often differ in appearance from their conventionally grown kin. They’re the hippies of the produce world: unwaxed, expressing their individualism, coming to the produce stand as they are, lumps and […]
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The Washington Post lamely attacks Obama’s climate ideas
Post columnist Sebastian Mallaby, in an absurdly titled column, "Obama's Missing Ideas," proves once again that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Obama's ideas about climate solutions are probably the very last place one can find something missing.Obama has a terrific climate plan, full of winning ideas, as I have blogged many times. Yet Mallaby claims that "good ideas are actually quite scarce. Just take a look at climate change."
Mallaby's "case" is based on two climate ideas many people have always thought were lame (which he never actually bothers to link to Obama), one climate problem that is pretty straightforward to solve, and one idea Mallaby thinks is new that is in fact quite old, is not really a climate idea, and as such has limited climate benefits.
First he says, "A couple of years back, ethanol was touted as a good answer to global warming." Uh, no. Corn ethanol, which is what he attacks, was not considered a "good answer to global warming" by any energy or climate expert I have ever met. To the extent climate advocates even tolerated the fuel, it was strictly as a bridge to cellulosic ethanol. To the extent that corn ethanol was supported on policy grounds by politicians [as opposed to support for the farmers or a desire not to offend Iowans], it is primarily from people who are concerned about our dependence on imported oil, not global warming.
Does Mallaby even know that Obama supports "a National Low Carbon Fuel Standard," which would block any fuel that increases greenhouse-gas emissions -- or that he supports accelerating the development of cellulosic (i.e., low-carbon) ethanol? These are good ideas.
Next Mallaby complains about "carbon trading with developing countries":
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Notable quotable
“Getting shot is just going to piss off a 500-pound grizzly bear.” — George Durkee, director of the Ranger Lodge of Fraternal Order of Police, on why it doesn’t make sense to allow visitors to carry loaded guns in national parks
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Alaskan village sues Big Fossil Fuel over link to climate change
The tiny village of Kivalina, built on a barrier reef in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against 24 oil, coal, and power companies, alleging that Big Fossil Fuel’s greenhouse-gas emissions are contributing to the climate-change-caused coastal erosion that threatens the village’s very existence. Kivalina says that the companies should pay for its relocation. […]
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State govs embrace the range of ‘alternative fuels,’ from nukes to clean coal to biofuels
The National Governors Association has linked up with “a team of Wal-Mart energy experts” to “green the capitols.” That’s fantastic — and I’m sure it will draw well-deserved huzzahs in certain green circles. (It’s touching to see Wal-Mart giving back some of what it has been siphoning off in state taxes!) But read a little […]
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Wow
Aside from being substantively misleading, this is just really, really awful. Doesn’t CEI have enough money to hire a video editor?
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Conventional energy vs. renewable energy
This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Bill Becker, executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.
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As all eyes turn toward Texas this week in advance of the Democratic primary, we will see a state that is beginning its transition to a new energy economy. Texas is grappling with a shift the entire nation faces -- and as usual, it's doing it on a big scale.
When it comes to energy and to carbon emissions, Texas is a place of superlatives and contrasts. It has more solar, wind, and biomass resources that any other state; but it's also No. 1 in total carbon emissions.It is the ancestral home of Big Oil, but it also hosts the world's largest wind farms. It has a very successful renewable energy portfolio standard, but it also has two nuclear power plants in the pipeline to provide power to its rapidly growing population.
A year ago in a watershed deal, a private equity firm working with environmentalists arranged a $45 billion buyout of the state's largest power producer, TXU. As part of the deal, eight of 11 planned new coal-fired power plants were cancelled. However, as many as nine new coal plants remain in the pipeline.
In Texas, we see a contest between conventional and renewable energy resources, and between the past and the future.
