Latest Articles

Greenland ice melting faster than predicted

Guess it ends with a bang after all: The Greenland ice cap is melting so quickly that it is triggering earthquakes as pieces of ice several cubic kilometres in size break off. Scientists monitoring events this summer say the acceleration could be catastrophic in terms of sea-level rise and make predictions this February by the […]

Bush administration will propose quicker deadline for phasing out ozone-depleting chemicals

Nearly 200 nations will gather on Sept. 15 to discuss the Montreal Protocol, a 20-year-old treaty put into place to phase out the nasty chemicals that contribute to the thinning of the ozone layer. At the meeting, a dozen countries plan to suggest that participating nations move up the deadline for a full phaseout of […]

Friday music blogging: The Apples in Stereo

I’ve found a theme song for Grist! The Apples in Stereo are 15-year veterans of the Elephant Six collective down in Georgia — chipper lo-fi psych pop stuff. This is from their new album New Magnetic Wonder. I’ve never been a huge follower of that scene, but I like this new album well enough, and […]

Norway bans generic green terms from auto advertising

This is funny and kind of awesome: No car can be “green,” “clean” or “environmentally friendly,” according to some of the world’s strictest advertising guidelines set to enter into force in Norway next month. “Cars cannot do anything good for the environment except less damage than others,” Bente Oeverli, a senior official at the office […]

On the energy potential of geothermal power

Like solar thermal power, geothermal power is too often neglected. Indeed, the Bush administration has proposed zeroing out the geothermal energy program for two years running.

But a major 2007 study sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, "The Future of Geothermal Energy" (a 372-page PDF), reveals the potential if we redouble our efforts toward this zero-carbon power source. The MIT-led panel of scientists, economic experts, and engineers found that Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) that use "heat-mining technology, which is designed to extract and utilize the earth's stored thermal energy" could contribute 10 percent of baseload power by mid-century:

Bush makes gaffes at APEC gathering, forum may set weak voluntary targets

In Sydney, Australia, today at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, U.S. President George Bush referred to APEC as OPEC, then tried to cover up his gaffe by explaining that Australia’s prime minister had invited him to a summit of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries next year. Unfortunately, Australia has never been part of […]

Mooney on hurricanes and climate change

Chris Mooney has a piece in the L.A. Times about the current hurricane season and the connection between hurricanes and climate change. It echoes the sensible line taken in Chris’ book. This is the crucial bit: When it comes to the hurricane-global warming relationship, neither outright alarmism nor dismissive skepticism are warranted. Rather, taking the […]

APEC’s draft plan to reduce GHG intensity will do nothing to curb emissions

Reports coming out of the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit say that a draft statement on climate change from the Pacific Rim nations is on the way. Early reports, however, contain this nugget:

To strike the accord, negotiators agreed to set a target to reduce "energy intensity" -- the amount of energy needed to produce economic growth, Al-Farisi said.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard previously called for reducing energy intensity 25 percent by 2030. A Southeast Asian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that goal was included in the draft.

This is, as I blogged about before, a huge scam. Greenhouse-gas intensity is the emissions per unit economic output. Multiply this quantity by the size of the economy and you get total greenhouse-gas emissions.

Historically, greenhouse-gas intensity has declined all by itself as the world's economy has evolved from manufacturing (which takes a lot of energy) to services (which take less), and as equipment has naturally become more efficient. Over the past few decades, U.S. greenhouse-gas intensity has declined somewhere between 1 and 2 percent per year without any government policies.

Based on the historical data, the target of decreasing our greenhouse gas intensity by 25 percent over 23 years is essentially a do-nothing target. We would expect such a decrease to occur naturally. And given such a modest decrease in intensity, we can still expect emissions to continue to grow rapidly -- and hence climate change will continue unabated.

If this is indeed their target, it should be clear that the leaders of the APEC nations are not making any legitimate effort to head off the risk of climate change.

Al Gore will pen a solutions-focused sequel

Al Gore is writing another book — and you can bet that climate change is shakin’ in its boots. The Path to Survival, a solutions-focused sequel to the groundbreaking Inconvenient Truth, is slated to hit shelves on Earth Day 2008. (Where was that impeccable timing when you were campaigning, Al?) Billed as “part scientific manual, […]

Notable quotable

From a Washington Post article about the transcendent potential of switchgrass: But such efforts [to persuade farmers to grow switchgrass] have hit a snag: Scientists haven’t perfected the process that turns switchgrass into ethanol. So for today, the Crop That Could Change Virginia is just hay with better publicity.