Latest Articles

Greenspan on energy

Greenspan is no polymath, to go by the discussions of energy and climate in his instant bestseller, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World. During his nuclear power love-fest, he writes (p. 453):

Nuclear power is not safe without a significant protective infrastructure. But then, neither is drinking water.

Wow! That's an analogy I bet you never heard before. Greenspan is actually comparing drinking water infrastructure -- which is needed mainly to protect the water from us (i.e. from human pollution) -- with nuclear power's infrastructure; which is needed to protect us from nuclear material, which (unlike water) is inherently dangerous. I guess this economic guru is the only person in the country who would rather live next to a nuclear power plant than a reservoir.

Even more annoying (p. 446):

For example, after the initial surge in the fuel efficiencies of our light motor vehicles during the 1980s, reflecting the earlier run-up in oil prices, improvements slowed to a trickle.

Friday music blogging: John Vanderslice

John Vanderslice is a Bay Area singer-songwriter, once with the band mk Ultra but now a solo artist. He also occasionally helps produce albums in the much-acclaimed recording studio he founded, Tiny Telephone. The studio uses only analog instruments and recording, but Vanderslice dirties the sound up with tons of distortion and effects. He calls […]

Parking lots transform into parks for one day

There are two kinds of public demonstrations. Those that attract people to the cause and demonstrate new possibilities, and those that just piss people off and make enemies out of potential friends.

Here's a beautiful example of the former. "Parking" can either mean leaving an expensive hunk of climate-changing steel to cool on greasy asphalt, or it can mean sitting on the grass with friends, drinking wine in the fresh, clean air. These guys have an elegant way of getting people to think about which definition of "park" should get more city space.

If you are in SF, NYC, LA, DC, Seattle, Portland, Chicago, St. Paul, Boston, Austin, Salt Lake City, Tampa, Miami, then check it out.

Some pictures below the fold, courtesy of Transportation Alternatives.

New WRI report compares climate bills

The World Resources Institute has a new report out comparing the various climate bills floating around Congress. Here’s what you need to know (click for larger version): This confirms what we already knew, that Sanders-Boxer is the best bill and the only one that has a chance of stabilizing CO2 at levels we can live […]

Peruvian residents fed up with mining

Big Mineral has made big investments in Peru, where the government has leased some 45,000 square miles of Andean highlands for mining. But Peruvians are getting fed up. When residents of a town called Rio Blanco took an unofficial vote on Monterrico Metals’ plans for a $1.4 billion copper mine in their backyard, 95 percent […]

Greenpeace releases another ranking of tech companies’ environmental records

Greenpeace has released the fifth version of its Guide to Greener Electronics, and lauds the tech industry for making “great improvements” since the first scorecard hit the scene in August 2006. Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and Dell took the top three spots this time around; Apple, the CEO of which was rankled by his company’s dead-last […]

Rep. Ed Markey looks down the road on climate and energy

The Center for American Progress hosted Rep. Ed Markey at a roundtable for reporters to give a sort of primer for what to expect in the run-up to and during the marathon of international climate-change events in the coming week.

He was, to my ear, a little bit sanguine about the energy bill, which he expects will be completed and sent to the White House this fall, in time for the Congress to then turn its attention to a climate-change bill.

Markey said, "The NRDC estimates that that bill, if it was signed by the president, would meet 25 percent of the greenhouse-gas goals of the United States by 2030." It's unclear, though, whether he was talking about the NRDC's ambitious benchmarks or the president's laughably dubbed "aspirational goals" for long-term greenhouse-gas reduction. And in any case, it would depend upon all of the emissions-mitigating provisions of the bill -- some now in the House version, some in the Senate version -- finding their way into the final version that emerges from the conference committee.

From Population to PETA

From Russia with lust Hot and bothered about its dwindling population, a Russian region recently gave women a half-day off work for patriotic sex; liaisons ending in perfectly timed babies may be rewarded with a brand new SUV. We’d make some privileged snark about overpopulation and emissions, but time off for getting laid? We’re sold. […]

Feds apologize for encouraging employees to buy fuel-efficient Japanese cars

A Bush administration official has apologized for encouraging government employees to consider buying fuel-efficient Japanese cars. Which is why we have a “dumbassery” tag.

Bogs, not oceans, may have been the source of an increase in atmospheric methane

What triggered the Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM) about 55 million years ago, which saw the fastest period of warming documented in Earth's geological history? The PETM is associated with a rapid rise in greenhouse gases, particularly methane -- but the big question is where did the methane come from?

The most common answer has been the ocean (methane hydrates), but new research in Nature ($ub. req'd) casts doubt on the ocean theory -- instead finding chemical evidence that the methane came from terrestrial sources, bogs, which were themselves stimulated by rising temperatures -- an amplifying feedback. The lead author says:

A lot of temperate and polar wetlands are going to be wetter, and of course warmer as well [because of current climate change]. That implies a switch to more anaerobic conditions which are more likely to release methane. That's what's predicted, and that would be a positive feedback -- and we have evidence now that this is what happened.

Indeed, research from last year found "thawing Siberian bogs are releasing more of the greenhouse gas methane than previously believed." Why should we care about the source of the PETM?