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New company says it can make better, cheaper biofuels

Picture a liquid fuel that is derived from the same feedstocks as cellulosic ethanol (switchgrass, sugar cane, corn stover) but contains 50% more energetic content and is made via a process that uses 65% less energy. Unlike cellulosic ethanol, this fuel can be distributed via existing oil pipelines rather than gas-hogging trucks and trains, dispensed […]

Put a whole society on a tightrope without a net and wait

The venerable Tom's Dispatch has a powerful essay from Chip Ward called "How Efficiency Maximizes Catastrophe." It uses honeybee climate collapse disorder to illustrate a hugely important point: where nature overprotects, and uses redundancy with abandon, mankind attempts to engineer everything to the last decimal place, with all redundancy removed in the quest for maximum profit.

A suicidal cultural pattern, probably. Excerpt below the fold.

Sure looks that way

Back in May, I was seduced by GM's seeming sincerity in developing a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, the Chevy Volt. We must always remember, however, that GM is a master greenwasher.

Brit greenhouse-gas factories, now with extra fascism

Nice.

Airliners are shaped the way they are for a reason

We took our Prius over the mountains a few weeks back. I was looking forward to testing it at the extreme end of its design envelope, with a bulky cargo carrier to boot. This gave me an opportunity to see how much highway mileage would be affected by aerodynamic drag. Yes, yes, I should have stuck to the speed limit, but by not doing so I preemptively squashed a bitching point leveled by hybrid hatas -- Prius drivers sticking to the speed limit are always getting in the way.

We nailed 40 mpg on the nose for a 260-mile trip that was 95 percent highway driving. I was pleasantly surprised. Just look at that blob on top of the car. I used the cruise control religiously and pegged the speed 5 mph over the posted limit whenever traffic allowed, which was most of the time.

The Middle East

NYT: The Bush administration is preparing to ask Congress to approve an arms sale package for Saudi Arabia and its neighbors that is expected to eventually total $20 billion at a time when some United States officials contend that the Saudis are playing a counterproductive role in Iraq. Discuss.

Bloomberg’s law: Environment equals economic growth

This guest essay comes from Steven Cohen and Jacob Victor. Steven Cohen is executive director of Columbia University's Earth Institute and director of its Master of Public Administration Program in Environmental Science and Policy at the School of International and Public Affairs. Jacob Victor is an intern at Columbia's Earth Institute.

After overcoming numerous obstacles in Albany, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's controversial congestion-pricing plan finally appears to be slowly moving forward. Thanks to a last-minute deal between Bloomberg and the leaders of the state Assembly, it is almost certain that New York will receive a $500 million federal grant to fund the equipment and upgrade mass transit in order to begin the program. While New York City has not been given permission to charge tolls to enter Manhattan south of 86th street, the first steps in implementing congestion pricing were authorized by New York state's famously dysfunctional state government.

Friday music blogging: Explosions in the Sky

You thought I forgot! This week’s song is from a fantastic band out of Austin, Texas called Explosions in the Sky. They play in a style that has somewhat unfortunately been dubbed “post rock,” though the band, like most bands stuck with the label, hates it. The prefer plain old “rock.” What sets the genre […]

Game over

In an editorial in this week's Science Magazine, Donald Kennedy writes:

With respect to climate change, we have abruptly passed the tipping point in what until recently has been a tense political controversy. Why? Industry leaders, nongovernmental organizations, Al Gore, and public attention have all played a role. At the core, however, it's about the relentless progress of science. As data accumulate, denialists retreat to the safety of the Wall Street Journal op-ed page or seek social relaxation with old pals from the tobacco lobby from whom they first learned to "teach the controversy." Meanwhile, political judgments are in, and the game is over. Indeed, on this page last week, a member of Parliament described how the European Union and his British colleagues are moving toward setting hard targets for greenhouse gas reductions.

I particularly like the credit he gives to the "relentless progress of science." A while back, I blogged on what I considered to be the tipping point of the political debate (here).

Smacking down a bad idea

I know you've all been eagerly waiting for this (don't worry, I don't have many more rules). I got sidetracked by last week's offset hearing.

Offset projects should deliver climate benefits with high confidence -- that's a key reason trees make lousy offsets, especially non-urban, non-tropical trees. An even more dubious source of offsets is geo-engineering, which is "the intentional large scale manipulation of the global environment" (PDF) to counteract the effects of global warming.

As John Holdren, President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, noted in 2006 (PDF), "The 'geo-engineering' approaches considered so far appear to be afflicted with some combination of high costs, low leverage, and a high likelihood of serious side effects."