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Well, Uh, At Least No One Got Zero?

California, Vermont, Connecticut top ranking of energy-efficient states Less than a week after California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) declared at an economic summit in Canada that clean energy is becoming the basis for “a new gold rush,” his all-star state has topped an energy-efficiency ranking issued by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. Looking […]

Or is that geoengineering at work?

A new study shows that geoengineering should work. Just not exactly how we imagined:

Geoengineering could indeed cool the atmosphere, ecologist Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution in Stanford, California, and colleagues conclude in their new analysis. The team examined the impact of 11 possible projects over the next century using computer simulations and assuming trends in greenhouse-gas emissions will continue unchecked.

The good news is such measures would be effective even if undertaken decades from now, the researchers report online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The bad news is that in all cases studied, reducing solar radiation would also shift global rainfall patterns, potentially drenching some areas and parching formerly productive agricultural land. Worse, the simulations predict that if the atmospheric fiddling suddenly stopped, the warming would accelerate dramatically -- possibly to 20 times the current rate -- because CO2 would still be accumulating.

Credits will be auctioned and limits tightened

This is extremely heartening: Europe is moving toward making significant changes to its emissions-trading system that could force large polluters to pay for most, if not all, permits to produce climate-changing gases, European officials said Monday. Although the European carbon-trading arrangement is considered to be among the world’s most functional, the countries that administer it […]

A couple of podcasts for your commuting pleasure

I've run across these shows in the past couple days, and thought fellow Gristmill readers might like to hear them too. The first is Science Friday's "Hour One" from last week. There is a segment on carbon sequestration, which I have yet to form an opinion on, and also one on generating hydrogen. The second, which I'm actually listening to as we speak, is about the economic benefits of "going green." Apparently being environmentally conscious is a smart business move! Go figure. The podcast comes from a series called "TED Talks" and the show can be downloaded here.

Enjoy!

Why we gotta knock solar?

Can we please, once and for all, stop decrying solar energy for being too area-intensive? See, for example, the oft-cited statistic that to power its economy, the U.S. would need "10 billion meters, squared, of land." America isn't exactly short on square meters, and awfully sunny ones at that. But 10 billion square meters sounds a lot bigger than it really is.

10,000 square kilometers (100km x 100km) form a square you could drive around entirely, at legal highway speeds, in four hours. (Less if you speed.) 10,000 square kilometers is also roughly one-fortieth the area that the human species has already occupied for hydroelectric reservoirs -- all to produce, according to the IEA, 15 percent of current global electricity demand. (This certainly overstates the efficiency of large dams, which do not produce 100 percent of the world's hydroelectric power.)

Get that? For vastly less space than we already consume for the pittance we get from hydroelectric dams, we could power the world. Space is not the limiting factor -- and soon enough, cost won't be either. Which will leave mulish stupidity the remaining roadblock.

Conservatives like Bush’s climate plan because greens don’t

The conservative National Review likes the president’s new climate change strategy. Not because it will work to reduce emissions, mind you. Because it irritates environmentalists and Europeans.

We had to destroy the village to make it a global village

The job of the PR industry: comforting the comfortable, afflicting the afflicted. Now on to protecting the feelings of the poor maligned air travel industry:

As part of the makeover, there's a short in-flight video, titled "Flying's a Wonderful Thing," that has been produced to ease consumer guilt over plane travel, and brochures have been printed. "Air transport made the global village a reality," one pamphlet says.

It would pre-empt state fuel efficiency laws

An energy bill is emerging from the House Energy and Commerce Committee, but it has some "unacceptable" provisions, according to leading energy and environmental experts.

Rick Boucher (D-Va.), chair of the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality, has a draft bill online, along with summaries of key provisions. The bill has a variety of important provisions aimed at promoting energy efficiency in electricity and vehicles -- and some useful provisions to promote low carbon fuels.

But it has at least two serious flaws.

First, it helps subsidize coal to liquids, which is an irredeemably bad idea, as I have argued repeatedly (here and here). Yes, the bill would require carbon capture and storage, but even so, the process still generates high-carbon diesel fuel. Also, such storage would take up the space in underground geologic repositories that could otherwise be used for storing carbon dioxide from future coal plants, which results in carbon-free electricity -- vastly superior to high-carbon diesel fuel.

Second, the bill would "prevent California and other states from taking independent action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions," as noted by Environment & Energy Daily (sub. req'd -- article reprinted below). In an email, David Hawkins, director of NRDC's Climate Center, called this provision "absolutely unacceptable."

Others who question this provision can be found in today's E&E Daily:

Company presentation offers glimpse of life on the other side

Have you ever wanted to be a fly on the wall at a top-level corporate meeting just to see what really goes on behind closed doors? Consider this nifty PowerPoint presentation your ticket in.

It turns out chlorine companies talk about Oceana in their meetings as much as Oceana talks about them. The Chlorine Institute held a meeting a few months back where one of the companies gave a formal presentation about being "In the 'Crosshairs' of an Environmental NGO."

Their presentation looks an awful lot like our presentations -- outlining all of our tactics to stop seafood contamination, which to them are challenges they need to overcome. It's nice to know that ERCO has realized Oceana's in it for the long haul.

My favorite slide? "Essential survival tactics."

They may not all be bad.

Two recent news stories from the Chesapeake illustrate well the opposite poles in the debate on invasive species. The first details the appearance of the cuddly-sounding mitten crab in Chesapeake waters, an Asian species that has also hitchhiked in ships to California, Germany and Great Britain. Articles about it use terms like alien and exotic for the little fellas, often pitting them against the beleaguered native blue crabs.

So the news that a foreign species of aquatic vegetation, once considered a major nuisance when it began rapidly colonizing the nearby Potomac River, has instead benefited the watershed's ecosystem interested me. Hydrilla first appeared in 1983 and created dense vegetation masses and even impeded boat traffic in some areas. It was feared that it would interfere with the native vegetation, itself an important food source for waterfowl and fish.

This 17-year study of hydrilla, though, found that not only did it not crowd out native species, but the natives actually increased. Hydrilla also became an important winter food source for waterfowl communities, which increased over this period. All of which makes me wonder about the hype and hyperbole used to describe each new "invasion."