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Richard Rorty, RIP

This will likely be of interest to exactly none of you, but one of my great philosophical heroes died yesterday. The first paper I ever presented at a professional philosophy conference was on Rorty. I can’t improve on what Chris Hayes says: Rorty had an uncanny ability to stare into the post-modern abyss, in which […]

Not together

First and foremost: If you have Windows Media Player, check out this PSA from basketball hottie Steve Nash. “When the Suns get hot, that’s good. But when the earth gets hot, that’s bad.” Swoon! Second and, uh, secondmost, there’s stuff out there about Beijing 2008 and London 2012. But there will be stories about the […]

Jon Stewart on the G8

Honda ditches Accord hybrid

Honda is ditching the Accord Hybrid because it discovered that … are you sitting down? … people who buy hybrids like good gas mileage.

They just keep coming

Speaking of guides to the candidates’ positions on global warming and other guides to the candidates’ positions on global warming, here’s yet another guide to the candidates’ positions on global warming — this one from NPR. And while you’re there, check out this story about how global warming is playing big in the presidential race.

Built to scale

Small and medium size wind generators of about 100 KW each are playing an important role in the power supplied by the Alaska Village Electric Cooperative (AVEC) -- a non-profit customer-owned electric co-op serving 52 villages throughout interior and western Alaska.

Wind power on this scale, and in these conditions, is not cheap. Unlike megawatt scale wind turbines which cost around $1,600 per KW of installed capacity, these smaller generators run around $10,000 per installed KW. Part of that cost is simply a matter of buying on a smaller scale. But according to Brent Petrie, Key Accounts Manager for AVEC, the harsh Alaska conditions are responsible for much of this cost. Building in permafrost has always been tough, especially when that permafrost undergoes seasonal melts that turns it to mush and marsh. As an environmentally sensitive utility, AVEC is careful to minimize damage during installation. Overall, electricity costs from such small scale generation are estimated by Petrie to run around 15 cents per kWh -- three to four times the price of larger scale wind farms in milder conditions.

But the same conditions that drive the price of wind electricity for the AVEC customers drive up conventional sources even more. Fuel is shipped by barge to the small isolated communities, or even flows in, meaning that electricity is supplied by diesel generators run on the most expensive of fossil fuels. Since transporting large amount of fuel is an expensive prospect, normally fuel is delivered only once a year.

According to Petrie, AVEC tries to make sure that as a cushion each village has storage capacity for 13 months of fuel. Building a diesel storage facility on permafrost is an expensive prospect too. Combined fuel purchase, shipping, and storage for diesel in these villages runs between 13 cents and 25 cents per kWh -- even before purchase and maintenance of generators is considered. Overall, electricity to these villages averages 45 cents per kWh; so the 15 cents per kWh for wind electricity represents a real savings.

Friday music blogging: M. Ward

M. Ward is a rarity: an artist who started out as something of a novelty act but has gotten consistently better, blossoming into one of the most expressive, interesting songwriters on the current indie scene. His first album, End of Amnesia, was good but samey: scratchy, faint, analog, like on old homemade folk recording you […]

Dirt cheap carbon

Great interview over on Mongabay with Daniel Nepstad, head of the Woods Hole Research Center's Amazon program. When it comes to immediate carbon emissions reductions, the biggest bang for the buck is to stop deforestation of the tropics. This revelation would have much less relevance if there were not also a mechanism envisioned to achieve it called the RED initiative (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation).

As with anything, the concept has its critics. In my unqualified opinion, one of the biggest potential flies in the ointment is fire. How do you keep a carbon sink from going up in smoke? Once the land becomes more valuable for soy, sugarcane or palm oil, how can you stop the local profiteers from setting the forests on fire, nullifying them as carbon sinks?

Hopefully, the authors of this scheme will do a better job than the bozos (again, no offense to you clowns out there) who put the agrofuel consumption mandates in place that are currently consuming carbon sinks, food, and biodiversity all around the world while simultaneously increasing CO2 emissions.

Say the developed countries to OPEC

Biofuels will provide only a small proportion of the world’s demand for fuel in the next decade, the developed countries’ energy watchdog has said in an attempt to reassure OPEC that the need for oil will continue to grow. Well I feel reassured.

Lovins v. Richter

Energy guru Amory Lovins and Nobel Prize-winning physicist Dr. Burton Richter face off, mano a mano, debating the merits of nuclear energy for addressing the climate crisis. MongaBay offers a blow-by-blow account. No one will be shocked to hear that I would call the bout for Lovins, though it was far from a TKO.