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Heart and solar

My advice to all you Dig This-diggers out there: Hop on the solar bandwagon. Big things lie ahead.

Indicators include the news that Solar Night Industries intends to start churning out "portable power supplies, home and energy power grid solutions, consumer outdoor/indoor products, portable 110V plugs, solar sporting solutions and many more." Currently Solar Night Industries specializes in the very lovely but not particularly, um, useful fiber optic daylily (pictured above).

Indicator two: Solar power makes homeowners happy. Am I the only one who thinks that's just about the cutest headline ever? The article begins, "Today's solar home buyer is not a stereotypical green enthusiast." That's good news, people. It goes on to report on a small survey of residents of new solar home developments in California (of course):

Meet Robert Bullard, father of the environmental-justice movement

Rich, white environmentalists love to moan about why the movement is so ... rich and white. But activists who don't fit that description are busy on the ground, wondering what the hell the white folks are talking about. Robert Bullard is one of them. Considered the first to articulate the concept of environmental justice, Bullard has been battling eco-inequities for nearly 30 years. He talks with Gregory Dicum about why he entered the fray, how things have changed since, and why "creating little black Greenpeaces" isn't the answer.

Meet Robert Bullard, the father of environmental justice

Robert Bullard says he was “drafted” into environmental justice while working as an environmental sociologist in Houston in the late 1970s. His work there on the siting of garbage dumps in black neighborhoods identified systematic patterns of injustice. The book that Bullard eventually wrote about that work, 1990’s Dumping in Dixie, is widely regarded as […]

Love Means Never Having to Remove Your Oil Platforms

Controversial research shows fish thriving around California oil platforms Controversy over 27 oil platforms off the California coast is making waves (ouch!). Delightfully monikered marine biologist Milton Love says the submerged portions of the platforms are serving as artificial reefs and valuable habitat for overfished species like rockfish and bocaccio (which we had previously thought […]

Chem and Get It

State report urges California to adopt greener chemical policy California continues to leave the rest of the nation in the (toxic) dust: A new report commissioned by the state legislature recommends a tough “green chemistry” policy to identify, restrict, and replace the most dangerous chemicals used by American industry — because, says the report’s lead […]

City Bickers

Housing developers compete with manufacturers for urban land You know the story: developers target a tract of land for condos and are met with outraged protests from … manufacturers? Progressive urban planners envision dense cities where housing and clean industry (think solar-panel manufacturing, not smokestacks) co-exist peacefully, with the latter providing jobs for those who […]

Courtesy of PBS

While most television networks lack programming in the environmental arena, at least we have PBS, which will air a few green specials just in time for Earth Day.

First we have "Planet H20":

Job opening for the most important job in the world

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- the group that's supposed to translate the international scientific consensus on climate change, so the threat can be accurately gauged and appropriately addressed -- is looking for an information officer. The job posting is here (pdf).

Rightly or wrongly, autopsies of global-warming failures to date often indict scientists for their poor communication skills.

Regardless, to counter the well-funded counter-intelligence coming out of Exxon-Mobil and the White House, it sure would be nice to have a top-notch professional in the role. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that the future of the world may depend on it.

So how about helping find one? Know a mercenary PR professional with bulldog instincts who's tired of selling widgets and keeps telling you how they really want to make a difference? Forward the posting: here's their big chance. Job's in Geneva -- a beautiful city. Pay is $80k-$100k. I'll even throw in Vote Solar t-shirts for the whole family if that will make a difference.

Correlation does not equal causality, but c’mon already

The U.N. announced today that global warming gasses have reached record concentrations in the atmosphere:

"Global observations coordinated by WMO show that levels of carbon dioxide, the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, continue to increase steadily and show no signs of leveling off," said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud.

In other news, Canada is reporting the warmest winter since records have been kept.

Canada has recorded its warmest winter in nearly six decades of record-keeping, with temperatures that a veteran forecaster said on Monday were almost "un-Canadian."

Environment Canada said temperatures averaged 3.9 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than normal from the end of November 2005 to the start of March 2006, and broke the previous record for the country's warmest winter by almost a full degree.

"The entire country was into this balminess. This kind of benign winter, said David Phillips, Environment Canada's senior climatologist in Toronto.

Alberta, Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories basked in temperatures that were more than 6 degrees Celsius above norm.

"We are known as the second coldest country in the world and it was anything but that. It was really quite un-Canadian," Phillips said.

Billion dollar idea

From Science:

Could a $1 billion prize help end the U.S. addiction to foreign oil? Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA) thinks it might. Last week, he urged the National Science Foundation (NSF) to raise such a prodigious amount from private sources and then give it to scientists offering ideas on how to make the United States energy independent.

But why limit the contest to scientists, and what exactly is a "scientist" anyway? It seems to me that we are not short on ideas. We are short on commercially viable ideas, and commercial viability cannot be proven in a lab. If cost were not the overriding variable, we could simply pay double the market price for our oil. Producers around the world would be knocking our doors down to sell their oil to us. That particular idea sure would not win a prize, because cost (commercial viability) is what this is all about. We are not hostage to foreign oil per se; we are hostage to liquid fuel costs, regardless of where that liquid fuel comes from. Also keep in mind that we have not hit peak energy sources, we have just hit peak liquid fuel sources. I hope someone dreams up something better than biofuels, and here is why: