Articles by Adam Browning

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.

If we don’t look, maybe it will all just go away …

From DailyKos, a cite to an AP story about budget cuts imperiling the satellites that are currently used to study global warming.

That's one way to deal with the recent uptick in news stories about government inaction in the face of a clear catastrophic threat ...

One-stop data shop

Given that states take the lead on most things electrical, perhaps you are wondering how to find out which state is doing what when it comes to ameliorative policies.

Wonder no more. The good folks at the Interstate Renewable Energy Council have now added energy-efficiency programs to their popular and invaluable database of state renewable-energy incentives. Check it here.

Clean Edge Energy Trends 2006

Clean Edge just published their annual report on clean energy trends. The trends are upward:

According to Clean Edge research, biofuels (global manufacturing and wholesale pricing of ethanol and biodiesel) will grow from $15.7 billion in 2005 to $52.5 billion by 2015. Wind power (new installation capital costs) will expand from $11.8 billion in 2005 to $48.5 billion in 2015. Solar photovoltaics (including modules, system components, and installation) will grow from an $11.2 billion industry in 2005 to $51.1 billion by 2015. And the fuel cell and distributed hydrogen market will grow from $1.2 billion (primarily for research contracts and demonstration and test units) last year to $15.1 billion by 2015.

In total, we project these four clean-energy technologies, which equaled $40 billion in 2005, to grow fourfold to $167 billion within the coming decade.