Articles by Christopher Mims

Brit gives NIMBYists the tongue-lashing they deserve

Writing in the Times (of New York, not London), Roger Cohen points out that even though 82 percent of Brits are in favor of wind power, only one in three on-shore projects is ever built, owing to "Not in My Back Yard" attitudes. Apparently Her Majesty’s citizens are all for wind power as long as it happens in one of the colonies. (“We still have colonies, right?”)

How to get paid to save the electrical grid

On the hottest days of the year, it's not uncommon for regional electricity systems to become so overloaded by demand that they come within a hair’s breadth of failing completely. (It happens in Texas all the time.)

Fortunately, utilities have come up with a cheap and easy way to overcome this problem: they offer their customers a cash incentive to sign up for a special kind of thermostat over which the utility has limited control. Then, when it gets nasty out, the utility can literally save the grid by turning up the temperature in your home just a teeny tiny bit. This is what's known as "demand response."

Texas likely to have multi-year drought; Rick Perry likely to deny its cause

Texas' over-the-top, economically devastating, record-breaking drought is likely to turn into a grinding, multi-year drought, reports Kate Galbraith in the Texas Tribune. That could put it on track to compete with the state's worst-ever dry spell in the 1950s, which in turn can barely compete with the prehistoric mega-droughts Texas used to experience.

In other words, Texas is a dry state with a delicate climate, and climate change is only going to make things worse.

Fracking sadface: U.S. has one-fifth the shale gas once projected

"Oops," says the United States Geological Survey, "We used to think the shale on the East coast of the U.S., which gas companies are currently fracking into submission, had a metric buttload of natural gas. Turns out it only 0.2 metric buttloads." (I'm paraphrasing.)