Climate Climate & Energy
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Climate change expected to increase Western wildfire burn area as much as 175% by the 2050s
A major new study, “Impacts of climate change from 2000 to 2050 on wildfire activity and carbonaceous aerosol concentrations in the western United States” finds a staggering increase in “wildfire activity and carbonaceous aerosol concentrations in the western United States” by mid-century under a moderate warming scenario: We show that increases in temperature cause annual […]
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Michigan to Granholm: We want clean energy
Yesterday, on a beautiful summer day in Lansing, Michigan, more than 500 activists from all corners of the state lent their voices to a call for a massive investment in clean energy and moving the state beyond coal. Clean Energy Now, a coalition made up of over 40 environmentalist groups including Sierra Club, organized this […]
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The Climate Post: Big hopes for Al G.
First Things First: The trouble with electricity is that you can’t seal the unused portion when you’re done using it and put it on a shelf. The New York Timesa piece from industrial-belt poster-city Allentown, Penn. International Battery is developing a cereal-box-size battery that could help remake the energy economy by making electricity able to […]
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Nuclear plans hurting power companies’ credit ratings
Power companies pursuing construction of new nuclear plants may find it harder to get credit — meaning ratepayers could end up shouldering a greater financial burden for the costly and environmentally harmful projects. Moody’s Investors Service, a leading independent credit rating firm, recently released a report that says it’s considering taking a “more negative view” […]
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US can easily meet 2020 emissions target while lowering the nation’s energy bill $700 billion
More than perhaps any other company, McKinsey has documented how an aggressive energy efficiency strategy sharply lowers the cost of climate action (see “McKinsey 2008 Research in Review: Stabilizing at 450 ppm has a net cost near zero“). Today they released their most comprehensive analysis to date of this country’s energy efficiency opportunity, “Unlocking energy […]
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The Germans’ heralded carbon capture plan? Pumping it directly into the atmosphere.
NIMBY, meet NUMBY: Not under my backyard. The Guardian reports today: It was meant to be the world’s first demonstration of a technology that could help save the planet from global warming — a project intended to capture emissions from a coal-fired power station and bury them safely underground. But the German carbon capture plan […]
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The climate science fight club
So a guy writes in to our local paper saying climate change is a big scam, nobody ever shows the actual data, blah blah blah. I usually ignore these things like I ignore the moon landing deniers and the flat earthers, but this time I had a second in the morning and so I sent him […]
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Tracking property tax financing programs for renewable and energy efficiency investments
Berkeley’s program for leveraging property taxes to help homeowners finance investments in solar and energy efficiency is taking off–San Francisco was the latest to announce a new program. To date, 11 states (and counting) have enacted enabling legislation allowing local municipalities to follow suit. Which ones? The good folks at the Interstate Renewable Energy Council […]
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Even with economic headwind, U.S. still adds 4,000 MW of new wind — and a dozen new factories
The U.S. wind energy industry installed 1,210 megawatts (MW) of new power generating capacity in the second quarter, bringing the total added this year to just over 4,000 MW – an amount larger than the 2,900 MW added in the first six months of 2008, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) said today in its […]
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Another major study predicts rapid warming over next few years — nearly 0.3°F by 2014
From 2009 to 2014, projected rises in anthropogenic influences and solar irradiance will increase global surface temperature 0.15 ±0.03 °C, at a rate 50% greater than predicted by IPCC. So conclude Judith Lean, of the US Naval Research Laboratory, and David Rind, of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in a new Geophysical Research Letters […]
