Climate Climate & Energy
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Weather-sealing and funding for existing transit offer quick ramp-ups, fast paybacks
David Roberts asks: Another key question is how much money could be pumped into building sector energy efficiency, and how quickly. The feds and states do some weatherization of low-income homes through LIHEAP, but those are not large agencies and probably couldn’t handle tens of billions dumped on their heads. Beyond that, what? To answer […]
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The World Community Grid sets its sights — and processing power — on clean energy
IBM’s World Community Grid is a global network of computers linked up to become a single super-computer. The processing power of idling computers is put to use number crunching solutions to AIDS, Dengue Fever, um, Human Proteome Folding, and, now, clean energy: The mission of the Clean Energy Project is to find new materials for […]
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Biochar
Biofuels Digest rounds up the evidence of increasing interest in biochar — a potentially carbon-negative source of power.
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Over 1,000 gallons of oil spilled off California coast
Over 1,100 gallons of oil spilled off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif., Sunday when a pump line on an offshore oil rig sprung a leak, causing a mile-and-a-half-long oil slick that state regulators said was mostly cleaned up by Monday morning. In 1969, the same rig was the site of a massive, 200,000 gallon […]
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Forest policy is a hot topic at international climate negotiations
The U.S. Secret Service and the press are on higher alert with the arrival of U.S. congressional delegations at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Poznan as the second week of the conference gets underway. While the official Bush delegation is remaining low-profile — even evading questions at today’s press conference — most Democratic congressional […]
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Focus on renewables and efficiency regardless if ‘clean coal’ is clap or crap
A raging debate has emerged as to whether clean coal is claptrap or crap trap. On the one side are people who think that clean coal means coal plants with carbon capture and storage for the vast majority of the carbon dioxide they emit (or that coal isn’t clean under any plausible definition of the […]
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Very warm 2008 makes this the hottest decade in recorded history by far*
The climate story of the decade is that the 2000s are on track to be nearly 0.2°C warmer than the 1990s. And that temperature jump is especially worrisome since the 1990s were only 0.14°C warmer than the 1980s (see datasets here). Global warming is accelerating, as predicted. The U.K.’s Guardian, on the other hand, believes […]
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The Alliance to Save Energy plan
Part 1 reported that Obama and the Dems are planning a huge stimulus package with a big cleantech component and asked for ideas. Brian Castelli, Executive Vice President of the D.C.-based Alliance to Save Energy sent me their recommendations. Brian has been a cleantech leader for over three decades. I got to know him at […]
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Scientists using consumers’ computing power to develop new solar cell
Researchers at IBM and Harvard University launched a project recently that aims to use a network of consumers’ home computers to run calculations that could lead to new, more efficient solar panels. “It’s a way for people that have computers to do some good for the world,” said Joe Jasinski of IBM.
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Anti-air-travel activists stage protest on U.K. airport runway
More than 50 environmental activists from anti-air-travel group Plane Stupid were arrested Monday in a protest at Stansted Airport in the United Kingdom, some 40 miles from downtown London. The activists broke into a restricted area where planes taxi between takeoff and landing and chained and barricaded themselves in place, declaring their opposition to a […]
