Climate Climate & Energy
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Create jobs, cut emissions, and reduce oil imports by investing in renewables and energy efficiency
Originally posted at earthpolicy.org —– At a time when major U.S. companies are announcing job layoffs almost daily, the renewable energy industry is hiring new workers every day to build wind farms, install rooftop solar arrays, and build solar thermal and geothermal power plants. The output of industrial firms that manufacture the equipment for these […]
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What I heard on the radio blew me away
I know green has saturated our cultural chatter to the point where it shouldn’t be surprising to hear it mentioned … everywhere. But sometimes I’m still surprised. Like last night: I’m in the car, I’m scanning through the radio, and something catches my ear. And there it is: two DJs shooting the smarmy sh*t about […]
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A roundup of reports I ought to read but in reality have only skimmed
So many reports, so little time! Greenpeace: The True Cost of Coal It’s well-known that coal’s price is artificially low, since many of its costs — health maladies, climate change, polluted water, etc. — are externalized. But how much do those externalized costs add up to? This report delves into that subject in great detail. […]
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City announces plan to develop next-generation electricity grid
The city of Austin, Texas recently announced a smart grid project. Smart grids, you may recall, are one of the core elements of the Grand Climate Plan. Although the Austin project isn’t the first such effort in the country, officials hope that the city will be able to move faster than others, because Austin actually […]
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Can teaching art to future scientists help save the planet?
A special report from Gainesville, Florida. Robert Ponzio, art instructor and chair of the Fine Arts Department at Oak Hall School took to the skies Sunday above Florida’s Kennedy Space Center in a specially modified, G-FORCE ONE aircraft. Working in a near weightless environment traditionally reserved for astronaut training and scientific experimentation, Ponzio hopes to […]
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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 […]
