Climate Climate & Energy
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Is an economic downturn the perfect time for cap-and-trade?
The NYT has a piece about how the economic downturn may "limit moves on clean energy." This piece, like most of its ilk (they’re catnip to the media), is about 80 percent vaporware, built on quotes from people or countries that were resisting "moves on clean energy" before the downturn anyway. But it’s an excuse […]
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Another climate impact comes faster than predicted
Energy companies remove the tops of entire mountains. Now it turns out humanity’s use of that coal is removing the tops of entire glaciers. Climate models have repeatedly underestimated the speed and scale of major climate change impacts (see list below). That is why climate scientists — and indeed everyone but the blinkered deniers — […]
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Some final thoughts on Politico, skeptics, and the next con
Earlier this week, Politico, the influential Beltway newspaper, ran an awful story on climate change skeptics (two, actually). I kind of, um, flipped out, and Politico got bashed by Joe Romm, Brad Johnson, Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, Steve Benen, Curtis Brainard, and Adam Siegel. Now Politico has run a long letter by Russ and me […]
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Government says it’s ‘diffiult’ to reduce the emissions from Canada’s oil sands
I’m about to reveal Canadian state secrets: William Shatner is an overacting jerk. The tar sands are an unfixable climate disaster. Lock me up in Gitmo! Or wherever the Canadian version of that hellhole is. I’m guessing Athabasca. The Onion CBC News reports: CBC News has obtained a government document that says reducing greenhouse gases […]
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Vatican goes solar
The 2,400 solar panels covering the roof of a giant concert hall in the Vatican were activated on Wednesday. And seeing that now the pope is open to solar systems, Galileo shook his fist in his grave.
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BLM backs off from plan to allow oil drilling near Utah national parks
The Bureau of Land Management on Tuesday partially backed off from unpopular plans to open land near Utah national parks to oil and gas drilling. BLM deferred leasing about one-third of the 93 tracts that the National Park Service had objected could contaminate parks with noise, water, and air pollution; the rest will still go […]
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You know your regulatory incentives are perverse when …
… a drop in electricity demand signals an enormous crisis for the industry responsible for powering America. I do not want a publicly supported monopoly industry whose health depends on rising greenhouse-gas emissions. Pretty sure we should be aiming the other way.
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Like the interstate system, a new electrical grid would revolutionize power transmission
Cross posted at the NDN blog. —– Should the federal government build or incent others to build a new electron superhighway? In other words, a backbone for a 21st century electrical grid? At NDN’s recent event on clean infrastructure, Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) asked precisely that question, and it’s one more and more energy leaders […]
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L.A. will go big with solar power under mayor’s plan
Los Angeles will source one-tenth of its energy from solar power by 2020 under a plan unveiled Monday by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Considering the town’s many celebrities, a plan to tap star power is certainly forthcoming.
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Revkin ‘n’ Romm
Over on Dot Earth, Andy Revkin has an interesting Q&A with Joe Romm pivoting off Romm’s letter to James Hansen. Joe says this about cap-and-trade: I don’t see that as the first strategy anymore, as I said in my Nature Online article. The latest science suggests that national and global climate policy is seriously misdirected. […]
