Climate Climate & Energy
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Concerns grow about giant pollute-y cloud over Asia
A cloud of soot and other pollutants, blanketing Asia in a haze nearly two miles thick, is darkening cities, damaging crops, and killing thousands of people. But look at the bright side — it’s mitigating some impacts of climate change! Hey, they don’t call us a beacon in the smog for nothin’.
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Must-read IEA report explains what must be done to avoid 6 degrees C warming
The International Energy Agency is out with its World Energy Outlook 2008. I wrote last week about the report’s stark conclusions on oil. The IEA’s conclusions on climate are even starker: “Without a change in policy, the world is on a path for a rise in global temperature of up to 6 degrees C.” The […]
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Climate change and peak oil point us toward the same policies
This is, I think, one of the underappreciated aspects of the climate problem. I blog about it on Nature‘s Climate Feedback blog. While most pundits put the problems of energy supply and climate in opposition, my view is that a constrained fossil-fuel supply points our society towards the same policies that the climate problem does.
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If we try cap-and-trade systems, we have to handle coal separately
Below is a first draft of an essay I’m formulating. I welcome comments and will post a revised draft after a while: Why we must be more concerned about capping emissions than trading them If there is one thing that the recent financial debacle should have taught us, it’s that risk cannot be managed by […]
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Lots of natural gas is chillin’ on Alaska’s North Slope, says USGS
There’s enough natural gas frozen 2,000 feet below the permafrost on Alaska’s icy North Slope to heat 100 million homes for up to a decade, the U.S. Geological Survey said Wednesday. Look alive, Palin pipeline!
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Inflated fuel efficiency ratings for Canada’s cars
A few weeks ago, Canadian resident Rachel Perks sent me an email puzzler. Why is it that apparently identical cars — same make, model, engine size, specs, etc. — are advertised with drastically better fuel economy in Canada than in the United States? To see what I mean, compare the official government fuel ratings in […]
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T. Boone Pickens’ wind-power plans becalmed
T. Boone Pickens’ plan to build a gigantuous wind farm in Texas is being held up thanks to a drop in natural-gas prices and the credit crunch. “With natural gas prices where they are, you can’t kick off a wind project, you’re not economical,” Pickens said on Tuesday, adding the next day, “When you’re talking […]
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Google’s CEO is the one person who can engineer the transition
No position under the next administration will be more important for the economy, the environment, and national security than energy secretary. And no one fits the position as perfectly as Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Schmidt recently told the New York Times that he’s not interested in the role of "chief technology officer" in an Obama […]
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A potentially game-changing development in concentrated solar PV
In the Toronto Star, Tyler Hamilton takes a close look at a cool new company, Morgan Solar, which has developed a potentially revolutionary form of "concentrating photovoltaic" solar technology. It’s intended to be simple and cheap enough to make solar ubiquitous, particularly for the developing world. Here’s the nut: Morgan Solar has come up with […]
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IEA forecasts boom in renewables through 2030
The influential International Energy Agency has released its annual report on world energy demand, predicting that renewables will make big gains worldwide, increasing their overall market share 5 percent to meet 23 percent of the world’s total energy needs by 2030. However, coal consumption is also predicted to increase, eventually providing some 44 percent of […]
