Climate Climate & Energy

You can’t begin an argument about coal’s future by assuming coal’s future

I swear, I don’t mean to just rant about stupid coal articles every day. But people keep writing stupid coal articles. I’m like Pavlov’s dog at this point — they say stupid things, I bash them. Good boy! The latest is this interview in Wired’s Planet Earth blog with Jeremy Carl, who researches how to […]

Disturbing news is more likely to be ignored

An interesting post on the phenomenon encountered by peak oil "doomers" in trying to explain their dour views to those that are unaware:

But if the purpose of the peak oil movement is to spread awareness and ultimately spur action, then telling uninformed people news which radically challenges their worldview may cause them simply to tune us out. In this regard, the worse the news is, the less likely people are to want to hear what we have to say or to believe it if they do listen.

Notable quotable

“If the internet goes down, global warming will triumph for sure.” — Bill McKibben

Big Coal slimes Kansas governor Sebelius

The fossil fuel lobby is panicking. Kansas was recently the site of a bold repudiation of coal — Roderick L. Bremby, Secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, established a new precedent by denying a coal plant permit on the basis of CO2, with the full backing of Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius. Look […]

‘Clean coal’ proposals are getting canceled right and left

Remember clean coal, vaunted savior of, um, coal? Turns out cost, unproven technology, and rising opposition to carbon emissions are conspiring to nip a lot of clean coal projects in the bud. This, of course, is just the latest piece of evidence that coal can’t hack it in a carbon-constrained market needs more subsidies.

Do the experts know anything about oil prices?

Finally, after a four-month stretch in which oil prices rose from under $70 to over $95, oil industry analysts seem to have caught on that prices are rising. From Bloomberg news (emphasis added):

Twenty-one of 35 analysts surveyed, or 60 percent, said oil prices will rise through Nov. 9 ... Respondents [had] predicted price drops in the previous 16 weeks.

That's right, for each of the preceding 16 weeks, the consensus of oil industry experts was that prices would fall in the coming week. They were right five times, wrong 11 times -- and crude prices rose by over a third during the stretch. So much for expertise.

Over the longer term, the oil industry analysts haven't fared much better:

Public hits the streets to rally for global-warming action

Speaking of people who make it difficult for us to maintain our well-earned cynicism, Saturday’s Step It Up 2 climate rallies were, by all accounts, a grand success. Following up on the first Step It Up in April, the movement — spearheaded by author Bill McKibben — spurred some 1,000 rallies across the U.S. From […]

7 easy steps to reduce your carbon emissions

Grist’s valiant leader was on the Today show this morning. Check it out: Seven steps to save energy

Working with cities to create markets for green products

My first impression of Clinton was that he’d just woken up, or that he was under the weather. He had a little bedhead, his voice was a bit croaky, and he was speaking slowly. This definitely wasn’t the virtuoso Clinton of the 1998 SOTU. The fireworks were mostly muted, though there were a few flashes […]

The renewables revolution

After the introduction and an explanation of "The Coming Oil Crisis" and "Abandoning the Solution," the next part of "MidEast Oil Forever?" (subs. req'd) is a discussion of the "The Renewables Revolution."

One of the great energy tragedies of the 1980s is that President Reagan gutted the renewable energy R&D budget (and the entire clean energy budget) -- a stunning 90% cut in key technologies -- just as America was assuming technological and marketplace leadership in core areas like wind and solar power.

One of the great energy tragedies of the 1990s is that the Gingrich Congress blocked the Clinton administration's efforts to significantly ramp up renewable and clean energy funding, which could have restored U.S. leadership in technologies that even then were obviously going to be the foundation of major job-creating industries in the coming century.

Here is what we wrote on renewables: