Climate Climate & Energy

Discover Brilliant: Renewables and buildings

Now it’s "Moving the Technology Frontier," about technologies that are going to create "tectonic shifts" in the cleantech space, with Stan Bull, head of R&D at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and Steve Selkowtiz, Building Technologies Program Leader at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Bull is first up. Says NREL’s budget is $200-$250 million. That seems […]

New York state investigates power companies’ emissions on behalf of shareholders

New York state used a new tactic last week to try to prompt coal-fired power plants to clean up their climate changing emissions: concern for shareholders. State attorney general Andrew Cuomo sent letters and subpoenas to five coal-lovin’ power companies on Friday requesting internal documents and questioning if investors had been given adequate information on […]

With more ‘zero-zero’ buildings, maybe we could still have cake now and then

This story appeared on my birthday (a prime number year). I'll consider it my present.

Lomborg misrepresents possible sea-level rise

Lomborg is a champion cherry-picker when he isn’t just getting his facts wrong, as I argued in Part I. He has a deceptively misleading — and outright erroneous — discussion of sea-level-rise projections in Cool It. Let’s start with a few all-too-typical howlers: Antarctica is generally soaking up more water than Greenland is shedding, as […]

Freelance writer embarks on biodiesel tour of sporting events

Freelance sports writer Joe Connor is embarking this fall on a four-month-long Green Power Sports Tour (holy neon website!), visiting more than 100 football, hockey, and basketball venues — in a biodiesel car, natch. Hey ladies … he’s self-described “very, very single” …

Rates of black lung disease double in a decade

Rates of black lung disease have doubled in the last decade, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The disease, which is caused by inhaling coal dust, now occurs in almost 10 percent of coal miners who work 25 or more years underground, as opposed to about 4 percent a decade ago. […]

A must-read article from Science on the underestimation of climate change impacts

The new issue of Science has a terrific article that underscores many of the points I have been making here. Its central argument is that the scientific consensus most likely underestimates future climate change impacts, especially in the crucial area of sea-level rise and carbon-cycle feedbacks.

The authors are highly credible, led by Princeton's Michael Oppenheimer, one of the most widely published climate experts. I will excerpt the article here at length ($ub. req'd):

Tar sands are the enemy of the planet

Our civilization's addiction to oil is being displayed in all its nefarious glory in the tar sands of Canada. According to Chris Nelder:

What we have here is arguably the most environmentally destructive activity man has ever attempted, with a compliant government, insatiable demand, and an endless supply of capital turning it into "a speeding car with a gas pedal and no brakes." It sucks down critical and rapidly diminishing amounts of both natural gas and water, paying neither for its consumption of natural capital nor its environmental destruction, to the utter detriment of its host. And all to eke out maybe a 10% profit, if it turns out that the books haven't been cooked, and if the taxation structure remains a flat-out giveaway.

Greenpeace recently announced a new campaign against the tar sands, pointing out that "Tar sands produce five times more greenhouse gases than conventional oil, because they are energy-intensive, requiring huge amounts of natural gas to separate and process the bitumen."

As I recently posted, processing tar sands leads to more pollution in the United States. Tar-sand oil production leads to more global warming, is being pursued because of peak oil, and continues the wholesale destruction of ecosystems, as Nelder enumerates:

Lenders believe energy-efficient homeowners are less likely to default on mortgage payments

With all the bad news about mortgages, it is time for some good news: Mortgages that promote energy efficiency are on the rise.

The basic idea is simple. If you make your home more energy efficient, you reduce your monthly energy bill. And that means you have more money to pay your mortgage, and are less likely to default, so lenders are wisely encouraging this:

The Wall Street Journal has a very good article on this:

Global warming brings Greenlanders potatoes, destroys their heritage

It gets lost in all the gloom and doom, but global warming does have its upside. In the sub-Arctic south of Greenland, rising temperatures over the last five to 10 years have brought residents more potatoes, broccoli, and flowers, and have made officials optimistic about economically beneficial opportunities for drilling and mining as sea ice […]