Climate Climate & Energy
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Not very well
As reaction to Sarah’s post showed (rather more rudely than strictly necessary, I might add), Grist readers are not big fans of "Project Phin," the online video series launched by the Center for American Progress to promote flex fuels — i.e., ethanol. Ben Affleck dressed as a corn cob proved particularly irksome. CAP clearly got […]
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I’ve watched this video four times now and I can’t stop laughing
Yeeeessss. Because the only enemy of the human race greater than coal is … the human race. This video comes to us from filmmaker Jeremy Beiler of Brooklyn, who is also a Grist reader and fan.
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Where did the comparison start?
Recently, CNN cable TV and syndicated radio host Glenn Beck said this: Al Gore’s not going to be rounding up Jews and exterminating them. It is the same tactic, however. The goal is different. The goal is globalization. The goal is global carbon tax. The goal is the United Nations running the world. That is […]
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Two actions and two ‘tweaks’
Hansen offers his climate solution -- two important actions and two "tweaks":
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Here are some
Last week I discussed the basic arithmetic associated with population and economic growth, which will make it impossible to dramatically reduce greenhouse-gas emissions without major improvements in technology. (Some commenters protested, saying that current technology is sufficient, but they are mistaking the ability to reduce emissions based on current levels of income and population and what emissions will be as countries grow and economies expand.)
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Distributed power could have saved us some serious pain over there
Earlier this year, it was reported that residents of Baghdad could count on about five or six hours of electricity a day. Last week, it was reported that they could now count on about … one. The Bush administration’s response to this trend is paradigmatically Bushian: it’s going to stop reporting. Seriously: But that piece […]
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Back(ground) in black
It's called Blackle -- a black version of Google -- and according to this blogpost, it could save 8.3 Megawatt-hours per day, or about 3000 Megawatt-hours a year globally:
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New company says it can make better, cheaper biofuels
Picture a liquid fuel that is derived from the same feedstocks as cellulosic ethanol (switchgrass, sugar cane, corn stover) but contains 50% more energetic content and is made via a process that uses 65% less energy. Unlike cellulosic ethanol, this fuel can be distributed via existing oil pipelines rather than gas-hogging trucks and trains, dispensed […]
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Put a whole society on a tightrope without a net and wait
The venerable Tom's Dispatch has a powerful essay from Chip Ward called "How Efficiency Maximizes Catastrophe." It uses honeybee climate collapse disorder to illustrate a hugely important point: where nature overprotects, and uses redundancy with abandon, mankind attempts to engineer everything to the last decimal place, with all redundancy removed in the quest for maximum profit.
A suicidal cultural pattern, probably. Excerpt below the fold.
