Climate Climate & Energy

The latest from Kunstler

Jim Kunstler’s heard the latest data on oil exports/imports, and he sees trouble a’comin’: The implication in [the coming dropoff in oil imports] is that the activities that have become “normal” for us during the post World War Two era will very shortly become untenable. An economy based on suburban expansion and incessant motoring is […]

I’m sure whoever has the best argument will win, right?

There’s an interesting piece today in CongressNow on the debate over auctioning vs. giving away credits in a cap-and-trade system. (CN requires a subscription, which you can get for the low, low price of $1500 or so. I’m on the 10-day evaluation thing, so enjoy these pieces while they come, ’cause there’s no way Grist […]

It ain’t working

The Washington Post has a piece about Obama’s attempts to split the difference (thread the needle? straddle the fence?) on the subject of liquid coal. Y’all are probably sick of hearing me talk about this (watch for an op-ed soon!), so I’ll outsource the making of the basic point to Brian Beutler and Brad Plumer, […]

Climate change science questioned

In an op-ed in today's Washington Post, Emily Yoffe asks an interesting question:

All this is not to say that it's not getting warmer and that curbing our profligate environmental ways is not a commendable and necessary goal. But perhaps this movement is sowing the seeds of its own destruction -- even as it believes the human species has sown its own. There must be a limit to how many calamitous films, books and television shows we, and our children, can absorb.

It doesn't seem sustainable to expect people to remain terrified by such a disinterested, often benign -- it was so nice eating out on the patio! -- and even unpredictable enemy.

Random observation of the day

I read a lot of arguments about coal in a carbon-constrained world, given my, um, obsession with it, and I frequently run across these two claims, sometimes in the very same article: There’s so much coal, and renewables are so far from competitive, that it’s not realistic to think we could live without it. Coal […]

Getting rid of the remnants of the sell-more-power utility model

This is an important article on one of the best, simplest, and fastest ways to reduce home electric usage: make it visible.

We can have both

A new study entitled "Sipping Fuel and Saving Lives: Increasing Fuel Economy without Sacrificing Safety" notes:

The public, automakers, and policymakers have long worried about trade-offs between increased fuel economy in motor vehicles and reduced safety. The conclusion of a broad group of experts on safety and fuel economy in the auto sector is that no trade-off is required. There are a wide variety of technologies and approaches available to advance vehicle fuel economy that have no effect on vehicle safety [and vice versa].

The study by the International Council on Clean Transportation concludes that "Technologies exist today that can improve light-duty vehicle fuel economy by up to 50 percent ... with no impact on safety."

The study has two noteworthy figures. The first shows that higher-fuel-economy vehicles [green] are some of the safest while low-fuel-economy vehicles [red] are some of the least safe vehicles driven today -- large, heavy trucks and SUVs. Click to enlarge.

The second figure lists technologies available today that can improve fuel economy with no impact on safety and lists technologies that can improve vehicle safety with little or no effect on fuel economy. Click to enlarge.

The study is conservative in the sense that it doesn't even consider plug-in hybrids, which can significantly increase fuel economy with no impact on safety at all. It is well worth a read.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Plans to make huge cuts in greenhouse gases

Well it would be nice to know how they plan to do all this, but these certainly are ballsy goals out of New Jersey: • Reduce greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2020 (a 13 percent drop) and 80 percent below current levels by 2050. • Regulators have one year to measure current and 1990 […]

Quite engorged, actually

I can’t believe the world’s private investors have joined up with those silly, unrealistic anti-nuke fruitcakes! Renewable energy has moved out of the fringe and into the mainstream, with investors worldwide pouring $71 billion of new capital into the sector in 2006, up 43 percent from the previous year, and more is expected, a U.N. […]

Gov’t doesn’t want to pay for them

Looks like the public teat is closing up shop: The government will not subsidise new nuclear power plants, so if the private sector does not provide the huge investments needed, the country will have to do without, the minister responsible for energy said on Thursday. The Labour government sees nuclear power as one of the […]