Climate Climate & Energy

I’m Hot, Sticky Sweet

Vermont’s maple-syrup industry braces for climate change Will warmer winters stop the flow of Vermont maple syrup? That’s the question of the day in the Green Mountain State, where folks worry that climate change will make the $200 million industry — which provides 32 percent of U.S. syrup output — dry up. “I’ve always been, […]

Carbon trading vs. carbon taxes on Science Friday

The question of climate change has finally moved on from is it happening? to what should we do about it?.

There has been some great discussion here at Grist on carbon trading vs. carbon taxes (e.g., here or here).

For those who want more, Bill Chameides, chief scientist of Environmental Defense, was on Science Friday to talk about carbon trading. Check out the mp3 here.

Bill basically reiterates the points he made here on Gristmill a while back. But it's still worth listening to.

Now We Can Watch Them Go Up

NOAA scientists unveil online emissions-tracking tool The U.S. might not be ready to cut its carbon emissions, but it’s ready to measure them. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has unveiled a nifty new online tool that tracks carbon dioxide levels around the world. And guess what it’s called? CarbonTracker. We’re in love! “This is […]

Not In My Back Yardarm

Biggest U.S. oil-tanker company slapped with $37 million in dumping fines They would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those meddling pipe fitters: the nation’s largest oil-tanker company, Overseas Shipholding Group, will pay $37 million for gooping up U.S. seas. For nearly five years, the company’s ships dumped waste oil and sludge […]

Major technological advances are necessary

Whatever you may think of Robert Samuelson, his essential point in today's Washington Post is sound: With developing countries increasing their energy use dramatically over the next few decades, the solution to climate change will have to come from major advances in technology.

Everything’s Up To Date in Kansas City Power & Light

Sierra Club makes groundbreaking deal with Midwest utility If a groundbreaking deal between an electric company and the Sierra Club is any indication, we can all get along. Aww. The green group has agreed to quit a six-year campaign against a new Missouri coal plant being built by Kansas City Power & Light; in return, […]

You can help

If you live in Maryland and you care about solar energy, well, you are in luck. We've got an opportunity for you to make a difference.

Today, a huge solar bill passed out of the Senate Finance Committee and the House Economic Committee in the Maryland legislature. It now faces a floor vote. You can help it become reality.

HB 1016/SB 595 would amend the state's renewable portfolio standard to add a 1,800 MW solar program. That would put it in the top tier of solar states, and go a long way towards jumpstarting the solar industry. It's a game changer.

Read about it and take action here.

Report from India

Daphne Wysham, co-director of the Sustainable Energy & Economy Network sends the following from Angul, Orissa, the heart of India's Coal Belt, on March 15, 2007:

The smell of burning coal in household fires hangs in the air. Bicyclists carry heavy bags of coal from the mines to sell for a few rupees. They are overtaken by huge lorries carrying more than the tonnage they are supposed to carry -- all part of the black market in coal -- down busy streets, with cattle lying nonchalantly on the road.

We visited communities that were literally on the edge of the coal mines, who had nowhere else to go, having received no compensation for their land, taken by the coal companies and the World Bank. In the heat of the summer they tell us, the temperature in these communities can reach over 130 degrees F. Spontaneous combustion of coal in the open-pit mines cannot be extinguished. Water is polluted and far away. Health care and education is non-existent. Heavy energy-intensive industry is everywhere in Angul: aluminum smelters, steel mills, sponge iron factories.

As we drove to a village on the outskirts of the dirtiest aluminum smelter in the country, Nalco, we were forced to stop as a parade of men dressed in bright orange dress, paint on their faces, were banging drums and cymbals, celebrating the festival of holi, the arrival of spring. They celebrate in colorful garb in their villages as they do every spring although just down the road, on the outskirts of the state-owned Nalco smelter, their cattle are dying in droves from bone-crippling fluorosis -- caused by the excessive fluoride produced from smelting aluminum -- and other undiagnosed diseases.

The people and animals have small tumors on their bodies; the women complain of arthritis-like symptoms and swollen joints that make it hard to do their daily work; the children show signs of genetic malformations. One boy we saw had seven fingers on each hand, and six toes on each foot. Another boy was deaf and retarded, his teeth also weakened, possibly by the fluoride. All the malformed children were born after the aluminum smelter was established here. Many of the women cannot be married if the men learn where they are from; similarly, cattle cannot be sold from this community. it is well-known that here a severe poisoning has taken place at the hands of Nalco.

Or a new way forward?

File this under possibly hopeful news: Researchers at Purdue are calling an approach that gasifies biomass to make liquid fuels a "hybrid hydrogen-carbon process," or H2CAR. Read the article for the straight scoop, but it's basically adding hydrogen to biomass from a "carbon-free" energy source (solar? wind? nukes?), via gasification.

The process would be more efficient than current biofuel production because it'd suppress the formation of carbon dioxide and convert all of the carbon atoms to fuel. Is it just hot air? And if this process is powered by nukes, that's a whole new question.

Come on, Drudge. You can do better

Al Gore is testifying on Capitol Hill twice on Wednesday -- before John Dingell's House Energy and Commerce Committee and Barbara Boxer's Senate Environment Committee. According to the Drudge Report (link may only be temporary), "Proposed questions for Gore, which are circulating behind-the-scenes, have been obtained by the DRUDGE REPORT -- questions that could lead Gore scrambling for answers!"

Here are the questions, which would not cause a fifth grader to scramble, but I am flattered to make the list: