Climate Climate & Energy

Arctic Tock …

Arctic ice may be gone in one to three decades If you’ve been planning a trip to the Arctic, better buy your tickets now, because it’s a-meltin’ fast. (Perhaps you’ve heard?) A record low amount of ocean froze over this winter — a reduction of over 115,000 square miles of sea ice from last year. […]

The Best Big Wind Farm in Texas

Biggest U.S. offshore wind farm planned for Texas coast Yesterday, officials approved a plan to build the biggest offshore wind farm in the U.S. off the coast of Padre Island, Texas. Say it with us now: everything’s bigger in Texas. Superior Renewable Energy LLC plans to erect as many as 170 turbines, with the capacity […]

In the Pipeline of Fire

Pipeline explosion kills up to 200 in Nigeria Between 150 and 200 Nigerians were instantly incinerated when locals siphoning gasoline from an overground pipeline near Lagos, Nigeria, caused an explosion today. Nigeria is the biggest oil producer in Africa and the fourth-largest supplier of crude oil to the U.S.; as a consequence, it’s become quite […]

Wind farm follies

So, it seems they're going to build the nation's largest wind farm off the coast of Padre Island in Texas. Environmentalists are up in arms about ... wait for it ... the birds. Oy.

This bit from Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson is amusing:

"Those who are concerned about view sheds shouldn't have a problem," he said. "There's nobody there to look at it."

Nice bank shot!

Speaking of view sheds and wind farms, I confess I haven't been following the latest drama over the much-discussed Cape Wind project all that closely, cause it makes me want to pull my hair out.

First Sen. Don Young (R-Alaska) offered an amendment to kill it. I think that one died. Then Young offered another amendment giving Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney, a longtime project opponent, the power to kill it. In conference committee, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) whittled the amendment down so it only applied to wind projects in Nantucket Sound and then attached it to a Coast Guard funding bill.

Greenwashing coal with platitudes

In the same vein as the half-pint shill with a skateboard who's "stoked" about how clean coal is, this greenwash site for Peabody Coal tries to appeal to the bumpersticker platitude crowd in its latest ad:

ENERGY FOR THE 21st CENTURY
Flip a switch.
Play a tune.
Warm your home.
Fuel your car.
Yeah ... coal can do that.

Another One Fights the Must

Canada is totally over the Kyoto Protocol O, Canada. What are we going to do with you? Besides invade when oil gets too expensive, we mean. Canuck greenhouse-gas emissions are 35 percent above Kyoto targets, and Environment Minister Rona Ambrose has declared that to meet them, Canada would have to cease using all trains, planes, […]

Oops

Oil leaks all over everything Oil, oil everywhere! And not in a good way. In its dubiously named Sustainability Report, oil behemoth Royal Dutch Shell reports that oil spills at its facilities rose 50 percent from 2004 to 2005. Hurricane damage was responsible for a goodly portion of the spillage, and sabotage of a major […]

Far From the Madding Cloud

Pollutants contribute to Arctic warming some more The Arctic climate is already sensitive to global warming; now it turns out human pollutants are kicking it — or rather, warming it more — while it’s down. According to a new study in Nature, particulate pollution (mostly from cities in Europe) changes the size and number of […]

Countries May Have Shifted During Flight

China builds new airports; still not as pollutey as U.S. China plans to build 48 new airports in the next five years, spending $17.5 billion on construction and continuing expansion of existing hubs. The country is already the premier buyer of Boeing and Airbus planes, and has vowed to buy 100 planes every year until […]

The military-industrial complex wins again

Theoretically, the oil shale in the American West could provide enough oil to power the world, Saudi-free, for decades or more. The problem is that while oil shale is a hydrocarbon, it's not a terribly attractive one. Massive amounts of energy must be used to extract useful fuel, making it a loser in terms of economics and energy balance.

Fortunately, Raytheon (makers of the missiles and radars used by the USAF) is there to save the day, via The Energy Blog:

Radio frequency (RF) energy combined with critical fluid (CF) technology shows promise for efficiently extracting oil from shale. Historically, the lack of an economical and environmentally friendly way for extracting oil from shale has kept it from being a significant energy source.

"Raytheon is an expert in RF technology," said Lee Silvestre, director of Mission Innovation at Raytheon IDS. "What makes this effort a breakthrough is that similar RF technology that we have been applying in core defense products -- radars for tracking and guidance systems -- has demonstrated applications in the energy crisis."

So good to see a mom-and-pop operation like Raytheon helping the country -- nay, the planet! -- through its environmental crisis. After all, I'm sure oil-shale harvesting will be at least as efficient as, say, the tar sands.

The military industrial complex: Fueling the ... military industrial complex since 1945!