Climate Climate & Energy

Where Are We Supposed to Move Now?

Canada plans cuts to climate programs and backs further away from Kyoto Do you hear that? The mild harrumphing? That’s the sound of disgruntled Canadian enviros. They’re unhappy with the new Conservative government’s reported plans to slash funding for programs to fight climate change, despite a recent federal review that found most such programs to […]

Coal gasification: “clean coal” or subsidy-hungry boondoggle?

Governing magazine has an excellent, compact overview of current developments in coal. If you're hazy on gasification this, coal-to-liquid that, and Fischer-Tropsch the other, I recommend it.

With oil and natural-gas prices rising and coal in plentiful supply, it's more or less inevitable that coal's going to get used, so it makes sense that (some) enviro organizations are biting the bullet and joining the push for the cleanest possible applications.

There is reason for cautious optimism. Coal mining is destructive as hell, but in places like northeastern Pennsylvania -- where the article focuses, and where the first U.S. coal-to-liquid plant will be built starting this Spring -- there's waste coal laying all over the place, leaching acid into groundwater (the legacy of pre-regulatory coal mining). The plant will gather that coal as feedstock and replace it with solid waste covered in soil, thereby creating farmland or forest.

Pistil Whipped

Plants don’t absorb as much CO2 as expected, study finds Those who tout tree-planting as the answer to all the earth’s problems may have to go back to the drawing board (the planting board?): A new study in Nature finds that carbon dioxide-absorbing plants can’t hoover up quite as much of the greenhouse gas as […]

Umbra on climate-change patterns

While I am in no doubt about the effect of human activity on climate change, I have a friend who is convinced that even if we weren’t destroying the earth, the earth’s own weather patterns would be in global-warming stage anyway. How do we know the current climate change isn’t just an inevitable part of […]

Oh No He Didn’t

Chrysler official takes public potshot at oil companies What’s more fun than a quiet, simmering feud between Big Auto and Big Oil? A public catfight! Chief Chrysler spokesflack Jason Vines minced no words on a company blog Monday: “Despite a documented history of … hoarding their bounty by avoiding technologies, policies, and legislation that would […]

Europe should push U.S. to more fully fund the Global Environment Facility

Recently, in Moscow, at the meeting of G8 Finance Ministers, the Europeans gave us a repeat performance of an all-too-familiar pattern: they appeased George Bush at the expense of the global environment. Show us the money. Photo: iStockphoto. At last year’s Gleneagles summit of the G8 industrialized nations, the G8 leaders, led by the Europeans, […]

A Swiftly Heating Planet

Spacecraft heads to Venus to get clues about global warming Venus coulda been a contenda. It’s just a little closer to the sun than Earth, just a little smaller, and once had plentiful water. But instead of evolving life in a tropical paradise, the oceans started heating up and evaporating, trapping the planet in an […]

If At First You Don’t Succeed, Quit

Canada won’t make Kyoto emissions targets; blames targets Canada is nearly 30 percent above its greenhouse-gas emissions targets under the Kyoto Protocol, so it’s redoubling efforts to … abandon the targets. New Environment Minister Rona Ambrose, of the less-than-ambitious Conservative Party that took power in February, concludes “it is impossible, impossible for Canada to reach […]

Umbra on global warming

Dear Umbra, The many articles on global warming conclude with something about the inherent complexity and uncertainty of the issue. So exactly what is the evidence for (and against) arguing that the current warming trend is inside the scope of normal fluctuations? What is the evidence for (and against) arguing that the trend is caused […]

Increase fuel efficiency with magnets!

As the developed world scratches its collective head over the puzzle of fuel efficiency -- "Why would we want something that's good for us in the short term and the long term?" -- a Los-Angeles-based company has patented technology to reduce emissions and increase fuel efficiency, all with the humble holder-of-plastic-letters-onto-the-refrigerator: the magnet. Save the World Air, Inc., do-gooders and lovers of acronyms, own the manufacturing and marketing rights to ZEFS and CAT-MATE devices, which are ...

... specifically engineered to minimize environmental pollution, to enhance fuel system performance and to increase engine efficiency. Variations of these devices can be attached to the internal combustion engines or exhaust systems in most automobiles, motorcycles, off-road vehicles, generators and other stationary implements.