Climate Climate & Energy

Have They Asked the Conservative Think Tanks About This?

Climate change really screwing things up, say scientists around the world Global warming, neither a far-off abstraction nor the myth some (still!) claim it to be, is already causing mayhem worldwide, according to the latest rash of studies on the topic. In the late 20th century, the Northern Hemisphere experienced its most sustained warm stretch […]

The Bear Necessitates

Feds to consider listing polar bears as threatened Congressional Republicans waging jihad against the Endangered Species Act may soon have a new reason to hate it: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering giving polar bears federal endangered-species protections because climate change is melting their Arctic sea-ice habitat. If the feds are compelled to […]

The Sweden Hereafter

Sweden aims to be oil-free in 15 years It’s official: Sweden is the coolest … country … evar. Already widely admired for meatballs, Ikea, and, um, other Swedish stuff, the country has now announced its aim to have an oil-free economy by 2020. The Swedes cut the percentage of their energy coming from oil from […]

As snowy peaks get warmer, ski industry tries to stave off extinction

With the Olympics starting this week, all eyes are on the slopes of Turin. But skiing and snowboarding could disappear from our collective culture in about 50 years, if global-warming forecasts ring true. In a lot of popular ski areas, there simply won’t be any snow. It’s all downhill from here. Photo: stock.xchng. It’s already […]

What’s the most energy-efficient crop source for ethanol?

Biofuel is the hot topic lately in the green blogosphere. There's legitimate dispute about the political and environmental wisdom of plant-based fuels, but at the very least everyone should be starting from a valid, shared set of numbers (oh, to dream).

In an attempt to offer up such numbers, I'm going to ... rip off somebody smarter than me. Namely, Lester Brown, founder of the Worldwatch Institute, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, and author of the recently released Plan B 2.0, which is the best big-picture summary of our environmental situation I've ever read (and I'm only 2/3 through it!). The entire thing can be downloaded for free from EPI's site.

There are two key indicators when evaluating various crops for biofuel: fuel yield per acre and net energy yield of the biofuel, minus energy used in production and refining. This table (taken from Chapter 2) compares crops based on the first indicator:

Meter Aid

New power meters help customers cool juice use Millions of California households will soon be able to see at a glance how much electricity and money is being gobbled up as they flip on their hairdryers and plasma TVs. California regulators and two of the state’s biggest utilities are rolling out a $2 billion program […]

This Global Thing Is Everywhere!

Weird weather is messing with marine ecosystems along the West Coast Tens of thousands of starved seabirds washed up on West Coast beaches last spring, and researchers are blaming — surprise! — above-normal ocean temperatures and weird weather and wind patterns. Half of the auklets in California’s Farallon Islands didn’t even try to breed last […]

Maybe oil from elsewhere?

In an earlier post, I calculated (based on 2004 figures -- I may update them shortly) that Bush's "great goal: to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025" would involve lowering U.S. oil consumption by 10.5% over 19 years. Not very ambitious.

But it's worth noting that even there I may be giving Bush too much credit. I'm assuming that he means to "replace" the Middle Eastern oil with alternatives -- biofuels, electric cars, hydrogen cars, whatnot.

It's at least possible, though, that he means to replace Middle Eastern oil with non-Middle Eastern oil. I'm no oil geologist, so I don't have a good sense of whether this is possible. But it's not outrageous to think we could cover that amount (10.5% of our oil use) by increasing imports from Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, and Nigeria -- and by increasing domestic production (read: drilling in Alaska and off the coasts). Since Canadian tar sands are under furious production, it's likely that Canadian imports are going to rise anyway.

So, it's possible that Bush's "great goal" could be accomplished without reducing U.S. oil consumption at all. We could, to use his own addiction metaphor, get our fix elsewhere.

But even I'm not that cynical.

Book Your Guilt Trip Today!

British enviros curb flying to protest airplane emissions A growing number of British enviros are quitting or cutting back on air travel, resisting the siren song of low-fare, no-frills airlines. “I just realized that all my other efforts to be green — recycling, insulating the house, not driving a giant 4×4 — would be totally […]

A coalition plugs (ha ha) for plug-in hybrids

How did everybody miss this?

Declaring the country's economy, environmental health and national security at risk, a grassroots coalition of cities including Austin, Baltimore, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle as well as electric utilities and national policy organizations today kicked off a nationwide campaign to urge automakers to accelerate development of plug-in hybrid vehicles.

Click on the webcast if you want to see a bunch of stuffed shirts give speeches. Even Senator Hatch (the ultra conservative Republican from Utah) shows up late to throw in his two cents. The only real expert on the panel was Dr. Andrew Frank, the mechanical engineering professor at UC-Davis who has been studying this concept for decades.

The goal is to convince automakers to build plug-in hybrid electric cars by promising to subsidize purchases of such cars. The usual excuses are given as to why it is OK for government to subsidize, namely, because everybody else does it! Sometimes government drives me crazy. The tax credit for buying hybrid cars is completely unnecessary. I trip over a Prius every time I go out my door. Note in this link that an all-electric car would get a tax credit of $4,000. This would knock about $1,200 off the purchase price of one of these $14,000 high-end golf carts (if you are in the 33% tax bracket).