EVs
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Critical List: IPCC says humans causing bad weather; physics causes cyclists to breeze by stop signs
The IPCC is officially saying that human-generated emissions are screwing up the weather. Fukushima rice that was supposed to be safe has unacceptably high levels of radiation. Energy Secretary Steven Chu survived five hours of questioning from Congress about Solyndra. Can we let it go now? The Green Car of the Year is the Honda […]
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Critical List: Climate change is happening (no, really!); the gas industry has some weird ideas
A Berkeley scientist who was once critical of climate science did an independent study that confirmed that climate change is happening and that common claims from skeptics are totally spurious. Skeptics are still skeptical.
Three-quarters of Americans think that the government should push harder on developing clean energy.
Shocker: The government also invested in electric cars and some of them were not perfect, i.e., THIS IS THE NEXT SOLYNDRA.
Natural gas companies don't understand why the EPA would want to make rules about fracking wastewater disposal: "We'll do it in a responsible way! Well, at least, we do now, after the New York Times revealed that we've just been dumping it into a river! But we'll do better! Honest!"
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Northeastern states build giant electric vehicle network
A consortium of northeastern states stretching from New Hampshire down to Maryland is working together to construct an electric vehicle network. EV infrastructure is only just starting to build up, so it's great that states are coordinating on it, rather than each building their own system and creating a hodgepodge of nonsense that no sensible person could actually use.
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Coming in 2013: Electric DeLorean!
The DeLorean Motor Company (not the original one but a reboot) will be coming out with an all-electric version of the iconic gull-wing auto in 2013 -- two years early for the events of Back to the Future II. Dear god, we'd better get cracking on those self-lacing shoes!
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Can luxury car brands market green vehicles?
Luxury car brands have a problem. They want to be green, honest! But luxury, according to The New York Times, means "bigger, stronger, faster." None of those adjectives translate into "fuel economy."
They're trying, though! Aston Martin, for instance, turned a tiny Toyota smart car into the fancy Cygnet, which has 1.3 liter engine. Mercedes is working on smaller cars, some with hybrid or electric engines. Lexus has a "compact luxury hybrid hatchback" (whatever that is).
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Charge your EV in 10 minutes flat
Pretty much no one wants to wait around for their theoretical EV to charge, which is one reason why people aren't buying them in droves yet. But in the near future, charging won't take more than 10 minutes, thanks to Nissan.
Along with a Japanese university, the car company developed an EV charger that takes a fraction of the time of current chargers without compromising battery life. Right now, charging an EV generally takes about eight hours, or 48 times as long as this new charger will need.
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Critical List: Invasive species jump the border; Gulf sheen not BP’s fault
While U.S. border monitors were busy looking for terrorists in cargo containers, a slew of invasive species slipped unnoticed into the country.
Whatever that sheen in the Gulf is, it's not BP's fault, okay??
If carbon is a risk (and it is!), the market should adjust for that, valuing companies with high "exposure to climate change" less than those that are climate-resilient. But since markets don't seem to ever do what they should in theory, that hasn't happened yet.
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Here’s a win-win: Geothermal power can make lithium for electric vehicles
Existing geothermal power plants are powered by a hot brine from deep within the earth's crust, which is just lousy with dissolved minerals -- literally "half the periodic table," reports Scientific American. One of those elements is lithium, which can be extracted from the geothermal fluid that existing power plants in California's Salton Sea are already pulling out of the ground.
This is remarkable on many levels at once.
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Critical List: Biden stumps for clean energy; the magical green properties of concrete
"The biggest mistake this nation has made in its entire history" would be not to invest in clean energy, VP Joe Biden said yesterday at the National Clean Energy Summit 4.0
The Russian government just cut a deal with Exxon to look for oil in that country’s sector of the Arctic. The next day, Russia raided BP’s Moscow offices.
George Monbiot argues that fracking without regulation is insane.