Iceland
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Iceland plans to turn excess carbon into stone
Instead of smokestacks belching carbon into the air, plants and factories in Iceland may soon have well injectors to push the greenhouse gases underground. You might think this would inflate the Earth like a balloon and lift it out of orbit (okay, you probably don’t think that, but it’s a good image). But in fact, […]
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Icelandic moonbow plus Northern Lights is methadone for your nature-starved eyeballs
Iceland sits just below the Arctic circle, at the confluence of multiple ocean currents, which means it a) has the Northern Lights and b) gets tons of rain so is covered with waterfalls. No doubt the descendants of Norsemen chant heartily whenever they behold this rare confluence of events:
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Rock stars, lesbians, and probably some Icelandic elves team up for geothermal power
Two rules for industry in Iceland: Don't piss off the elves, and do NOT mess with Bjork. She is the Hugo Chavez of Iceland's geothermal power.
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Making cheese from Icelandic sheep [VIDEO]
At Star Thrower Farm, Deborah and Scott Pikovsky raise these cold-hardy animals for their milk, meat, and wool -- and they do it outside, on pasture, all year long.
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Björk protests energy deal with karaoke marathon [VIDEO]
Bj?rk is staging a three-day karaoke marathon -- but not for fun, y'all. It's a protest against a sell-off of Iceland's natural resources. (Oh snarf!)
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What are the prospects for comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation in the coming years?
The chances for either an economy-wide shrinking cap on greenhouse gas emissions or a major push on clean energy investment over the next several years are not large. The best one could plausibly hope for in the next Congress, assuming only modest Republican gains, is some sort of weak cap on utility emissions, though that would still require Obama to do what he refused to do under more favorable political circumstances -- push hard for a bill.
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Building a better volcano
EyjafjallajokullPhoto courtesy Ludie Cochrane via FlickrIn America, we don’t care much about science. We care about sex and violence and money. That makes it hard to sustain a conversation about geoengineering, given that there is very little sex or money involved, and the only violence is likely to be brought on by future climate catastrophes. […]
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U.S. slips in Environmental Performance Index
Researchers at Columbia and Yale released a new Environmental Performance Index ranking 163 countries on a broad variety of indicators—basically, how well they protect their people’s air, water, natural resources, and ecosystems. Surprise, surprise, Scandinavian and Northern European countries do well. So does Costa Rica, the country that shut down its military in 1949 and […]
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U.S. denounces Iceland whaling move
WASHINGTON — The United States on Friday denounced Iceland’s decision to go ahead with a sharply higher whaling quota, voicing concern there were not whales to sustain the hunt. Iceland’s new left-wing government said last week it will maintain an earlier decision for a quota of 150 fin and 150 minke whales this year — […]