Weather Extremes and Media Indifference

If you've found the news reports of extreme weather-related events unsettling, you're not alone. However, because of a mainstream-media machine tightly linked to many of the industries that contribute most heavily to global warming, the likely culprit behind these events is generally ignored. Few news stories on floods, hurricanes, droughts, or heat waves suggest any correlation with the steady rise in global temperatures. Most often, these correlations are restricted to the OpEd pages, as is this piece in the Boston Globe, Katrina's Real Name. The disaster unfolding in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast is one more link in a growing chain of anecdotal evidence that corroborates what most climate scientists are saying--the effects of global warming are being experienced already in increasingly deadly ways.

Solar Nanotechnology Arrives

After decades of fits and starts, solar energy gets a boost from some new technology emerging from the Silicon Valley. Offering the promise of mass-produced light-collecting plastics that could be embedded in building materials or spread across rooftops, the nanotechnology firms involved in this pursuit are confident that costs can easily be reduced to levels similar to non-renewable sources of energy. Freedom from the grid may be near at hand.

Climate Change: Warnings of Imminent Disaster Fail on Deaf Ears

The title, Warnings of Imminent Disaster Fall on Deaf Ears, says it all.

California Farmers Embrace Solar Power

The abundance of California sunshine during large parts of the year have helped the region become one of the most important agricultural producers in the world. Now, many California farmers are using that same sunshine to produce electricity, lowering their needs for centralized power delivery, particularly during the long, hot summers. One second-generation farmer, Pat Ricchiuti, has cut his annual $1.5 million energy bill by 50 percent after installing 7,730 solar panels, which generate 1 megawatt of energy.

Nuclear Power is Wrong Answer

Among the many myths that bob around largely uncontested in the mainstream media, perhaps the most glaring is the assertion that nuclear power is the technology of choice to solve the global warming problem. As this Baltimore Sun article, Nuclear Power is Wrong Answer, points out, nuclear power is not clean, green, or sustainable.

The Cost of Clean Energy

Amid the claims and counterclaims over which energy solutions make sense for the future, the Union of Concerned Scientists has compiled a clean energy analysis that pulls together hard numbers and provides a compelling argument for turning to renewable energy options now. The bottom line is that if the United States adopted a 20 percent national renewable energy standard, consumers will save money on energy costs and jobs will be created. You might be surprised by just how much will be saved and how much will be gained.

Ocean Data Support Global Warming Projections

Mounting evidence continues to support the well-established scientific judgment that human activities are warming the planet. A new study confirms that the Earth is absorbing more energy from the Sun than is being reflected back into space, as this article from the Environment News Service, Ocean Data Support Global Warming Projections, details. The latest hard data matches computer models of this imbalance and the lead author calls the research "the smoking gun that should put to rest any lingering doubts about humanity's role in global warming."

The End of Oil Is Closer Than You Think

The title of this story from The Guardian UK, The End of Oil Is Closer Than You Think, says it all. The roller coaster is nearing that first big drop and the ride promises to be wild and wooly.

Lining Their Pockets: The Global Warming Debunkers

Guess who is paying for many of the junk science studies and intemperate critiques of global warming scientists? Why, it's none another than ExxonMobil, the company that has pumped more than $8 million into trying to downplay the greatest threat the planet faces. As Chris Mooney points out in this Mother Jones article, Some Like It Hot, the goal is to undermine the scientific consensus that humans are causing the earth to overheat.

Revisiting Chernobyl

Those who swear by the safety of nuclear power should be airlifted to the Ukraine and left to stroll around the deserted streets of Pripiat to get a small sense of the impact of a large-scale radiation release. This Inter Press story offers some insight: ENVIRONMENT: Some Chernobyl Clouds Will Not Clear.

The latest novel from Martin Cruz Smith, Wolves Eat Dogs takes detective Arkady Renko to the Zone of Exclusion surrounding Chernobyl for a chilling, well-researched taste of the magnitude of the disaster and the effects on the remaining local residents.

Wildly Popular Hybrids

Spiraling gasoline prices have led to booming popularity for hybrid vehicles. As the Toyota sales manager in Baltimore says in this Baltimore Sun story, A Winning Hybrid Shows the Way, "People love this car. We could sell as many as we can get."

Enabling Sustainable Development

Project results unveiled by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) this week provide strategically significant information for siting wind turbines and solar collectors, as described in this release from the Environment News Service, Mapping Reveals Earth's Best Sites for Wind, Solar Power. Focusing on 13 developing countries, UNEP hopes to make a difference in helping launch successful sustainable energy developments in regions with limited resources.

Where is the "Sound Science"?

As Derrick Z. Jackson reminds us in this Boston Globe article, President Bush has told us he needs to see the "sound science" on global warming before joining the rest of the world in combating it. A recent report, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, commissioned by the United Nations relied on 1,360 experts from 95 countries and devoted $24 million to compile a hard science perspective on the human impacts to our planetary ecosystem (including global warming). The Bush administration to date has been curiously silent on the sobering conclusions of this assessment.

Powerful Winds Aloft

Wind turbine energy systems are prone to the inconsistencies of wind forces near ground level, but at higher altitudes wind forces are persistent and strong. An Australian engineer, Bryan Roberts, has designed an approach to launch self-powered aircraft equipped with wind turbines skyward and working with a San Diego startup company, Sky WindPower, is seeking to commercialize the invention. This Wired article, Windmills in the Sky, provides the details.

Homeland Insecurity: Nuclear Plants Open to Attack

Nuclear power is safe and clean and our only future energy option as long as you don't take into account the mining and transport of uranium, the shutdown of reactors in heat wave conditions (as occurred in France during the record-breaking heat a couple of summers ago), the costs and risks of decommissioning reactors, the storage of wastes, and the possibility that terrorists might crash an aircraft into a reactor facility (as discussed in the Washington Post article, Homeland Insecurity: Nuclear Plants Open to Attack . In the age of terrorism, it would be difficult to find a worse choice than nuclear power to bank on for the future.

Missing the Big Picture

Bill McKibben is always an entertaining read and he's particularly sharp and well focused in this Orion article, On Not Quite Getting It.

Plug-in Hybrids Get Astounding Mileage

Suppose you could take that high-mileage Prius sitting in your garage and modify it so that it gets 180 m.p.g. rather than 45? This is the question that a couple of inveterate tinkerers asked as they set out to make their fuel-efficient car even more fuel efficient by plugging it into the garage wall outlet at night. Not surprisingly, Toyota and Honda frown about this kind of modification to their carefully engineered creations. Will such a vehicle be available commercially any time soon? [New York Times, requires registration]

Hydrogen Fueling Station in Vermont

Thanks to a Department of Energy Grant secured by Vermont representative Bernie Sanders, Northern Power Systems and Proton Energy Systems will be constructing an advanced hydrogen fueling station near Burlington, VT. A partnership with EVermont helped bring about this project, which will begin as soon as local approvals have been completed.

Energy deregulation is good for you

Some of the very same companies that engaged in market manipulation to cheat consumers are now banding together to lobby for more energy deregulation. With an energy bill set to be unveiled in Congress in early April, these stealth lobbyists hope to sway opinion in their favor.

"It is disingenuous for this lobby group to push deregulation policies that they claim are good for consumers when history shows that their own companies used these very policies to profit from the biggest consumer rip-off in history," said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen.

The Long Emergency

"People cannot stand too much reality," Carl Jung said, as James Howard Kunstler reminds us in this Rolling Stone article, The Long Emergency. The reality that Kunstler paints is truly grim, even for those of us who hope there is a way out of our pending energy crisis through alternative energy and efficiency improvements. The year of peak oil production (as has been projected by other analysts, as well) may be 2005. As we slide downhill, forced to give up the amenities that many take for granted, the behavior of the citizens of our oil-addicted society is likely to be less than civic-minded.