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Alternative energy attracts investors (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 06:00:06
| Wall Street Journal: Even before President Bush called for a push into petroleum alternatives in the State of the Union address, energy startups were venture capitalists' latest technology craze. Some of the same people who helped to finance Silicon Valley's succession of electronics-technology booms see promise in energy technology. One of the valley's best-known venture capitalists, Vinod Khosla -- who co-founded Sun Microsystems Inc. in the early 1980s and is now a partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield ... |
Australia: Sydney water crisis: Is desalination plant the solution? (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 06:00:06
| Green Left: Sydney is facing a water crisis. One of the worst droughts in Australia's history has left the Warragamba Dam, which provides Sydney with 80% of its water needs, only 43.1% full. This is far below the 60% mark which triggered mandatory water restrictions in 2003. The level will need to rise above 70% before restrictions are abandoned. Speaking on ABC TV's Lateline program on June 10, Professor Tim Flannery, an environmental scientist and director of the South Australian Museum, ... |
Ethanol's merits are debated (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 06:00:06
| Boston Globe: Outside New England, millions of drivers in 38 states have access to an alternative fuel that is billed as environmentally friendly and generally costs pennies to 40 cents per gallon less than gasoline. But scientists and green-policy advocates haven't come to a consensus on the merits or demerits of E85, a blend of 15 percent gasoline and 85 percent ethanol, an alcohol derived from organic material, frequently corn. Both groups have two camps. One insists that E85 is cleaner, ... |
James Lovelock: 'The lush, comfortable world we are used to is going rapidly' (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 06:00:06
| Independent: James Lovelock insists that he's an optimist, but not when it comes to the future of our planet. We have passed the point of no return, says the scientist who invented the concept of the Earth as a planetary "super-organism" and who impishly named it after the ancient Greek goddess Gaia. We have reached a point where civilisation itself is threatened. Life as we know it will never be the same, he warns, and we have no one to blame but our own ignorance and greed. Lovelock ... |
Australia: Reef 'gone in 20 years' (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 06:00:06
| Australian: MARINE scientists say global warming could transform the Great Barrier Reef into a bleached maze of dead coral within 20 years. The warning comes amid bleaching over the summer near the Keppel Islands, which threatens to spread to large sections of the World Heritage-listed reef. Australian Institute of Marine Science coral bleaching expert Ray Berkelmans said the damage - which occurs when warm temperatures rob the coral of nutrition - may mark the start of the reef's demise. ... |
Winds of climate change are about to make their impact felt in many a boardroom (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 06:00:06
| Guardian: The old economics is dead. Its death knell was sounded last week, not by a practitioner of the dismal science but by Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser. Sir David King said concentrations of greenhouse gases were already at a level where the warning signs were flashing red: a comment that starkly illustrates the impending clash between economic orthodoxy and environmental sustainability. Economics is a discipline in which the factors of production - capital and labour - are supposed ... |
Easy oil no more (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 06:00:06
| Denver Post: People have been nagging me about my wasteful oil consumption for 30 years. I didn't pay much attention. I love my Mustang convertible. I was the kind of guy who, hearing President Bush tout the virtues of ethanol and decry America's "addiction" to oil in the State of the Union speech, would dismiss it as empty rhetoric. Except, recently, I was stopped in my tracks by a message on an airport billboard. "The world consumes two barrels of oil for every ... |
China: Global warming threatens Tibet rail link (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 06:00:06
| Reuters: Global warming could threaten the new Qinghai-Tibet Railway, the world's highest, within a decade, a Chinese researcher said in remarks published on Sunday. Wu Ziwang, a frozen soil specialist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the official Xinhua news agency his research over three decades revealed large areas of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau showed signs of shrinking, as they were frozen less of the time. This could threaten the new railway, which is to start operations ... |
United Kingdom: Industry fears it will be hit by fresh drive to cut emissions (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 06:00:06
| Independent: Electricity generators have warned that placing an even greater burden on the sector to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, under a forthcoming official plan, will threaten Britain's already struggling power network. Power stations and other heavy users of energy fear that they will again be seen as a "soft touch" for a government desperate to meet its ambitious target of a 20 per cent cut in UK carbon dioxide emissions by 2010. Electricity producers believe it will ... |
Canada: Rip up Kyoto contract? Not so fast (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 06:00:06
| Toronto Star: During the election campaign, the Conservatives were coy about climate change. Their official platform spoke of developing a "made-in-Canada plan" to address greenhouse gas emissions, but didn't mention the Kyoto Protocol at all. Still, it's quite clear that Stephen Harper is no fan of the agreement. Now that he's in power, could he tear it up? The answer is: not very easily. That's because the protocol sets out a timetable for backing out of the deal. A party must wait ... |
Wind energy costly to move (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 06:00:07
| Associated Press: Wind energy sounds great in theory. In practice, it can be extremely costly, a Nebraska Public Power District official said. After wind energy is generated, it must be stored and moved. If transmission lines required for the task don't meet specifications, it can cost as much as $500,000 per mile or more to update them, said Doug Mollet, water systems and renewable energy manager for NPPD. "If you don't have the transmission, it falls apart from an economic ... |
Too hot to handle (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 06:00:07
| Boston Globe: JIM HANSEN, the director of NASA'S Goddard Institute for Space Studies, is a dangerous man. Not a brash man or a rebel-I remember interviewing him many years ago, and when I asked him what he did to relax, he replied, ''mow my lawn." He's spent his whole career on the NASA payroll, but never looked up at the beckoning stars, at least professionally. Instead, from a floor of offices above Tom's Diner, of ''Seinfeld" fame, on New York's Upper West Side, he's fixed an unwavering gaze ... |
Bush bangs out a hollow message on an oil can (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 06:00:07
| Times (UK): My personal recipe for getting through a state of the union address is a gin and tonic and an ephedra (a herbal stimulant that's legal again in the US). Aware of the crushing tedium of such speeches, their writers have learnt over the years to insert a couple of lines every now and again just to see if the audience has already slipped into a coma. Bill Clinton told the world that "the era of big government is over". I vaguely remember spluttering what was left of my drink at the time. ... |
Glaciers 'moving faster' - study (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 06:00:07
| BBC: The rate at which two major Greenland glaciers are moving has seen a dramatic acceleration, a study warns. Swansea University researchers say the flow rate, or the speed at which the constantly travelling glaciers move, has doubled in two years. Scientists have warned the findings could mean the ice cap is melting even more quickly than previously thought. A report published by the UK government last week also expressed fears of the impact of climate change. ... |
United Kingdom: Wind farms face 10-year delay for grid connection (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 06:00:07
| Times (UK): THE government's renewable energy policy is in chaos after hundreds of wind farm companies were told that they face delays of more than 10 years before they can sell any of the electricity that they produce. Green energy targets are under threat because the national grid is unable to cope with the large numbers of wind farms applying for connection. Producers are being asked for "security" payments worth millions of pounds to build turbines that could lie idle for a ... |
Muffled warnings on global warming (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 06:00:07
| Boston Globe: THE BURNING issue was the thin ice encrusted on the boulders. The rocks were half-submerged in a small stream at the foot of the White Mountains in Maine. Ribbons of water swirled around them, propelled by two days of nonstop rain. That was the first problem. It was mid-January. In northern New England, the rain usually would have been a foot of snow. The boulders would have been smothered into giant marshmallows. This aberration was amplified by the seductive warmth in Boston. For ... |
NASA Chief Backs Agency Openness (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 06:00:07
| New York Times: A week after NASA's top climate scientist complained that the space agency's public-affairs office was trying to silence his statements on global warming, the agency's administrator, Michael D. Griffin, issued a sharply worded statement yesterday calling for "scientific openness" throughout the agency. "It is not the job of public-affairs officers," Dr. Griffin wrote in an e-mail message to the agency's 19,000 employees, "to alter, filter or adjust ... |
'Addiction to Oil' Calls For a More Direct Intervention (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 06:00:07
| LA Times: Let's say the energy bills in your house are too high. One response might be to start saving for a new, more efficient house you could afford in 10 or 20 years. Or you could replace the windows and improve the insulation today. President Bush, in the energy plan he announced in his State of the Union speech last week, chose the first strategy. Bush promised more federal energy research, primarily into technologies that might reduce America's fossil fuel dependence years from ... |
Bush's Energy Escapades (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 06:00:07
| CounterPunch: It was, to use Yogi Berra's phrase-déjà vu all over again. George W. Bush's energy program in his State of the Union speech echoed the many similar promises made by his presidential predecessors going back to Ronald Reagan. Promises that were either vague or if specific, distant from realization. What irony to pledge to become energy independent, as we become ever more dependent on imported oil-imports are now reaching 60 percent of total US oil consumption. "America is addicted ... |
Local ways start to change as waters of Lake Chad recede (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 06:00:07
| Financial Times: For decades Lake Chad, in the semi-desert region where Chad joins Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon, has been retreating into itself, a geographic backwater on the frontier between west and central Africa, where regional co-operation has so far achieved little in the attempt to manage a vital and shrinking resource. On the map, the lake is clearly delineated, the biggest expanse of water for 1,000km in any direction. About 30m people live in its drainage basin, a vast area of 2.4m sq km ... |
Gagged prophet (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 06:00:07
| Houston Chronicle: NASA's top climatologist, James E. Hansen, recently urged swift action to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. When he did, the agency's public affairs machinery went into overdrive. NASA officials ordered Hansen to submit for review any lectures, Internet statements and journalists' requests for interviews. Hansen recently posted a widely quoted report on a NASA Web site stating that 2005 was the hottest year since comprehensive weather records were ... |
Firm hopes to start carbon credit exchange in Japan (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 06:00:07
| Kyodo: Japan's first carbon dioxide credit exchange is being planned to start in the middle of the year to help achieve the greenhouse gas emission cuts promised under the Kyoto Protocol. Netherlands-based Asia Carbon International B.V., which last year set up Asia's first offshore carbon exchange, in Singapore, is planning to set up an exchange in Japan with Japanese partners, said Kesava Shotam, the firm's managing director. "We're looking at setting up an exchange in Japan. We ... |
Global warming boosting Greenland glacier flow (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 06:00:07
| Reuters: Two major glaciers in Greenland have recently begun to flow and break up more quickly under the onslaught of global warming, a new study said on Friday, raising the spectre of millions drowning from rising sea levels. The report from the University of Swansea's School of the Environment and Society said the Kangerdlugssuaq and Helheim glaciers had doubled their rate of flow to the ocean over the past two years after steady movement during the 1990s. This spurt meant that ... |
Action needed to protect Pacific from climate change: World Bank (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 06:00:07
| Radio New Zealand: The World Bank says urgent action is needed to protect Pacific Island countries as global warming increases the frequency and ferocity of tropical cyclones in the region. In a report, the World Bank says Pacific Islands need to do more to minimise the impact of cyclones and other natural disasters, including droughts and tsunamis. It says Pacific countries rank among the most vulnerable in the world to such natural events. The report says aid donors should offer ... |
Focus on Oil Praised, but With Caveats (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 06:00:07
| LA Times: In declaring in his State of the Union address that America is "addicted to oil" and pledging bold action to find alternative fuel sources, especially for automobiles, President Bush adopted rhetoric that had previously been heard more often from environmentalists than from the White House. Many analysts welcomed Bush's change of tone as a sign of rising awareness of how serious U.S. dependence on imported oil had become. Not only are the prices of gasoline and other ... |
God's Green Soldiers (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 09:00:10
| Newsweek: In a town where access is everything, the Rev. Richard Cizik's calendar would be the envy of even the hardest-hitting Washington player. One day last week his schedule included the National Prayer Breakfast with President George W. Bush, a luncheon with King Abdullah II of Jordan and a cozy evening reception at the home of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. Between meetings, Cizik hobnobbed with U2 lead singer Bono, in town to advocate for Third World debt relief. Shaking the rock star's ... |
United States: New Power Meters Show Users the Money (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 09:00:10
| LA Times: Kieran Wong likes flexing his power. Two years ago, the 42-year-old furniture salesman had an "advanced" electricity meter installed in his Valencia home as part of a pilot project designed to see whether the high-tech devices could help customers save power. As far as Wong is concerned, it worked. On hot summer afternoons in the Santa Clarita Valley – when power prices are at their highest – the meter and a "smart" thermostat that displayed real-time ... |
Canada Oil Sands to Help Meet Bush Mideast Oil Cut (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 09:00:10
| Reuters: President George W. Bush could get closer to his goal of cutting US dependence on Middle East crude - but it won't be his futuristic plan to run cars on fuel made from wood chips or hydrogen that will do the trick. It's Canada. Bush laid out a plan in his State of the Union speech earlier this week to slash crude imports from the Middle East 75 percent by 2025, replacing the oil with alternative fuels at home. But yet-to-be released numbers from the US Energy ... |
Sugar's Expanding Role as Auto Fuel Energises Funds (View Original Story)
Source: Posted: 02-06-2006 at 09:00:10
| Reuters: Investment funds are piling into sugar, sending prices to 25-year highs, as they seek to cash in the sweetener's growing use as a source of motor fuel, analysts and fund managers said on Friday. Raw sugar prices finished on Thursday at their highest in 25 years on a supply squeeze and heavy investment fund buying, with the market tipped to race past the psychological 20-cent level soon, brokers said. The New York Board of Trade's key March raw sugar contract jumped 0.86 cent, ... |
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