Environment and Energy
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Greening The Suburbs
What between the coming tidal wave of infrastructure stimulus spending, concern over global warming, and, of course, the fear that gas prices will eventually bolt back up once the world hauls itself out of recession, were no doubt going to be hearing a whole lot more about transit in the coming year ...
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Last-Minute Gifts For Pigs And Mines
This is very useful: Propublica is compiling a complete, searchable list of all the last-minute regulations the Bush administration is trying to jam through before Obama takes office. Its hours of fun, if youre into that sort of thing, though three rules in particular are worth a closer look heretw ...
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Quick Hits: Birdwatching In the DMZ
Noteworthy items from around the Web: * The Christian Science Monitor has a diverting piece on how the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North Korea and South Korea has inadvertently turned into one of the worlds most important wildlife preserveshome to one-third of the worlds rare red-crowned c ...
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Should We Forget About Carbon Pricing? (No.)
In this months American Prospect, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger have yet another essay arguing that environmentalists should abandon all hope of trying to cap or tax carbon emissions, and instead focus solely on subsidizing clean-energy sources if they want to avert drastic global warming. ...
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Should We Forget About Carbon Pricing?
In this months American Prospect, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger have yet another in a long line of essays arguing that environmentalists should abandon all hope of trying to cap or tax carbon emissions; instead, greens should focus solely on subsidizing clean-energy sources if they want any ...
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What Obama's Security Team Means For Energy
Over at The Washington Independent, Spencer Ackerman wonders why Barack Obama didnt name an energy secretary as part of his newly designated security team today, and its a fair question. After all, Obama himself has underscored the connection between energy security and national security (alas, the ...
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Killing Undead Appliances For Good
Im always genuinely shocked to read about how much electricity appliances consume when theyre off but still in "standby" modeTV sets, especially, which stay undead after you turn them off so that they can be clicked back on with a remote. Here are some numbers from this Wall Street Journa ...
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The End of Sashimi?
Over the last ten years, as sushi has gone from niche delicacy to global industry, the worlds bluefin tuna stocks have been suffering accordinglyespecially in the Mediterranean, home to 90 percent of the worlds bluefin. Lately, though, those tuna fisheries have been so decimated that many marine sc ...
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The End of Sushi?
Over the last ten years, as sushi has gone from niche delicacy to global industry, the worlds bluefin tuna stocks have been suffering accordinglyespecially in the Mediterranean, home to 90 percent of the worlds bluefin. Lately, though, those tuna fisheries have been so decimated that many marine sc ...
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Ethanol or Lithium: Pick Your Poison
Is there anyone who hasnt taken a good whack at corn ethanol over the past year? Its not just that, depending on how you measure things, the process of producing corn ethanol may actually create more greenhouse-gas emissions than gasoline does, once you take changes in land use and deforestation int ...
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A Thanksgiving Pardon For... Utah
Heres something to give thanks for this holiday weekend: the Bush administration is partially backing off on its plans to allow oil and gas drilling on land near Arches and Canyonlands national parks in Utah. The Bureau of Land Management had planned to auction the drilling leases for the affecte ...
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There Will Be Acid
Over the past few days, scientists have released a series of studies suggesting that the worlds oceans are acidifying much faster than anyone thought possible. As an increasing amount of carbon-dioxide gets emitted into the atmosphere, the oceans have, in turn, been absorbing more of it, which cau ...
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Everyone Loves Solar Thermal
Douglas Fischer of The Daily Climate has a great article about the growing popularity of concentrated solar thermal plants, which use mirrors to focus the suns rays on pipes carrying oil or other heat-absorbing liquids in order to make steam, which can then power a turbine. Already some 60 projects ...
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The Flex-Fuel Fiasco
There are plenty of ideas kicking around out there about how Congress can help promote a new transportation infrastructure that doesnt rely quite so heavily on oil. One oft-mentioned proposal involves having federal agencies buy up plug-in hybrids and flex-fuel cars for their fleets, in order to hel ...
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How Tricky Can This Satellite Stuff Really Be?
You know what the federal government needs right now? A bunch of Bush appointees without any sort of scientific background getting slotted in key science-related civil service positions, thats what: In one recent example, Todd Harding -- a 30-year-old political appointee at the Energy Department ...
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Are We Wasting Less Water Than We Think?
Switching to drip irrigation seems like a pretty commonsense way for farmers to save water. Instead of using giant sprinkler systems or ditches to get water to cropslosing much of it along the way to runoff, seepage, or evaporationdrip irrigation uses a system of hoses that delivers water dire ...
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How Green Is A Recession? (Again.)
Deep and nasty recessions are terrible for all sorts of obvious reasons. But when it comes to thinking about climate change and greenhouse-gas emissions, the current economic slump will likely do two things: First, it will reduce sharply emissions in the short term, as energy use plummets. Second, t ...
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The Real Reason to Subsidize Solar
In keeping with Arnold Schwarzeneggers oft-stated goal of installing solar panels on a million rooftops, California currently has one of the nations most generous subsidy programs for residential solar installations. Indeed, the amount California spends subsidizing a kilowatt of solar capaci ...
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Unintended Metaphor Alert
While the Vine doesnt endorse violence against animals, this video from the Huffington Post of Sarah Palin delivering a straight-faced interview in front of a tragic struggle between bird and man must be seen to be believed (h/t XX Factor). Does anyone doubt at this point that Pali ...
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Is Carbon Legislation Too Complex For Its Own Good?
Its going to be tough getting any bill that reduces U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions through Congress in the next two years, and scores of different legislative strategies to do so are no doubt being dreamed up as we speak. As weve been reporting here, a few DemocratsBarbara Boxer andJeff Bingaman in ...
Environment and Energy
