On the effect of unregulated trading (speculation) on oil prices. It creates demand nearly equal to the demand China has in oil markets. Hmmm, wonder if that raises prices?   more »

Excellent! Watch the video! VP Cantwell? Yep.   more »

Check out this goofy candy commercial. Based on the premise that "blogging about our ideals" is sexy. Too bad it doesn't really work, or does it?   more »

He's the real thing, real reform is on the way. Not perfect on every energy issue by any means, but bucking the trend to ignore hedge fund trading abuses shows real allegiance to this nation dedicated to the best interests of we the people. Dedicated not so long ago on the time scale of human history.   more »

Nope, congressional testimony says it's so. 2 bucks of every 4 dollar gallon of gas goes to hedge funds. The Enron loophole is doing the same for everything we buy. This is how the rich get richer, they stash their ill-gotten gains in hedge funds for even more ill-gotten gains. Then protect their wealth by protecting hedge fund corruption, with the infamous loophole leading the way.   more »

So the Gulf Stream conveyor could stop in a few years after the arctic ice and greenland glaciers melt? Evidently yes, as this recenty retrieved Greenland ice core data shows. What could be a more catastrophic weather condition than massive flooding and storm surge followed by glacial conditions overtaking large population centers like NYC?   more »

So far high prices are helping to focus on alternatives to gas guzzling. . But this offshore drilling issue shows just how touchy this is. If we are seen as taking satisfaction in the pain at the pump, we could lose this election. Concentrating on price is the way to defeat the GOP tactics. The Rovian tactic of tarring the eco-minded as anti-economy. Voters can see through it if we help by staying on message.   more »

It is very hard to compare mpg ratings to determine which vehicles save more GHG and oil. Confusion is the result. And bad policy based on lobbyist exploitation of that confusion. Reframing, it's the way to win in politics, the zen method common to Ghandi and Obama. Change the perspective and backward thinking dissapears into the vanishing point. Aum.   more »

The right batteries have arrived for a plugin hybrid conversion. 125 pounds worth, 5 of these batteries will store 6 kwh, which is equivalent to a gallon of gas. And only costs 75 cents. That could get you 40 or 50 miles on plugin power in a really economical car.   more »

And all that fertilizer will release a mess of GHG in the form of methane from the cellulose stored in wetlands where it ends up. It will also cause huge weed overgrowth, temporarily soaking up some CO2, yes. But it will be rereleased (in a 21x worse GHG form) as that weed overgrowth kills the lakes and the weeds and fish die and turn into methane too.   more »

The "Enron loophole"! Finally a name is put to insider hedge fund market manipulation. The special loophole for Enron also applies to every energy source. It was engineered by Enron lobbyists and pushed through into law by by Phil Gramm, McBush's economic expert.   more »

These golf cart sized green, GHG free, plugin vehicles are being legalized for limited road use all over, almost everywhere people retire. Why not make them rentable with a credit card slot, wirelessly connected to the net. This could replace how many cars over the next 20 years?   more »

Another excellent article by bio-d at Grist on possible ways to convert a Toyota Yaris to a partial plugin hybrid. This idea may fit your vehicle with a fairly simple kit of parts and easy installation by a local mechanic or do-it-your-selfer.   more »

Great article here from the illustrious JCWinnie, who I am proud to say commented on a recent article of mine. It details how IBM is working on a technology previously demonstrated to boost solar PV efficiency to 38% in National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) tests.   more »

How could this be? As much power from kites a km up in the wind connected to a huge carousel on the ground, as from a nuclear reactor. Hmmm...    more »

This floating wind power design came up on Grist today, finally someone else noticed it.   more »

Guess who wins?   more »

"You will have to pay around $100,000 to $200,000 per acre." Cheaper to pay Lula directly. How much does he charge per acre? If land is worth 100k to agribizz it would most likely net 10 bucks for Lula and his cronies. Bargain pricing! What if we offered 12 bucks per acre to preserve it?   more »

Another subsidy idea, a direct infusion of cash, through actual consumers, to real capitalism, competitive small local business might be more helpfull for people and the environment. "The human fund..money for people", Larry David's "Seinfeld" fictional approach is much better. Hehey.   more »

This time there is a free lunch. But it will cost upfront. Once solar panels, geo heat exchange, plugin hybrids, wind machines, smart grid storage, and biogas backup pay for themselves with savings. All the energy after that is free.   more »

Where will we get all those economy plugin hybrid cars? There is already a shortage of just plain economy cars. 17 million cars are replaced per year in the US. It would take about 20 years at that pace, to switch them all for plugin hybrids. No problem. That is fast enough.   more »

A nice graphical representation of various fuels and their price rises during the last 8 years. Given this shocking news, it is surprising that the economy is holding up as well as it has. Add in the huge capital drain of cash flushed down the oil war and OPEC toilet, and it is down right amazing.   more »

In this episode, the mighty upstart human species actually "plumbs" space itself! Tolkien. meets Joseph Campbell. Astronauts pooping in a bag-like device? Hehey.   more »

One of the best presentations against nuclear power is out right now, from Amory Lovins and the magnificent Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI). And Grist is interviewing him all about it. After beating up on nuclear power with these articles, it would be a great time to introduce a moratorium on new nukes, along with throwing the industry (lobbyists, legislators, and shills) a nice, juicy bone.   more »

Be warned, this New York Times guest op/ed by a retired gynecologist in his mid-80s recounts the horror he experienced repairing the damage done by back alley and do-it-yourself abortion attempts, back before Roe vs Wade made abortion legal. A McCain win would most assuredly result in another Scalia corporate right loving clone on the supreme court, thus overthrowing reproductive rights for women. The cruel (faux moralistic) corporate-growth-above-everything daddy state would be in charge of women's reproductive organs again.    more »

Building vertical greenhouses, a foolish trade off of cows ($$$) for beans? I thought about this for awhile, skyscraper farming. I have envisioned malls and large building being retrofitted with solar greenhouses on their south facing walls and roofs. But imagine whole skyscrapers? But how do you get the light to do this without burning (with coal fired power plants, literally) electric power?   more »

Re-framing. It could be the most powerful rhetorical tool ever. By going beyond rhetoric right into the subconscious, collective hive mind? We are talking about the fractals that order the actions of the human herd. Subconscious hive mind rules of interaction. Sounds and tones that tell the tale of where the last worker bee to come up with some actual nectar, found that nectar.   more »

The old "It's just a theory" talking point? The usual response to that was this. "Yeah, and so is the 'theory' of gravity just a theory, go ahead, please jump off a cliff. But don't take the whole planet with you." Why not just stuff the whole planet into a black hole? Where all the laws of physics are really different. The information component of human reality would persist forever, the mean reality of gravity, climate change, national bankruptcy, and so forth would be squashed out of existence.    more »

6 to 9 dollars per watt, this is around what I expected, since the last one built here in the US was 6 dollars per watt. But that was back in the 80s, so one would think this was low, what with the huge inflation in materials and construction cost during the last few years.   more »

Another great movie   more »

Is milk a strange foreign substance foisted upon human kind by the dairy industry? In its present form maybe? But look at how it all evolved to this point. Hit the reframe button. Look at humans as symbiotic predators. We turned from hunting ruminants to herding them.    more »

Imagine you are an exxonmob or peabody boardroomate. From that POV it would make sense to keep energy prices on the rise enough to sap the political and financial will from your enemies. But not boost energy prices quickly enough to make alternative energy sources cost competitive.   more »

Why rely on biogas digestion of the waste stream for that solution? Because biogas and natural gas can run in the same very efficient, low cost distributed cogeneration device. Namely solid oxide fuel cell/turbine generators. They are scalable from backup for a home to powering a plugin hybrid to a 100 mw power plant.   more »

Solar thermal power plants in the desert and on factory roofs can generate power all night long, after the sun goes down. How so? With heat stored in molten heat storage salt or in factory products like cooling glass or metal. With cogeneration, a turbine generator running on constantly rec-condensed, recycled refrigerant gas heated by the stored waste heat. Red hot metal or glass stores a lot of energy.   more »

Kinder gentler, friendly coal? Well if coal industry thugs are going to invoke "pony spirits" they need pony hawk 'do's. All coal industry officials, coal bribed politicians, and lobbyist/liars ought to be required to wear pony hawks then. Like that kid on American Idol. That would rule!   more »

Evidently it is too much to expect, that scientists remember their basic math education and take it into account in climate modeling. The only explanation I can think of is that politics must be effecting studies like this. Climate scientists MUST understand feedback effects and exponential change.   more »

And without adding on huge debt, to your already burdensome mortgage and credit card debt. I sure like add on greenhouses for retrofit. The best would be on the southside of an existing building. But to adjust to buildings that have no solar exposure, a greenhouse can be built on, extending into a good sunny patch of the property.   more »

Fold your tent and move on GM, you have officially lost. This announcement of the Prius triumph combined with soaring gas prices, makes your autopsy iminent and also completely boring. Good riddance to lobbyist trash.   more »

Incredible new statistics in this article, coinciding with a local news report of thousands of dollars per year in energy savings foer homeowners who install geo heat exchange heating/cooling systems. I have been using the 36% figure for percentage of GHG from building heating/cooling, the 48% firgure must be for lighting, water heating, cooking as well? 76% of electricity? Incredible.   more »

If only I had a real PHD now, maybe someone would listen to my pleas to subsidize farm biogas, hehey. It is looking better and better as a central part of ag and energy policy reform. Biodigestion not only takes care of the methane released by manure and fertilizer run off (organic fertilizer a byproduct of biodigestion, tends not to run off, as chemical fertilizer does), but also the nitrogen. 296 times the GHG effect of CO2.    more »

Now fertilizer prices and companies are on a similar tear, to oil? That boosted oil company profits and market cap? Yes. What will this do to food prices? Is it real scarcity that is driving this or merely human psychology? The fear of scarcity? Fear is becoming the main force in the market, for everything. Even greed gives way to fear.   more »

A great commentary on exactly why CBA should never rule environmental policy decisions. I still am fond of breaking down this analysis to family economics though. To fight the corporate economist mud hole of CBA justification for feudal corporate rule of planet earth, why not try to use CBA itself?   more »

That's a constant theme lately, it seems to lead to a vision of a culture thrown back into the pre-techno times of horses and endless human labor. But we really need to moderate the pessimism.   more »

It's the same commercial slogan for the anti-depressant, Effexor. If you voted for bush, twice! Wouldn't a drug that might cause suicide be kind of comforting? Thus the excellent GOP sloganeering!   more »

This is the right policy, for the wrong reason. Lower gas prices? Well it's the wrong reason to stop filling reserves. Refining and speculation are more powerful bottlenecks than crude oil supply in retail gas pricing.   more »

What would it take to restore enough of the ice cap to give polar bears a chance at survival? Maybe floating snow machines? Wind/wave powered pumping platforms floating in the arctic sea that spray sea water up into the 50 below zero arctic air.   more »

An interesting article in Grist. How do you get the CO2 coming out of our tailpipes and smokestacks back out of the air once it's been mixed together? Scientists and entrepeneurs are looking for a majic techno fix that does this. The main problem is that it takes huge amounts of energy, and with our present energy mix, where would that energy come from? Burning more fuel, producing more CO2.   more »

This great explanation of the McCain version of GHG cap and trade (the permits would be traded) just came up on Grist. It's a stark warning, thanks for that DR. Let us imagine, how would a hedge fund set up a scam to incorporate the McCain plan? Following the past models of hedge fund bubble inflation market manipulation. Mainly the most recent bubble, that caused the global credit crisis and our present economic problems here in the US.   more »

Is carbon permit trading by hedge funds likely to sabotage green energy revolution? Yep. Gar is right with this one. "...put a carbon tax in place or auction permits already. Forget game-playing CDM and the whole additional new carbon lobby that secondary carbon markets create." That secondary carbon permit market will be the ultimate GHG reducing policy killer. As hedge funds scam and energy prices to consumers rise, industry friendly politicians will say "See, we told you so, government intervention is destroying the economy."   more »

Here is an excellent dissection of a newspaper article on biodiesel and ethanol. Why does old style media get the story wrong almost every time? Bio-d, a tireless Gristmill opponent of biofuel farming, does the autopsy. If only 5% of our energy came from biogas/waste, the rest of the CO2 we emit would be offset. Effectively eliminating our collective carbon footprint. That would allow renewable/conservation energy revolution along with organic fertilizer byproduct from waste biodigestion to actually reverse GHG disaster. Biogas/waste farm projects could use heavy subsidies, politicians and eco-lobbyists please take note of this main component of green revolution.   more »

The fantasy of peak oil is not gloomy. Think about it. It is good for our side. Mother earth's side. The fear and gloom sets everything up for real GHG solutions. Peak oil? Bring it on!   more »

An article about Arnie and his relatives in the NYT. How do they run on forever?   more »

What a concept! Thanks to the sleep deprived mind of "Pathos" (a gristmill blogger) for this gem. "The best solution to both peak oil and global warming is to hawk renewables like they'll save us all by themselves, and alter our lifestyles like renewables won't do a damn thing."    more »

Hope springs eternal in the pants of man. Why not use that to push eco-revolution? Sex sells. Sex sells the message. No one would watch it without the sex. it wouldn't have been linked here without the sex. We wouldn't comment on it.   more »