I just saw an interview with P J Singer on the Daily Show, he wrote "Wired For War". All about the use of technology in the ME wars. He claimed that soldiers using drone planes killed 2400 "insurgents" to propell a recent much touted "victory". But we need to notice that in Israel, where most of this technology is developed they couldn't stop rocket attacks without an invasion.   more »

Hand it to Grist, their people really find vital stories that the mass delusional media hides. This is the start of distributed smart grid technology and where the internet switching giant leads, the paradigm must shift. Shift right over to a marriage of the grid and the internet. Cisco's Chambers signalled the death of the old phone companies before the bushwacking began. It's finally happening, phone traffic is shifting to the internet. Pretty soon a shift to wireless broadband over the power grid might gobble up the cell phone business too?   more »

Why execute cap and trade? Any carbon cap is easily adjustable, that's the problem. When democrats are in power a cap might be imposed, as soon as repuglicans (sp) win a few seats back, the cap will be lifted. Subsidies work differently, once a commercial change wave gets going, adjusting caps won't stop it. Renewable energy will cost less going forward as the fuel inflation spiral inevitably leaves fossil and nuclear energy in the dustbin.   more »

A sad sign of the disastrous times we are living through, this is an actual probability. Internet betting in general should be added to the long list of informal fallacies, but this bet seems to be careful enough to avoid the fallacy designation. The interesting part of this wager is the volcano exception.   more »

Here is is. A nice cheering up, hehey.   more »

A great article and thread here by Gar Lipow, on exactly how fast we need to cut GHG emissions. Of course I am thinking already that since positive feedback effects like ice melt/increased solar absorption and ice melt/methane release aren't figured into current climate models and estimates, where are we really at? And how can this climate be saved at this late date?   more »

This is just in time for the new administration to order up a raft of these new ultra-efficient carbon fiber plugin hybrids for government use. They have the right stuff to save the climate and save taxpayers fuel costs for government employee driving.   more »

Yeah that's the usual schtick from the extremists, anything but unlimited population growth constitutes eugenics. Read Lester Brown's Gristmill piece for illumination into these dark political corners. This is the charge leveled from both right and left who oppose family planning and reproductive rights. From the right religious dogma motivated by the unending growth formula, based on nationalistic, ethnic, and religious (but usually corporatist) motives. They want to out populate the "evildoers" and "infidels". Their religious warriors are supposed to beat back the inhuman hordes who don't believe in their particular God (and/or "free" market economic model).   more »

In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people: "Let it be told to the future world...that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]."   more »

Shakspeare's possible take on "cool" muscle car gas guzzling? Internal combustion is "...but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing." "Nothing" except wasted energy. 6% of the energy in the gas guzzler gets to the road surface to propell the car. When the tires smoke, that goes down below 3%, since it is being converted into friction.   more »

No the news is all about, the majical hydrogen economy, again?!? Is it some of that really cool internal combustion hydrogen guzzling (like BMW prefers), or platinum fuel cell .. never mind. It's all a moronic scam anyway. Did Toyota have the 962 pound, Prius sized, 600 mile range (on a battery charge and 4 gallons of gas), 1/X concept car, there? Notice how this article deletes any mention of the plugin hybrid nature of the 1/X?   more »

Maybe this eruption or another one somewhere else on the planet will trigger another year without summer, like 1816? Scientists have talked a lot about a geo-engineering plan to send solar reflecting particles into the upper atmosphere, like a volcano does.   more »

I have always opposed conventional geothermal power because it injects fresh water into underground rock faults and uses the resulting steam, losing most of the water in the process. This huge water use and the possibility of contaminating aquifers with mineral bearing sulphate rock leechate from escaping steam, put the kibosh on this technology for me. A brilliant commetor in Gristmill came up with a new idea. He suggested teaming hot rock steam with solar furnace steam. That way the rocks get to rest and recuperate when the concentrating solar plant is powering the turbines. Molten salt storage could use solar even at night, cutting the time/heat needed from the hot rocks. The rocks lose their heat after 10 years of constant operation, this symbiotic design cures that. The beauty is that the turbines are powered by both sources.    more »

This is a travesty, as these recent reports detail. What would that buy in terms of ground source heating systems to replace fuel oil? A 5k subsidy per system would support 1 million of these energy, oil, and GHG saving installations. That's a lot of job stimulus too. Carefully targeted to replace fuel oil heating in public buildings, it would also allow smart grid operation that can store heat in building mass.   more »

CNBC's Dylan Ratigan is the only financial commentator I have seen that bemoaned the eclipse of real risk/reward capitalism, still evident in small and medium businesses, at the expense of global corporate monopoly insider market manipulation. Today he explain how the "velocity of money" through the economy, hand to business to hand, will signal the effect of a stimulus. It is sluggish right now, everyone is afraid ro buy or invest, and especially to take on new debt with their jobs in question. Or for businesses to hire new employees.   more »

Would it sell? I think so!   more »

How could he let us down like this? Touting "clean" coal, carbon taxes (that could never pass in a recession.."No new taxes"), and pie in the sky 4th generation (fast neutron, waste neutralizing?) nuclear reactors. At least he dissed cap and trade though: 'Policies being discussed in national and international circles now, which focus on 'goals' for emission reduction and 'cap and trade,' have the same basic approach as the Kyoto Protocol. This approach is ineffectual and not commensurate with the climate threat. This really needed to be said, but Barack will go with "experts" who tout cap and trade, the "free" market solution. The same sort of "experts" who caused the credit crisis and are now failing to deal with it. Hansen will be deemed to have no expertise in these business matters.   more »

A sad New Years revelation in amongst the Grist top 10 climate stories of '08. "...the tundra has as much carbon locked away in it as the atmosphere contains today." This will most likely be the main point in the autopsy of life on planet earth as we know it. The tipping point has surely passed if the feedback of methane and ice melt works as expected, based on these factors.   more »

Jeff bridges as Preston Tucker, in "Tucker"... the movie. Tucker's final statement to the jury. Who found him innocent, after being set up on fraud charges by the big three and their political allies.   more »