• The planet has kept warming since 1998 - despite apparant 'cool years'
    As part of their climate myth series, New Scientist cuts through the nonsense on what’s happened globally in the last decade: In fact, the planet as a whole has warmed since 1998, even in the years when surface temperatures have fallen.
  • Opec warns oil prices could rocket to $500 a barrel - Business News, Business - Belfasttelegraph.co.uk
    The nightmare scenario of oil reaching $500 a barrel within a few years was raised at the weekend by a member of OPEC's governing council.
  • The Cost of Energy » Blog Archive » Hypermiling–still a great idea
    I’ve made no secret of my love for what I call “mild hypermiling”, by which I mean employing just the safer practices. Some of the things people do in their quest for ever more miles/gallon (like drafting behind 18-wheelers) are just plain nuts, so I don’t do them and I definitely recommend that others don’t even consider them. Life is short enough as it is. But back on topic–why should you hypermile? I mean, isn’t it work? And isn’t it less fun than driving like a typical American (a.k.a. a bat out of hell on acid)? Honestly, the answers are no and no. Once you give it a try and see that you’re pouring less money into your gas tank and dumping less CO2 and other pollutants into the atmosphere, then it becomes profitable, and it’s even a nice little challenge to make your driving more interesting.
  • Environmentalists target snack food makers over palm oil use - Aug. 21, 2008
    The link between the supermarket shelf, climate change and shrinking rainforests is palm oil, a controversial ingredient that may now be the most widely-traded vegetable oil in the world. Here's the problem: Demand for palm oil, which is found in soaps and cosmetics as well as food, has more than doubled in the last decade as worldwide food consumption has soared. Farmers, in turn, are expanding their plantations, burning forests in Indonesia and Malaysia, where nearly all of the palm oil imported to the United States originates. Deforestation is the primary reason that Indonesia's greenhouse gas emissions are the third-highest in the world.
  • Bloomberg Offers Windmill Power Plan - NYTimes.com
    In a plan that would drastically remake New York City’s skyline and shores, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is seeking to put wind turbines on the city’s bridges and skyscrapers and in its waters as part of a wide-ranging push to develop renewable energy.
  • MIT engineers work toward biological cell-sized batteries - MIT News Office
    The energy for tomorrow's miniature electronic devices could come from tiny microbatteries about half the size of a human cell and built with viruses.
  • How Bubble Wrap Could Power the Future | LiveScience
    The Beijing National Aquatics Center, or "Water Cube," is surrounded by a light-weight polymer foil that significantly reduces the energy that goes into construction. The thin transparent material, called ETFE (Ethylene Tetrafluoroethylene), is segmented into 3,000 air-filled cushions that let in light but hold in heat.
  • Understanding climate change complacency - MIT News Office
    Why is the general public not more concerned about the potential consequences of climate change? For many risks, such as the risk of a plane crash, the public is far more fearful than the evidence shows, observes John Sterman, the Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. But on the issue of climate, he notes, the situation is just the opposite. "The science is unequivocal now. It's urgent that we reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions," he says. "That debate is basically over." However, Sterman adds, the public at large remains complacent.
  • Researcher builds solar collector for algae feedstock - Biodiesel Magazine
    An industrial technology researcher at Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas, is designing and building a solar collector that can be used to process and distribute light and heat to grow algae feedstock for biodiesel. The system will also produce solar and steam-generated electricity.
  • Polymer Electric Storage, Flexible And Adaptable
    The proliferation of solar, wind and even tidal electric generation and the rapid emergence of hybrid electric automobiles demands flexible and reliable methods of high-capacity electrical storage. Now a team of Penn State materials scientists is developing ferroelectric polymer-based capacitors that can deliver power more rapidly and are much lighter than conventional batteries.
  • Technology Review: Intensifying the Sun
    In his darkened lab at MIT, Marc Baldo shines an ultraviolet lamp on a solar concentrator, a device that gathers diffuse light and focuses it onto a relatively small solar cell. Solar concentrators can lower the overall cost of solar power by making it possible to use much smaller cells. But the concentrators are typically made of curved mirrors or lenses, which are bulky and require costly mechanical systems that help them track the sun. Unlike the mirrors and lenses in conventional solar concentrators, Baldo's glass sheets act as waveguides, channeling light in the same way that fiber-optic cables transmit optical signals over long distances. The dyes coating the surfaces of the glass absorb sunlight
  • Green Car Congress: Navistar Introduces Li-ion Battery Lease Program for Medium-Duty Hybrid Trucks
    Navistar is now offering customers of the International DuraStar Hybrid medium-duty truck a battery-lease program—the first of its kind in the North American commercial truck industry—that shaves $10,000 off the initial purchase price of the truck in exchange for making 60 monthly lease payments on the battery.
  • "Convert 80 Million Gas Guzzlers"
    As part of his teaching at Stanford University, Andrew Grove researched electric vehicles, and, shocked by the slow pace of auto manufacturers, is prodding venture capitalists to fund electric vehicle technologies with a lecture he's delivered to Khosla Ventures titled "There Could Be Blood." His bold vision calls for converting 80 million trucks and SUVs on the road today into plug-in hybrids within the next four years.
  • NewEnergyNews: CARBON FARMING
    The fight against global climate change may turn out to be a very good fight for the U.S. farmer. Credits earned for agro practices that sequester GhGs in the soil instead of releasing them into the atmosphere have sold on the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCE) for $2.50 to $7 a metric ton over the last 3 years and earn ~$4 a metric ton now. 990 North Dakota farmers and ranchers participating through the National Farmers Union Carbon Credit Program earned $2.6 million in July 2008. Credits are earned primarily from no-till farming, a method of planting in which – instead of plowing the soil and releasing GhGs that have fallen or rotted into it – a machine injects seeds and fertilizer into standing stubble from the previous crop
  • 'Clock ticking' on global warming: UN climate chief
    Time is running out in the fight against global warming, the UN's top climate change official warned as a new round of UN talks got started on Thursday. "There is little time left to get a solid negotiating text on the table. Clearly the clock is ticking," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.