I entered engineering school at Columbia University in September of last year intent on pursuing my interest in the development of alternative energy technology. Throughout this past year, my classmates and I have been often reminded of how engineers are really public servants whose ideas, inventions, and discoveries can be powerful agents of change if the engineer is committed to them. The...
Mora County, N.M., has a message for the oil and gas industry: “You’re not welcome here.” County commissioners voted 2-1 on Monday to ban all oil and gas extraction in their drought-ravaged county near Santa Fe, home to fewer than 5,000 people . A temporary drilling moratorium is already in place in neighboring San Miguel County, but it is believed that Mora County is...
When a subsidiary of Mark Zuckerberg’s new political group started airing ads for expanded oil drilling and the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, CREDO Action decided to post an ad of their own calling Zuckerberg out — on Facebook. This morning, Facebook rejected CREDO’s Facebook ad (pictured right). According to CREDO Action, Facebook initially informed them...
Suppose you weren’t worried that we humans are destroying our water supply and eroding our ability to feed ourselves by burning coal and gas and oil and hence changing climate. Suppose you thought that was all liberal hooey. What might worry you about fossil fuels instead? How about a six trillion dollar bet, including a big slug of your own money, on people not doing what they have said...
The solar era has begun: the industry is booming, prices are dropping, and solar energy at last seems poised to help topple the climate-altering dominance of fossil fuels. But bringing it to the masses won’t be as simple as just soaking up the sun. To gain a better picture of the challenges to come—and of some possible solutions—electric companies and solar developers...
Moving oil is a dirty business, and never has that been more clear than this past month. Since March 11, the global oil industry has had 13 spills on three continents. In North and South America alone, they’ve spilled more than a million gallons of oil and toxic chemicals – enough to fill two olympic-sized swimming pools. How bad was it? Here’s an infographic of all the...
It got so hot in Australia in January that the weather service had to add two new colors to its charts . A few weeks later, at the other end of the planet, new data from the CryoSat-2 satellite showed 80 percent of Arctic sea ice has disappeared. We're not breaking records anymore; we're breaking the planet. In 50 years, no one will care about the fiscal cliff or the Euro crisis...
Editor's Note: Fossil fuel companies have spent millions of dollars to get you to believe that a tax on *them* would really be a tax on *you.* Their money has bought mouthpieces to propagate their myths in both mainstream and alternative, anti-establishment outlets. But don't be fooled. We're already paying a tax on carbon , while they continue to profit in the billions. ...
According to the transcript of the secretly recorded tape, Charles Koch was chuckling like a six-year old. Koch was having a hell of a laugh over pilfering a few hundred dollars’ worth of oil from a couple of dirt-poor Indians on the Osage Reservation. Why did Koch, worth about $3 billion at the time (now $20 billion) need to boost a few bucks from some Indian in a trailer home?...
In a brewing scandal that should shock and trouble all of us, Exxon silenced us this week. We put together a nationally crowdfunded PSA , promoted by thousands online who threw in a dollar or a click or both in favor of two simple ideas: we should be able to get the word out about the most pressing issue of our time, climate change, on television primetime; and we should be able to demand...
Despite impressive green economic growth during this country’s job-challenged recovery, particularly in the wind energy sector, the conservative right is systematically seeking to reverse this trend by repealing state-mandated renewable energy targets, even if many of the states that stand to lose jobs and economic opportunity lean red. Right-wing groups funded by the fossil-fuel...
Global warming is a threat to all of us regardless of our politics, religion, or culture. People from all walks of life are realizing this and converging to address this common threat and 350.org , Bill McKibben, along with The Sierra Club are leading the charge. "At 12 Noon on Sunday, February 17, thousands of Americans will head to Washington, D.C. to make Forward on Climate the...
Discussions on energy in general are relevant for two reasons: first, most of us not only just use energy but we also recognise its absolutely indispensable role to allow us to function in our routines, assure the continuation of the economic systems we rely upon, and to put simply to allow for the survival of mankind; second, we finally have come to accept that energy sources and supply...
Utah State University presented a first-of-its-kind electric bus that is charged through wireless charging technology in a demonstration Nov. 15. Image source: Utah State University
Device Uses Solar Energy to Convert Carbon Dioxide into Fuel April 17, 2007 By Sherry Seethaler CO2 splitting semiconductor/catalyst device under construction (gallium phosphide wafer with metal contacts) Credit: Aaron Sathrum, UCSD Chemists at the University of California, San Diego have demonstrated the feasibility of exploiting sunlight to transform a greenhouse gas into a useful product.
The International Energy Agency released its annual flagship publication yesterday, the World Energy Outlook . The IEA made an historic statement in the executive summary. It said, “ No more than one-third of proven reserves of fossil fuels can be consumed prior to 2050 if the world is to achieve the 2 °C goal ”, the internationally recognized limit to average global...
It was a dreary late- September morning in the East Texas woods outside of Winnsboro, chill and drizzly. Everything was wet or damp except for the spirits of four young people sitting in a tree stand. They were perched 30 feet above the path of the Keystone XL pipeline, slated to carry very heavy and very toxic Canadian tar sands bitumen from Cushing, Okla., to refineries in Houston. The...
The first two U.S. presidential debates have been painful to watch. Both candidates are running on platforms constructed from verbal hallucinations about the nation’s past, present, and future. And the American people are being asked to choose between those hallucinations in order to select the best available scapegoat for the next four years of national economic decline. The race is...
Oil and gas drilling operations are already well underway in twelve national parks, and that number may soon balloon to 42 if the fossil fuel companies get their way. The progressive mainstay Center for American Progress recently requested data from the National Park Service regarding current and future drilling operations. The agency complied—it outlined 42 national park sites where...
Five million people die every year as a result of the carbon economy and the impacts of climate change, according to the latest edition of DARA’s Climate Vulnerability Monitor. Published today, the report warns this could rise to six million by 2030, with 700,000 of those deaths from climate change related impacts. It estimates 100 million people could die as a result of climate-carbon...
HistoryCommons.org has compiled an incredible historic resource that documents the rise and escalation of the climate denial industry over the last 15 years. Without editorializing the content, these articles summarize 178 headlines (often with multiple news article sources for each headline), which covers a range of climate change topics. History Commons lets the stories speak for themselves...
Over the first half of 2012, the African Development Bank (AfDB) has been demonstrating its commitment to support the scaling up of renewable energy in Africa with the approval of US $800 million in loans to spur private investment in Morocco’s growing wind and solar markets. The Bank’s technical and financial support of Morocco’s plan to develop a concentrated solar power...
Thanks and Disclaimer: This F.A.Q. is taken from "Life After The Oil Crash, compiled by Matt Savinar," which is no longer online. We are aware that the solutions of L.A.T.O.C. are more "self-sufficiency"oriented, rather than with building solidarity and community, which we believe is crucial to the success of "operation planet," but for clarity of facts and addressing common objections and...
Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe - and that make clear who the real enemy is If the pictures of those towering wildfires in Colorado haven't convinced you, or the size of your AC bill this summer, here are some hard numbers about climate change: June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States. That followed the warmest May on record for the...
The Mayas has more than one Calendar. They have the calendar of the big circles, which cover over 5000 years, and many more different smaller calendars/ circles, which covers different time periods.(some of them 22 days, some of them 520 years, and so on..) One of these big circle is getting to the end at the end of 2012. Some people believe it’s already happened in 2011 , some people...
While much has been made of the $535 million loan guarantee made to the failed Solyndra Corporation in 2009 to encourage alternative energy, you may have missed the court decision this week, halting expansion plans for a Kansas coal plant facing similar problems. The ruling underscores how deadbeat coal plants can be even more costly for taxpayers. Back in 1980, Sunflower Generation...
I wrote this originally in 2010, and, it is based on decades of work by some of our best. Our scientists do not get credence from media. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/publications/annrpt25/Manning.pdf This document is pages 121 to 126 of a longer set of data about our monitoring of our Homeworld, and specifically, the composition of our air, or, atmosphere. Unlike the countless tens and...
Frack! tells the story of the unconventional gas-drilling ("fracking") frenzy sweeping the Marcellus region, including the Catskills and Upper Delaware River watershed, threatening pristine areas which provide clean drinking water for over 15 million people. Without a massive public outcry, once idyllic rural landscapes could become toxic industrial wastelands, and New York State a gas...
I think now is a good time to be talking about Bucky’s vision of a World Game. We have the technology to do this and a new administration could easily provide the funding. I don’t think any of this material is Utopian or far out, but if you do, let me know why. From the introduction to a World Game activity book: “Now, for the first time in the history of man, all...
Inspired by Cord's thought-provoking post on the per gallon prices of various liquids, and by Sarah Palin's ill-informed Facebook rant on the "$4-Per-Gallon President," I decided to take a closer look at gasoline prices around the world. Mrs. Palin might be interested to learn, that the world already has quite a few $4-Per-Gallon Presidents. In fact, the world already has $6-Per-Gallon...
I need to speak to you, not as a reporter, but in my former capacity as lead investigator in several government nuclear plant fraud and racketeering investigations. I don't know the law in Japan, so I can't tell you if Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) can plead insanity to the homicides about to happen. But what will Obama plead? The Administration, just months ago, asked Congress to...
March 14, 2011 (1400 hrs) - Watching scenes of the devastation is emotionally taxing. Bodies continue to be found everywhere. The body count in Miyagi Prefecture alone is now over 10,000. Whole towns completely wiped off the map. Even if people escaped with their lives, those lives are now shattered. And now it looks as though the 20-year slow-motion collapse of Japan’s economy could be...
It's been a long time coming. Now it's final. Lisa Jackson and the EPA have gone to the mountaintop and announced their veto of the largest mountaintop removal mining permit in Appalachia. "This ushers in a new era of civility in the coalfields," said long-time coalfields justice leader Bo Webb. He added: "I think Judy Bonds just sent us all a little smile," referring to the recent...
Last week, in a move that pits American labor against China's green-technology industry, the Obama administration filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization over China's wind-power subsidies. The U.S. move challenges China's rapid growth in the renewable-energy market, and also throws the weight of the administration behind the unions, elevating concern about Chinese competition to...
Reducing your home energy use is the best of win-win deals — not only does it reduce your carbon footprint, it also saves you big bucks on your energy bills. That’s especially exciting when you consider that many home energy improvements are fast, easy and inexpensive . Often, the savings from an individual project are small, but when you start putting them together they add up...
The Beginning of a New Era It can no longer be labeled a crackpot theory, a distant prediction, or a doomsday scenario. It's official. Peak Oil was reached in 2006. This is the assessment of the International Energy Agency -- the intergovernmental organization that advises nearly 30 industrialized nations, including the U.S