ALL HOMES IN SCOTLAND CAN BE POWERED BY THE WIND, with Britain’s newly augmented capacity. Read more in the New York Times.
Hey, BP: You lost some oil. Now it’s been found.
Yeah, there’s a thick 3-inch layer of oily residue covering large parts of the Gulf of Mexico. Just thought you should know. NPR’s got the story.
Filed under oil
Economic Ripples and the Stimulus
A former college housemate of mine has an interesting tale up on his blog AustinCynic. Seems his employers installed solar panels with Federal stimulus funds. Some Texans aren’t a fan of this. Read his superb rebuttal here.
Filed under Uncategorized
On Energy and Geometric Progression
The following video has been labeled “The Most Important Video You’ll Ever See.” Hyperbole? It’s just a lecture on math, given by a Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Colorado-Boulder. It explains how just a 7% annual growth in energy use equals a 100% growth in 10 years. After a few decades, you’ve got a really big number. And a tremendously enormous problem. Watch and learn, please.
[H/T Peter Hufnagel]
Filed under climate change, coal, Economic Policy, Energy, oil, When Midnight Comes, Where Credit's Due
ANOTHER OIL RIG EXPLODES IN THE GULF OF MEXICO
Breaking news from the A.P. It happened about 9:30 this morning, and planes, helicopters and ships are now en route to the site. That’s all the information we have at the moment.
Filed under oil
Double Dippin’ with MERLE HAZARD
Merle Hazard is the one and only country-music singer writing songs about the Financial Crisis. He’s been on PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer; he’s been the subject of articles by The Economist, London’s Financial Times, The New York Times, and Der Spiegel. And by gum, the man can carry a tune! Here’s Merle Hazard performing “Double Dippin’”!
Filed under Economic Policy, Financial Crisis, wall street, Where Credit's Due
You Will Be Eaten By a Bear
If yer one of them huntin’ folks up there in Wyoming or Montana – y’know, Republican, an’ thinkin’ climate change is a myth – best listen up.
You will be eaten by a bear.
A grizzly bear.
A six-foot-tall, 600-pound grizzly bear.
The bears are hungry.
See, grizzlies up in Yellowstone eat the nuts of whitebark pine cones. Trouble is, there aren’t as many whitebark pines. That’s because of the beetles. There’s been a huge beetle infestation of the Yellowstone whitebark pine – 70% of the trees have been decimated. And that’s because the ground’s not freezing as much to keep the beetles at bay. And that’s because of global warming.
“Every year is now a bad year for whitebark pine,” said Louisa Wilcox with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We can expect more conflicts and we are getting it.”
The bears are comin’ down the mountain an’ eatin’ livestock.
“Right now every god-dang dead cow down in this country’s got grizzlies on them,” said Mark Bruscino, a bear specialist with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department in Cody. “We’ve already had a couple of reports of bears on the gut piles of hunter-killed elk. Road-killed deer have bears on them.” (Quotes via the Associated Press.)
An’ when they ain’t got no roadkill to eat, they’ll go with human carpaccio. Two people done gone an’ been killed by grizzlies so far this year, the most in a century. But those ain’t related to no whitebark pines. Ain’t the time of year yet. But it will be soon, as autumn arrives. So watch out, folks. Global warming could kill you sooner than you think.
Read more at the AP [H/T John Emerson]
Filed under biodiversity, climate change
