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Entries from May 2010

Alternative Energy News Roundup

May 25th, 2010 · 3 Comments

Another guest post from Mark Louis on, well, news on the alternative (clean) energy front. Time for another trip to the world of renewable energy.  The last item that I wrote generated a great deal of debate.  Of course, I did blame everyone for the oil spill, which caused a few angry comments.  But, I […]

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Tags: Energy · renewable energy

A window on some of coal’s dirtiest secrets …

May 24th, 2010 · 2 Comments

The Institute for Southern Studies provides consistently top flight reporting in its online journal, Facing South, related, to among other things, energy practices in the south that create significant questions of environmental justice and polluting energy practices that threaten the health of all Southerners (actually, all Americans). As the nation’s attention (okay, not enough of […]

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Tags: coal · Energy · environmental

The (lack of?) Power of A Public Comment

May 24th, 2010 · 1 Comment

In September 2009, an environmental investigator submitted a 60-page report on the risks of deepwater drilling as a public comment to the federal government’s proposed rule for oil and gas leasing between 2010 and 2015 on the outer continental shelf. Addressed to the chief of the Minerals Management Service’s (MMS) leasing division, this memorandum highlighted […]

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Tags: Energy

Do we have a new 9/11 and Katrina in terms of an opportunity for national transformation?

May 23rd, 2010 · 2 Comments

To make it quite clear: the implication has nothing to do with the cause. the implication is that we are faced with an unexpected crisis that reveals a much ignored problem, and which can, if responded to the way it should be, change the nation and the world- for the better. The explosion of Deepwater […]

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Tags: Energy · Obama Administration · oil · OilApocalypse · oilpocalyse · President Barack Obama · the five percent solution

What happens when all the canaries are dead?

May 20th, 2010 · 1 Comment

Among the latest front, yet another (strong) piece of evidence of the cascading impacts of climate change on eco-systems around the world and the global eco-system’s ability to sustain modern human civilization, scientists have laid out how Lake Tanganyika is heating at an unprecedented rate (at least of 1500 years of scientific analysis) and that […]

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Tags: Energy

Stealing The Work Of A Better Blogger & Calling It My Own

May 18th, 2010 · 7 Comments

This guest post from WarrenS provides a template for the commendable work that he has been doing to seek to illuminate climate and energy issues for newspaper readers across the country. One of the things, by the way, that WarrenS doesn’t mention is that his pieces fall into a context: even if he is not […]

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Tags: climate change · Energy · environmental · Global Warming · journalism

Feedback systems and ECSTASY

May 18th, 2010 · 2 Comments

As any who regularly read my work should be aware, I have a fascination with the power of feedback systems to foster behavioral change (and here and …) and help foster more Energy Smart practices and to hasten the adoption of Energy Smart/Energy COOL technologies. This guest post by Milly Watt (which, in this context, […]

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Tags: electricity · Energy · energy cool · energy smart

Local Electric Transport and the Energy Independence Levy

May 17th, 2010 · 1 Comment

Another guest post from the extremely thoughtful and insightful BruceMcF. Bruce’s thoughts, writ large, about transport policy and, more specifically, electrified rail merit attention and action. If we reduce our oil consumption by 5% a year over each of the next twenty years, that allows use to be free of our oil addiction if we […]

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Tags: electricity · Energy · guest post · rail · the five percent solution

Missing the menacing clouds in the raindrops

May 17th, 2010 · 3 Comments

The obliviousness about humanity’s impact on weather patterns due to climate change continues for all too many in the media. The Washington Post‘s Howard Kurtz provides today’s example.  Kurtz reports on the near media blackout when it comes to the recent (massive) Nashville floods.  Kurtz, just like the Post’s reprinting of the weak AP coverage, […]

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Tags: climate change · Energy · Global Warming · journalism

What I want, and don’t want, to see on my next trip to a major aquarium …

May 16th, 2010 · 1 Comment

Despite the horrific nature of the massive man-made volcano of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, the utter absence of discussion of the evolving disaster in work and social environments has been a striking contrast to the virtual blogosphere world. Not once this month, without my starting the conversation, has Gulf oil been discussed: even […]

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Tags: environmental · oil · OilApocalypse · oilpocalyse · political symbols · pollution