Get Energy Smart! NOW!

It is all too easy for our lying eyes to deceive us as large-scale patterns, trends, and otherwise are difficult to recognize in the face of the immediate.  And, individual memory can be such a difficult thing. The Washington, DC, area has had an unusually cool past several months.  As a ‘native’, I refer to […]

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Solar panels cover my rooftop and generate about 80% of my household’s electricity use.  My house, of course, has numerous other “energy cool” elements (solar light tubes, high-efficiency fireplace insert, insulated whole-house fan, efficient appliances, etc …) but those solar panels generate 99% of the initial questioning about the house and my home’s energy issues. […]

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Mother Jones has a series of graphics highlighting how chickens are taking over the world sparked by a ‘chicken rescue’. the Northern California animal sanctuary Animal Place will airlift—yes, you read that right: airlift—1,150 elderly laying hens from Hayward, California, to Elmira, New York, in an Embraer 120 turbo-prop. The price? $50,000. And, that is the […]

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When there are spills in the kitchen, most Americans run for the paper towels. “Bounty: the thicker, quicker picker-upper” and all that. In the face of what is reported to be an “oil spill in New Bedford Harbor” that is “one of the largest … seen in New England,” it looks as if the response […]

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At the Georgetown University climate speech, President Obama gave a tip-of-the-hat to the fossil fuel “disinvestment” campaign by commenting “invest, divest”. Convince those in power to reduce our carbon pollution. (Applause.) Push your own communities to adopt smarter practices. (Applause.) Invest. Divest.Remind folks there’s no contradiction between a sound environment and strong economic growth. Today, […]

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This guest post comes from Andrew Freedman (via Climate Central). The deadly Yarnell Hill Fire continued to rage out of control on Monday, a day after the flames fanned by erratic winds and temperatures topping 100°F overwhelmed a team of elite firefighters, killing 19 of the 20-member crew. The fire has burned about 200 homes […]

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“Social Cost of Carbon” (SCC) is a tool to provide a fiscal accounting for all the damage implications of adding carbon to the atmosphere. The U.S. government has a SCC figure of about $20 per ton, which is radically below what reasonable. Even though a radically low figure, it matters that SCC has made its […]

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This guest post comes from Greg Laden. I was distressed to find many people who are essentially pro-environment and who generally understand climate change science being less than terribly shocked about the prospect of the Keystone XL pipeline being built. Then I began to realize that many people don’t realize the order of magnitude of […]

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The Virginia legislature seems poised to adopt a (at best) mediocre transportation bill — better than what Governor McDonnell proposed originally but still pretty bad — but the voting is going to be close as Tea Party Republicans are prepared to vote NO on the Governor’s top priority because it includes tax revenues to pay […]

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New York Times columnist Joe Nocera has put up How Not to Fix Climate Change. In private correspondence, in bringing this to my attention, one person commented that reading this “lowered my IQ by 20 points,” another “elementary arithmetic seems beyond his grasp”, and third that the title should have been “demonstrating multiple levels of […]

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