The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a 37-page summary of its AR6 Synthesis Report of the Sixth Assessment Report Monday. It integrates the grim conclusions of the assessment’s three Working Groups in three special reports released over the past two years. The key message reiterates what climatologists have been telling us for some time: We Earthlings have a brief […]
Forty-five years ago, when I began work at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI), we were keen on figuring out ways to get solar panels on as many residential rooftops as possible. By Meteor Blades Just as the solar panels President Jimmy Carter had installed on the White House roof and President Ronald Reagan later […]
The supreme irony of the Biden administration’s decision announced Monday to green-light ConocoPhillips’ massive, $8 billion Willow oil and gas project in a pristine part of Alaska’s North Slope can be found in a word: thermosiphons. Since the 1960s, Alaska has warmed more than twice as fast as the rest of the United States. By Meteor Blades Scientists predict that the region will warm […]
To an overflow audience that included Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and numerous other state and local officials at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities Monday, Vice President Kamala Harris explored the benefits of the billions of dollars of the Investment and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). As she has done at previous events […]
This week, a 65-page report released by BloombergNEF and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy contains good and bad news. The short version: sustainable energy continues to grow despite supply chain issues, inflation, and regulatory obstacles; the U.S. is behind when it comes to the Obama administration’s 2015 Paris emissions pledges. By Meteor Blades The authors wrote: […]
Four new advanced power reactors were originally slated to come online in the United States in 2016 and 2017. When completed, they would join two 1980s models at the Alvin T. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Waynesboro, Georgia, and one 1980s model at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station in Fairfield County, South Carolina. Together, they would add 4.4 gigawatts […]
Kristopher Tigue at Inside Climate News reports that a gang of Republican extremists are determined to prevent their party from finding common ground on climate policy, something surveys show could be problematic on Election Day. By Meteor Blades One such poll was conducted in December by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Among other things, the surveyors found 70% of […]
For years. environmental activists have asserted that carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology is being pushed by oil companies who are deploying it so they can keep extracting oil until every last drop has been squeezed out of the ground. While proclaiming in advertising and other PR campaigns that CCS is a “climate solution” and the companies […]
Under pressure from activists, investors, and governments, companies have in the past few years been hyping their pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Sounds good. But as many critics have asserted, the pledges don’t mesh with either the reality of what the vast bulk of corporations are doing or the reality of the climate crisis. By Meteor Blades Carbon Market […]
Three environmentally important announcements came from the Biden administration this month. Reinforcing an effort he signed into action on his first day in office, the president on Thursday ordered federal agencies to provide annual plans to guarantee that underserved communities can actually benefit from their policies. They must also designate a senior leader to promote racial equity and foster […]
On Wednesday, Laura Clawson reported on workers’ efforts to organize a union at Tesla’s Buffalo, N.Y., facility. Today, CNBC reports that 30 of them have been fired. By Meteor Blades In a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, Workers United said Tesla fired more than 30 workers from its Autopilot unit at a Buffalo plant as a retaliatory […]
More than half of new US generating capacity this year will be SOLAR – The U.S. Energy Information Administration, part of the Department of Energy, has long tracked energy production and consumption and made forecasts in its Annual Energy Outlook and its International Energy Outlook. While its tracking of what’s already happened has been uniformly excellent, critics […]
Sean T. O’Brien, CEO and president of the conservation-focused NatureServe, leads off the organization’s “first report of its kind” with a horrifying sentence: “At this moment, species are going extinct faster than any time in human history.” By Meteor Blades Using 50 years of data it has collected from its network of 1,000 scientists, NatureServe scrutinized only the United […]
Back in 1991, President George H.W. Bush’s chief of staff, John Sununu, told White House staffers not to discuss “climate change” or “global warming.” In 2012, the Republican administration of Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett ordered the state’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources to remove the term “climate change” from its website. In 2015, the North Carolina-controlled […]
It was called Boulder Dam in February 1935 when it began holding back the Colorado River to form the gigantic reservoir of Lake Mead. The foundations of irrigation-driven economic development—a dream of entrepreneurs since the 1890s—had been laid. Now, however, a relentless drought that has drained this and other reservoirs to record lows could turn that dream into a nightmare for the 40 […]