News: Archive for November, 2009
‘Through its Texas subsidiary Horizon Wind Energy, the giant Portuguese company EDP Renewables; the second largest wind company in the world, intends to almost triple its US projects to $4 billion worth of new wind energy projects in the United States through 2012.’
via Recovery Act Spurs $4 Billion in Wind Power Projects | Green Business | Reuters.
‘SAN FRANCISCO — Alphabet Energy, a Lawrence Berkeley National Labs spin-out with a semiconductor that converts heat directly into power, says it can make devices that will produce power at close to $1 a watt.’
via Greentech Media: Renewable Energy for $1 a Watt? Yes, Says Alphabet Energy | Green Light.
‘BEIJING — A joint statement by the U.S. and Chinese presidents on climate change is encouraging as pressure builds in the last few weeks before a 192-nation conference in Copenhagen, but the language leaves a lot unsaid, observers in both countries said Wednesday.’
via The Associated Press: US-China climate statement raises hopes, questions.
‘AMERICA will not pass a cap-and-trade law in time for the global climate-change summit in Copenhagen next month. To understand why, it helps to ask a farmer.’
‘Hundreds of private e-mail messages and documents hacked from a computer server at a British university are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.’
via Hacked E-Mail Is New Fodder for Climate Dispute – NYTimes.com.
‘The single largest California emitter last year was the Chevron oil refinery in Richmond, which emitted 4.8 million metric tons of greenhouse gases. Second was the Shell refinery in Martinez, with 4.5 million metric tons, followed by the BP and Chevron refineries in Carson and El Segundo, near Los Angeles. Rounding out fifth place was the Dynegy Power Plant at Moss Landing, a massive 1950s era structure on the Monterey Bay that burns natural gas to create electricity for much of Northern California.’
‘Even before scientists found temperatures creeping upward over the past decade, sea turtles were threatened by beach development, drift net fishing and Costa Ricans’ penchant for eating turtle eggs, considered a delicacy here. But climate change may deal the fatal blow to an animal that has dwelled in the Pacific for 150 million years.’
via Turtles Are Casualties of Warming in Costa Rica – NYTimes.com.
‘As the world has talked for a dozen years about what to do next, new ship passages opened through the once frozen summer sea ice of the Arctic. In Greenland and Antarctica, ice sheets have lost trillions of tons of ice. Mountain glaciers in Europe, South America, Asia and Africa are shrinking faster than before.’
via Warming’s impacts sped up, worsened since Kyoto – Yahoo! News.
‘The US remains the only industrialized nation that has not committed itself to a greenhouse gas reduction target with Copenhagen climate talks just weeks away. Pressure is increasing on the U.S. to commit to a target, but the UN climate chief warned that the lack of ambition from rich nations as a whole could still foil hopes of any kind of agreement by the end of 2009.’
via UN Climate Chief: Global Deal Hinges on More Ambition from Rich Nations | SolveClimate.com.
‘Stop eating beef to save the world, Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh suggested on Thursday.
A vegetarian himself, Ramesh offered a pat on the back for non-beef eaters, saying they help in “climate mitigation”.’