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Archive for December 28th, 2011
Never Mind Solyndra: Fuel Cell Industry Growing with Government Support
Posted by Forbes: Erica Gies on December 28th, 2011
Forbes: So much political hay has been made over the collapse of Solyndra, which was supported by government funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Government isn’t qualified to pick technological winners and losers, said detractors; support for renewable energy is political, they said. But government has a long history of encouraging emerging technologies, and that continues, from energy storage to fuel cells.
Beginning in April 2009, the Department of Energy (DOE) invested...
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In Drilling Safety Debate, Hydrofracking’s Not the Only Target
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 28th, 2011
New York Times: In the heated debate over fracking in New York, it is often forgotten that conventional natural gas drilling has been taking place in the state for decades.
Chemung County, a place I write about in Wednesday`s Times, has been a leader in gas production in the state and is now poised to become a leader in exploration of the Marcellus Shale. Drilling awaits the approval of new state rules governing horizontal drilling combined with high-volume hydraulic fracturing, or fracking – a controversial...
Frequency of extreme weather may escalate in 2012: Scientists
Posted by China Post: None Given on December 28th, 2011
China Post: From floods that crippled countries, to mega cyclones, huge blizzards, killer tornadoes to famine-inducing droughts, 2011 has been another record-breaker for bad weather. While it is too early to predict what 2012 will be like, insurers and weather prediction agencies point to a clear trend: the world's weather is becoming more extreme and more costly. Following are details of major weather disasters for 2011 and some early forecasts for 2012. 2011 overview Global reinsurer Munich Re says natural...
Evolution triggered by climate change
Posted by TG Daily: None Given on December 28th, 2011
TG Daily: Six distinct waves of mammal species diversity in North America over the last 65 million years were driven primarily by climate change, new research suggests.
Evolutionary biologists say that on each occasion warming and cooling periods, in two cases confounded by species migrations, marked the transition from one dominant grouping to the next.
"Although we've always known in a general way that mammals respond to climatic change over time, there has been controversy as to whether this can be...
The drought that keeps on taking
Posted by Marketplace: Eve Troeh on December 28th, 2011
Marketplace: Jeremy Hobson: Well here in this country, one of the biggest natural disasters of the year still hasn't come to an end. That would be the drought in Texas, which has devastated the state's farmers.
But the fallout from that drought extends far beyond the borders of the Lone Star State. From the Marketplace Sustainability Desk, Eve Troeh reports on how the rest of the country could feel the Texas heat.
Eve Troeh: If you take the 500-mile drive from Austin to Amarillo, every other tree is dead,...
Recall: Punishing drought just getting started in Texas
Posted by San Antonio Current: Greg Harman on December 28th, 2011
San Antonio Current: Natural weather cycles delivered the worst one-year drought in the historic record to Texas in 2011. Scientists examining tree rings had to go back as far as 1789 to find a worse one. It was global climate change, however, that supplied the added heat that further reduced precipitation and exacerbated an already ugly dryness into levels of record-breaking heat. When Texas state Rep. Doug Miller suggested that State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon had said climate change was not involved, the typically...