Here are some items that I think are worthy of your attention. As always, there is a lot happening, so I can only hope I'm looking at some of the more interesting and salient issues. Don't forget to visit some of the sites at the Blogroll at right for all sorts of great stories and various compelling angles on recent developments.
Nukes , I want to flag two recent articles by the venerable Matthew Wald at the "NY Times" on the state of nuclear power in the US. A Cautious Approach to Nuclear Power from September and Nuclear Power May Be in Early Stages of a Revival. As I think I've made clear here, I'm a longtime nuclear power antagonist and I've seen little over the past 35 years to make me change my view. Even the specter of catastrophic climate change impacts can't get me there. What strikes me in these two articles is the reiteration of the concerns regarding the extraordinary capital costs involved, the persistent lack of real technical and political progress on the safe storage of waste, and the recognition of the looming opposition to new individual nuclear power plants. The Union of Concerned Scientists, with whom I did a little work on opposing a plant in Wisconsin back in the mid-1970's, is quoted in the second of Wald's articles. "David A. Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer, said it was too soon to say that opposition was weaker now than during construction of the older plants, when grandmothers tried to block bulldozers. "We've got the grandmothers; we just don't have the bulldozers. There's not the Kodak moment that a lot of these protests need.'"
See also this argument at RenewableEnergyWorld.com, Nuclear Denial, from an experienced energy hand on the facts in the case on our dearth of answers on the critical question of storage.
The Impacts of Coal Mining , While we're worrying, and entirely rightly so, about the massive GHG burden from coal-fired power plants, we may tend to forget the environmental and public health nightmare that coal mining is in many communities, particularly in Appalachia. I wrote about The Crime of Mountaintop Removal Mining last May. Now the Bush Administration is rushing a regulatory change that will further enable the destruction of countless more hundreds of square miles of wilderness and the endangerment of public health. See Now or never from "The Daily Independent" of Ashland, Kentucky, this from the "Wall St. Journal" and this editorial, More Sadness for Appalachia from the "NY Times."
Get with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition for more information and a hard-hitting approach to battling this continuing travesty.
Two GHGs On the Increase , This story from the AP, courtesy of the "Star Tribune" of Minneapolis-St. Paul, warns that two potent greenhouse gases, methane and nitrogen trifluoride, are a growing concern. My post on Nitrogen from early September , and more specifically the comment there , touched on nitrogen trifluoride, a critical component in the manufacture of High-Def TVs. Two researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography have done groundbreaking work on the prevalence of this potent GHG. See this release from Scripps. Given the growing use of this chemical and its potential for serious damage, it will need to be included in the list of greenhouse gases that the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change regulates.
We've looked at methane several times, most recently in Permafrost (Or Not). The AP story says: "After almost eight years of stability, atmospheric methane levels ‚ measured every 40 minutes by monitors near remote coastal cliffs ‚ suddenly started rising in 2006. The amount of methane in the air has jumped by nearly 28 million tons from June 2006 to October 2007. There is now more than 5.6 billion tons of methane in the air."
Green Schools , I'll leave you with one upbeat story. (My ratio of bad news to good news is usually higher than in this post.) "The U.S. Conference of Mayors has formed the "Mayors’ Alliance for Green Schools,' which will work with the U.S. Green Building Council" according to this article at "GreenerBuildings." The international movement to increase the energy efficiency and to maximize the use of clean energy in our built environment is critical, and I've reported on it any number of times here. Schools are a logical place to walk the walk on the environment and energy and enable students to both live and learn the important lessons of how to create a sustainable world. See also the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment.
