Electric Utility Pays $100,000 to Global Warming Naysayer
By Clayton Sandell and Bill Blakemore
ABC News
July 27, 2006
Ever wonder why so many people still seem confused about global warming?
The answer appears to be that confusion leads to profit — especially if you’re in some parts of the energy business.
One Colorado electric cooperative has openly admitted that it has paid $100,000 to a university academic who prides himself on being a global warming skeptic.
Continue Reading Making Money by Feeding Confusion Over Global Warming
Posted by Paul on July 28, 2006
By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
OLD SNOWMASS, Colo.
In 1976, Gerald Ford was president, Americans flocked to see “Rocky” (the first one), oil was $13 a barrel, and Amory B. Lovins wrote a massive piece in Foreign Affairs magazine declaring that the United States stood at a crossroads on energy policy.
The first path, he wrote, led to ever greater output of coal, oil and nuclear, a capital-intensive strategy dubbed “strength through exhaustion.” The second path relied primarily on greater efficiency as well as the development of such alternative energy sources as wind, solar power and biofuels.
Thirty years later, the price of oil — even after adjusting for inflation — is almost twice as high and what President Bush has called the nation’s “addiction” to oil has grown more dire. But the answer according to Lovins is pretty much the same: It’s a lot cheaper, easier and faster to save energy than it is to buy or produce it.
Continue Reading One Man’s Long Battle To Get U.S. to Kick Oil
Posted by Paul on July 25, 2006
By Jim Norman
The New York Times
July 23, 2006
On a recent return trip from Massachusetts to my home in New Jersey, a distance of 160 miles, I burned a total of two cups of diesel fuel in my 2001 Volkswagen Jetta TDI.
Since that would indicate fuel economy of more than 600 miles per gallon, something didn’t quite compute.
The missing part of the equation was this: I was returning from Easthampton, Mass., where Daryl Beck, a mechanic well versed in such matters, had just installed a secondary fuel system in my car. The main fuel I used on the drive home was not diesel, which the Jetta was designed to burn, but straight vegetable oil.
Continue Reading Grease Is the Word: Fill It Up With Fry Oil
Posted by Paul on July 23, 2006
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent
BBC News
July 20, 2006
The world needs a new global organisation dedicated to stemming the loss of plant and animal species.
That is the argument put forward by a group of eminent academics in this week’s edition of the journal Nature.
They call for the establishment of an Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity (IPB) to parallel the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Recent studies show continuing loss of biodiversity, with the hippo and polar bear just added to the danger list.
Continue Reading World ‘needs new wildlife body’
Posted by Paul on July 20, 2006
High energy costs and green building initiatives could boost interest in the rooftop units
By Margaret Allen
Staff Writer
Dallas Business Journal
December 23, 2005
Fort Worth real estate mogul Ross Perot Jr. will be among the first to use a new alternative energy invention from a Plano-based company — the Mag-Wind rooftop turbine, which uses wind to generate electricity.
Mag-Wind Co. L.L.C. in February will install one of its first five pre-production models — possibly the one nicknamed “Toto” by its inventor — atop the developer’s Victory office building in downtown Dallas.
Continue Reading Turbine co. harnesses wind power
Posted by Paul on July 18, 2006
By Alexei Barrionuevo
The New York Times
June 25, 2006
Dozens of factories that turn corn into the gasoline substitute ethanol are sprouting up across the nation, from Tennessee to Kansas, and California, often in places hundreds of miles away from where corn is grown.
Once considered the green dream of the environmentally sensitive, ethanol has become the province of agricultural giants that have long pressed for its use as fuel, as well as newcomers seeking to cash in on a bonanza.
Continue Reading Boom in Ethanol Reshapes Economy of Heartland
Posted by Paul on July 12, 2006
By Claudia H. Deutsch
The New York Times
July 4, 2006
In a sense, it is the ultimate renewable source of fuel. Weather anomalies can kill off corn crops, calm the winds, obscure the sun — but through rain or shine, gusts or stillness, cows and hogs and turkeys spew forth a steady stream of manure, one of nature’s richest sources of methane, a principal component of natural gas.
And now, farmers and entrepreneurs are recognizing that this immutable fact can yield a steady stream of revenue and profit, too. Slowly, but steadily, they are replacing the malodorous lagoons used to treat the waste with machines that can wrest energy from excrement.
Continue Reading Tapping the Latent Power in What’s Left Around the Barnyard
Posted by Paul on July 04, 2006
These Folks Fuel Their Diesel Cars With Cooking Oil. Slick, Huh?
By Allan Lengel
Washington Post Staff Writer
washingtonpost.com
Saturday, July 1, 2006
In these days of eye-popping gas prices, Mike Leahy gets fuel for his Volkswagen Beetle at the Barking Dog, a popular Bethesda pub. Shane Sellers fuels up at a Chinese restaurant in Frederick. And Ben Tonken heads to a Tex-Mex eatery in the District.
“There’s a bit of a smell when you get out,” said Leahy, a D.C. lawyer. “A slight french fry smell. I kind of like it; it’s kind of sweet. It smells better than diesel.”
Welcome to the world of greasel — the shorthand some use for grease and diesel. Leahy and the others are among a tiny but growing band of environmentalists and thrifty consumers who are turning to restaurants for free, used vegetable oil to fuel their diesel-engine cars.
Continue Reading Grease Guzzlers
Posted by Paul on July 02, 2006
