You should read Paul Krugman’s new article, ‘Building a Green Economy: How we can afford to tackle climate change’, in the upcoming issue of The New York Times Magazine. The article is a good overview of the economics of carbon pricing. It includes good discussions of the cost of action versus inaction, of planing for [...]
I updated my simple fuel economy calculations with the new changes to the CAFE standard. Unlike yesterday’s post, this is a prediction of fuel economy for all cars and light trucks actually on the road, not just the CAFE standard for a particular year: The the definition of light truck in the CAFE standard includes [...]
New fuel economy standards have finally been issued. The long overdue update will rase the CAFE standards from their 1990 levels. This will be beneficial for the environment, health, national security, and will save car owners money: Together, EPA and NHTSA estimate that the average cost increase for a model year 2016 vehicle due to [...]
Since they are in the business of selling gasoline-powered automobiles, the manufacturers understandably are reluctant to come out and publicly announce the obvious solution to air-poisoning by the gasoline engine: Get rid of the gasoline engine. On the other hand, every member of the industry is actively engaged in trying to do just that. –W.E. [...]
I finally got around to reading Thomas L. Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded. Friedman is one of the few columnists that I read on a regular basis and the book is on an interesting subject, so I was expecting to enjoy reading it. I didn’t. While I don’t agree with all his ideas, the main [...]
I’ve enjoyed James Balog‘s photography for several years. I’ve been looking forward to seeing the results of his Extreme Ice Survey, were he installed cameras on several glaciers around the world. Since the last time I checked, EIS has posted several high-quality time-lapse movies of glaciers! Go to the EIS site to see more. GL-05 [...]
I read this several months ago, but didn’t finish the review until now. This is a hard review to write because Freeman has so many good quotes. I saved 3400 words of quotes from this book. Winning Our Energy Independence: An Energy Insider Shows How by S. David Freeman is an excellent book by an [...]
One important issue not receiving enough attention is efficiency increases forced by population growth. The Earth is a finite system: resources do not grow as population does. This means that to maintain the same results (standard of living, &c.) as population grows, efficiency must increase. This is important for issues such as land use, food [...]
I finally got around to watching Who Killed the Electric Car?. It is a very good documentary. I have been reading about electric vehicles the past few months, and the movie inspired me to start looking again.
Todays RealClimate post about Venus and Venus Express is very interesting.