Climate and energy

Happy Sunday, all. Hopefully everyone has had chance to take a deep breath and say – ahhhh…. while shoveling snow, some of you. We got about six inches up here to start with (on top of I don’t know how much rain last night), but the snow is so wet and so thick that it is rapidly coalescing into slush. Spring snow.

Today, your news clips come courtesy of my family. They save clippings and forward me news stories all the time, so I’m letting them take the stage today.

My parents first. They are especially helpful, because they have subscriptions to three very important publications that I do not: Wall Street Journal, Economist, and Grass and Grain. This time, Mom and Dad saved two important bits from the WSJ – first, an editorial titled “Clean Power or Dirty Coal?” It talks about resistance to coal power rising across the board, from Wall Street boardrooms to everyday citizens, and declares: “This is good news. Coal-fired plants are big contributors to global warming.” Quotable:

As we have said before, the surest and probably the only way to encourage meaningful and swift commercial development of cleaner fuels and energy sources is to put a stiff price on carbon emissions… (Until Congress does so) every effort should be made to encourage the development of alternative energy sources.

Second up from the WSJ, my parents pulled a fascinating section on Energy (dated 11 February 2008). Part of it is available as an online slideshow, too – a section on how cities across the U.S. are aggressively pursuing energy efficiency.

Last, from Grass and Grain, Mom and Dad held out a sobering ad on wind energy. Titled “What Have I Done?” it tells the story of a land owner in Michigan who got involved with some wind developers, without really understanding how that development process worked. It stood as a sobering reminder of what might happen in Kansas, if our government doesn’t get some solid wind policies on the ground to help guide this incredibly rapid development and to make sure our farmers and state get the best possible deals.

Will that happen soon enough, though, with the Kansas state legislature currently (ha) spending all its energy (ha) on coal…? Hard telling.

That last article means even more than you think, because in the past, my folks and I have not always seen eye to eye on wind development. Lately, though, we have reached a cautious common ground – we agree if the wind development is coming anyway, then Kansas needs to do it right. There are some places wind can go, and some it can’t. The scale of the development matters, too.

Next up, from my husband – a note for other gearheads. His gearhead tendencies are aimed primarily at his motorcycle, but he was thinking that he might convert his 1996 Toyota Tacoma over to a diesel engine, so he could run it on biodiesel (the link is to a set of forums all about people who do this). After reading up on it, he decided not to go that route, but he has a buddy who still might.

My brothers and sisters-in-law are way too busy raising my nieces and nephews right now to even be aware that newspapers exist, let alone that they contain interesting details about climate and energy. However, on their behalf, I note the following: Physicians for Social Responsibility went nuclear (ha) over how coal PR giant ABEC is using children to promote coal power on their new website, learnaboutcoal.org. This marketing tactic – happy kids who love coal! – is really questionable when you consider how vulnerable pregnant women and children are to the particulate and mercury emissions from coal plants.

And lastly, an incredibly cool activity for kids and citizen scientists in general  Project BudBurst.  Really cool stuff – you  sign up to collect  climate change data on the timing of leafing and flowering in your area. You can gather the data in your own back yard, then enter it into the website. Scientists will use the information to learn about how plant species respond to climatic variation locally, regionally, and nationally, and to detect longer-term impacts of climate change by comparing your results with historical data.

— Maril Hazlett, www.climateandenergy.org