GlobalWarmingisReal contributor Anders Hellum-Alexander wraps-up the climate and environmental news headlines for the past week:
- While gleaning stories from National Geographic (NG) I ran into advertisements for Shell Oil Company, like at the Scientific American site discussed last week. The story I found on NG focuses on the intersection of water and energy in our economy.
Then, I went to the website for Popular Science and found, yet again, a web page covered in ads for Shell. Shell now “Presents” Popular Science.
Shell is still an oil company no matter how much it tries to appear to be an energy company, and I don’t support businesses that let companies like Shell spread its deception. - ConsumerEnergyReport.com covers a new study that claims that solar is now a cheaper energy source than nuclear. Whether or not this claim is true, solar energy is getting cheaper everyday while nuclear is getting more expensive because of increased regulation and the need for billions of dollars upfront to build a reactor.
- The Week covers the Tea Party and their opposition to environmental regulation. According to the Tea Party, all scientists are dumb and wrong despite their years of education and practice, and there is no developing environmental crises to prepare for.
- The UN is meeting in Japan right now to try and agree on targets for protecting and supporting ecological biodiversity. As usual though, the poorer countries, with all the biodiversity to protect, want financial support to do so and the richer countries don’t want to open their wallets too wide. Brazil is leading the fight to block any agreement without the promise of financing.
- NASA announced that they found water on the moon, and it can be harvested. Think of the day when we need to go to the moon to get fresh water.
- With the new EPA rulings soon to become effective, companies that own small coal fired power plants will find it a money losing operation to keep them open. These small plants brought on line occasionally to augment the larger plants are being replaced by power generation from the growing renewable energy market.
- The US government offers money to anyone that gets an energy efficiency upgrade to their home. Christian Science Monitor reports.
- Japan is adopting “Smart Power” strategies that reconfigure an urban energy system to operate in a highly efficient manner using renewable energy sources.
