Who's Right on Biofuels?

Ethanol's Failed Promise
The willingness to try, fail and try again is the essence of scientific progress. The same sometimes holds true for Public Policy. It is in this spirit that today, Earth Day, we call upon Congress to revisit recently enacted federal mandates requiring the diversion of foodstuffs for production of Biofuels. These "food-to-fuel" mandates were meant to move America toward Energy Independence and mitigate global Climate Change. But the evidence irrefutably demonstrates that this Policy is not...

Obamas riding the (cellulosic) ethanol ponyheres why he should buck the trend
Like countless politicians before him, Obama is striving to shore up his political support in the Midwest by brandishing goodies for the Ethanol industry. There you go -- scrambling to check on Baseball scores or celebrity gossip. (That is, unless you farm a few thousand acres of corn or run an Ethanol plant, like so many Grist readers.) I know, I know, even my editor groaned when I said I was writing about Ethanol again. But this will be riveting, I promise! In a Speech last week, Tom Vilsack, ...

DOT, EPA Propose Nation's First-Ever Emissions, Fuel-Efficiency Standards for Trucks and Buses
Posted by Secretary Ray LaHood on October 25, 2010 at 02:22 PM EDT Today, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and I proposed the first national standards for Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Fuel Efficiency for medium and heavy-duty trucks, vans, and buses. This is a historic first step to address categories of vehicles previously excluded from America's corporate average Fuel economy guidelines. Currently, the vehicles we propose covering account for 20% of the transportation sector's...

EPA fuel economy labeling: Is there a better metric than MPG or MPGe?
The U.S. Department of Transportation and Environmental Protection Agency face twin and equally daunting tasks as they revise the fuel economy labels as mandated by the 2007 Energy and Independence Security Act. Not only must they incorporate accurate fuel economy, greenhouse-gas Emissions and smog-forming Emissions Ratings for Gas-powered passenger Vehicles, but also for plug-in battery-electrics that derive power from other sources. As more cars come on the market powered by electricity, E85, ...

U.S. Military Boosts Its Use of Algae-Based Fuels
Wednesday, October 27, 2010 By Jason Dearen, Associated Press Sailors conduct maneuvers aboard the Riverine Command Boat (Experimental) at the U.S. Naval Station in Norfolk, Va. on Oct. 22, 2010. The RCB-X is powered by an alternative Fuel blend that is 50 percent algae-based. (AP Photo/U.S. Navy,Specialist 2nd Class Gregory N. Juday) South San Francisco, Calif. (AP) - The forest green algae bubbling in a stainless steel fermenting tank in a suburban warehouse may look like primordial pond...

Soros Gives $1M to California Pot Legalization Measure
Tuesday, October 26, 2010 By Marcus Wohlsen, Associated Press (AP) - Billionaire financier George Soros has thrown his weight behind California's Marijuana legalization Measure with a $1 million donation a week before the vote. The contribution reported Tuesday by The Sacramento Bee is the single biggest donation from an individual other than Proposition 19's main sponsor, Oakland Medical Marijuana entrepreneur Richard Lee. The high-profile liberal and philanthropist has long backed Drug Law...

A primary pivot point for California transit
0 from Solid Principles Only if Poizner, Whitman, and Brown join forces can they defeat the tiger that tried to eat Roy Horn By Nathanael Johnson, KALW News In California the Gubernatorial Candidates offer radically different visions for the future of transportation in the state. Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner are racing for the Republican nomination. Jerry Brown (barring a last minute Scandal) has the Democratic nomination wrapped up. As primaries approach, inquiring transit-obsessed voters...

Companies fight to keep global warming data secret
WASHINGTON – Some of the country's largest emitters of heat-trapping Gases, including businesses that publicly support efforts to curb Global Warming, don't want the public knowing exactly how much they pollute. Oil producers and refiners, along with manufacturers of steel, aluminum and even home appliances, are fighting a proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency that would make the amount of Greenhouse Gas Emissions that companies release — and the underlying data businesses...

Obama aims for tougher fuel economy rules for big vehicles
The Obama Administration has announced plans to develop more strict rules regarding the fuel economy of big vehicles such as school buses, garbage trucks, and delivery vans. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Transportation Department are moving forward with a fuel economy concept for medium- and heavy-duty trucks. The first models to be subject to the new rules will be those produced in 2014. Proponents of the Regulation hope for 20 percent less Greenhouse Gas Emissions and fuel...

James Cameron: a bully and a gigantic hypocrite
Director James Cameron is out to save the planet . If you are skeptical of the claims of the alarmists that Man is destroying the planet via Greenhouse Gas Emissions, he calls you a denier who has your head up your backside . He’d like to have a “shootout” with you, except that, when taken up on the offer, he suddenly has other things to do… Anyway, wouldn’t you expect that, being a good little cultist of the Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming, he’d try...

China to Institute Cap-and-Trade System
The same day that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced that he did not have the votes to pass a cap-and-trade bill, even a scaled-down utility-only version, news broke that China has decided to institute its own cap-and-trade system, though the details remain fuzzy. Why is this significant? Republicans have long argued that there is no sense in capping Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the United States if major emitters like China refuse to impose caps of their own. The...

Congress candidate Q & A: Reducing human-caused emmissions to moderate global warming
The Anchorage Daily News asked Candidates in statewide Elections their views on a variety of issues. Question: Do you support enacting any laws or regulations to reduce human-caused Greenhouse Gas Emissions as a way to moderate Global Warming?

Administration has no regrets on pushing healthcare before climate
A senior adviser to President Obama said the administration has no regrets about securing Healthcare Legislation before a broad Climate and Energy plan this Congress. Melody Barnes, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, acknowledged that prioritizing Healthcare made it more difficult to get an Energy and Climate plan passed on Capitol Hill. But she said Healthcare was a topic voters frequently talked about during the Presidential Campaign in 2008. One of the things...

EERE News: Wind Power Could Provide a Fifth of World's Electricity by 2030: Study
A new study by the Global Wind Energy Council and Greenpeace International reports that Wind could meet 12% of global power demand by 2020, and up to 22% by 2030. The "Global Wind Energy Outlook 2010" (GWEO 2010), announced October 12, finds that Wind power could play a key role in meeting the world's increasing power demand while also achieving major Greenhouse Gas Emissions reductions. The 1,000 gigawatts (GW) of Wind power capacity projected to be installed by 2020 would preclude the emission...

Why Sacramento needs to be fumigated ... [Darleen Click]
I am now going to give you the exact first sentence on Prop 23 on my CA sample ballot. This is the way it appears on the official ballot at the polling place: 23 SUSPENDS IMPLEMENTATION OF Air Pollution Control LAW (AB 32) REQUIRING MAJOR SOURCES OF Emissions TO REPORT AND REDUCE Greenhouse Gas Emissions THAT CAUSE Global Warming, UNTIL Unemployment DROPS TO 5.5 PERCENT OR LESS FOR FULL YEAR. See? Manmade CO2 causes Global Warming. Settled science, you know. You can stop thinking about that...

The Biggest Loser (of energy waste): UNC dormitory
UNC Chapel Hill's Energy team: Luke Macon (from left), Annie Baer, Keith Funkhouser, Erin Hiatt, Piya Kerdlap, Hannah Sacco, Mat Smead, Steven Byrd, Sean Murphy, Eleanor Saunders. Absent: Ashley Mui, Byron Ransom, Michelle Sykes, Nick Rogoff, Mackie Price.Photo: UNCBack in April, the EPA launched a quirky little competition inspired by The Biggest Loser in which 14 Buildings competed to see which could trim the most waste from their Energy usage. The competitors were a 23-story Manhattan Office ...

Toronto Takes Off to a Great Walkable North
Just back from a four day trip to Toronto with my University of Michigan graduate Students learning about Pedestrian-oriented urban development. We toured seven major walkable urban places from downtown to a couple downtown-adjacent places, but especially suburban-located walkable urban places redeveloping old town centers and strip commercial centers. What did we see? A forest of cranes building 30 to 50 story Condominiums, rental apartments, and office towers in these walkable urban places an...

The Clean Energy Scam
From his Cessna a mile above the southern Amazon, John Carter looks down on the destruction of the world's greatest ecological jewel. He watches men converting rain forest into cattle pastures and soybean fields with bulldozers and chains. He sees fires wiping out such gigantic swaths of jungle that scientists now debate the "savannization" of the Amazon. Brazil just announced that Deforestation is on track to double this year; Carter, a Texas cowboy with all the subtlety of a chainsaw, says...

No, Sharron Angle isn't calling Social Security "wicked"
The Democratic Party's "Accountability Project" uploaded [1] the audio below, apparently trying to make people think that Sharron Angle is calling Social Security and similar programs "wicked". In fact, she's not calling those programs "wicked". What she considers wicked are those who turn their backs on the least among them, relying on government programs to take care of people they should be taking care of. On the audio she accepts Social safety net programs as a reality, she just thinks tha...

President Obama endorses filibuster reform
A few hours ago, President Obama appeared on The Daily Show and endorsed Filibuster reform: Here’s one quote: "There are a couple of things that have changed in our politics that are gonna have to be fixed. One is the way the Filibuster operates. As I said, that's just not in the Constitution." Also, in the White House blogger meeting that Barb attended yesterday, President Obama also endorsed Filibuster reform: "I will say that the damage that the Filibuster I think has done to the work...

No, Health Care Didn't Cause The Tea Party
I've already seen a lot of punditry asserting that Health Care reform is the reason for the GOP's Midterm Election gains, but I've rarely seen the case made less persuasively than by Republican consultant Steve Lombardo: The debate over -- and the eventual enactment of -- Health Care reform Legislation was the flashpoint for a political firestorm that will reach its apex on November 2nd. Opposition to Health Care reform came from two perceptions: 1) that the White House and Congress were focusi...

Obama light on jokes on 'Daily Show'
"Over and over again we have moved forward an agenda that is making a difference in people's lives each and every day. Now is it enough? No," Obama said. "I expect and I think most Democrats out there expect that people want to see more progress." After achieving Healthcare Reform and an overhaul of Financial Regulation during the first half of his term, Obama highlighted energy and Immigration Reform as issues that would be on his agenda in the next two years. Stewart needled Obama for promisi...

Abbreviated Pundit Round-up
Punditlicious. Dana Milbank: The president had come, on the eve of what will almost certainly be the loss of his governing majority, to plead his case before Jon Stewart, gatekeeper of the disillusioned left. But instead of displaying the sizzle that won him an army of youthful supporters two years ago, Obama had a Brownie moment. The Daily Show host was giving Obama a tough time about hiring the conventional and Clintonian Larry Summers as his top economic advisor. "In fairness," the president...

Solar-Power Plant Gets U.S. Approval
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Biofuels a factor as global food riots spread to Haiti
The diversion of food crops to Biofuel production was a significant factor contributing to global food prices rocketing by 83% in the last year, and causing violent conflicts in Haiti and other parts of the world. Haiti was rocked by violent Protests this week, leaving 5 dead, hundreds injured and resulting in parliament passing a Vote of No Confidence against Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis for failing to take enough action on high food prices. Food related Civil Unrest appears to be a...