The Apollo Alliance (named in the spirit of President John F. Kennedy’s ambitious goal of the Apollo manned missions to the moon) is a group that put together a $300 billion policy proposal for another moon-shot: a green America.

According to studies by the non-partisan Perryman Group, the Apollo Alliance’s ambitious and very achievable plan would have the following benefits:

1. Add more than 3.3 million jobs to the economy

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Posted by Tim Roth, author of the political blog Think Anew and Act Anew

In an important report published yesterday in Paris, France the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) declared that human are “very likely” a cause of global warming. While this isn’t exactly breaking news, what is significant is that in a 2001 report the IPCC said humans are “likely” a cause of global warming. In more concsete terms, the IPCC definition for likely is a 66-90% probability. This means the probabilty of a human effect is now greater than 90%. [2]

Another interesting paragraph of the IPCC Executive Summary read the following:
“The observed widespread warming of the atmosphere and ocean, together with ice mass loss, support the conclusion that it is extremely unlikely that global climate change of the past fifty years can be explained without external forcing, and very likely that it is not due to known natural causes alone.” [3]

Other highlights from the IPCC report:
1. By the end of the century, temperatures will probably rise 1.8-4C (3.2-7.2F) and could possible rise between 1.1-6.4C (2-11.5F)
2. Sea level likely to go up by 28-43 cm (11-16 inches)
3. By the second half of the century, Arctic sea ice will disappear entirely during the summer months.
4. Eleven of the last 12 years are some of the warmest on record
5. Changes in weather patterns will lead to longer and more intense droughts, heatwaves, and tropical storms.

The IPCC will release a full report later this year and will release reports on how to adapt to climate change and suggestions towards reducing greenhouse gases. Stay tuned for more updates.

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Posted by Tim Roth, author of the political blog Think Anew and Act Anew

Sources:
1. “Analysis: Through the climate window” by Richard Black, BBC News
2. “Humans blamed for climate change” by Richard Black, BBC News
3. IPCC report (PDF), released on February 2, 2007

Obviously this kind of legislation has a huge impact for the alternative energy sector, so stay tuned for further legislative updates.

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Posted by Tim Roth, author of the political blog Think Anew and Act Anew

Source:
Source

Check out this summary of the climate and alternative fuel debate in 2006 in a BBC article by Richard Black called “Climate 2006: Rhetoric up, action down”

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Posted by Tim Roth, author of the political blog Think Anew and Act Anew

LED Christmas lights. LED stands for light-emitting diode and this technology can be found everywhere from flashlights to traffic signs. For some interesting reading on LED technology, check out the Wikipedia article on the subject.

If you haven’t already put up your holiday lights yet, you should consider getting some LED lights. (I realize this article comes a bit late for many of you….I already set a reminder on my computer to post this article next year around Thanksgiving when people begin to string the lights up for the holiday season.)

Yes, they are more expensive upfront, but they will save you money in the long run. They are much more durable than the incandescent lights since there are no filaments to burn out or break. Plus, color incandescent bulbs fade because the colored plastic lens degrade in the elements. Since the color of LED lights is based on the actual chip rather than a colored lens, you can maintain vibrant colors year after year.

Most of important of all, they save energy and every bit of energy matters at a time when a growing and modernizing world requires more and more energy. LED lights use a jaw-dropping 1/100th of the energy a old-fashioned incandescent light.

According to a Department of Energy study in 2003, holiday lighting costs 2.2 billion kWh (kilowatt-hours) of electricity a year. If everybody in the country switched to LED lights, we could save an estimated 2 billion kWh every year!!

Think about all the holiday lights across the world and how much energy could be saved. That’s electricity that could be used to power electric cars and replace the heating oil needed by many to keep warm this winter. That’s a lot of oil that could be saved, folks.

I don’t about you, but I’m dreaming of a “Green” Christmas!

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Posted by Tim Roth, author of the political blog Think Anew and Act Anew

Currently, the United States is emitting about 1.8 Gigatons of carbon every year. Mr. Socolow and Mr. Pacala concluded that a “business as usual” approach to policies such as car mileage standards and alternative energy would result in 2.6 Gigatons of annual U.S. carbon emissions by 2050.

Through six different categories of policy changes, the researchers predicted that we could lower annual carbon emissions to roughly 1.0 Gigatons by 2050. This is would be back down to the carbon levels of 1970.

What are these six different categories? They all are affordable and already-existing technologies that in combination would make a gigantic difference.

1. Reduction from more efficient use of electricity in heating and cooling systems, lighting, appliances, and electronic equipment.

2. Reduction from end-use efficiency, meaning that we design buildings and businesses to use far less energy than they currently do.

3. Reduction from increased vehicle efficiency by manufacturing cars that run on less gas and putting more hybrid and fuel-cell on the roads.

4. Reduction from making other changes in transport efficiency, such as designing cities and towns to have better mass transit systems and building heavy trucks that have greater fuel efficiency.

5. Reduction from increased reliance on renewable energy technologies that already exist, such as wind and biofuels.

6. Reduction from the capture and storage of excess carbon from power plants and industrial activities.

Conclusion: We can do this….we have to do this.

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Posted by Tim Roth, author of the political blog Think Anew and Act Anew

While these percentages seem small, consider that in 2000 we emitted 6.8 billion tons (gigatons, Gt) of carbon and 2005′s total was 7.9 Gt.

Yet another reminder that we as a planet have some serious work to do.

For further reading, check out the BBC article on this carbon emission study.

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Posted by Tim Roth, author of the political blog Think Anew and Act Anew

Weblogs Inc, AutoblogGreen feels that Pelosi and company are going to need to step up more than they’ve first shown to really makes some noise in this sector. Although Pelosi has said she wants to “roll back the multibillion dollar subsidies for Big Oil,” they seem to be starting out slow.

With less than 3 weeks passing by since the tables turned we’d like to give them at least til the end of the year to make some noise against Big Oil. We’ll be keeping our ears open to any breaking news on this multibillion dollar rollback and let you know as soon as we hear it.

technorati tags:Oil, Energy, Pelosi, Democrats

Governor Jim Doyle announced the energy solution plan saying that they were “going to find answers to things [they] can apply across the state of Wisconsin.”

The University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point already has solar panels to power hot water heaters, and a special “green roof” to provide a more energy efficient insulation means.

I think this is a great idea. By placing this on a school, the University can use itself as a test bed to develope new technology and also use itself as a proving ground so that, if successful, other schools, businesses, and families can follow suit and push America towards a renewable energy economy.

Also included in the renewable by 2012 project are three other UW system Universities. Green Bay, Oshkosh and River Falls.Â

technorati tags:Renewable, Energy, Alternative, Fuel, UW, Stevens, Point

I recently bought the book An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore. The book is basically the paper version of the movie that was released in May 2006. The book and movie are based on the Keynote presentation on global warming (Keynote is the Mac version of Powerpoint) that Al Gore has given close to a thousand times. This slideshow is both fascinating and deeply terrifying as the former Vice-President takes you on “a nature walk through the Book of Revelations.”

This book and movie were just stuffed full of compelling information. For example, here’s a summary of one of most interesting parts of this movie and book.

As I mentioned earlier, the scientific community has reached a overwhelming consensus: Global warming is real. Humans are the principal cause. The consequences will be very dangerous. Said Jim Baker, the former head of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration): “There is a better scientific consensus on this issue than any other…with the possible exception of Newton’s Law of Dynamics.”

In a peer-reviewed Science magazine study published by Dr. Naomi Oreskes at the University of California at San Diego, all 928 of the peer-reviewed science journal articles on global warming published between 1993 and 2003 were analyzed. Dr. Oreskes and her team choose a large random sample and determined if these papers agreed on the scientific consensus on global warming.

Percentage of articles in doubt as to the cause of global warming: 0%

Then it gets interesting:

Due to well-funded special interest groups, a very coordinated disinformation campaign is being conducted to raise doubt about the “inconvenient truth” of global warming. (Big surprise: these groups happen to receive funding from the oil and coal industry). Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ross Gelbspan wrote a book called Boiling Point and discussed this information campaign. In this book, he describes an internal memo from one of these groups that stated their goal was to “reposition global warming as theory, rather than fact.”

Al Gore then proceeded to draw a compelling comparison to the reaction of the tobacco industry in the 1960s when the Surgeon General released a landmark report linking cigarette smoke to lung cancer.

“Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.” – Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company memo from the 1960s.

Then it gets really interesting:

Similar to the study of the peer-reviewed journal articles, another study was done of the mainstream media coverage of the global warming issue. No formal citation was given for this story, but as avid news reader I have zero doubts about the study’s conclusion.

They studied articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, and the Wall Street Journal over 14 years (roughly 1990-2004). They took a 18% sample of the 636 articles and analyzed how they depicted the global warming issue.

Number of articles that gave equal weight to the “scientific articles” (translation: not peer-reviewed) that claim global warming isn’t due to human activity: 53%

53%!!!

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Posted by Tim Roth, author of the political blog Think Anew and Act Anew